Day 5: Virginia Blog Vets Merv and Pam Forney & Jim Duncan

Freedom Wall, Charlottesville, Virginia.

July 5, 2007. Virginia is for bloggers! Who knew?

Well folks, here’s an embarassing fact - we could not find the White House in D.C. I know what your thinking, how can two “real estate” bloggers - with a GPS - fail to find the White House? We are still scracthing our heads trying to figure it out ourselves. Maybe it was because so many streets were blocked off due to the hightened fourth of July security. Who knows.

Legend of Leesburg.

After gassing up, we high tailed it out of D.C. and made our way to see Merv Forney of The Northern Virgina Real Estate Guide. After spending a day in the madness of D.C. traffic, it was quite refreshing to drive through the beautiful Virginia countryside. The GPS played nice with us and brought us directly to Merv’s neighbors door. What? Neighbors door? That’s right. Joe was driving and even though the mailbox had Merv’s address on it, the driveway was littered with open house signs—- so Joe figured it had to be the house next door. As we pulled in, we noticed Merv in the adjacent driveway taking pictures of our blunder. Thanks for making us laugh Merv

Merv and Pam were wonderful hosts. Their home is nothing short of spectacular.

We received the guided tour of the Forney botanical gardens and their prized wine cellar. Merv showed us his special stash of Pomerols and Bourdeauxs. They were even kind enough to contribute some fine wine for the tour. Cheers Merv and Pam!

Merv has a his and hers blog war room which includes all the essential elements that a blogger would need. You could feel the blog juice in the room. And after some small tallk, the verbal blog thoughts started to spew. Merv is very passionate about promoting real estate consulting and has dedicated quite a bit of effort to the movement. He will be speaking more about it at the Inman Real Estate Connect in San Francisco. I will put together a montage of Merv’s real estate point of view in the coming days. Good stuff for sure.

Next stop, Charlottesville, VA (C-Ville to the locals.), the blog turf of Jim Duncan of Real Central VA. After a scenic country drive, we arrived at Jim’s Century 21 office. As we pulled up, Jim was waiting for us with camera in hand. I had the camera rolling and caught Jim in the act Bloggerrazzi baby!

Before we headed off to town, we got a quick tour of the office and managed to squeeze some great stories out of Jim for the camera. Stay tuned for the footage……

We made our way to the town square and had a great interview in the car about how the Virginia Board of Realtors is passing (considering passing?) rules that would make Virginia real estate bloggers sign all their blog posts and comments with all their company contact information. They seem to think blogging is advertising. We wonder if it will pass.

We walked through Downtown Hall, a quaint and lively college town. We signed the Freedom Wall, and met with two new construction developers. Ryan homes and Woodland Hills Condos are two very different builders and it was quite interesting to hear their points of view about real estate, blogging and the interenet. Stay tuned for the video footage.

More pics from Charlottesville, Virginia: