Mike Parker

Mike Parker mparker@theblackwatercg.com It is always easier to predict continuing bad news than to make good things happen. All these "Chicken Littles" bemoaning the state of affairs are in danger of making their "predictions" into reality. Here's reality: Your 2009 will be what YOU make it. Many agents are doing well, but they aren't the ones surrendering. Many markets are tough, but many agents are succeeding, still. If only these naysayers would quit the business and clear the way for those determined to make 2009 more successful than 2008, we'd have the recovery happening right now. A pox on all you negative thinkers! Watch out for flying acorns!

Mike Parker mparker@theblackwatercg.com Do you remember when Japanese companies were buying up American landmarks like Rockerfeller Center? When the capitalized value of Nippon Telephone Stock was supposedly worth more than the S&P 400? When a square foot of Tokyo real estate was worth more than a block of Manhattan Real Estate? No? It was in the seventies and it was unsustainable because it did not pass the reality test. I said then that a day of reckoning would come because none of those supposed "values" were true. So it is today. Houses are not worth the prices they reached in 2006 and people cannot afford them at those ridiculous prices. Granting a $727,000 mortgage to a strawberry picker from Bakersfield (true story) with no money down is not reality. Japan paid with a lost decade: the 90's. Deflation ran rampant, millions of jobs were lost, the currency fell and the banks turned out to have 40% non-performing loans. Sound familiar? There's too many guilty parties to even begin to think about. What we need to do now is to accept reality: the party is over; houses deserve to sell for whatever the market will price them at, and one must have money to put down, a good job that assures repayment of mortgage responsibilities, and be an owner occupier. The problem will then fix itself. Now if we could only get our incompetent government to fund banks to make loans.....

Mike Parker mparker@theblackwatercg.com World War I was the 'war to end all wars', too. Online search is only being refined to better market pay per click. Organic search will remain largely as it is. No company would ever scrap a product and a method that gives it a 65% market share and the folks at Google are not stupid. Localize your optimization; it works better. Remember Chicken Little; hit on the head by a falling acorn, he ran around saying "The sky is falling, the sky is falling!" Anyone saying organic search is dead, dying or headed for the junkpile needs to learn from Chicken Little: It just ain't so.