photo credit: herzogbr

Our world pushes forward, nature cycles, leafs fall from the trees, the landscape changes and evolves, tides rise and fall, and the face of our society and business changes along with the ebb and flow of the natural world. Such is the case today. When someone introduces a new technology, things change. That is the way of things, as it should be. People sometimes forget how linked to nature we actually are. The face of commerce and business changes as does our natural world. Well, this isnt about nature its about a new business model.

Roost, a real estate search portal, has introduced a new way for real estate agents to interact with home buyers. Traditionally, Roost has worked in the real estate community by exchanging data between themselves and brokers and agents to list information about properties. However, their world has evolved and the services they offer are born anew, into a "Social Real Estate Toolkit." Social networks have changed the way people interact with each other, so its reasonable to guess that it would change the way business people interact with their customers.

This model helps brokers and agents acquire referral contacts through the social networking website Facebook. The idea is to capitalize on the concept of word of mouth business, which is how most real estate professionals gain the bulk of their business anyway; this seems to be a natural next step. Real estate agents, like the rest of us, are not necessarily web or social network experts, but they are experts at building relationships with people and clients, and this simply helps them further their reach. A natural next step indeed! I wish Roots and the real estate industry good luck in this new endeavor.

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Posted in Headlines, Denver Colorado Real Estate, Blogging, Real Estate Industry, Real Estate Industry Trends, Technology And YOU, Downtown Denver Lofts and Condos

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Let the mortgage games begin seems to be the battle cry of the mortgage lenders, banks, and government. Get as many butts in the seats as possible and well worry about how to keep them there later. Maybe its the disposable attitude our country has adopted, I think it started with the disposable razors. Lets blame it on disposable razors. Razors are the reason we are in this financial mess. Everything used to be permanent and now we view everything, I mean everything, as a temporary or disposable.

When my parents, and certainly my grand parents, bought a house it was to live in and raise a family, which meant at least 18 to 20 years. Thats not so much the case now. Now we use our homes as a way to build a financial portfolio, not that theres anything necessarily wrong with that, its just that we have such a different attitude about our homes as well as everything in our lives. This temporary attitude, I think, has lead us down the wrong road, maybe not personally or individually, but as a country we are on the wrong path, although, it always starts with the individual.

The more we get use to the temporary mind set the more we accept the government and policy makers temporary fixes and solutions to the very real problems you and I face in our lives. Nothing coming out of Washington and the financial sector is sustainable, and the games are being played with our livelihood. Is that a game we really want to play? We need to realize that this is not a game that has winners; there is no victory to be had for anyone playing this game.

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Posted in Headlines, Mortgage, Denver Colorado Real Estate, Blogging, Real Estate Market Conditions, Real Estate Industry Trends

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Part of the reason George Washington and his gang came to America and fought for independence is that they wanted the average person to have a shot at a good and productive life, and they succeeded in their plight. We created the strongest middleclass in the world, and we have done a pretty good job at maintaining that way of life over the last couple hundred or so years, however, that lifestyle is now threatened. It has been threatened before here in America, but we are facing some things this country is not used to seeing and were not sure how its going to turn out.

Even the economists are throwing their hands up in the air. We can speculate, but thats all it is, speculation. What worked in the past just doesnt apply today, the problems of yesteryear are not the problems of today, however, there were some very important lesions we learned back during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl that we seem to have forgotten.

photo credit: phi1317

A society will have to learn the lesions again, it seems, once they are no longer emotionally connected to that event. The people of today dont even hear stories and lesions from our grandparents about those times any longer. We have a huge disconnect from that experience and lesion. It looks as though we are going to have to go through it again, which might sustain us for another generation or so.

photo credit: Miquel Wert

We will especially have to learn the political lesions of that generation once again, which of course ties into our financial situation. If you do have a chance to speak to people who are still connected to the events of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, they might tell you they have seen this road before and that we are headed down a turbulent path. This is unfortunate because we have so much in front of us, we have new lesions to learn, and here we are learning lesions we should have already assimilated into our societal consciousness.

Homeownership is a staple of our country, its something we have prided ourselves on, being the strongest middle class and making sure everyone had a chance at a good life. Keep in mind, if we can, the lesions of WWII and the communist movement back a generation ago. Everything turned into the haves and the haves nots. You either had a nice home and worked for the government or you lived in impoverished turmoil. This is not opinion; this is the way it was.  You can look it up.

I just make this comparison because of our current situation. Fewer and fewer people can purchase homes today, and this trend is happening at a break neck pace. The banks simply arent lending and the government isnt helping. You either have perfect credit, money in the bank, and collateral or you dont. Its just that simple these days. You either have money or you do not. Sound a little like something in our recent history? It sure does to me.

photo credit: theqspeaksWe have been so caught up with sides, Right or Left, Conservative or Liberal that we have forgotten to pay attention to the actual direction our Nation is heading. We just want our side to be right. I went to a town hall meeting a couple of weeks ago for a Demarcate Senator, I being more conservative thought I would encounter crazy comments and people who thought very different from me, however, what I found was a group of people saying the same thing as the Republicans.

I was amazed, you could have substituted a crowd of conservatives for this crowd, they were saying the same things the other side was saying, and of course blaming the opposite side just as the other side does, we all want to be right, and we all want to be secure in the fact that the other side caused this, and that we have the answers if only the other side would just listen. However, the fact of the matter is that both sides have been going down an old path that we should have known is hazardous. I think its time we put our differences aside, at least for a little while, and talk about our similarities, and pay attention to the lesions of our grandparents.

We may think we understand the past and are above letting those same things happen again, because were smarter or we understand things they didnt understand back then, but we do not have a better understanding, and we are letting the same horrible things happen yet again. Saying "lets all just get along" simply isnt me, but I do think we need to pay attention to what we all want, to our goals as a country, to where we are going, where we have been, and to start talking about some practical answers.

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Posted in Headlines, Metro Brokers, Denver Colorado Real Estate, Blogging, Real Estate Investing, Real Estate Market Conditions, Real Estate Industry, Real Estate Industry Trends

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We have all heard the new age, self help rhetoric about thinking positive and taking control of your destiny. "You are the architect of your own reality," "what you think is what you create" and "thoughts become things." These are some of the sayings weve heard lately about taking control of not only our lives, but taking control over ourselves. How does this relate to business or real estate you might ask? Mike Brooks, from Broker Agent Social thinks it has a lot to do with real estate and sales.

Mr. Brooks says that how you talk to yourself can have drastic effects on how you view yourself and how you perform. You may say to yourself that you dont talk to yourself, but what did you just say and who did you say it to? You may or may not believe in self motivation and creating your own reality, but if you take a steep back for a moment, and remember how your parents taught you and how you teach your children you might think twice about this positive thinking stuff.

photo credit: Brave Heart

Every mother and father inherently knows positive thinking works, and can form and shape our lifes. Think about teaching your children how to catch a ball in the back yard or teaching them to tie their shoe laces. What do they say time and time again? I cant do it! And what do you say in return? Yes you can, dont say you cant do it, if you say you cant you wont be able to do it. Say you can do it, I know you can. At what age did this rule stop applying to us? What we say to ourselves and how we think does affect our lives.

If you say youre not good enough to close the deal, then youre not good enough to close the deal, just like catching the ball in the back yard as children, the same rules still apply to us, only now we juggle many balls in the air, and our families depend on us, our financial future depends on learning how to catch that preverbal ball. You can do it, I know you can!

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Posted in Headlines, Metro Brokers, Denver Colorado Real Estate, Blogging, Colorado Association Of Realtors, Real Estate Industry Trends, Gen X-Y, Web 2.0 Marketing, IPTVBoyz Blog Training

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The Gulf oil spill effects are likely to be much farther reaching then any of us can foresee at present, but many real estate professionals can see immediate effects. A portion of the money set aside for claims and victims of the Gulf Coast oil spill will now go to realtors that have been affected by the mess.

The new administrator of the Gulf Coast Claims facility, Kenneth Feinberg had no intention of sharing some of the $20 billion with realtors along the affected coast, but members of the state Realtor associations from the affected states convinced Feinberg that many real estate professionals may not have a legal claim, but they certainly have a moral claim on some type of compensation.

"I think it's the right thing to do under the circumstances," Feinberg said, according to an article by The Washington Independent.

"He realized there may not be a legal justification, but I think he has come to realize there is a legitimate need and cause for what happened. He sees that loss of income is a result of the oil spill, and he's trying to do the right thing within the guidelines that he's given," The president of the Alabama Association of Realtors, Keith Kelley said. Kelley also helped during the negotiations.

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Posted in Headlines, Blogging, Real Estate Investing, Real Estate Market Conditions, Real Estate Industry, National News, Downtown Denver Lofts and Condos