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House Submissions
Q. How do I submit a home for your site? A. I am no longer accepting submissions except for those few that have submitted homes before that were posted on the site. If you’ve seen your name mentioned as a thank you for submitting, then you know who you are. Otherwise, no more submissions.
Q. What are the qualifications for house submissions (with photo examples)? A. I’m leaving this question up, although I am not accepting submissions except from those who’ve submitted and had their submission posted. This will just be a reminder for the kind of home I will post. Clear photos of at least 400 pixels wide. No more renovated homes, unless it’s been renovated to museum perfection. I’m getting too many over updated homes. It’s okay if it has vinyl or aluminum siding but only if the interior is nearly completely original. You can still submit homes but they either must require renovation or museum quality perfection (NO recessed lighting everywhere!) Examples of what not to send (if every room is like these, don’t bother submitting): Are they trying to land a plane on the ceiling? Recessed lighting like this is a no-no. No more of these, please. Frankly, it’s boring to look at. If all the rooms look like this, please don’t bother submitting it because I will not post it. Still another room with no much to see. Not even original lighting. If all the pictures only show bits and pieces of the room and not the entire room, much like this pic, it’s not something I would consider posting.
Q. How long will it take for the house submitted to be posted? A. Although I’d love to do it right away, sometimes it can take me a few weeks.
Q. The listing details are wrong and I'm going to sue you!
A. That got your attention, didn’t it? But this is one thing I deal with from irate owners and agents who don’t take the time to read what this site is about and how I get my information, which is directly from the listing details at the time I post the house. I don’t know how many times I have to say it, this is a blog and is not attached to any MLS database. The details I get come directly from the listing at the time of posting, changes made at a later date by the agent or owner are updated once I find the update or am notified it’s been updated. Details on this website do not affect details on major real estate websites. Let me repeat that because some people don’t seem to get it: any listing details on this site (status, acreage, taxes, price, etc.) doesn’t change any details on Realtor, Zillow, Trulia or your agents listing site, it’s not connected.
Q. Where do you get the photos of the houses? A. Photos are from the listing, usually provided by the agent or owner. Links are provided to the listing page via the Agent & MLS tab.
Q. Where do you get the build date? A. Obviously from the listing description or listing site. If it’s wrong and I am totally sure it’s wrong, I’ll make a comment giving an estimate. I am not an expert on build dates, I can only give an estimate based on the style of the home. I find that some homes are given even year build dates, so sometimes I will put “c.”, since the build year may not be exact. You’ll notice a lot of homes have the year 1900 as a build date, this seems to be default for homes that a build date is not known. I do use “c. 1900″ if I believe the build date is between the years 1890-1910.
Q.How do you find these houses you post? Are they submitted to you? A. Some houses posted were submitted to me by the owner, agent, or a reader not related to the home. Most of the homes posted were found by me using Zillow as my search source. Zillow has the option of searching entire states at once, without having to give each city like Realtor or Trulia demands.
Q. Do you get a cut when a house is sold or posted? A. No, I do not. I do not make any money from house sales or posting these homes. I do make a few cents from the banners but it’s just enough to break even with paying hosting costs.
Q. Important information about listing status. With nearly 2000 houses to keep up with, it’s difficult to maintain the current listing status for each home. Although I have given you the ability to search prices, states, styles, etc., this is still a personal blog and not hooked into any database for automatic updates. Anytime a listing changes, I have to do it manually. For most of the houses posted I can keep up with price changes but when a home is sold or goes off market I cannot know that instantly. So, often times you’ll see a home as ‘Active’ on this site but when you visit the listing page it is either sold or no longer on the market. I go through all the homes posted twice a year but mostly rely on readers comments to let me know if the home is off market or sold.
I suggest that if you are interested in a home, always check the links provided. If the links do not work, search the address on Google or Zillow, since the links sometimes are broken due to listing changes. If all else fails, contact the listing agent.
Q. How do I subscribe, so I won't miss a post?
A. There are various ways to subscribe. Facebook, Twitter, RSS feed and sign up for an email to receive at the end of a posting day.
If you follow using Facebook, you will not receive all updates in your newsfeed, you will need to hover your mouse over “Liked”, after liking the page, and make sure “Show in newsfeed” is check marked. Even then you still may not get all updates to show in your newsfeed so I also recommend checking the page to see all updates.
If you sign up to receive an email, you will need to verify your email after entering it in the text box (shown on the right side of the website, below.) If you do not receive the verification email, check your spam box.
And if you want to follow with the RSS feed, you can add it to any RSS reader (I use Feed Demon), or to any page that you follow RSS feeds from (Google, etc.)
Facebook has not been reliable enough to follow every post. Following via Twitter, RSS feed or by email is the recommended way.
Q. I am looking for a house with the following features...can you find one for me? A. Sorry, I can no longer help with your house search, too many requests and not enough memory. 
Q. What style house is this? (And, that style is all wrong!) A. Let me say this plainly, I suck at determining some house styles. At least when it comes to houses that are a mix of styles or the original style was removed and renovated some time ago. I get styles wrong a lot. All I can tell you is it’s an ongoing learning process for me. If you’d like to correct a style, leave a comment telling me why it should be X style, don’t just say, “This isn’t a Queen Anne…”, give me an explanation on what makes it a Queen Anne.
Q. Can I advertise my site or business on your site?
A. Maybe. If you’ve got a site that relates to old houses, antiques, historic stuff, etc., then I’ll consider it. Contact me for rates.
Q. I am a real estate agent, can I advertise or have one of my homes featured on your site? A. If you are interested in advertising, see above. Otherwise I no longer accept house submissions.
Q. Important information about browsing and searching this site.
You have the ability to combine categories (build dates, prices, states, etc.), to make it easier to find what you are looking for. There are various reasons why some houses will not show up using the ‘Browse Houses’ feature. If certain information is missing in the original listing details, square feet or acreage for instance, and you set up a search for Queen Anne homes in Texas with X-X square feet, and the listing details did not include square feet, then there will be some Queen Anne houses in Texas that will not be displayed in your results. There’s nothing I can do to fix that, all I can suggest is browsing all Queen Anne’s in Texas with no square feet or acreage chosen. Any home that is no longer active will not show up if you search by price. Of course it will include the homes that may be off market but not updated on the site to reflect that.
If you use the search form to find a particular home it will also display “like” results. For instance, if you search for Boston, VA it will not only show you the homes in Boston, VA but also Boston, MA because you used the word Boston. You should also know that if you search using the state you have to use the abbreviation since it is what is used on the site. So if you want to search houses in Atlanta, Georgia you have to use the search term Atlanta, GA. I never suggest searching full addresses since that might not work, I suggest search the city or city and state to find a particular home.
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