Every now and then, something wild crosses my path and I stop whatever I am doing even when there are home buyers in my car. The truth is I brake for wildlife. And if I am lucky they have enough patience to wait until I can find my camera and make their image to tell you a story about them. These two failed to look both ways when they crossed the road. Fortunately, I saw them first. Yes, they are deer and very dear to me.

These two deer are New Mexico mule deer who live in the northern part of our state, mostly in rural areas. They were very close to town in a pinon covered hilly neighborhood just north of our historic Plaza. Fortunately, they have keen eyesight and good hearing as they paused on the edge of the road when they heard my car. After I stopped, they knew immediately to carefully move across the road and then freeze. It was clear they were in the neighborhood foraging the local vegetative landscape as our winter has been mild. They waiting long enough for me to make this one image and then leaped over the hillside together.

Do you brake for wildlife too?

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About the only thing Santa Fe and the Serengeti and Social Media have in common is the letter S. The climate zones, the geography, the animals along with cultures, lifestyle, food and everything in between is radically different. Yet, somehow the gift of a book, Surviving Your Serengeti and learning to adapt to Social Media made be see new connections from my Santa Fe window of real estate.
It was only a year ago that I wrote this post Surviving Your Serengeti - Which Animal Are You? Stefan Swanepoel connected this Realtor in Santa Fe to the plains of the majestic Serengeti - all online! Here is what happened to me then and now one year later. I took the What Animal Am I quick quiz and discovered I was a crocodile. Yikes, I thought! Then, I learned I if I was a crocodile person in the Serengeti I was an enterprising person who explored all options and boldly seizes every opportunity. Yes, I have the skills of a crocodile! And if I were a crocodile in the Serengeti, my life would depend on it.

Yet, what does it mean to be a crocodile living in Santa Fe NM in 2012 selling real estate? It meant I needed to quickly think out-of-the-box every day! Given, we do not have a zoo in Santa Fe or any living crocodiles on our historic Plaza to observe, I had to find some new venue to sharpen and explore my skills. Using my crocodile imagination, I turned my Serengeti into the new wild and bold landscape of social media. Here is what happened next.

Over the past year, I discovered a new passion for exploring how people make decisions using social networking online. I found loved telling real estate stories using social media tools. Today, I publish a column in the Santa Fe New Mexican Homes Magazine on social networking. And I work to stimulate our local economy by sponsoring Breaking Santa Fe News, an aggregate of twitter feeds in real time about Santa Fe. Recently, I began a mastermind group at Santa Fe Properties to help my peers discover how social media can work for them. When you are uncertain about using new tools it does help to have a support group to learn something new, especially given how social networking changes in a nanosecond.

If you are looking for new ways and ideas to work in our new landscape of real estate, I hope this post will inspire you to make a difference in your environment. Why not explore Surviving Your Serengeti to find new ways to thrive in this coming year.

If you read the book or took the quiz over the past year, what happened to you next?

Surviving Your Serengeti is not only a fable of self-discovery, it is truly a refreshing new perspective on how to see the challenging times in your own life and work differently.Stefan Swanepoel walks his talk. He donates a percentage of each sale of the book to theAfrican Wildlife Foundation. This post and past review was not solicited by the author.

New housing starts are at a 40 year low and new construction inventory levels are at the lowest since 1963. The trend for multiple family housing is on the rise and it’s common for college graduates burdened by student loads to move back home. Consider the consumer price index which has increased 160% in the last 30 years and includes a 150% increase in the cost of food and a 700% increase in the cost of college tuition. Conversely, mortgages have only increased 17% in that same 30 year period due to the difference in interest rates available now versus then while rents have increased 200%. It is no wonder that investors are turning back to real estate as a viable commodity to place their cash.

In Santa Fe, the final fourth quarter did see continued improvement overall in our housing industry. Most notably, new listings have gone done from 3194 homes for sale at the end of 2010 to 2604 in 2011. Pending sales were down 9% from the previous quarter but year to date closed sales did see a modest increase of 2.4% over last year. The percent of original list price a seller can expect to receive has fallen slightly to 87.9% while the days on market improved slightly to 243 days. The median sales price has fallen to $320,443 down almost $10,000 from the previous year; however, the month’s supply of homes is down almost 24% to 15 months.

The median sales price continued to decline in all areas of Santa Fe but two: the Northwest quadrant had an increase of almost 20% over 2010 for a median price of $627,500. The city Southeast north which includes the Railyard and South Capital saw an increase of 11% with the median price here at $579,000. Hard hit areas include Tesuque and Pojoaque whose prices have declined 42% from 2010 but sales here did increase 120%.

Most areas did see gains in the total amount of sales for 2011. The one exception was the Southwest County including Rancho Viejo and the Community College district out to La Cienega and Highway 14 which saw a decline of 20% of total sales for the year. For land sales it was a yet another tough year with a total of 35 lots reported sold with the average lot price at $125,000 up from the previous year’s average of $110,000.

So what is going to change for 2012? There are many signs that our economy is improving but we believe it is up to us to continue to pressure our government and financial institutions to put forth the initiatives that will bring further improvement. And while they are doing that it is incumbent upon us to keep our own sense of hope and optimism alive. The missing piece of the puzzle is consumer confidence so keep sight that our economy is improving slowly everyday and our continued appreciation of that can be contagious. Together we can make 2012 a confident year!

In a recent review of Facebook’s own stats, I learned 250 million images were uploaded on Facebook daily with a record of 750 million images uploaded on the recent New Year’s weekend. Many real estate bloggers know about how to manage their real estate business online including how to track their online reputation. However, not all Realtor® and agents are bloggers. Many are clueless about even how their picture is online and how they appear online to future prospects, customers and current clients. And then there is the general public. How many people know what their image is online? I suspect not many.

This is a reminder on how important it is to check your online visual reputation. Here is a quick simple step to see what others see when they search for a picture or image of you online.

• Go to Google and click on the IMAGE tab
• In the search bar, type your name in “quotation marks” example “John Doe”
• Click search and review the image results which appear for your name
  

Given real estate has shifted online, it is important to know how people SEE us when they search online. Have you searched for your images in the past? Are you concerned about what you see? What is your take about this online aggregation of data?

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Stopping in the town of Las Vegas, New Mexico can be one of the best experiences one could have in Northern New Mexico and I highly recommend this for both out-of-town people or local New Mexicans. There are unique shops, good food and the architecture alone is worth the drive as you travel though the downtown area of this Northern New Mexico town.

On I-25 just past Glorietta I had stopped to pick-up a couple that had just had car troubles and were stuck on the side of the road. It turns out this couple worked with the local Santa Fe Schools through their artistry. Ironically my wife Melanie was going into a local PTA meeting to discuss the very nature of their services and to petition the members to provide local services and products for school fundraising functions. We laughed at what a small world we live in and cherished the moment.

There are many opportunities to own your own beautiful land in this area from 60 acres to over 1,000 acres and I would be happy to assist in your efforts to find that right piece of land in my home state.