>>Columbia’s Newest Hotsheet; March 3 – 22, 2010
You can use our number of listings and sales as a good indicator of what’s in this edition of The Hotsheet. Click and look around as some good inventory has hit the market!

Columbia is Perfect American Microcosm for Pilot
If you live in Columbia you may have noticed the “Google Fiber for Columbia, SC’s” Fan Page on Facebook. It may seem like a late push to lure Google’s super duper fast pilot program to the capital city, but its nice to know we’re in the game.

Before I posted my blurb about the infamous photo of E.W., I noticed a cool story about Greenville’s efforts to lure Google’s project from Adam Fogle’s palmettoscoop.com. At the time I didn’t know of any local efforts, and given the timeline of the selection process I refrained from mentioning the opportunity. As you can see from “Scoops” story, our Sandlapper friends from the northwest part of the state have put forth an admirable effort.

Kudo’s to folks like Mandi Engram and Elza Hayen and others for getting Columbia’s party started. I actually think the logo is clever and am proud of what their efforts have produced in only a few short days.

Come on Google! Our city can project a little bit of everything you’d want as Columbia, SC is a perfect snapshot of American life. We’re small business heavy, diverse, a capital city, home to the country’s largest military training base and South Carolina’s flagship university.

In short, Columbia, SC may be the perfect microcosm of your macro project. Google…Columbia is Famously Hot. If you’ll make us hotter, we’ll sure make you faster. Columbia, SC will make you proud.

Rib Eyes, Long Naps and Daylight Savings Time
I love things like my job, Starbucks Coffee and two set tennis matches in 100 degree heat. Also at the top of the list are huge rib eye steaks (medium rare), long naps with no responsibilities afterwards (rare these days) and the day when the sun stays up longer in the day.

Daylight savings time is kind of a big deal. First, it allows more time to devote to selling real estate. Second, it’s the trigger day for losing weight. It’s sort of like a holiday that springs more opportunity for daily exercise. Everyone seems to gain weight in the winter and for me, this is the unofficial end of it.

On a larger scale I argue that daylight savings time is good for national commerce and safety. From golf courses to insurance agencies, having more daylight is good for business. If you think about it, who really wants to pay their auto insurance in the dark. As for safety, having more daylight is a no brainer.

I actually tried to get a candidate for the U.S. Senate to insert a daylight savings extension as a plank to their campaign platform. My recommendation has since come to fruition via another mechanism.

Either way, daylight savings time is here and I welcome it with open arms. Now I can get on the weight loss thing without excuse and now don’t have to show houses in the dark for a while. In short, it’s awesome!

Richland Co. Closed Transactions; Feb 22 – March 10, 2010
On Monday I thought I was being smart by attaching the information in list form. Well, tonight someone informed me that readers counldn’t log in withoug a Realtor code. Ooof. Sorry about that!!!

If you dive into the attachment you’ll notice that three of the top five priced homes closed in the time frame are located in Woodcreek Farms. Pretty strong showing for a neighborhood located in Northeast Richland.

Every now and then an image comes along that perfectly captures a moment, tells a story and brands a character forever. The photo above, snapped by Chris Berry, is a perfect example.

Here we have a character dressed in a nice suit fit for a funeral that’s accessorized to the brim with hat, scarf and sunglasses. He’s exiting a public building familiar to many of the taxpayers of his community. Slowly moving from the building, he’s alone and expressionless. His pockets are full with hidden hands. The horizontal lines in the architecture almost complete the story as they provide the symbol for the prison jumpsuits singed in our minds from movies and cartoons of the past.

Enter the vertical bars. The bars complete the story. I don’t know if Mr. Berry saw this coming as he waited for his subject to exit, but either way he was in a primo spot for his dramatic shot.

It’s unfortunate that the photo even had to be taken and that I’m typing this post in the first place. Notwithstanding all that, this is one of the rare pictures that tells a story and will stay with (brand) a character for a long time.

Richland Co. Closed List: Feb. 22 – March 5, 2010

Given the sheer number of channels to choose it would seem that I could find some late night entertainment without a problem. To the contrary, when the nightly ‘Will & Grace’ and ‘Frasier’ go off, the entertainment level drops like a rock.

After Frasier ends I usually switch over to The Tennis Channel by default. If you know me you’d think I’d be flipping between FOXNews or CNBC, but watching people yell at each other gets awful after about four minutes. SportsCenter is great but by 2 a.m. it’s been rerun a few times over.

Having said all of this I could always count on Millionaire Listing at least once a week. To watch these three dudes go at it is a good hour for a local Realtor to watch. Some of the aspects of this show can be spot on and some can be incredibly stupe. Either way, it was a good hour.

Some folks think the show hit a snag when Josh Flagg (the one with the grandmother) was arrested for stealing valuable art from his listings. Who knows the truth about the matter but I hope that’s not what’s holding up the show.

As you can tell it’s a slow blog night and am obviously looking for something worth a crap to watch on the tube. Jerry Springer just popped on and I’m now surfing again. Come on Bravo, bring on Millionaire!

>> Columbia’s Newest Listings: Feb. 8 – March 2, 2010

New Benchmark Comp in King’s Grant – 70 Somerton