« September 2007 | Main | November 2007 »
We hope everyone has a happy Halloween and eats lots of candy!
Dora dressed up as a Robot of the Future (Flight of the Conchords reference)
... or maybe she's just dressed as a box...
Either way, Halloween is definitely Dora's LEAST favorite holiday.
(It's one of my favorites, but that's probably because nobody makes me wear shipping equipment.)
Despite vise-tight credit and sinking asset values, some people are still eager to get into amateur real estate speculation. Probably the folks who find hijacking loads from Columbian drug cartels too safe a profession.
For those needing advice, hundreds of authors are willing to help them on their way. A search on Amazon.com with the keywords "real estate investing" yields 331 results for books published in 2007 alone. How can one know where to begin? Here's a hint: It's probably wise to avoid any tome with the words "subprime", "flipping", "secrets" or "millionaire" in the title. And if you are a self-described dummy, you may want to reconsider this course of action entirely.
Now for real advice worth the price, look for the Wall Street Journal's excellent Complete Real-Estate Invesing Guidebook by David Crook. Crook provides a clear understanding of the ups and downs of real estate investing, with an emphasis on managing rental properties, not flipping homes. And he does this with a nice sense of dry humor, which we can appreciate at HotPads.
One nifty feature of Google is that it allows you to create a customized home page called iGoogle, loaded with free widgets that give you access to the latest news, weather, YouTube videos or even games like Bejeweled and Tetris.
But now the real fun begins, with the launch of the HotPads iGoogle app. The HotPads Apartment Search gadget lets you launch a rental housing search right from your iGoogle desktop. You can use HotPads to browse the listings of upwards of 80,000 apartments and rental houses from coast to coast.
The Google desktop app is now one more way for folks to find and use HotPads. And while you're at it, you can also check out our Facebook application and instructional videos.
As massive wildfires once again rage through southern California, people who are not from the left coast scratch their heads and wonder why folks still choose to live where the real threat of losing one's home to fast-moving flames in an increasingly dry climate grows every year.
The answer is a complicated mix of bottom-dollar economics, amazing properties and the unique southern California state of mind.
For some, sky-high real estate prices in SoCal mean that they can't afford to live outside of the danger zone. Because of the huge population growth over the past 20 years, brushland has been developed to accommodate less expensive housing.
For those who can afford to live anywhere, like denizens of beach cities like Malibu, having a mansion
on a mountain peak that overlooks the Pacific Ocean is an irresistible draw. Celebrities like Suzanne Somers and Sean Penn have lost homes to California brush fires, but rebuild and enjoy.
On top of that, you have laid-back Californians who take their natural disasters in stride. The scene at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium, used as an evacuation shelter, resembled a college move-in day with Starbucks coffee, Wi-Fi Internet and endless coolers of soda.
Maybe the best way to understand this is to read what was written by one real estate blogger who documented his thoughts while watching fire crews work to stop the blaze moving in on his home; He couldn't help but marvel at the extra special glow that the smoke lent to the beautiful sunset.
Congratulations to Doug McCune on starting to write "Flex 3 For Dummies" with Deepa Subramanium. He announced this on his blog, DougMcCune.com. If you visit his post you have the opportunity to virtually throw a bunch of Dummy books at each other and watch them bounce off each other, thanks to Flex.
Doug is a former HotPads team member. This is the first book from the HotPads family...and we are thankful it is not an exposé. So, for any Adobe Flash and Flex developers out there, keep an eye peeled in Spring of 2008. Who wouldn't want to read a book by this guy: 
The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a growing cause for concern; your confidential financial information left on the street, by mortgage loan middlemen caught up in the turmoil of the credit crunch. Amid layoffs, shuttered offices and looking for new jobs, many brokers and agents have failed to take even the most basic precautions (a $39 shredder from Staples) to protect their clients from fraud.
One Indianapolis reporter trolled the back alleys and trash bins behind loan offices and title companies and found that nearly half contained sensitive borrower information ripe for the picking.
Although obviously a bigger concern now with so many mortgage brokers going belly-up, this is not a new phenomenon. The National Association for Information Destruction has an online newsroom full of articles documenting boxes of mortgage files, sometimes years old, turning up in recycling bins and other public places.
So as with all financial transactions, deal only with reputable firms that have been around for a while, and will be around for a while. Or at least use that Lifelock guy's Social Security number on your loan application. (If you didn't already know, it's 457-55-5462.)
It's been a long time since Madison Avenue could rely on a snazzy jingle and a 30 second spot in prime time to reach the majority of the buying public. Remember this kid?
With the growth of the Internet, the advent of digital video recorders and the decline in newspaper readership, it's gotten a lot tougher to reach a mass audience through one advertising medium. So marketers looked for newfangled ways to reach more customers, and ended up with supermarket conveyor belt dividers and sponsored parking lot stripes.
While innovative, these ad placements miss the point. The key to smart advertising isn't reaching customers in more places, but reaching the right customers. Luckily, marketers looking to reach young, web-savvy consumers during their housing search won't have to resort to bribing fools into tattoo their faces.
That's where the new advertising program at HotPads.com comes in. You may have already noticed more national advertisers using HotPads.com to offer great services right when renters need them. And unlike other sites, we don't show more ads, just better ones. To learn more, visit HotPads.com.
The losses and layoffs resulting from the housing slump have revealed the many bad business decisions made by seemingly smart folks in the real estate community. It's evident that a lot of bankers and investors need to go back to school. And who better to wear the robes of an academic Don than the master of real estate himself, Donald Trump.
For as little as $34.97, eager students can take courses from the online ivory towers of Trump University. The course catalog includes subjects like "What Inexperienced Homebuyers MUST Know Before They Buy a Home and "Three Master Secrets of Real Estate Success." But even T.U. dropouts know that you have to spend money to make money. Premium online courses cost about a grand, and full-blown seminars will set you back $1,995.
While no one doubts the obvious cachet that a prestigious T.U. diploma garners in the business world, we did have a few recommendations for future courses; "Buying Gold Leaf at Wholesale", "Overextending Your Brand (and Bank Account)" and "Better Ways to Invest $1,995" would all be great additions to the curriculum.
In fact, we may just save them for the 2010 launch of HotPads University.
Being based in the nation's capital, Team HotPads can't wait for the next year when the spanking new stadium for the Washington Nationals opens. We're not all baseball fans, but we are quite partial to beer and grilled foods.
While we wait, we can check out the awesome stadium construction webcam that shows a log of daily images of the stadium throughout its construction. This is a really great Web 2.0 real estate application, run by a company called OxBlue.
You have a choice of views, either from the press box or from center field. You can go to a given day of the construction, pick your zoom level, email images to friends and more. You even get a snapshot of what the weather did each day.
The coolest feature of the site is a time-lapse video that shows the entire construction progress in under a minute. You can see the stadium rising from a hole in the ground to its current nearly-completed status. I love seeing the weather change in the sky over the stadium, and rain pelting the camera on certain days.
If you a baseball fan, or a construction junkie, or just bored at your job, check out the site at http://clarkconstruction.oxblue.com/clarkhuntsmoot/.
Got a crush on Obama? A new online tool from Slate.com allows you to stalk him like a crazed ex-girlfriend off her meds.
Map the Candidates uses information from the public schedules of the 2008 Presidential candidates to show their activities on a national map. Not quite HotPads.com, but it's pretty sophisticated in its mapping and features, and pretty fun. You can filter results by date using the timeline sliders, zoom in to a particular location or use a geographic search box, select which candidates you want to track and even see YouTube videos and news articles from around the campaign trail.
There is also detailed information on each candidate, including their press coverage and policy positions. There's no word on what advanced technology Slate is using to keep track of all the Mitt Romney flip-flops.
www.flickr.com
|
