Water is the life blood of the West and wars have been fought over the right to own and control water - whether for raising livestock, growing crops, or just being able to live.  And, still today, it is a major factor in your ability to use or build on a piece of property.  While this article is focused on Utah, the concepts are ablicable to most western states and I thought it might be useful for those of us working in the wild, wild west.

Back East, you can take water from stream or lake if it crosses your property. This is based on riparian concepts imported from English common law.  Not so in the West (and more specifically in Utah), we use the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation to determine who has rights to water.  This doctrine is based on the concept of "first in time, first in rights.  Essentially this means that those who hold the oldest rights have the highest rights to use it.

"Pre-statutory water rights or "Diligence rights are generally considered to be real property and are conveyed in the same manner as other as real property (e.g. a house or land.

To mange water resources in Utah, the Utah State Engineering Office was created in 1897.  Today this is done by the Division of Water Rights (although you'll hear the old title).  A complete water code was enacted in 1903 and was revised and reenacted in 1903.  This law is presently in force mostly as Utah Code 73.

All water in Utah is considered public property and is subject to the rights to use.  A water right is based upon:

1.Quantity - how much water you can use
2.Source - where the water comes from (e.g. Provo River)
3.Priority of date --  when was the water right established
4.Nature of use - e.g. culinary, agricultural
5.Point of division -- where can the water be drawn from (e.g. well, this point on the stream)

So, if your right is to agricultural water you can't use it for household water unless your new right is perfected.  Your right to use the water is not perfected until a certificate is issued.  This right to use can be transferred by assignment or deed while being developed.  But, only by deed once it has been perfected.  The determination of right to use is made by the Division of Water Rights.

What is really critical to understand is that if a water right is not being used or is being used inappropriately, a water right can be lost.  So, if you have a well permit, but haven't dug and used the well water, that right is lost.  Or, if you have the right to water for your livestock (e.g. horses), but don't have any livestock on the land using the water, the right is lost.  Statutory forfeiture currently occurs when an appropriator fails to use the water for a continuous seven year period.

What great week it was last week.  We took the mules on up into the Tetons just outside Jackson Hole, WY and packed into the Yellowstone River (a couple of miles outside of Yellowstone Park).  The fishing was amazing ... 5 trout in 30 mins all over 24".  Lots of wildlife -- Bears and Wolf Packs included (the wolf packs were howling most of the night as they hunted -- I slept with my 357 magnum next to my bedroll ).  I slept outside and the stars were beautiful at night (no city lights to dull them).  No cell phones and not watch ... it was a relaxing vacation.

And, to top it off -- I closed on a $4M property last week and am getting paid today.  And, the property is on the Provo River (gold medal trout fishing) and the new owner gave me permission to fish it whenever I want.  What more can you ask for out of life --- or, the real estate business.  This is the way it should work all the time.

I was just reading a blog (Your Home Sold in 120 Days Guaranteed OR) where agents were talking about how agressive a particular training program is in follow-up emails and they couldn't get off the email list.  Here's an easy way to stop all the spam mail.

1. Set up temporary email accounts that forward to your primary account.  You can do this via P2A's email account management. This is useful when you think you "might" want to continually receive emails from the source.  So, for the XYZ service, create an "xyz@<yourdomain.com> email account that forwards to your prime account.  (Or, for any other service -- <servicename>@<yourdomain.com>)  I did this when signing up for the Proctor information and then deleted it after I got what I needed -- so, no spam from that company .

2. Get a 'free" email account -- like hotmail.com  -- when you're asked to give an email to receive information that you only want to receive one time, use it.  Hotmail has a capability to send all email except those on your contact list to the junk folder where it can be deleted immediately or held until you delte it.  I normally have it set to delete immediately except when I'm expecting an information email.

3. If you put your email address on your website:
    a. if you don't need them to click on it to send you an email, put a space in the address -- mine might look like: nick@park city sold.com, or
    b. if you want them to click on it to send you an email, use the concept in para 2.  Then delete/change it if you start to get spammed.  Idea for these email usernames are info, information, customerservice, custsrv, help (e.g. info@<yourdomain.com>).

For those of us who like doing our own Search Engine Optimization ... or those of us who just want to understand what it is all about ... Dan Thies (Note: I'm not affiliated with nor do I use Dan's company) has just published a new (and Free) ebook on the subject.  You can download a copy at: http://www.seofaststart.com/portal/download/

Dan Thies is very well know in the SEO world as a SEO trainer (i.e. he trains SEO consultants to do SEO).  His book focuses on "white hat" techniques of obtaining organic (e.g. free)  search engine placement.  "White hat" techniques are those that the search engines are OK with ... "Black Hat" techniques are those that try to circumvent search engines rules to achieve placement.

 Even if you don't plan to do SEO yourself, the book is a good read and will help you understand what an SEO consultant should be doing for you.  (Note: you can do SEO yourself but think that if you're busy, it's worth money to use a reputable SEO partner ... but, you do need to be able to vet them and ensure they're doing they're job ... so read the book.)

Thought it would be nice to continue with a few blogs on the handling different objections that we might run into.  This one deals with the seller who thinks their property is worth more than the market value (not that that would ever happen  ).  Add your thoughts on how to handle this or similar senario.

1. Seller: The Jones just listed their house down the street for $XXX.  And we can always come down later.
    Response: I can understand that you want to get the most money for your home.  That is exactly what I want as well.  You know, however, most people won't even bother coming to see a property that is priced to high.  And, we can potentially miss our buyer because they'll have purchased a different property.  So, do you want to price it above market and not have a chance to negotiate any offers at all?  Let do the right thing and list it at a sellable price.  All we need to do is sign the contract so I can help you get what you want in the time you want.  (note: I'll generally have previously provided a list of sold and expired properties.)

Probably the most often heard objection is on the commission ... sellers seem to always want us to cut it.  It is always good to have a few standard answers ... that make sense ... so, you can handle this objection.  Here's a couple I use (please add your own):

1. Seller: Agent A will list our property for 5% ... will you cut your commission.
    Answser: Wow.  I can understand your concern with commission.  But, if he was willing to cut his commission before he's even listed your property, how well do you think he'll do helping you negotiate the best price for your house.  So, lets do what's right and sign the contract so I can get you the best price for your home.

2. Seller: Brokerage A will list our property for 1% and put it on the MLS.
    Answer: I can understand why you might think that is a good deal.  But, do you know the type of buyers discount brokers bring ... discount brokers bring discount buyers.   A professional agent like myself will help you get the best possible price for your home.  Lets do what's right and sign the contract so I can get to work selling your home.

Obviously, it does no good to have a real estate website if no one knows about it.  That's why we to optimize our sites for keywords like "homes for sale".  The real questions is how information on your website made available when someone searches for "homes for sale".

You might think that each search engine scours the entire web, indexes the results, and provides a response to your queries from those results.  In reality, they don't scour the entire web.  Instead they have a complex set of relationships between each other ... even Google will actually hit Yahoo (and visa-versa) to gather information to use in its results.  And, then you have your 2nd tier (if you want to call them that) which have a relationship with SEs like Google to return results ... but, filters those results in their own way.

A great overview of relationships between search result providers and consumers is Bruce Clay's SE relationship chart. Below is a static representation. The dynamic (pretty cool interactivity) version is available at http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm.

If you want your site to appear high up in the result list of a search engine that is a data consumer from another engine, target the parent engine. If you want AOL.com customers to see your site target Google.

The main problem I have with Relibration is that it tends to be a linear blog ... i.e. no real organization.  Even though you can set topics and keywords, they aren't used (I'm not sure most know how).

The P2A forum at least allowed discussion within subject areas.  So, if you wanted to write on a particular subject it was easy.  For example, if I want to chat about SEO or Real Estate Issues or Social Issues I could find a discussion area.

P2A might review blog structures like ActiveRain's.  And, incorporate group-type features and membership areas.

I attended the 1st day of a Mike Ferry conference  today.  I wanted to get feedback from the group if anyone had used them and, if so:

1. Is their approach valid -- what are the pros/cons
2. Is it worth the money
3. If so, which of their programs would you recommend

It seems a bit old school to me ... but, there were a lot of agents there (plants?) that said they did a ton of business using the approach.

I attended a P2A session a few weeks ago on SEO.  The speaker said that traffic (i.e. people doing searches and the possible resulting click throughs) on Yahoo/MSN/AOL was a better demographic for potential real estate clients than Google traffic.

His supposition was a significant portion of Google searches came from the My Space crowd -- i.e. teenagers and early twenties.  Vs, the majority of Yahoo/MSN/AOL searches were from the over 35 year old demographic -- which is where most real estate clients would come from.  He based this on the supposition that people will generate their searches from the same interface they use for thier email client (i.e. use the embedded search).

His proposed that because of this we should optimize our real estate websites for Yahoo/MSN/AOL instead of Google.  Of course, he might be saying this because it is harder to get organic (free) position on Google than Yahoo/MSN/AOL.

Any thoughts on this?

I've put alot of thought into how to drive traffic to my three sites (www.parkcitysold.com (main site), www.parkcityhomeprices.com (seller site), and www.parkcitybuyer.com (buyer site)) over the past 6 months.  The effort has resulted in the www.parkcitysold.com site being on page one of Yahoo.  And, has reduced the cost of my adword campaigns with Google, MSN Live, and Yahoo.

The process involved

1. Researching which keywords are used the most frequently

2. Looking at how many competitor sites where optimized for each keyword

3. Determining how much the pay-per-click was for a particular keyword.

What is interesting is what I thought would be the keyword that would generate the most impressions was not the one that actually did.  For example, "Park City UT Real Estate" generates about 50% more impressions than "Park City Real Estate".

And, it turns out that most of the local real estate websites where optimized for "Park City Real Estate" on only one was optimized for "Park City UT Real Estate".  And, guess which one was cheaper for buying adwords .

The other keyword campaign is subdivision oriented (I just started this).  I've set up pages on the main website that are oriented to the various sub-divisions -- information on the area, market stats, etc. No one is doing this in my area.  So, the keywords are cheap to buy (less than a 25 cents per click) and I should be able to get reasonable SE indexing over the next few months for each of these pages.

I use the P2A drip email pretty heavily to keep in contact with clients.  It is amazing how well it works -- really builds a relationship and trust level with them.  The one issue is that I'm in a ski resort town -- Park City, UT -- which is mostly 2nd homes and clients are in the area 1 or 2 times a year -- so, the incubation period can be 12 to 24 months. Which means the drip email campaigns can get kinda of long.

P2A limits a drip campaign to 26 emails.  So, as the client come off of the 1st campaign, I want to move them to a 2nd & 3rd campaign.  I've done some extensive modifications to the P2A provided content.  But, need to add the additional emails/campaigns -- and, I've run out of the creative ideas. 

Can anyone suggest a source for drip email content?

One of the features of a P2 pro account is that you can remove the header and footer on selected pages.  I've done that to create two focused pages (one buyer and one seller).  I have a domain pointed to each of these (Buyer: www.ParkCityBuyer.com and Seller: www.ParkCityHomePrices.com).  Currently, I buy adwords to drive customers to these sites (generate most of my new business this way).  Obviously, would like to optimize the pages for so the search engines will rank them on Page 1.

Here's the issue.  I was just told (by an SEO vendor) that because these two sites are redirections to my main site (www.ParkCitySold.com) that I won't be able to get the search engines to pick up these URLs.

Is this correct?

If so, suggestions on how to restructure so that I can get search engine rankings for these pages.

Has anyone seen an overall impact to the mortgage market for buyers with normal range credit scores.

I just finished one of the hardest closings ever this week with a buyer whose credit score was in the low 700s.  The lender had him providing more financial history (3 years back) and asked more questions about what he planned to do with the property (it was a primary home) that I've ever seen before.  They actually had him providing information even after we had closed  before they would transfer funds -- it was pretty crazy.

But, we did get everything done and it funded today