For a pushy sales person, the right time for you to buy a home may be RIGHT NOW!  TODAY!  Don’t WAIT…can’t you smell the steak on this grill?  But the truth of the matter is, the right time for you to [...]]]> It’s all dependent upon the interpretation of the term, “The Right Time to Buy.”

For a pushy sales person, the right time for you to buy a home may be RIGHT NOW!  TODAY!  Don’t WAIT…can’t you smell the steak on this grill?  But the truth of the matter is, the right time for you to buy a home is when you are able to, financially.  There aren’t any programs, tax credits, special incentives, or “great deals” that should make you feel as though you’re losing out if you don’t buy, especially when you’re not ready to handle the responsibilities associated with owning a home.

That includes when the market is down.  In fact, I would submit that the fluctuation in the market is going to affect only a few things for the buyer who is ready, and those things are location, location, location.  True, a down market (or a market where real estate is on sale, like it is now) it would be the best time to buy for someone who is ready to buy.  But, it may not be until the market has climbed a bit before you’re prepared.

Your finances should be in order before you consider such a commitment.  You should have 6 months of reserves based on the prospective home’s costs to survive if you experience an emergency.  You need health insurance.  You need to be generating income.  You need to budget and plan your retirement and your children’s college funds.  AND you need to be in the mindset that you won’t enter into a purchase contract on a home until you can put 20% down and take out no more than a 15-Year fixed rate mortgage that carries no more of a payment than 25% of your net take-home pay.  You need to have all of your debt paid off, have no car payments, no credit card balances, and no student loans.  If you’re about to get married, wait until you’ve been married for a year before buying, even if you’re financially ready.

Sound like an unreasonable proposition?  It’s very possible, provided you’ve made some good decisions along the way.  If you haven’t, and you’ve gotten yourself deeply in debt, don’t buy a house yet.  Wait.  I don’t care how “good of a deal” it is, and how “down” the market is.  You may not be ready to buy that house until the market is up, in which case, you’ll buy something a bit smaller, perhaps in a different location, but with the goal of owning the home free and clear as fast as possible so that you can pursue the next venture.

The right time to buy a home is when you have a plan that will lead you to not having payments on it.

Other articles of interest:

• July 7, 2010 -- This Is Going to Hurt
• December 24, 2011 -- Short Sale Basics Part Four: The BPO
• December 13, 2011 -- Short Sale Basics Part One: Market Value
• August 27, 2010 -- A Higher Sense of Purpose
• July 25, 2009 -- Even Millionaires Can Do a Short Sale

1.  Firstly, the Tweetdeck window opened with icons only, and no tweet columns.  I [...]]]> I just ran into a problem that took me a while to solve.  Upon installing Tweetdeck on my XP system at home, which has a dual monitor setup (land isn’t the only real estate I’m interested in,) I experienced two problems.

1.  Firstly, the Tweetdeck window opened with icons only, and no tweet columns.  I could manipulate the windows, maximize, move, restore, and minimize, but was unable to interact at all with it.

Solution:  Use the Log Out/Change Password button to ‘disengage’ Tweetdeck and force a new logon.  This will reset the application and allow you to actually use the program.

2.  The second problem caught me by surprise, and to my knowledge, is a common problem amongst those of us with dual monitor setups.  When I re-opened Tweetdeck, I was prompted to login, but then after logging in, the windows sort of disappeared.  The taskbar showed that TweetDeck was running, but the application was nowhere to be seen on screen.  If I right clicked the application in the task bar, I could maximize the application, but I was unable to move or resize the window.  If I restored, I noticed that the minimize animation quickly shuttled the window from the upper left (Monitor 1) down below monitor 2, but off screen, so i couldn’t see where it was nor access it.

Solution:  Maximize TweetDeck by right clicking TweetDeck in the Taskbar.  Once the application is maximized, click the third button from the right on the TweetDeck toolbar which is designed to show the application in “Single Column Mode.”  This promptly solved my problem, restored the window to the primary monitor (Monitor 1) and allowed me to resize it and move it where I wanted it.  Problem solved.

Other articles of interest:

• March 30, 2011 -- The Beginner’s Guide to Financing
• June 9, 2009 -- A New Trend in Bank Communications
• September 24, 2008 -- It’s a Gamble that Freddie Mac
• November 25, 2008 -- We Don’t Own the Data
• March 18, 2011 -- Are You Still Renting?

Threaded E-mail

Most [...]]]> If I am carrying on a conversation over e-mail that is important enough that I need to keep a copy of all correspondence, there are a few different ways to accomplish this task, but ultimately, the best way I have found, and the cleanest way is by using a support ticketing system.

Threaded E-mail

Most e-mail clients, depending on your user settings, will quote an original message in your reply so the recipient will be able to remember what the original message was.  Then, when they reply to your reply, the same thing happens, creating a very long thread of messages within an individual e-mail.

Problem:  If you reply to a message, then you reply to the same message again (assuming you may have left something out), you now have two sent messages with different replies.  The recipient, when he or she replies to your reply, will only quote one of your original replies, breaking the thread permanently.  This broken heirarchy can grow exponentially as time passes, messages change hands, and recipients grow.

E-mail Space Requirements

Keeping every message that ever comes into your inbox is inefficient in more ways than just taking up space on your laptop or computer, or server for that matter (that’s a whole different topic.)  Not only does it eat up space, it also eats up your time because you end up with a mountain of e-mail, and unless you have a clear system by which you read and sort your e-mail, and an effective plan to ensure your messages are permanently archives OFF SITE, meaning not on your laptop or computer, then you’re asking for hours of wasted time and frustration.  Storing your e-mail in folders is one solution, but it doesn’t remove you from the same risks and problems associated with having it all in one spot.

Keeping your e-mail on your mail provider’s server also poses a problem, because eventually it will cause your mail quota to be exceeded, and this ends up costing you time and energy, and sometimes added fees from your service provider if you don’t clear it out from time to time.  Clearing it out means eliminating it.

Support Ticketing System

The computing world is run on databases.  What better use of a database than to capture all of your important communications that you may have to refer to later?

A support ticketing system is a middle-man that automatically archives every message sent through the system and offers easy access to that system for future reference.  There are many flavors of ticketing systems out there, but I use one that I have found to be far superior to the rest.  The reason this is the case is because it takes on one feature that many other ticketing systems do not.  It allows the end user (the person who initially contacts you) to start a new ticket simply by sending you an e-mail.  It also has a zillion other fancy bells and whistles, and it runs on your own server, or a hosted server, so you have complete control over it.

How does it work?  Easy.  The support ticketing system is setup to monitor a single e-mail address (or multiple addresses if configured to do so.)  When someone sends an e-mail to this address, it sits on the server waiting for the ticketing system to check for the e-mail much like you would if you were using Outlook Express or another mail program.  If the system finds a message waiting in the wings, it “parses” the message.  In other words, it looks at the subject line to determine if there is an existing ticket number in the subject line or if it’s a new message.  If the message is new, the ticketing system assigns to it a new ticket number, records the message in the database, and forwards a notification along with the message to me, or the designated operator, at a different e-mail account.  If the message has a ticket number in it already, it adds the message to the last message that came through with the same ticket number, thereby recording the conversation permanently, and at the same time, notifies me, or the currently assigned operator.

When I get a new message with a new ticket number and reply to it, it goes to the same address that the ticketing system is monitoring.  In this case, when someone sends a new e-mail to whatever@realscottsdaleliving.com, my reply will also go to whatever@realscottsdaleliving.com.  The address is always Whatever@realscottsdaleliving.com, and every message involved in the conversation will bounce off of this address, leaving a copy of each subsequent message in the database.

Because I have this system in place, I know that every message that has a ticket number on it can be deleted from my mail client immediately after I’ve read and replied to it because all of the messages are safely stored on the server, permanently, including all attachments.  I no longer need to stack up messages in my in-box.

Researching tickets simply involves visiting a public website that allows me to search by many different methods to locate the information.

In the ticketing system, I am referred to as a Support Operator, and I am assigned to a specific Department within the ticketing organization.  Ticketing systems allow you to create multiple departments with multiple operators for each department, each with their own custom automated responses, knowledge base articles, and independent e-mail addresses.

The amount of customization you can do within your ticketing system is off the charts.

Right now, if you are a REALTOR and you inquire about one of my properties through the ARMLS system, the message goes to whatever@realscottsdaleliving.com and creates a ticket number.  All replies are tracked in my own system.  It gives me complete control and ownership of the messages that I communicate throughout the course of a day’s business.

Even if you aren’t a REALTOR, and you happen to send me a message at whatever@realscottsdaleliving.com, you will be assigned a new ticket and our conversation will begin.  Since most people don’t manage their e-mail in-boxes effectively, I can count on you keeping that message in your in-box so that if you reply to it at a later date, the ticket number will have remained in the subject line and your response will be added to the system.

One of the other nice features of a ticketing system is the ability to assign the issue to other Operators in other Departments that have been defined in the system.  Since the system is based on the internet, there is a web interface that allows anyone on your team to become part of the support system.  Moving issues and conversations between people within your organization while maintaining a consistent record of an entire conversation becomes very simple.  Imagine how difficult it would be for more than two people to monitor the conversation thread if all you had was individual e-mail accounts where messages were downloaded to different computers.

Nightmare.

Ticketing systems are a perfect solution to help your business create an identity that will never change.  Imagine Judy working the front desk for 5 years.  For her entire time of employment, she sends mail out to the agents in her office and the agents get used to sending mail directly to her using her e-mail address.  But what happens if Judy moves on?  Now you would have to notify all of the agents that Judy’s e-mail address is no longer the point of contact.  Rather, James has taken over.  So now everyone updates their contact list and a ton of uneccessary work is required from a whole lot of people who don’t need to be spending time doing that work.

Wouldn’t it be easier to give your office administrator position an e-mail address, then assign Judy, or James to that position as an operator in the ticketing system?  The agents wouldn’t know the difference, and they’d never have to change anything.  They would always send their requests to admin@company.com, or support@company.com, or accounting@company.com.  Whomever is assigned to each department would receive the requests.  If that person moved departments, or left the company, the IT director would simply remove them from the department and add the new person.

Similar Topics

• June 9, 2009 -- A New Trend in Bank Communications
• September 26, 2008 -- Perspective and Perception, Small Changes that Improve Productivity

In high school, during those adolescent days of discovering freedom through juvenile activities like chinese firedrills, lawn-forking, and water balloon fights at camp, [...]]]> There isn’t just one reason Twitter is a valuable tool, but I’ll tell you about one way that Twitter has been beneficial to the growth of my business.  Exposure.

In high school, during those adolescent days of discovering freedom through juvenile activities like chinese firedrills, lawn-forking, and water balloon fights at camp, we had a good time pulling pranks on people at intersections.

Here’s how it went.  When our carload of hormonally imbalanced youths pulled up to a red light, provided there was enough time, one of us would hop out of the car, look startled, and run forward pointing into the sky.  We would stop, and look amazed, like we were watching Godzilla.  The inevitable reaction from the rest of the cars around us was as expected.  They would look up, as though there was something we had spotted in the sky.  We were entertained, and their attention was captured for a split second.  Some laughed, some ignored us, some just thought we were idiots.  One person fired a pistol at us (no, not really.)

In San Francisco, there is a man who sits alongside the sidewalk in a busy pedestrian area hiding behind twigs that he holds in front of him.  When an unsuspecting ped-o-person walks by, he jumps out from behind two branches usually scaring the crap out of people to entertain them.  People who know, watch and are entertained.  He earns tips by entertaining and some people like him and some people don’t.  But he gets their attention for a split second.

Twitter is a world wide sounding board.  It’s like that intersection where we would hop out of the car and point to something.  It’s a place where the things that I do on a regular basis can be published without any effort, like pulling up to that intersection and saying, “hey, look over here.”  Those who wish to look can.  Those who aren’t interested can listen to someone else.

The one way that I have seen Twitter provide value for my business is additional exposure.  All of my online publishing platforms have a Twitter plug-in installed.  Any time that I post a new article, the blog notifies Twitter, and anyone who is following me will see that there is a new Tweet that points to a new article on my blog.  At that point, they can either click through and see, or ignore the Tweet (the act of sounding off on Twitter.)  The people that are visiting can subscribe to my feed so they never have to visit the site again, or they can read and participate right there on the site by leaving comments or interacting with me directly.

Now that you are able to search Twitter for specific key-words, it’s possible for you to intercept the Tweets of people you would normally not have known about to find others who are interested in the same things you are.  Interested in aerobatics?  Set up a search and you’ll be notified when someone tweets about it.  Are you an aspiring chef who wants to know when someone is tweeting about Creme Brulee?  Creat a search and you’ll know who’s talking about it.  You may be surprised by what you find when you click through someone’s tweet about a topic you’re interested in.  It’s allowing us to create micro-niche-groups comprised of small groups of people in far-distant places.

Inevitably, every time I post an article, someone, somewhere follows my Twitter account within 15 minutes of the posting.  Today I received 3 new followers after posting an article, most likely because something in the Tweet triggered their saved search to notify them that I had “tweeted” about their preferred topic.

Other articles of interest:

• June 24, 2009 -- How Long Does It Take to Accept a Contract?
• April 10, 2009 -- Real Estate Trends, Market Update
• July 22, 2009 -- How Soonr Has Helped My Business
• July 7, 2010 -- This Is Going to Hurt
• July 25, 2009 -- The Coolest Wedding Entrance EVER!

Outlook and [...]]]> That’s what I’m looking for, and I don’t want to spend a fortune.  I know.  How in the world can one have such a tall order and not want to spend the money?  Well, I imagine because this type of sofware would be in great demand and would sell in volumes, like Quicken.

Outlook and Microsoft Project just don’t do it for me.

I haven’t found anything else that does.  If you know of software that will do some of the following features, please pass the word along so I can look into it:

Firstly, it must synchronize with Outlook without having to file->Import/Export.  That’s probably the most important prerequisite.

• It must allow defining a task as needing to be completed “X” number of days from the date the task is initiated.
• I need a database of repetetive tasks that have due dates that are dependent upon the number of days the task must be completed after the previous task that can be assigned to a parent task.
• I need to be able to create a master task (such as “Take a Listing”) and have the sub-tasks involved in the master task automatically show up in the calendar on the day they either start, or are due.  For instance, if there are 3 sub-tasks that need to happen on the same day the listing is taken, then they would all show up on the calendar on the day they need to happen, but if there was a task that started as a result of the master task that wasn’t due until 7 days later, then it would be set as due in 7 days.
• There needs to be a clear definition between the time it takes to complete a task and sub-task and the due date in days that the task needs to occur, and the parent tasks that “kick off” the sub-tasks.

On Monday, I take a listing.  On Monday, I have 3 more tasks to complete, one of which is due on day zero (monday) and one that is due on day 4 (friday) but cannot start until the other task has been completed, which is also due on day 4 (friday).  Once the first task is completed, it would shift to the next set of tasks that would be added to the calendar.

I would essentially never miss a deadline and would be able to track the next move on every file that I have.

Anyone have an idea about such software?

Other articles of interest:

• July 24, 2009 -- What is Escrow?
• September 25, 2009 -- The Truth About Loan Modification
• July 23, 2009 -- What is a Loan Status Report?
• June 14, 2010 -- Nationstar Mortgage: We Won’t Help You Until you Stop Paying Us
• February 21, 2011 -- Am I Liable for the Balance or Difference in a Short Sale?

A photo that I recently took at a [...]]]> Before you edit photos that will represent a home that you have listed for a client, please consider how accurately the editing will depict the actual home. I never make edits that alter the reality of the home itself, like adding a view that doesn’t exist.

A photo that I recently took at a listing was unacceptable to me. The floor needed to be cleaned, but there wasn’t enough time to worry about it. I simply needed to get the picture and get the listing on the market.

To remedy the situation, I used photo editing software to essentially clean the floor, making it look more appealing. The tool that I use primarily is Fireworks from Macromedia Studio 8. My preference is Photoshop, but a recent disaster rendered my laptop useless and I lost Photoshop. I actually paid for Studio 8, so I feel no guilt about using Fireworks, even though I miss Photoshop desperately.

In Fireworks, just like in most editing software, there is a blur tool, but more importantly, there is a smudge tool. Using the smudge tool on the floor in the following photo resulted in a rather smooth fix.

Here is the Before Picture:

And here is the after picture:

The differences are subtle, but the process made the dust on the floor vanish.

If you’re not a digital photo editing junkie like myself, you may find this to be out of your area of expertise. I happen to enjoy it and it’s a hobby of mine.

Keep an open mind when you’re taking photos for a listing. Sometimes the most obtrusive element of the photo is something that can be removed in Photoshop. Just make sure that it can be removed in real life too. In one case, I was asked by a colleague to help him add his sign post to a listing photo that didn’t yet have a sign post installed. The bank was requiring it in order to proceed, and sign post installation was set for a day later. I actually inserted a sign post exactly where it was installed later that week and the bank was satisfied.

If you don’t know how to do this type of work, but you think that it may save you some time, give me a ring and I might be able to help you out, for a fee, of course.

Other articles of interest:

• June 21, 2009 -- Good News for Phoenix Real Estate
• October 3, 2008 -- Don’t be Fooled by The Weather
• July 29, 2011 -- Would You Hire a Chevy Mechanic to Work On Your Toyota?
• April 14, 2011 -- We Don’t Do Foreclosure In Arizona
• July 19, 2011 -- Who Prices a Short Sale?

E-mail, [...]]]> Every day I discover something new, whether it be on the internet, in the newspaper, or by speaking with clients and prospects.  Following technology advancements is one of my favorite activities and it has led to a myriad of tools that I have implemented to make my life more productive, or so I thought.

E-mail, to this day, has been a great way to keep in touch, but there’s one downfall that I overlooked for a long time until someone recently turned me onto the idea of eliminating e-mail notification.  At the beginning of the summer, I made a few changes to Microsoft Outlook’s behavior in hopes of changing my own behavior.  I found myself impulsively checking my e-mail every time my computer chimed in.  I also found myself very distracted by it.  So, I turned it off.  Now, I don’t know when I have e-mail, and it’s liberating!  Much like disciplined business associates who set aside specific times during their business day to check their messages and return phone calls, I have developed a better habit by doing the same with e-mail.  No longer do I jump to my e-mail to read through each overwhelming topic in the middle of important tasks.  Rather, I return them in small clumps of time throughout the day.

Another change that I made to Outlook was setting it to open in a way that would lend to more productivity.  Why not have Outlook open directly to the calendar page instead of the e-mail page?  Great idea!  So now, when Outlook opens, it sits in the background and churns along on the calendar page where I can quickly gain access to my schedule without being distracted by the latest goofy joke or video.  I can save that for later.

Okay, so here’s another trick that I just realized will help me gain perspective on my finances.  I use Quicken frequently.  It’s the only way I know where I stand financially.  Perhaps I have a bit of a control issue when it comes to knowing where I spend my money, but I know that at any time I can run a quick report to determine where I have been spending my money and where I can change bad habits.  Whether or not I change them is the key .  If you’re a Quicken user, you are familiar with the annoying Cha-Ching that you hear when a transaction is recorded.  Well, I made a change to that.  I altered the sound from a misleading Cha-Ching (a sound that gives me a false sense of security because “Cha-Ching” is commonly used to describe income) to a more apropos sound.  Since I have more transactions that deplete my account than increase it, I figured a good sound would be the sound of someone swiping something out of my hand.

Voila!  Now when I record a transaction I actually feel the money leaving.  Who would have thought that a simple change like that would make a difference in spending habits.  We’ll see what happens .

Have you discovered any changes that you have made in using your computer that lend to greater productivity?

Similar Topics

• December 22, 2009 -- A New Outlook…Or Maybe Not So Much
• June 19, 2009 -- It’s a Bottom Line Issue
• June 9, 2009 -- What Is a Support Ticketing System?
• November 8, 2008 -- More First-Time Home Buyers Than Before
• November 7, 2008 -- iPhone Tech Tip: Creating Ringtones for FREE