| Duane’s Real Estate Video September 14 “It’s a great day to be in real estate! Duane Beisner here… sales manager and a sales representative for ERA real estate. | ||
| Duane’s Quote of the Day He who asks questions may be a fool for five minutes; he who never asks a question remains a fool forever. | |
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Duane’s Joke of the Day
A couple, desperate to conceive a child, went to their priest and asked him to pray for them. "I'm going on a sabbatical to Rome," he replied, "and while I'm there, I'll light a candle for you." When the priest returned three years later, he went to the couple's house and found the wife pregnant, busily attending to two sets of twins. Elated, the priest asked her where her husband was so that he could congratulate him. "He's gone to Rome, to blow that candle out" came the harried reply.
Duane’s Business Tip of the Day
No business can succeed without sales. Before you start your own business, learn something about selling and marketing.
Think about it.
Darwin Award of the Day
(19 July 2010, Washington) Two out-of-town race car crewmen were at a machine shop that builds and services race cars, when they dreamed up an unusual thrill ride. Fire Chief Dean Klinger reported that on Sunday evening, the men poured four gallons of methanol into a 55-gallon barrel in the parking lot, sat on top of the barrel, and lit it.
The men were in the town to participate in the American Sprint Car Series at Skagit Raceway. Apparently they thought the barrel would slide across the parking lot like a rocket sled, with a tail of flame shooting out, and two rodeo clowns sitting on top, waving their caps and hooting. But instead of sliding across the pavement, the barrel blew up beneath them. Who would have thought that 4 gallons of methanol inside a 55-gallon drum would be a bomb?
The explosion was so powerful that one end of the barrel landed 120 feet away from the blast site. The two men landed in Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Racing folks are smart people with a high degree of mechanical ability. The work is risky, but this was not a random "shop accident." Rather, it was a dangerous and ill-conceived stunt by two bored men who were hoping to find some fun in a small town. Instead of fun, one man lost his life, and a second survived with a sober lesson on the power of combustion.
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Duane’s Social Commentary
| How Debt Can Destroy a Budding Relationship by Ron Lieber
Nobody likes unpleasant surprises, but when Allison Brooke Eastman's fiancé found out four months ago just how high her student loan debt was, he had a particularly strong reaction: he broke off the engagement within three days.
Ms. Eastman said she had told him early on in their relationship that she had over $100,000 of debt. But, she said, even she didn't know what the true balance was; like a car buyer who focuses on only the monthly payment, she wrote 12 checks a year for about $1,100 each, the minimum possible. She didn't focus on the bottom line, she said, because it was so profoundly depressing. But as the couple got closer to their wedding day, she took out all the paperwork and it became clear that her total debt was actually about $170,000. "He accused me of lying," said Ms. Eastman, 31, a San Francisco X-ray technician and part-time photographer who had run up much of the balance studying for a bachelor's degree in photography. "But if I was lying, I was lying to myself, not to him. I didn't really want to know the full amount." At a time when even people with no graduate degrees, like Ms. Eastman, often end up six figures in the hole and people getting married for the second time have loads of debt from their earlier lives, it should come as no surprise that debt can bust up engagements. Even when couples disclose their debt in detail, it poses a series of challenges.
When, exactly, are you supposed to reveal a debt of this size during the courtship? Earlier than you'd disclose, say, a chronic illness? Even if disclosure doesn't render you unmarriageable, tricky questions linger. If one person brings a huge debt to a relationship, who is ultimately responsible for making good on the obligation? And if it's $170,000, isn't the more solvent partner going to resent that debt over time no matter how early the disclosure comes? After all, it will profoundly affect every financial decision, from buying a home to how many children to have. These were the questions that weighed on Kerrie Tidwell. A third-year student at the Medical College of Georgia and an aspiring emergency room doctor, she doesn't worry so much about her ability to pay back her loans. Ms. Tidwell, 26, is involved in a serious relationship with Stefan Kogler, an architect who is a native of Austria and living in Vienna. To Europeans, who often pay little or nothing toward their university studies, the idea of going deeply into debt to get educated is, well, foreign. Ms. Tidwell feels no guilt about the $250,000 in debt she will probably run up, including some from a master's degree program she completed in London, where she and Mr. Kogler met. "I didn't acquire it because I go out and shop a lot," she said. "It's because I'm doing something that I'll love for the rest of my life." Still, if she and Mr. Kogler are going to move in together and get engaged, she wants their financial arrangements to be clear and fair. But how do you define fair when you're bringing a quarter of a million dollars in debt to a relationship? Lisa J. B. Peterson, a financial planner with Lantern Financial in Boston, specializes in counseling young couples and has heard this story before. About half the people she sees are both bringing significant debt to the relationship, and about a quarter of the others have one person who has a pile of student loans. The problem is, most couples never get this far in the premarriage money talks. One advantage to prenuptial agreements is that they force the issue, even if it does turn the talks into a negotiation. "At least half the time, people are shocked at what the other person's attitude is," said Susan Reach Winters, a matrimonial lawyer with Budd Larner in Short Hills, N.J. "You ask how they'd handle it if someone wanted to stay home after having a baby, and at the same time they give completely different answers." Still, all of this raises the question: At what point do you have a moral obligation to disclose your indebtedness during courtship? On the eighth date? When you get to third base? In your eHarmony online dating profile? "It's a sliding scale," said Ms. Riesel, the Manhattan lawyer. "It depends on the person and the nature of the relationship." Ms. Winters, the Short Hills divorce lawyer, said it might depend on your definition of a serious relationship. "But I wouldn't wait until you were signing leases for apartments or picking out engagement rings." Ms. Eastman in San Francisco says she knows that now. "What would I have done differently, besides bringing a copy of my credit report on the first date?" she said, with a rueful chuckle. "I would have been more responsible."
Duane’s Real Estate News WSJ - banks' plans will drive mortgages
The speed at which house prices fall over the next few months could depend less on mortgage rates and Americans' appetite for home buying than on how banks decide to manage the huge number of foreclosed homes they own or may take from delinquent borrowers in the near future. Unlike home owners, banks often are much quicker to slash prices to unload properties quickly. The upshot is that, the more homes being sold by lenders, the faster prices tend to fall. That pattern was clear over the past two years: Price declines that began four years ago accelerated rapidly in 2008 as banks dumped foreclosed properties at fire-sale prices. By January 2009, the share of distressed sales had soared to 45% of all sales nationally; it was even higher in hard-hit markets such as Phoenix, according to analysts at Barclays Capital.
The Home Affordable Modification Program has fallen short of its goals. So far, fewer than 500,000 loans have been modified, below the target of three million to four million. Yet the program served as a "closet moratorium" on foreclosures that stanched the flow of bank-owned homes to the market, said Ronald Temple, portfolio manager at Lazard Asset Management. The result: The share of distressed sales fell by November to 25% of home sales, and prices stabilized. After rising in the winter, the distressed share fell to 22% in June, before bouncing to 30% in July. The problem is that these measures are wearing off. Demand plunged this summer after tax credits expired, and unsold homes are piling up. More foreclosures could move onto the market as borrowers fall out of the loan-modification program.
"We see the perfect storm brewing with rising supply and falling demand," said Ivy Zelman, chief executive of research firm Zelman & Associates and one of the first to warn of trouble five years ago. She estimated that distressed sales could account for half of the market by year-end if traditional sales didn't rebound. The market does have some tailwinds: Housing starts are at all-time lows. Banks have hired more staff to manage problem loans and government entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that own a growing share of foreclosures are less likely to deluge the market. The next leg down in prices "isn't going to be the foreclosure-induced freefall where you just had inventory coming out the wazoo, and it was going to be sold one way or the other," said Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin Corp., a real-estate brokerage.
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This is Duane signing off. Happy Trails to you! As always, I am proud to be an American.
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