Ron, good ideas but the big problem that I currently see with neighborhoods is that we probably have over 1000 neighborhoods in the Charleston area, many are far too small to be reasonable to purchase. The real value would be in communities (for example, a suburb like Katy TX) with at least 20,000 people. Although as I remember how large Katy is, it probably is several hundred thousand residents already and it alone likely has a hundred neighborhoods. And if that is the case, which do you choose?

Ron, I think these are excellent ideas! I would love it if the neighborhoods I have now had those features. I think the residents would love to post things that are going to be happening in their subdivisions, schools, communities, etc. and they would keep coming back to keep up with what is going on in their neighborhood. I would vote for it!

Ron:

Great ideas.  Are you going to give this to P2 to work on?

Hi Ron,

Great ideas - the 2 neighborhood I have are not geeting much web traffic.

I agree with Howard.  I have the same problem with buying neighborhoods.  Gainesville Florida has over 1000 neighborhoods, all of which are much too small to support a realtor.  The urban area has over 1500 neighborhoods, and this is a small city.  The only thing that would work here is a way to "buy" a district or quadrant like Northwest Gainesville or Northern Alachua County or the equivalent.  As the P2 system is now, the neighborhood system is totally impractical for my service area.  In fact you can go to my webpage and see all the neighborhoods I serve:   http://www.gainesvillefloridahomes.com/Locations_Served/page_1809198.html/

How could anyone post notices for that many neighborhoods?

The many "neighborhoods" that exist in the directory do not meet the criteria P2 has for neighborhoods.

From P2 Manual:

"We realize that there are some areas which may be missing some neighborhoods. We are asking our members to help us with this by spotting the inaccuracies and letting us know. Here's how to do it:

- Go to http://agentdirectory.point2.com/Registration/default.aspx and log in using the same username and password that you use for your Point2 Agent website

- Drill down to the area you believe is incorrect

- From the right hand side select Submit Neighborhoods

- Add in the information asked and if the neighborhood you are submitting is a correction to one we already have in the Directory please let us know which one in the Additional Comments field so we can review it as well

- Click Submit

We will review the suggestions as soon as possible and make changes in accordance to our criteria. This criteria is as follows:

- A neighborhood averages approximately 4,000 people in size but can vary from 2,500 to 8,000 people (this is in line with government Census Tracts).

- Cities cannot be submitted as neighborhoods. Towns, boroughs, etc. can be submitted as neighborhoods if their population meets the criteria specified above.

- Gated communities, retirement villages, condominium complexes, trailer parks, etc. are not considered neighborhoods unless their population meets the criteria specified above."

Despite the clear definition above.  The directory has really turned into a subdivision database.  In Georgia we don't have neighborhood names, it is city then subdivision.  Period.

I don't know why P2 has allowed the directory to be used this way.

Because so many of the subdivisions go unsold.  I believe it would be better if they just sold the subdivisions on a permanent monthly basis rather than through an auction process.  The cost should be reduced because it really only encompasses about 100 - 400 homes at best, not 2,5000 to 8,000 people!

Just sell them for $20.00 subscription a month and I am sure P2 would get more revenue from them than they are now, even with the auction.

I do agree with Ron, I have worked on a bunch of neighborhoods lately and would like to do a lot more with them as far as marketing goes, but I am not going to pay $250 per subdivision (or whatever they start at).  I would sign up long term for them at $20 per month if the pages were improved to include the functionality that Ron spoke about.  That would help us make the pages work for us.

Let's put it on the wish list!

Ok Ron, you know I love the calendar idea. An interactive calendar. My son and his friend invented CalendarHub. A calendar I use in my business and I think it would be great if P2 offered it for all their members. I think I could hook them up.

Forgive me a shameless plug.

Also, how is he collaboration going, coming?

Ron,

Great ideas.  Of the couple ideas, I prefer #3.

John ;-)

Lucia, every one of the neighborhoods on my list are genuine self contained neighborhoods in the way the term is used by my city, county, and nearby counties.  There are bigger ones and smaller ones, but none will support a realtor by themselves.  Your definition of a neighborhood being 2500 to 4000 people like a census tract is not a definition that anyone in my area would relate to.  My reality is not your reality.

I will add one more thing.  In the older center of town the city government has divided the city into "neighborhoods" and "urban districts."  They are all very small areas.  In the newer areas of town and the suburbs there are only "subdivisions."  The subdivisions are also very small areas.  There is no such thing as a neighborhood in most of the city, urban area, and rural county.  I have no choice but to use a subdivision name because that is the only name there is to use to describe the location of the property.

Mark,

That is not my reality, that is the definition in the P2 manual, I copied that straight from the manual.  Your use of subdivision is exactly what I am talking about and I think that is what most of us are doing.  Outside of the incorporated cities here in Georgia there are only subdivisions.  

I don't have any problem with that, in fact I like it being a subdivision database.  I just think the cost per "neighborhood" should be less because of the smaller size.

There should be plenty to go around because there are so many of them.  Everyone should be able to get as many as they want and subscribe to them on a monthly basis.  Then we could market to those subdivisions like no else could!  It would be affordable for us and profitable for P2!

Ron,

Are you taking this to the wish list?

In my corner of the world, we deal with the whole subdivision issue, too. There are a couple of true neighborhoods available in our area, but they are mostly subdivisions and don't really make a lot of sense to purchase.  However, for the actual neighborhoods that are established in my area through P2, Ron's ideas are great and would really work.  I coincidentally had purchased a domain name in the past because I planned on creating a neighborhood page.  I have it pointed at the corresponding P2 neighborhood that I currently own.  My problem is, that I am not getting enough traffic on it to make it worth purchasing again until it drops to twenty bucks again.  Then I am venturing into speculative marketing by pointing my domain at it hoping that someone else won't buy it before I do when it drops in price.  

Lucia, I apologize to you for thinking that you were giving your definition of neighborhood.  It is P2 that needs to change their definition to match our realities.  Subdivisions are the neighborhoods of the 21st century.  Maybe we should cut and paste this entire blog posting and comments and send it to P2.

Ron, all:

What would happen if you started a blog for each neighborhood you want to farm?  Start threads for garage sales, baby sitters, and merchant recommendations, then encourage visitors to post comments.

Maybe add a link to google calendaring or groupware tools and document sharing tools?

Post every listing and sale in the neighborhood as a news item, whether it is your listing or not.  

Your blog post regarding this neighborhood should soon get good SERP treatment....  

And you don't need P2 to change a thing!

Subdivisions are today's neighborhoods. Even a larger master planned community might have 25 neighborhoods within the larger community. It would be nice if everyone was on the same page.  

Lonn,

I have thought about doing that, just not sure how to give the administrative rights to other.  Do you let other in that blog to post or do they email you and you post it form them?

I like the blog idea.

Neighborhoods don't make sense for me because P2 has them so diluted.  For Example, the Town of Bourne alone has six different villages.  One of the "neighborhoods" that I keep getting offered is only one small street within one small village.  Hardly worth the money or the effort.

P2's definition of neighborhood doesn't apply in Michigan.  There are named subdivisions in the new communities but in the older established cities the subdivision name is only known in the legal description of the property.  Most people here describe where they want to live by indicating the major streets in that city so for me to purchase "Lakeview Gardens" is a waste of money for me and doesn't mean squat to the consumer.

Also, in my county, P2 has given out entire cities (population 67,000) as neighborhoods because they are unfamiliar with the area.  The concept of "neighborhoods" just doesn't apply everywhere in the world.

I love the idea of an interactive neighborhood site! There are companies selling that very idea...www.myonlineneighborhood.com for example. We had one company like this visit our office selling the concept to agents and sold some of them individual areas of the city for around a $600 start up fee and then around $60 a month subscription fee. Later, I found that same company sold the entire city to an agent from another brokerage for around $300 a month, thus diluting the agent's sites in our brokerage. I called them on it and they did not return my calls.

In my opinion, if Point 2 offered this, it would only be effective on a city level. As Gail said above, some areas are not recognized with specific names and this makes it impossible to be consistant with the concept.

If you can build a page for every listing ... why not for a neighborhood.  My neighborhood has a website and a number of home owner associations have their neighborhood sites.  The fee structure for neighborhoods, that's gonna take some thought.  

so, how long before this blog disappears from here and appears on the P2 message board?

Perhaps using an independent source of neighborhood boundaries like Maponics would help?  Neighborhoods are certainly tricky to define and I don't think it's possible to have unanimous agreement on where a neighborhood starts/stops but at least using an independent source would minimize some confusion?

that's a great idea, but it's already available (perhaps not as a blog, but as a website) at Razorball.com

Check it out!

view www.KennesboroughSquare.com

or you can creat a Blog for a specific website that you farm such as this agent has done with www.BradshawFarmBlog.com

ooops, that's actually www.razorball.net