I was reading the Washington Post today and Arthur C. Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute wrote a brilliant piece. The title of the piece America’s new culture ware: Free enterprise vs. government control. You can read the entire article by following this link to the Washington Post.

Mr. Brooks states that we are facing a new culture war in America. He goes on to explain the new war is over free enterprise and limited government vs. European style statism. The roots of America are in free enterprise and this has been the cornerstone of our country sense before our founding fathers. Now we are faced with a minority that wants to change how our country is being run by allowing our government to take over more and more of the basic building blocks of our economy.

Please go and read the article. Educate yourself on what is happening around us. This is way too important of a topic to be ignored. No matter what side of the political aisle you favor you must realize that we need to keep our free enterprise system free.

While not a real estate related topic this is one that most everyone who visits this site will find appropriate.

Are you tired of Facebook sharing your personal information? Does the weekly changes to privacy settings seem a bit much to you? What can you do about it? I have 3 suggestions that will help you.

1. Stop using Facebook. That’s right go in and delete your account. You can find the instructions here to delete your account. This in my opinion is a silly solution there is no reason to commit social media suicide. However, after you delete your account you will no longer need to worry about what Facebook is doing with their security settings.
2. Accept that Facebook will continue to evolve and that you as a user will need to continue to evolve with it. You will need to simply go about the tasks of changing your personal privacy settings as necessary so that you feel secure with what information you are sharing on Facebook. Really it seems that it should be common sense that anything you share online will be saved somewhere out of your control. If you are not comfortable with this see suggestion 1. After you complete suggestion 1 remove your computer from whatever method you connect to the Internet and NEVER, EVER go online again. Everything you do online can potentially be saved and misused.
3. Here is the method that I feel will make Facebook sit up and take notice. First step. STOP clicking on any advertisements on the site. Simply put stop putting money in the advertisers pockets. Once they realize that Facebook is not a platform for their marketing they will stop giving Facebook money. Facebook not getting money will cause them to sit up and realize that we as users are voting with our pocketbooks. That will send a message loud and clear. Included in this is stop playing all games, stop taking all quizzes, stop doing anything but posting on your wall or the wall of others. We all need to remember that when we use a game or an application on Facebook that we are putting money in someones bank account. Part 2 of this step is to simply use Facebook less. If the traffic of the site drops off along with the drop in revenue the powers that be will take notice. They are smart people they will get the message.

Really folks it is time that everyone realizes that everything we do in our lives online is recorded and saved somewhere. It is not just Facebook that is sharing our information it can be every site. Think twice before you share your personal information here or anywhere.

I welcome your thoughts on this topic.

Please skip this post unless you want to read what a frustrated Realtor® has to say about changing the very software we use to find our clients homes.

Recently the NWMLS changed software providers for the multiple listing service. What does this have to do with being frustrated. Like many of us change can be challenging for me. I do however like to upgrade my software and I am always looking for something new to try out. That is when I am not trying to make a LIVING using the tool.

Yesterday I was holding an open house in Tacoma and someone stopped by to see the home. Well actually she stopped by to find directions to another home that was being held open. Being the helpful type of person I am I offered to find it “in the multiple” for her. She gave me the address and for 5 minutes I looked and looked and could not find the home. This lady thought I was an idiot for not being able to find the home that was advertised in the newspaper. She went to her car to get me the newspaper advertisement and sure enough there was the house. I plugged in the address and nothing. I put in the MLS number and the listing popped up and sure enough it had the exact address I typed. As the visitor walked out the door she mentioned something about me possibly finding a better job suited for my lack of computer skills…..

Immediately after that I tried to access the new software again and could not access the database. Simply timing out…. over and over… I actually called the tech support for the NWMLS where I was assured that everything was working correctly. The person on the other end of the phone allowed me to vent and assured me that in the next couple of weeks I would see some amazing changes and that everything would be working better than I could ever imagine.

Moral of the story. If you are working with a Realtor® right now and they are having troubles finding information for you. It’s not them it’s the system… give em 2 weeks.

I just hope my open house visitor stops by again in two weeks so I can dazzle her………

It’s early in the morning on Saturday May 1st. 2010. When I got up this morning I was wondering what the world would look like outside. Why? The $8,000 tax credit has expired. The end of the world as we as Realtors® knew it……

I am glad the tax credit has expired and I hope that the government does not bring it back. Nobody needs the artificial enthusiasm that the tax credit brought to our real estate markets and the economy. I know that I was a proponent of the tax credit when it first came out but after a year of watching what it did to people and the housing market in Tacoma I am glad that it is gone and we can begin to rebuild our local and national housing markets.

In many ways the tax credit was like Wal-Mart offering 75% off everything the week before Christmas. People started acting rudely towards one another. I had one seller who responded to a buyers request for closing costs with something along these lines “why should we pay anything for the buyer? After all, they are getting paid $8.000 to buy our house. What are we getting?” People were making crazy offers on houses that they really did not even like just to get the $8,000. Why would anyone buy a house just to get $8,000? I mean that it is a very nice amount of money but nowhere near enough to warrant the purchase of a home. Everyone was acting entitled to things that they had no right to feel entitled to. Now much like January after Christmas where we all spent too much money on too much stuff that we did not need or that we now realize we even wanted but it was 75% off at Wal-Mart so it had to be good right? we will start the process of reevaluating our needs and our budgets.

Buyers will still want to buy houses. Sellers will still need to sell houses. The markets will still be the markets. Life will go on. I am optimistic that we will see an even faster recovery now that the people that are participating are actually participating because they want to for their own true reasons. Not because they were being bribed into making the decision.

I brought 2 homes on to the market yesterday April 30th. 2010. Crazy? perhaps hard to tell. Yet this morning when I looked in my MLS both homes had had over 2 dozen views in one day. My other listings that are active, no views. Is this a function of new inventory being shiny and new and exciting? Or is it the function of the market realizing my sellers want to sell and have priced their homes to sell without any artificial encouragement? I don’t know but I do know this. We will know soon enough.

The world did not end last night and today it’s a new world. When you’re ready to talk real estate I’m ready to be of service. I hope we talk soon.

There are new regulations coming from the EPA that I was warning my clients in Chelan about when it occurred to me that the home owners at Classic Homes would also want this information.

If your home was built before 1978, new rules coming from the EPA are going to make repairing your home more expensive.

The laws require contractors to be certified in lead paint removal and follow stringent rules to do the job. So the initial estimates on added costs by the EPA barely scratch the surface of what it takes contractors to comply with the regulations

If you’re thinking you’ll just do the job yourself in the middle of the night and ignore the rules, if you get caught, the fines are as much as $37,500 a day!

The EPA estimates that its new rule will add $8 to $167 to the cost of the average interior remodeling job, but contractors say the expense to homeowners will be much greater. “The EPA has grossly underestimated the costs to comply on any job. I can see my labor costs go up by thousands of dollars,” said Vince Butler, who runs Butler Brothers Corp. in Clifton and is president of the Northern Virginia Building Industry Association.

Butler estimates that the extra time and effort required for protecting, cleaning and testing construction areas in pre-1978 homes will add 5 percent to 30 percent in fees on small renovation jobs.

“Expect to add another $500 to $1,000 for remodeling a kitchen, painting a couple rooms or replacing several windows,” Landis said. “That is the minimal additional cost to perform lead-safe work practices and associated documentation.”

The EPA rule applies to almost every type of renovation — from paint scraping to window replacement and carpet removal (which can disturb painted baseboards) — carried out by contractors in pre-1978 houses occupied by young children and pregnant women. -  Washington Post

The new rules take effect on Earth Day, April 22nd, so you better hurry!