Fridays are for fun on this blog, and since it’s been a while since we’ve had a Fun Friday post we’re going to make this one extra-special.

So here’s the deal: look closely at the photo above, taken from the garden of our new listing. Now, do a little research and figure out where it is.

If you’re one of the first 3 people to email me with the address of the property, I’ll send you a gift card for $10 to one of three great new Annapolis restaurants at the new Annapolis Towne Centre – Brio, P.F. Chang’s or Gordon Biersch – courtesy of us, The Moss Haedrich Team of Keller Williams.

Email your response to kenhaedrich@gmail.com along with your name and phone number. If you’re one of the lucky ones I’ll call and let you know.  

Here’s a clue: the home is listed for more than a million, but less than $2 million. Hope that helps. Have fun.

I imagine it’s the same with other bloggers, but I find it quite interesting – and instructive – to keep track of who is reading this blog and what you’re reading. For one thing, it helps me figure out what sort of information you want more of. (Just for the record, that’s a generic WHO – other than subscribers, I can’t tell who you are.)

So I make it my business to keep track of what pages you’re landing on when you come here, and the search terms you use to arrive.  Often there’s little surprise – blogging about particular neighborhoods, like South River Colony, always gets lots of traffic. And sometimes, plenty of surprise: I still can’t figure out how the person who Googled “sock monkeys for sale in Target” ended up here, but they did.

You Like To Search For Annapolis Area Homes and You’re Smitten With the Fifty Dollar House

Many of you land directly on the home search page of the site, which tells me you’ve probably bookmarked that page for convenience. I’m glad you’re looking, because now’s a great time to buy. Is there a home we can show you?

A ton of you have been searching for news about the Fifty Dollar House, which, sadly, you did not win. Somebody else did, and we’re selling the home for her. Perhaps you’d like to buy it?

When I do a post about home sales statistics for the Annapolis area, that draws a lot of interest, too – I need to do more posts like this – as well as posts on subjects related to the Naval Academy. A number of you used the search term “Plebes no more,” a reference to one long-standing Academy tradition.

Search terms about home staging bring regular traffic because I’ve written about it often. Some people end up here by searching for our team stager, Linda Donnelly - the best in the business.  When you use her services to get your home looking perfect, we reimburse you at settlement.

More than a few of you are using search terms like ”trustworthy agent” or “untrustworthy agents” and you’re finding us that way since I published this story. Apparently, finding an agent you can trust is in the forefront of your mind, and it’s a good thing.

I’m afraid I must have disappointed the people who ended up here after searching for “math’s chalkboard”, “new home digest” and “bad stockbrokers.” Google must have been having a bad night when these poor souls were directed this way.

You Like a Good Laugh…

…which explains why some of you are searching for bad MLS photos. We have some doozies.

Not surprisingly, lots of you found us by searching for Keller Williams Annapolis or Keller Williams Culture, our culture – we believe – being one of the things that sets us apart as a company.

I can’t tell who you are, specifically – but I can often tell where you work. Some of you are affiliated with institutions of higher learning, which makes me think we attract a smart crowd. I like that.

And many of you work for large government entities. I won’t say which ones, because if you’re reading this blog instead of delivering mail, eavesdropping on bad guys or searching for cures to nasty infectious diseases, that’s between you and your boss.

As for the person who just yesterday typed “do you like living in Annapolis” into the Google search engine, I – for one – love it.

If you’ve sold a home recently, you know all about Feedback.

Feedback is the stuff buyers and their agents have to say about your property after a showing – the good, the bad, the indifferent.

Agents being busy – and this being the electronic age - feedback flies back and forth between agents in e-mail snippets. We’re lucky if we get a complete sentence from a showing agent. A paragraph is the equivalent of a novel.

Feedback can be useful – if ten would-be buyers complain about pet odors, you know you better do something about it.

It’s also a barometer of the market at any given moment in time, and a clear reflection of buyer behavior. Here – with very little exaggeration – is a sampling of feedback we’ve gotten recently. 

• • Showed buyer 18 condos this weekend. They’ve decided to buy a farmhouse with 10 acres on the Eastern Shore.
  • They loved the house – it made their Top 15 list.
  • Clients have decided to write an offer on the home if it is still available when they get back from Hawaii this summer.
  • Clients loved the home. They thought it was spacious, bright, had good flow, a nice yard, killer kitchen and master. Met all of their criteria. They want to keep looking.

That’s right. Hip young agents are shedding the old ways. They’re no longer piling their buyers into gas guzzling SUVs and schlepping them from home to home. Rather, they’re donning helmets with their clients, hopping on bikes, and hitting the road. The concept is really gaining ground in places like Portland, Oregon where – apparently – the sight of sweaty, two-wheeling Realtors is becoming quite common. I decide to run the idea by the rest of The Moss Haedrich Team at Monday’s team meeting.

Are you out of your mind? That’s Kathy, one of our Buyer Specialists. She reminds me that she has new clients flying into town this morning, and there’s a good chance of rain this afternoon. Besides, her clients have 3 kids and she’s showing them expensive homes in Edgewater. “Driving down Route 2 is dangerous enough in a car. You want me to kill off the best buyers I have?”

I see her point. I decide we should probably start with the buyers we’ve been working with for more than a year. Who knows? Maybe the jolt of adrenaline from pedaling around Annapolis on two wheels will finally push them off the fence.

I wonder how many visitors come to Annapolis for a day trip and miss Maryland Avenue entirely. Most, I’m afraid.

Shame, because it’s less crowded than Main Street and the City Dock area, the shops and galleries are great, and the architecture is some of the most striking that you’ll find in town. In the 18th century, Maryland Ave was the most fashionable residential street in the city, and it’s not hard – as you stroll from one end to the other – to imagine the privileged lives of the residents who built some of the homes here.

Here are a few of the sights you’ll see along this historic street.

Much of our work as agents involves telling people things they’d rather not hear: We need to adjust the selling price. Your septic system has issues. The would-be buyers have withdrawn their offer and are moving to Costa Rica instead.

That’s why I don’t mind paying someone else, on occasion, to tell people things I’d rather not tell them and that they’d rather not hear. Just makes my life a little easier.

One such person is our team stager/designer, Linda Donnelly. Not only does Linda have years of interior design experience. Nobody is better than she is at spotting potential buyer objections and offering sound solutions. That’s why she works with our sellers: to eliminate objections to a sale. It works: the homes she has staged for us sell, and beat the average days on market considerably.

Linda is extremely pleasant, but the experience – I must tell you – can be challenging for a seller. Imagine a 3-or 4-hour marathon session in which your home is put under a microscope, shortcomings are served up, and corrective homework is lavishly assigned. I worry how some clients will hold up. Linda knows to call me right away after a consultation and give me an update.

How did it go, I’ll ask.

Fine, she’ll say, until I told them they had to get rid of their dogs.

Linda likes to tease me, but her sense of humor is one of the things that makes her so good at what she does. This, too: she’s not afraid to roll up her sleeves and do much of the needed work with our clients. I think of her as our personal trainer for home sellers: she’ll push you to make your home look as irresistible as it can be. And in the end you’ll get the results you were hoping for.   

Linda’s services, by the way, are included for free when we list a home. Call for more details.

Today is Fun Friday on this blog and for 919 new graduates of the Naval Academy I imagine this was about the most fun they’ve had in 4 years.

To the graduates and their families…to those of us who live in Annapolis and perhaps served in the Navy…this is a very big day and we all take pride in this annual event. We’ve watched these young men and women mature before our very eyes, seen the sportsmanship they display on the football field and in other athletic events – and we can’t help but feel proud to be part of this community.

Admiral Michael G. Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressed the graduating class and offered some good advice: learn from your mistakes; be accountable for your actions; and question authority when appropriate. Not a bad code to live by.

The ceremony ended the way it always does, with the hat toss. If you’ve never seen it before, watch this clip – one I just found on YouTube – from this year’s graduation.

Today is Fun Friday on this blog and for 919 new graduates of the Naval Academy I imagine this was about the most fun they’ve had in 4 years.

To the graduates and their families…to those of us who live in Annapolis and perhaps served in the Navy…this is a very big day and we all take pride in this annual event. We’ve watched these young men and women mature before our very eyes, seen the sportsmanship they display on the football field and in other athletic events – and we can’t help but feel proud to be part of this community.

Admiral Michael G. Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressed the graduating class and offered some good advice: learn from your mistakes; be accountable for your actions; and question authority when appropriate. Not a bad code to live by.

The ceremony ended the way it always does, with the hat toss. If you’ve never seen it before, watch this clip – one I just found on YouTube – from this year’s graduation.

It has to be one of the smelliest, most spirited rites of passage in Annapolis, if not the entire country: first year Naval Academy students converge en masse on the Academy’s Herndon Monument in a rush to the top. There’s just one catch: the monument is generously greased with 100 pounds of lard.  

Traditionally, the plebe who makes the final ascent removes the plebe “dixie cup” hat (below) on top and replaces it with the midshipman’s cover (or hat) - a move symbolizing the plebes’ completion of their first grueling year.

This year’s climb on Thursday morning saw the Midshipmen finish the job in just under 2 hours and 36 minutes – not bad, though not nearly a record breaking time: no fewer than six plebe classes have come in at under an hour.

It’s Fun Friday on this blog, as always, and we thought you’d enjoy a firsthand look at the excitement from this year, below.

Well, it’s Friday, and you know that Fridays are for fun on this blog. And I can think of very little that’s more fun than watching the Blue Angels every year when they fly into town for Commissioning Week at the Naval Academy.

Commissioning Week runs this year from May 16th through the 23rd and the Blue Angels perform on the 20th and 21st – you can find the schedule by clicking here.

I whoop and holler at only a very few select events, namely Navy football games and the Blue Angels show. Apparently, I get a lot more excited than the guys flying these gorgeous F/A-18 Hornets. Check out the video below. It’s got some great cockpit shots and the pilot looks about as excited as a guy driving his pickup a block down the street on Sunday morning to buy a quart of milk. I love it.

 Click here to view the embedded video.