While being blessed with one of the strongest real estate markets in the country makes it enjoyable helping folks buy and sell homes in Cary, NC, I have to pause from time to time and ponder the real estate market conditions across the U.S.

I strongly believe that "All Real Estate is Local," that hyperlocal activity is a key to success in real estate. Some regions and cities, even in our area are typically more or less active, and higher or lower in price than other areas....

I'm so mad at myself for not starting this on January 1st. My primary goal was to do picture of the day for all 365 days. Well, unfortunately that never happened.

So, i'm going to start, but it's not going to be a daily things. More likely "whenever possible" thing

I've been looking at apartments online for several months. For the past two months I've been calling for applications and get more information. That is when I came across City-Data.com. I've been posting in the Wisconsin-Madison forum to get more info. I had some good replies. Such as I should visit apartmentratings.com before signing a lease and the poor apartments are usually the ones priced under $550. If I want a decent apartment, I should go for the higher prices,

One...

An observation was made by this writer while at work recently. Something significantly important needed to be fixed and was annoyingly out of place. As a matter of fact, this thing has been going on for the last few weeks, and nobody had done anything about it. No one noticed, no one cared enough, and no one stepped up, stood in the gap, and was just danged proactive in making sure that a certain act needed to get done.

Nobody.

Until yesterday. That's...