Real Estate Zealot

"My Phone Isn't Ringing Anymore"

Hmmm, welcome to the new world.  Since when is this business based on your phone ringing?  Ask yourself these 16 questions:

1. Do I have a database of all past and potential clients in a true contact management system?

2. Am I blogging and using social media to reach new clients?

3. Am I using or running your own leads or weekly referral group?

4. Do I call at least 10, new or existing, people a day?

5. Do I have a lunch appointment with a potential or future client at least twice a week?

6. Do I mail a strategic mail newsletter marketing piece each month?

7. Do I mail something (keeper piece) to your client base at least four times a year?

8. Do I use an IDX based web solution to capture leads?

9. Do I use a lead company to provide leads for you?

10. Do I farm or work a geographic area of homes?

11. Do I work at increasing your client base through investors or banks, etc.?

12. Do I do seminars for buyers or sellers..investors?

13. Am I doing any type of public speaking, as an expert?

14. Do I have client parties at least once a year?

15. Am I taking additional education to get bigger, stronger, smarter?

16.  Do I work 40 hours a week..in real estate that is?

Most of the people who have no business are not doing even 1 thing above.

This is a numbers game. Time for you to rack up some good numbers!  It's your time!  This is no different than any other type of sales job.

The problem is, we are already socialist pigs

This week, in 55 BC the Roman statesman Cicero wrote: "The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest we become bankrupt.

"The people must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

Wow- sounds like this guy should run for office.

So our problems aren't new, it's just a question of having the backbone to face them. Cicero would have only withering scorn for the lies of Socialist A. Obama and Socialist B. McCain.

Hard to believe that over 2000 years ago, the same issues have come to bite our noses. Stealing form one man, to give to another through using governmental bureaucrats is pure and unadulterated theft. Are we the people just stupid, naive or self centered?

History is clear, Rome fell in 476 AD....So the way I see it we have at least our lifetimes to experience fully, the decline of a great self governing concept.

The fact that NAR supported, what is now already (well past 850B) a $2T bailout is enough for me to rescind my membership. Problem is, we are all on the dole.

Fianacial Weapons Of Mass Destruction

Legalized Gambling, 100% pure and simple. Listen up to who signed the bill...and why up until the year 2000, this activity was considered a Felony.

"Credit Default Swaps", the bundling and selling of mortgages and the so-called insurance that was used to assure investors they were safe. These were"side bets" about whether a companies stock price will go up or down, also known as a credit derivative or a credit default swap because these bets could be made without actually owning the stock, similar to betting on a ball game. 

There is no reason that out of 80 million mortgages and less than 6 million behind or not paying their mortgage is effecting the USA, Asia, Europe etc. Give me a break.  So, where did all the money go? ...It was paid out to the Elie Fat Cats that saw this coming, new this was going to happen and the last time that anyone could bet like this was in the early 1900's. 

Take a listen on how much Mr. Treasury secretary Paulson pocketed!

Hillside Software presents the ultimate real estate survival tool kit-Virtual Office 9

Hi. I am Josh Simpson. I am coming to you from the CAR Convention 2008 here at the Broadmoor Hotel. I am with Hillside Software like I mentioned. We have real estate software products, like Virtual Office and HomeCards. We are releasing a new real estate product, a new version of Virtual Office tomorrow, Virtual Office Version 9. It has the EasyCMA capabilities, it has auto e-mail functions, a map search, as well as a new market wizard program, which lets you pull up properties, [Inaudible] image, send them to your clients, as well as these real estate charts and real estate graphs, real estate market trends, and things of that nature. It has been a great day here at CAR. It's definitely picked up from last year. It's quite busy and we are really enjoying ourselves out here.

Hillside Software presents the ultimate real estate survival tool kit-Virtual Office 9

43 folders Merlin Mann - email organization strategies

BrokerIPTV: We are at San Francisco at Inman Real Estate Connect 2008 and I have the privilege to be with Merlin Mann and Merlin was the introductory speaker today and he was talking about basically how to declutter[phonetic] our digital mess that we are in is personal slaves to our devices and great talk by the way.

Merlin Mann: Oh, thanks a lot Mark, appreciate it.

BrokerIPTV: I know this is a short interview, but is there something you can give our viewers out there as far as a short synopsis of what we can do to kind of manage lives in this new digital age?

Merlin Mann: Sure. Give up. Yeah. No, it is all over. There is no point, you will never catch up. You are going to die behind on email. Yeah, feasibly it is kind of the case. I mean [Inaudible] joke, but the truth of the matter is that people are trying to act that they can keep up with the huge influx of stuff that is coming into their life and I think a lot of us are basically trying to like put new buckets under our roof rather than trying to fix the holes at the top. So, the strategy I already... I always try to get people is to get in there and kind of limit the number of inputs that you allow in and then be very careful about the time that you spend on the stuff that you do allow them.

BrokerIPTV: So, 43folders.com. Tell me about that and what can I see when I go there. Do you have books that are [Inaudible], things I can buy, things that can help me?

Merlin Mann: 43folders is a site about personal productivity. It is very focused at [Inaudible] workers, you know people like computer folks, designers, writers, but in a way very much still relevant to real estate folks. The theme of the site is really kind of dealing with modern overload and trying to come up with some kind of a system for keeping it together and actually focusing on the stuff that is important to you and exclusion of the junk which just wants to steal your time.

BrokerIPTV: Yeah exactly. What I am really seeing here is because of all the social media, what we are really seeing I think is an enhancement of social media and the fact that we have to learn how to manage all the social media pieces and email and responses and posts and things like that are all part of that mess. So, I found your talk to be very alluring. Have you been to Inman before?

Merlin Mann: Year 2000, I was here as part of the industry. I was here on the inside. I had a badge, a paid badge and everything.

BrokerIPTV: So, what is your take on this year's event? What are you gleaning out of this? What is your feeling about the event?

Merlin Mann: It seems well... it seems like it is kind of like it is always kind of the same stuff. I mean for good reason. I mean the struggles that people have regardless of the technology, I mean this is all really the same kinds of issues and I guess the technology evolves and the marketing of that stuff evolves, but it seems like it is kind of the same problems people have faced for 50 years you know. It is how do I get the maximum return on investment for the time I put into what I do and I think that technology for that is kind of interesting.

BrokerIPTV: Well, thank you for speaking with us Merlin. Once again, that is Merlin Mann, 43folders.com.

God Save America

I geuss this guy is a racist? Well, maybe not everyone drank the Koolaid!

Hon. James David Manning, PhD preaches about Obama'a mama, grandmama, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezco, William Ayers, and more in the message called "God Save America" preached on Saturday, 18 October 2008.

Greenspan - “We are in the midst of once-in-a-century credit tsunami.”

That's code talk for "you are screwed and a number of my advisers and friends are set for life". 

Below are four links that can bring you to become enlightened vs. a misguided little media sheep.

Hmm, one hundred years since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.  Looks like we ran out of suckers at the bottom of the banking pyramid scam. He attempts to explain why the house of cards came tumbling down, blaming it on the bundled sub-prime loans...when in fact, the scam of fractional reserve banking has hit the wall.  Perfect timing too.  Problem, reaction and solution coming soon. 

We have not seen the bottom of this anytime soon.  2009 will user in many changes to our country...of which Greenspan was very much a key player.  They have scammed us for the last 100 years..wait until you see what they have in store for us the NEXT 100 years.

Good luck, the rabbit hole is deep.

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Robb Robichaud of AGS Constructions talks about the critical aspects of maintaining stucco

BrokerIPTV: Today we are talking with Robb Robichaud, the general manager of AGS Construction and Robb, thanks for being with us.

Robb Robichaud: Oh, it is a pleasure. Thank you.

BrokerIPTV: Talking about one of my favorite topics, stucco, EFIS and so forth, I keep seeing... I keep getting these buyers who are buying stucco homes and there are issues and people are worried and upset, which really kind of leads me into my first question. Is buying a stucco house in Colorado nothing but problems, true or false?

Robb Robichaud: False. Buying a house with stucco on it, what we recommend is to have an inspector report done and that way you can more or less determine if there are damages behind it.

BrokerIPTV: Does every house crack?

Robb Robichaud: Not every house cracks, but Colorado is an arid climate. We have high UV rays and you will get some cracking issues. If you get cracks, it is not serious unless the cracks become real wide, which is about sixteenth of an inch and that is if you can put a dime in it.

BrokerIPTV: You got a crack, what do you do?

Robb Robichaud: Well, the first thing you do is you don't caulk it.

BrokerIPTV: You don't?

Robb Robichaud: Don't caulk it.

BrokerIPTV: Okay.

Robb Robichaud: And reason why is patching it, you have to use stucco in it[Phonetic] and you have to put a texture[Phonetic] with it and then you cover it over, you can paint it or reskim the wall. If you just patch the crack and use caulk, when you paint it or if you kind of skim over it, it really... the crack will show up.

BrokerIPTV: Does that apply for windows as well? Around windows are you supposed to be caulking and maintaining those windows where the stucco meets the window frame?

Robb Robichaud: That should be Caulk Concealed [Phonetic] and it should be checked every three years.

BrokerIPTV: What happens if worst case scenario, we got water moisture behind EFIS insulation?

Robb Robichaud: Depends on how serious it is. If you have the penetration behind there, we see where we have to take it right down to the framing and sometimes we have to remove the framing and the reason why is you get black mold behind there and once you get that into the insulation, that has to be removed.

BrokerIPTV: Robb, let's say we got to make some repairs on a particular wall. If we have spots or holes or so forth, is that... can we just patch or do we have to refloat a whole wall or reskim a whole wall?

Robb Robichaud: You can patch it, but what is going to happen is once we patch it, that's going to show up. If you just do that particular section, we match the texture and the color as close as possible, but it is going to fade differently than what is existing on the wall and you don't have any way to get around it other than skimming that wall from corner to corner and then you have that uniform look.

BrokerIPTV: Robb, great information. It is a complicated topic that I know a lot of buyers and people want to know about including real estate agents. Thanks.

Robb Robichaud: Thank you very much.

Ron Stadham of Front Range Radon educates homeowners about radon

BrokerIPTV: Today we are talking with Ron Stadham, the owner and operator of Front Range Radon and Ron, thanks for being with us. Glad you are here.

Ron Stadham: Thank you Dan for having me.

BrokerIPTV: You know lot of people when I first got in the business, I didn't know what radon is, where it comes from. Can you get us up to speed?

Ron Stadham: Sure. Radon is a radioactive gas that comes from the soil. It starts as trace uranium 238 and as the decay process begins, it goes from uranium 238 to radium 226 to radon 222.

BrokerIPTV: Okay.

Ron Stadham: And we construct a home over this soil that contains trace uranium, the home can create negative pressure, drawing the radon up into it.

BrokerIPTV: So, does that happen anywhere in Colorado or is it unique to Colorado or do we see this in other states?

Ron Stadham: Trace uranium 238, the whole decay process occurs throughout the world. It is found almost everywhere.

BrokerIPTV: Okay.

Ron Stadham: It is just in some areas, it is greater than others. In Colorado, especially up down the Front Range, we have higher levels of radon in the soil than you may find in other parts of the country.

BrokerIPTV: What happens to people who are inhaling radon for lengths of time?

Ron Stadham: Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the nation next to cigarette smoking which is number one. So, it is very important that all of us test our homes for radon to find out what level we are at and if we are above 4 picocuries, then we do something about it.

BrokerIPTV: Most inspection companies when you do a regular home inspection ask if you would like to add on the radon test.

Ron Stadham: Everybody should test their home for radon. Know what the radon level is at least and then you can make... educate yourself and decide whether you want to do something about it. If you are above 4 picocuries which is the EPA's threshold, you should consider having a radon mitigation system installed.

BrokerIPTV: Some people go to local hardware store and get the test your home by yourself kit. Do those things even work?

Ron Stadham: Those kits are accurate if you follow all the directions, keep the house closed up tight, and the house should be closed up 12 hours before you do the testing, kept closed during the test. They are accurate now. After you have done a home test kit like that and you come back with an elevated level above 4 picocuries, you should probably consider having a qualified professional home inspector with more sophisticated equipment to come back in and retest again to make sure. Then, if you are still above 4 picocuries, then you need to start investigation a mitigation system.

BrokerIPTV: And when you say mitigation system, a typical remedy is vapor barrier ventilation fan. Is that correct?

Ron Stadham: Well, depending upon the home and how the home is constructed. If the home has no cross space, it is a lot easier. We do what we call a sub-slab depressurization system. There is no such thing as a home you can't fix the radon in. Every home is mitigatable. Some of the homes may get a little more involved than others, but there is always a remedy to fix radon in any home.

BrokerIPTV: Ron, thanks. Appreciate it. Good information.

Ron Stadham: Thank you.