David Saks

What does real estate counseling invlove?

Do you provide your clients with competent adivce? Does your advice reflect sound, professional judgement?

How can we counsel our clients to choose among the many alternatives they face?

What do we have to furnish our clients with to make informed decisions?

Many thanks for your thoughts.

It's been said that subdivision is the splitting of a single property into smaller parcels.

It's also been said in the same breath that development will involve the construction of improvements on a parcel of land.

We also know that improvements are made off-site on public lands which include electricity, water and other municipal services.

New homes and their additions with their improvements are made on-site, that is, on individual parcels of land.

We believe that subdivision and development are related, but could they be distinctively different from one another and considered independent processess which must occur apart from each other?

How do they work together?

We know that a property manager is usually a person or company hired to maintain or manage a property on behalf of another, usually the owner.

But when we hire a property manager is the owner actually relieved of the usual day-to-day tasks required to manage a property, such as collecting rents, making repairs, finding new tenants or evicting bad ones, modifying or constructing space for tenants or maintaining the property?

What do we have to insure as owners that our investments are being protected?

Isn't the most fundamental responsibility of the property manager to protect your investment, maximizing your return?

Many thanks for your comments.

I was sitting here sipping some iced tea and thinking about Kemmons Wilson, you know, the man who started out with a popcorn stand in front of the theater when he he was a kid and went on to become the founder of Holiday Inns in 1953. I was a year old then.

I grew up hearing about Kemmons and his accomplishments, almost daily as a child.

One of the greatest days of my life came when the phone rang, in 1990, and it was Kemmons. He called to congratulate me about a Memphis City Council honor I had just received. Kemmons asked me to come to a little party he was throwing for me at one of his hotels near the Memphis International Airport. He said his pals would be there; police captains, politicians, judges, real estate brokers, bankers, school teachers, bricklayers, shoe salesmen, doctors, teachers, the hotel staff and his many other family and friends. Kemmons wanted me to play the piano for him. Kemmons said to me, in his clear and wonderful voice, "David, I want to hear your songs about Memphis." I said I was honored that he would think of me in such a way. Kemmons was the tennis sparring partner of my uncle, Frank Romeo, Jr.. Uncle Frank was once the president of the Memphis Homebuilders Association, so I figured Uncle Frank, now 92, must have said something to Kemmons about it. Uncle Frank and I still chat about Kemmons and how marvelous a person he was whenever I visit him.

In May of 1968, Kemmons was the commencement speaker at the University of Alabama graduation, you know, that school they call "The Crimson Tide" which was once ruled by a "Bear". Alabama was about to confer the Honorary Doctor of Laws degree upon Kemmons. Kemmons said in his speech: "There is no substitute for hard work, even today. As long as we're willing to work, the American dream is not dead. It is alive and thriving. I believe freedom to work is second only to our religious freedom."

Kemmons was born on the fifth of January, 1913 in Osceola, Akansas. Kemmons went to be with the Lord on February 12, 2003; he was in his beloved Memphis that day. 

Kemmons earned his holiday, although I would have to echo the words of Kemmons pal and partner, Wallace E. Johnson who said, "If there isn't any work in heaven, it won't be heaven to Kemmons." 

I hope to see Kemmons again one day. I hope the Lord accepts my job application.

Is a brokerage just the business of bringing people together in a real estate transcaction, or is it more like a business characterized by a high degree of intensity which combines the components of a multi-platformed community into one full service entity?

Seems that the larger a brokerage is the more important training and retaining becomes.

What is the process of becoming a better brokerage?

I think it's understanding the business and all of the intricate processes, some sophisticated, some simple, that are the foundation of it's very existence.

Often, when we hear others talking about real estate, and even considering a career, what do they think about?

Do they think about becoming a broker and running their own brokerage?

Do they think about becoming a salesperson and working for a brokerage?

Do they think about becoming an appraiser, mortgage broker or banker, title agent, real estate attorney or what of many other options available allowing them to specialize within our profession?

What is the real estate business to you?

Is it a world revolving around negotiation and transaction all the time?

Is it commercial leasing?

Is it working with families to help them find a home, making a home a reality rather than just a clouded state of the imagination, something unobtainable or unrealistic?

Or is it just business - complex and full of challenges, at times riddled with anxiety?

We depend on each other daily to share our respective skills and knowledge to make the real estate profession, or any profession, great through consideration, confidence and other thoughtful measures.

Many thanks to the honorable Active Rain community for taking a moment to reflect.

Could it actually be that there is a low risk of home price decline in Chattanooga, or other Tennessee towns and cities, because, like Memphis and Shelby County, they have high property taxes ?

In other words, could high property taxes make it more difficult to stay in step with appreciation and create some unbeknownst condition of equalization?

Other factors such as foreclosure, tax liens, divorce, bankruptcy and crime influence price decline. High property taxes seem to keep prices stable, to a degree.

I'd like to see a nationwide study or moratorium on the impact of ad valorem assessment and it's affect on market conditions, especially in a reassessment year.

What are your thoughts? Thanks.

The trap has sprung.

When the Fed lowered the lending rate it might have signed a death sentence for the economy. For cash-strapped homeowners, they're worst nightmare could happen. They're going to refinance their mortgages at bargain rates again, thanks to the Fed's beneficence, and think that they can cut their payments in half. Low documentation and low downpayment scams are going to resurface their ugly heads for new borrowers. Those who take the bait are in for a nasty surprise. While many Americans have started to worry about falling home prices, borrowers who jumped into so-called option and hybrid ARM loans have another, more urgent problem: payments have and are about to skyrocket, and it's predicted the reset will last through as late as 2011, and onward !

Most of the pain will be borne by ordinary people, not the lenders, brokers, or financiers who created the problem.

The Fed discount, and new borrowing frenzy, could be the coup de grace to America's economy.

I wanted to share a letter with you that George Washington sent to his stepson, J.P. Custis

A moments reflection must convince you of two things: first, that lands are of permanent value; that there is scarcely a possibility of their falling in price, but almost a moral certainty of their rising exceedingly in value. And, secondly, that our paper currency is fluctuating, that it has depreciated considerably, and that no human foresight can, with precision, tell how low it may get, as the rise or fall of it depends upon contingencies which the utmost stretch of human sagacity can neither foresee nor prevent.

By parting from your lands, you give a certainty for an uncertainty, because it is not the nominal price - it is not ten, fifteen, or twenty pounds an acre - but the relative value of this sum to specie, or something of substantial worth, that is to constitute a good price. The advice I give is that you do not convert the lands you now hold into cash faster than a certain prospect of vesting it in other lands more convenient requires of you.

This will, in effect, exchange land for land, for it is a matter of moonshine to you, considered in that point of view simply, how much the money depreciates, if you can discharge one point with another, and get land of equal value to that you sell.

But far different from this is the case of those who sell for cash and keep that cash by them, put it to interests, or receive it in annual payments; for, in either of those cases, if our currency should unfortuneately continue to depreciate in the manner it has done in the course of the last two years, a pound may not, in the span of two years more, be worth a schilling.

It may be said that our money may receive proper tone again, and in that case it would be an advantage to turn lands, etc., into cash for the benefit of the rise. In answer to this, I shall only observe that this is a lottery; that it may, or may not, happen; that, if it should happen, you have lost nothing; if it should not, you have saved your estate, which in the other case, you may have been sunk.

George Washington - October 12, 1778

The President is with us more than ever !

 Hepplewhite Side Cabinet                                                                                                        

When the federal funds rate started to drop, and struck new lows in 2003, we were well into a strong and healthy stock market recovery. The federal funds rate stayed around 1% long enough to set off a boom in low-cost mortgages and in home prices. Home buyers soon discovered that their ordinary paychecks could now buy fabulous homes. People with cash in savings learned their money earned next to nothing.

Interest rates on home mortgages dropped so fast that the National Association of Realtors' housing affordability index showed that almost anyone could buy a house somewhere in America, because borrowed money was practically free. It's no wonder that home prices soared. According to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the national index of home values rose 46.9% in the five years ending Sept. 30, 2007. That's was a staggering annualized appreciation rate of 8% -- enough to make us all think owning a home was way better than the stock market or just about anything else you could roll the dice on. Some investors thought that they wouldn't have to actually work for a living anymore.

It's all changed now. Where would you trust your money in today's economy? Metals, precious gems, baseball cards, beanie babies, Hepplewhite, antique cars, comic books, real estate, stamp collecting,...?