Blacksburg’s Main Street improvement project is entering a new phase on Monday, May 16th!

The intersection of Prices Fork Road and North Main Street will undergo summer-long construction for the creation of a roundabout. Detours set up on Turner and Webb Streets will reroute traffic until August 17th. Visit www.blacksburg.gov/mainstreet for more information or check out the video below!

From the Main Street Improvement Project site…
FUN FACTS!
When complete, the Main Street Improvements will include:

- 115 New Street Trees
- 18 Trash Cans
- 14 Landscape Planters
- 7 Black Benches
- 116 Street Lights
- 130 Linear Feet of Seating Wall

Photo courtesy of the Main Street Improvement Project site.

This iconic home featured in the American movie classic "Home Alone" can be yours!

If you're planning to visit the Virginia Tech campus (or wish that you could!), then you should definitely get the new "Visit Virginia Tech" mobile app for the iPhone! Published by Smart College Visit, Inc. in partnership with Virginia Tech, the app is a navigational guide to the campus and a whole lot more!

The app features:
• A self-guided walking tour
• Information on admission requirements
• On and off-campus dining directories
• Local accommodation information
• Directions to each building on campus, parking lots, athletic facilities and residence halls
• Virginia Tech wallpaper background downloads for your phone

Nothing beats the experience of visiting Virginia Tech in person, but it's a great resource and a fast, easy, and free way to get sense of it right at your fingertips.

Photo courtesy of Smart College Visit, Inc.

The results are in from this year's NRV Current, Best of the NRV community pole.

Congratulations to Mike Eggleston– named the "First, Best Real Estate Agent in the New River Valley!

Congratulations to Jeremy Hart– also named as one of the top five Best Real Estate Agents in the New River Valley!

We are also honored to annouce that for the third consecutive year, you voted Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS® as one of the top five best real estate companies in the NRV.

Many thanks to our great agents and to you, the voters!

Explore real estate anytime, anywhere with Coldwell Banker's new iPad app! Download the new Coldwell Banker iPad app for free at iPad.coldwellbanker.com. It's just one more way Coldwell Banker is making it easy for home buyers to search for homes on the go and access real estate videos from Coldwell Banker's On Location YouTube channel. The app also features neighborhood ratings from Yelp!.

You can also download the free Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS® app* for Android or iPhone to connect with our New River Valley and Roanoke Valley agents, access our company listings, and our website www.cbtownside.com. *A big thanks to our developers at Handshake Media, Incorporated!

At Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS®, we have a mantra: "First. Better. Different." We strive to be the most innovative, provide the best service to our agents and clients, and to stand out among our competition as being the top real estate agency in the area.

So, we'd like to share with you 3 ways we are doing this:

• Our innovative website: www.cbtownside.com is your hub for real estate information in the Roanoke and New River Valley. Search and track your favorite listings, get to know our New River Valley and Roanoke agents through their custom profile pages, and read about the latest real estate and local information on our Keepin' it Real Estate blog.

• Coldwell Banker's On Location YouTube channel: Search for listings by location on an interactive map, explore neighborhoods, and watch hyperlocal listing videos from our agents.

• Our mobile app: We're the first and only real estate company in the area to develop a mobile app (thanks to our developers at Handshake Media, Incorporated!). Download our free mobile app for the Android or the iPhone to get connected with our company and agents via photos, bios, and contact information, and search listings anytime, anywhere.

Check out Coldwell Banker National's Brand Promise video for more ways we strive to be the undisputed leader in real estate:

If you're one of the many real estate agents who frequent our office, you're probably familiar with this picture. It's the first thing you see upon entering our marketing department– directions. If you look up you'll find the ceiling, if you look down you'll find the floor, and if you look around the corner, you'll find Kelsey (that's me) and Caroline.

So yeah, it might be a poor attempt at a joke, but it's also a metaphor. As marketing professionals at Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS, Caroline and I strive to provide direction. We help our agents identify where they are and where they want to go. Then we use marketing communication strategies to help them get there.

Ironically, I'm actually horrible at finding my way from point A to point B in a car. Just ask my personal GPS system, his name is Andy and he's my husband. Fortunately, providing direction and giving directions are quite different.

As a Marketing Department, we understand that one of the most helpful resources we can offer our agents is a fresh perspective– the ability to see the big picture, ask a lot of questions, and ultimately discover direction. Once we locate point A and point B, getting there is just a matter of drawing a line on a map. Again, perhaps not the best choice of words, coming from someone who finds physically driving from point A to point B rather challenging. Whatever, you get the point. We're here to help by providing direction in the form of communication strategy, advice, and design. We're here to help in case you get lost along the way.

If you get the local paper, you probably noticed a group of good looking people, all dressed in blue, right on the front cover. That's us! So now that we've got your attention, we would just like to say– Hi!

Also,if you are ever in need of commercial or residential real estate advice, we're here to help! Just give one of our New River Valley agents or Roanoke Valley agents a call.

GO BLUE! for Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS!

A couple of weeks ago, I asked on Facebook and Twitter “what do you love about living in the New River Valley?” I was overwhelmed with responses, both in messages on Facebook, or tweets, or emails and in one case, a text.  Here’s a list, unedited, of some of the reasons why people are so in love with the New River Valley (well, bolding or links are mine… so it’s partially unedited). Feel free to add your own reasons by posting a comment below.

• When you drive down the back roads and people wave
• I love coming over a hill and seeing the Blue Ridge Mountains everywhere
• I like that I can leave my keys in the ignition and not worry about it not being there when I come out of a store or restuarant. Plus how clean it is.
• We love that there’s curbside recycling available, and that it’s growing to include even more of the Valley!
• The abundance of coffee shops, the tech savviness, the short work commute, the Hokies!, the plentiful, jaw-dropping sunsets, etc…
• That if I go out of town for the weekend and forget to lock the front door, all of my stuff is still in my house when I return. Short commute
• The sense of community, parks and open spaces, the university brings events that a small town otherwise may not have (art, music, sports), and everything Caroline said
• Friendly people, supportive environment
• There isn’t any traffic – unless you’re trying to go to a football game at Lane Stadium
• I buy my fruits and vegetables from the Farmer’s Market and my meat directly from the farmer.  I love knowing where my food comes from
• Even though I have never gone to The Lyric on a Monday, I love the text message I get from Downtown Blacksburg each Monday informing me that it’s “Free Popcorn Monday” at The Lyric
• I love the parades we have for Christmas and 4th of July and how the whole Town attends them
• The kids in my neighbohrood play outside all day long and build forts, make up games, collect bugs and pick wild blackberries. I love that they can just be kids.
• There’s a planetarium in Radford that offers free shows.  At night, we can sit out on our deck and see the stars and point out all the new things we learned.
• At the local coffee shops, people don’t have conversations about what they watched on TV. They talk about how they can make our community better.
• I love that I can jump on Amtrak in the morning out of Lynchburg and be in the heart of New York City by mid-afternoon, all for $66.50 (and have wi-fi all the way)
• I love that I can catch Megabus in Christiansburg and be in the heart of DC in 4.5 hours for $8 (and have free wi-fi all the way).  If i want to take the BT to catch the MegaBus in Christiansburg, it costs me an extra $.50.
• If I leave my neighborhood and travel 7 minutes west, I can see a covered bridge that was built more than 100 years ago.  If I trvel 7 minutes east, I can see the amazing things being researched and invented at Virginia Tech to improve our future.
• I have neighbors from Sweden, Poland, Mexico, China, India, and all parts of the US.  I experience the true meaning of diversity every day.
• I love that we have more health food stores and local markets than traditional grocery stores.
• I can experience three seasons in one day … I’m learning to layer my clothes and love that.
• I have a menu of collegiate athletic events I can choose to attend each week – many of which are free.
• The Christiansburg Aquatic Center.  It has a water park for my son and free wi-fi for me – I love it.
• My family can have a nice dinner out with table service for less than $30.
• My property taxes are less than 5% of the tax bill my parents pay on their house in New York. And I love to remind them of that.
• When people here say, “Hi! How are you today?”, they look you in the eyes and they mean it.
• Life in the New River Valley is not a sprint; it’s a marathon (quote from @nrvliving)
• Volunteering and giving to others is the norm here, rather than the exception
• I love that wherever I travel in the NRV, I always have a beautiful view out of my window.
• History is cherished here, rather than ignored
• I love the “casualness” of the NRV.  We put on our “nice” jeans to go out to dinner.  It’s okay to wear your slippers to the grocery store.  Sweatshirts are perfectly acceptable church attire.  And the kids all wear VT shirts to school.

Dear Home Seller,

Hello there! Welcome to this exciting phase in your life! We want to share with you a few important statistics just to keep in mind as you enter the initial phases of selling your home.

As you might have noticed, a lot has changed (and continues to change) in the real estate world. We do business drastically different from the way we did just 5 years ago. The Internet, social media networks, and mobile applications have changed practically everything about the way we do business. The home buying and selling process has moved almost entirely from paper to the web, buyers and sellers have access to tons of property data through real estate websites, Facebook, Twitter, and mobile apps, and agents now connect with prospective clients on a much more personal level.

Here's what we know about how buyers are searching for homes in 2011:

• 90% of all buyers use the internet to search for homes
• 37% buy the home they find online
• 59% search for homes on MLS websites
• 45% search for homes on Realtor.com
• 43% seach for homes on local real estate websites (like cbtownside.com!)
• 42% search for homes on agent websites
• 2% seach for homes on social networking sites
• 2% seach for homes on YouTube

In short, it's advantageous to work with an agent and a company that places an emphasis on online advertising. At Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS®, we focus on giving listings targeted local distribution and worldwide internet exposure. So, you might be asking, "What does your worldwide internet exposure for our listings look like?" We're glad you asked! Just check out the chart below.

All the best,

Your friends at Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS®