My Blog Time

I have a shortage of time for my blog writing, but I thought I could share an article that is already posted on my property blog about the Limassol Zoo. I thought it's good to put it on that site as it could be informative for potential clients or at least for them to get to know me better and maybe know me as a person who tells it the way it is!

If you would like to read it just follow this link.

It has been a very productive week in the advancement of my property marketing business, not only were two properties added (villa in Peyia for 265,000CYP and two in Pissouri that I listed as one) but http://www.cyprus101.com had another new high for unique visitors – 469! It might not seem high but when you consider that unique means one person that has not been to the site before counts as only one no matter how many pages or properties they look at so when you consider that this site has only been active running since June 28, 2007 I am quite pleased. For the potential client who is reading this I must inform you here that I list all properties not only on my two sites but also a minimum of 5 others as well.

On the personal side, we have returned to our Sunday ritual of going down to the Paphos harbor with our friends and walking to the end by the castle to let our 2 year olds run around. Once the kids run their energy off we stop at Hobo Café for the usual Frappe’s for the guys while the wives usually get a Nutella waffle with ice cream while we all chit chat and people watch. The weather was great again, but it’s always good when it’s not super hot, I think I heard someone mention that rain is needed and sure enough we had a great thunder storm last night with much pouring rain. This morning it is clear and nice again and the beginning of hopefully another productive and sunny week!

The Other Side Of Gardening

Today, I wanted to do something different than the usual SEO tweaking on my website or anything to do with buying or selling property. I felt like doing something active and outdoor that can give instant results. I wanted to work on my long awaited and overdue garden maintenance.

Honestly, the last couple of times it was done by a crew that my mother- in-law has do her garden and my wife mentioned that she wanted to have them come out and do it again but I objected since I didn't want anyone else to do it in the first place. All they did was basically cut it all done to nothing. They did it fast and cleaned up well after themselves but I prefer to do it myself and I enjoy it so why pay for some one to take away my fun. My second baby is now just over 2 months old so we have gotten into a routine finally so I can make a part of Satudays as my garden maintenance day with my 2 year old since he enjoyed it so much today.

We were outside from 11am - 4 pm. I got a lot more done than expected and now I know what exactly is out there and what needs doing on a weekly basis. It had been about 4 months since anything was done on it so there was a lot to be done. Many of the plants has over taken others but we have so many it was really not such a great loss. My wife was happy to see a lot of it go so the kids will have more room to play rather then trees, plants and flowers (many of which have thrones on them).

The weather is still pretty good for November with t-shirts and shorts was the dress of the day and I just love it.

Winter is Coming

Now that we have had the first cold days - cold by Cyprus standards that is - and the high season is over I thought my business would come to a stand still. Everyone told me how Paphos is so quiet and becomes a ghost town in the winter. Well, so far so good as far as business goes for me. I seem to be getting the more serious prospects now, the ones that are specifically here to buy a home in Paphos. In the summer it seemed like the thinking was 'we are here anyway and like the place so why not check out a few holiday villas??' People who were basically just throwing around the idea of living somewhere else and not wanting to face the reality of going back home wherever that may be and returning to the daily grind of work, school, or other tedious routines. I even had a family like this go to a lawyer and begin the process of buying a home only to back out a month later when they got back home and probably looked over their finances more seriously. A lesson learned for me in that case since I didn't get a deposit. Now, the serious house hunters have arrived, people who already know the island and know that it is not so hot and hence, much more pleasurable to drive around and look at homes. They also know that agents are not running around like crazy like in the summer.

Another thing I noticed that is not season related is that my marketing, despite being geared towards UK and EU residents, seems to draw Americans in. Being American myself, I must be doing something very culturally relevant to US based marketing and/or using types of web marketing that American can relate to. The greater percentage of my clients are from the UK of course but the number of Americans that contact me has been a big surprise since there are hardly any in Cyprus or a very, very low percentage in relation to all other nationalities. There are many, many South African and South African Cypriots here that are continuously moving back from S.A. but I have not been contacted by one yet. Well, I just created a job for myself - how to tap into the S.A. market? Maybe I should get working on that.............