FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
When did Best Buys In Ojai originate?
We booted up the website on June 10, 2011.
Why doesn’t the BBIO archive go back to June, 2011?
Due to the intricacies of search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.), maintaining an archive of all blog entries since 2011 so that there weren’t expired or broken links was too time consuming. Also, most of the information on the site is perishable over time (with perhaps the exception of the Pic of the Day). This is the reason the archive only goes back six months.
About the Pic of the Day – who does the captions for those?
Ray comes up with the captions himself. If he finds a photo that someone else has already captioned, he’lI spend time to come up with his own caption. There have been a few exceptions where the original author’s caption was already great, so it was published as is – with the original caption superimposed over the photo. Coming up with the photo captions is one of Ray’s favorite aspects of running the website!
Why do some of the MLS links show a nearly blank page with only the words, “This is not a valid link” at the top?
These links originate from the Ventura MLS. On December 12, 2016 the Ventura MLS switched to a different system for their listings. This new system only allows a 30-day frame for public links to remain active. What this means to us here at BBIO is, every day we need to check the pages for any of these expired links so that we can grab new, active links from Ventura’s MLS and replace them. However, once a listing has been sold, cancelled, withdrawn, or expired – and that 30 day time period has passed – we can no longer retrieve a new link; the Ventura MLS purges these listings and public links are no longer available.
How do you measure rainfall accumulation for your weather data?
We gather measurements from 5 to 6 separate weather stations around Ojai (including our own) and average them, using data from www.wunderground.com.
What is the difference on the MLS sheet between “Contingent”, “Contingent No-Show”, “Contingent Show” and “Pending”?
When the MLS sheet reads “Contingent”, that simply means that an offer has been accepted. “Contingent Show” means that although an offer has been accepted, the owner of the property is willing to let other potential buyers tour the home. “Contingent No Show” means they’ve accepted an offer, but are not willing to let new potential buyers see the home. “Sale Pending” technically means that an offer has been accepted and all contingencies of the sale have been removed (such as the inspection contingency, loan contingency, etc). It’s the penultimate step to the home closing. To avoid confusion, we simply call any home that’s in escrow with an accepted offer a “Pending Sale.”
When do we update the website?
We update the website Monday through Friday. The site also gets a break on most major holidays – Christmas, New Years Day, Thanksgiving, and 4th of July. (For the first six years of its existence, the site was updated seven days a week – minus holidays.) People have asked us, “Don’t you ever go on vacation?” Yes, we do – but all our vacations are working vacations. We’ve updated the website while in the middle of the Pacific, the Atlantic, and from Washington D.C. To best utilize this website, we suggest you check in a few times throughout the day. Although we’d like to update as early as possible every day, we’ve found that sometimes new listings or changes to current listings aren’t input into the MLS system until later in the morning.
Are properties that are out of area, yet still listed in the Ojai Multiple Listing Service included on Best Buys In Ojai?
No. The properties highlighted in this website are only those in the greater Ojai Valley – Ojai, Upper Ojai, Meiners Oaks, and Oak View.
If a property is re-listed on the Multiple Listing Service after having been previously expired, cancelled, or withdrawn – do you show it as a new listing?
This is a judgement call on our part. If the listing was cancelled 3 months prior and is now being re-listed, yes, we will show it as a new listing. Anything shorter than a month will likely not be listed as “new”, unless there has been a significant price reduction. Many of these types of “new” listings occur because the prior listing has expired and the agent simply hadn’t gotten a new listing signed before the previous one expired.
