bookofjoe has an interesting remedy for a sore belly. Only hint I’m going to give you is that it involves a refrigerator but you don’t have to ingest anything. Go here to find out what it is.
Quit Your Belly Aching
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Category Archives: Interesting
Realtors Running Scared
There’s an interesting item at the Business 2.0 blog about a website in Madison, Wisconsin for people selling their own homes, or in the real estate vernacular it’s a site of "for sale by owner" (FSBO) properties. Here are the critical numbers they cite:
- The site has captured about 20% of the county’s listings.
- If agents had sold all the properties listed on the site and had a standard 6% commission the amount paid to the realtors would have been $17.3 million.
- The site collected $300,000 for those listings.
If you want to check out the site you can find it at FSBOMadison.com.
Well here’s what I think. Traditionally, the biggest advantage of hiring a realtor as a seller was access to the MLS (multiple listing service). By using the realtor’s service you were broadcasting the availability of your property to the world at large much more quickly than you could do it yourself. Now, though, with FSBO services and other online tools like CraigsList you can get the word out there very quickly all by yourself. The realtors probably instinctively know this, but don’t want to admit it. They better wake up though, because their biggest asset on the sales side is disappearing. Agents will tell you that they also give their clients advice on prepping their property for sale (empty those closets, unclutter your kitchen, etc.) but you can get the same info from a "Selling Home for Dummies" book.
As a buyer, especially if you’re moving into a new area, the biggest advantage of using a realtor is their knowledge of neighborhoods. Celeste and I found this out when we moved from DC to Winston-Salem two years ago. We did a lot of online research before we started working with our realtor but it became pretty apparent that we needed the services of someone who could match our needs to a neighborhood. In other words we needed a highly specialized service and we definitely benefited from our agent’s service. (BTW, if you need a good agent I highly recommend MaryLee Hester of Prudential Carolinas Realty). I don’t see that advantage disappearing any time soon.
My prediction is that the real estate business is going to change. Smart agents will not worry as much about being the listing agent and will instead focus on providing services to buyers. They will embrace the evolving FSBO market by being flexible. The really smart ones will help get one of the dirty little secrets out about real estate: selling is easy. Most people don’t know that it is up to the buyer to get a contract written up and submitted to the seller for consideration AND that you can get a contract written up by a real estate attorney for a few hundred dollars. And the new FSBO sites and online listing services will take care of the marketing.
(Disclaimer: As always there is the possibility that your house is a pig, and even if you put lipstick on it you’ll still have a pig.)
Smart agents will focus on helping their clients find the perfect home and then provide them with a list of real estate attorneys just like they do with plumbers, general contractors, etc. They will mine the FSBO sites and CraigsList for leads, just like they’ve traditionally used the MLS. They will also concentrate on educating the FSBO market to the advantages (larger market, contract sales force) of accepting visits from realtor-represented buyers even if they have to give up 1-3% commission.
To give you an idea of what I mean, when Celeste and I sold our first house a few years ago I was hammering the FSBO sign in my front yard when our phone rang. An agent happened to be driving by and asked if we would let her bring a client by to see the house. "Sure," we said, "but we’re only paying a 2% commission." She jumped right on it, because in reality she would have gotten only 3% anyway if we had a listing agent.
Celeste and I sold all three of our properties without an agent,
and I can tell you that we worked harder trying to buy our house in Winston-Salem than we did to sell all three houses combined. Admittedly we sold in a hot market, but I still think that in the end selling is easier than buying, and smart realtors will ackowledge that and focus on servicing home buyers.
My final point would be that they should not abandon listings totally. They should just recognize that they’ve lost the monopoly, and in fact they should consider listing their properties on things like CraigsList themselves. In other words they should really do the marketing that they’ve only been paying lip-service to up until now. Still as a seller I don’t know that I’d be willing to give up 3% for that kind of service so they’d definitely have to consider giving up a point or two there.
My College Degree is Worth Less Today
I’m sitting here on Christmas Eve doing a little reading and I just came across this post (Business Week) about how the real wages of those with college degrees has declined for the fourth straight year. I can’t say that I find it surprising, but it is a little depressing. I’d say that it is evidence that today’s college degree is equivalent to a high school degree in my parents’ day. Back in "the day" you could be pretty certain that you could get a good job with a high school degree, but as the US economy shifted away from manufacturing and towards "knowledge work" it became more important to have the skills equated with a college degree.
Of equal interest to me was a comment attached to the blog post that was written by someone who obviously graduated from college in the 70s with a degree from a liberal arts college. She blurted that old saw about how going to college isn’t about making more money it’s about being able to ask questions, expand your mind, etc. Then she said that she’d recently been an adjunct professor at a state college in the south and all the students cared about was passing the test, not "learning", and if that was indicative of today’s students then colleges are in trouble.
That cracked me up. Does she really believe that students in the 70s were that different? I guarantee you there were as many students just looking to pass the test in her day, but maybe she didn’t know them or hang out with them. Her observations about college in the 70s were just as anecdotal as those about today’s students. And does she really think that college is just about expanding your mind for the sake of expanding your mind? No, it’s learning how to think so that you can be more successful later in life (notice I didn’t say wealthier, although that’s often a consequence of being more successful) and essentially a more productive contributor to society. Believe me, if the average student didn’t expect a positive economic impact from earning their degree they wouldn’t go to college.
And let’s not forget about networking. As another commenter to the post said it isn’t what you know, it’s who you know. While that’s simplistic it is partly true. If two qualified people are in the running for a position or a deal then if one person has a personal connection to the decision maker then they have an inside track. There’s no doubt that you begin the "who do you know" game in college and it definitely provides a leg up in your professional life.
Unfortunately, it seems from the data provided by the post’s author that the old BA/BS is less valuable today than it was five years ago. Still, I’d certainly rather have a less valuable BA than none at all.
One More Reason Winston-Salem is a Great Place to Live
The whole silly "war on Christmas" thing that’s been going on so some guy (John Gibson) could sell his book and Fox News could jack up its ratings has had an unexpected, but pleasant effect on me. I’ve read more in the last two weeks about the history of celebrating Christmas in America than I’ve ever read before, even in my religious education classes at Capital Lutheran High School West in Arlington, VA. I was reading this Slate article when I came across this paragraph:
Observance of Christmas, or the lack thereof, was one way to differentiate among the Christian sects of Colonial and 19th-century
America. Anglicans, Moravians, Dutch Reformed, and Lutherans, to name
just a few, did; Quakers, Puritans, Separatists, Baptists, and some
Presbyterians did not. An 1855 New York Times
report on Christmas services in the city noted that Baptist and
Methodist churches were closed because they "do not accept the day as a
holy one," while Episcopal and Catholic churches were open and "decked
with evergreens." New England Congregationalist preacher Henry Ward
Beecher remembered decorative greenery as an exotic touch that one
could see only in Episcopal churches, "a Romish institution kept up by
the Romish church." (Emphasis on Moravians mine).
You’ll notice that the Moravians were one of the Christian sects that celebrated Christmas all along. Winston-Salem is located in what was originally a 100,000 acre Moravian settlement called Wachovia, and is currently home to historic Old Salem. Anyone who’s lived here for at least one Christmas can attest to the fact that the Moravians have been practicing the art of celebrating Christmas for a long time.
For evidence you only need to attend a Moravian Christmas Candlelight Lovefeast to get a sense for what I’m talking about. I could try to describe it, but it is beyond my capabilities as a writer. Just take my word for it and if you’re ever near a Moravian church on Christmas Eve make sure you attend. What I can say is that you get the feeling that this is what Christmas is all about.
Chalk that up as one more reason that living in Winston-Salem is great.
Christian Nudist Resort
Down in Florida (where else) there’s a guy spending millions of dollars to build a camp for Christian nudists. As described in a London Times article the 200-acre resort, named Natura, will feature 50 houses built around a non-denominational church (services will be clothing-optional), a hotel, a campsite and a children’s water park.
The founder of Natura is a 67-year-old Quaker named Bill Martin who made his money building retirement homes in Washington. He’s managed to tick off the religious fundamentalists and other nudists which has to be some sort of record. He also owns and runs the Naturist Christians website, which supposedly has 19,000 registered users and averages 35,000 hits a day. Quite frankly this just boggles my mind.
Personally I have no qualms about a bunch of adults cavorting around in their birthday suits, but I can’t see having kids involved. To be clear here, there seems to be a lot of family oriented naturalist sites out there, so these guys are breaking any new nudist grounds on that front. Apparently the big deal isn’t running around naked with kids, the big deal is going to church naked with or without kids.
As for sitting in church naked I would hope that they have bottles of Lysol at the end of each pew, for obvious reasons. And doesn’t this whole scenario sound like one of those bad dreams like wearing your pajamas to school, but way worse? And I don’t know about you, but I find listening to the average sermon hard enough without other, uh, distractions.
And here I thought people playing guitars and bongos in church was a radical concept.
Will My Parents and Their Ilk Bankrupt the Country?
In a stunning outbreak of nuance the National Journal has an article that explores the ramifications of the impending "retirement" of the baby-boom generation. I’m not sure if I found the article interesting because of the subject matter or because it does a good job at looking at the issue from multiple angles, or to put it more succinctly, because the article is nuanced. Either way it’s fascinating and a good read.
Oh, and to be totally accurate I don’t think my parents technically qualify as boomers since they were born during WWII and not after. I just missed the boomer designation since I was born in 1966 and apparently the boom ended in 1964. Still, I’d rather blame them than myself for any impending doom as that’s truly the American way. Anyone know a good psychiatrist that can reaffirm that none of us are responsible for our own failures/inadequacies since it’s all our parents’ fault? Of course any success we have is due only to our own actions…but I digress.
Rebels and Pirates Succeed
The New York Times has a story about the head football coach at Texas
Tech University who is winning games with uncoventional strategy. You
can read the article, "Coach Leach Goes Deep, Very Deep" here (registration may be required).
What I found most interesting about the guy is his seemingly insatiable curiosity about things other than football, pirates among them, and how he incorporates lessons he’s learned from those things into his avocation. He’s my kind of guy even though he seems to have a penchant for running up the score on his opponents, which is something I definitely don’t adhere to. Actually it might be his achilles heel; nothing inspires an opponent more than embarassing him so the coach better get used to people coming after his teams with added zeal.
No less a leading light than Tom Peters has been grokking this article which is written by Michael Lewis who is also the author of "Liar’s Poker."
Cross posted at Competitive Intelligence Marketplace.
Bible Key Chain
To the left is a picture of a USB drive keychain designed to look like a Bible. You push a button on the back and the USB port pops out. There’s a copy of the King James bible saved on the drive with a search function. You can buy one here.
This is a great idea for publishers of any stripe. What a unique way to promote a book and to get a digital, searchable version out there in the public domain.
And guess where I found this beauty. At bookofjoe of course.
BTW, we could have used this at one of our Lewisville Zoning Board of Adjustment meetings where we couldn’t find a bible for swearing people in, so we ended up using the town attorney’s Palm Pilot Bible memory card instead.
If You’re a Tree-Hugger I’m Not Sure if You’ll Be Happy or Not
Here’s an interesting story about a community college that cut its electric bill by 90%, not to mention greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, when it started heating the school by burning wood chips. Some other local government agencies are converting to "biomass energy plants" as well.
Tim Maker, executive director of the nonprofit Biomass Energy
Resource Center in Montpelier, Vt., said about 30 schools in his state
are heated with woodchips. He said biomass heating plants are popular
in Montana, Nevada, Utah, North Dakota and Idaho, where forests provide
a renewable supply of wood."Biomass is a commonsense approach to
getting fuel," Maker said. "When you look out the window, chances are
you’ll see trees. So you start asking if your fuel is going to come
from Iraq or that hillside out your window?"
Kind of puts the tree-huggers in a quandary doesn’t it?
Interactive Civil War Map
The National Geographic Society has an "interactive map of over 5,200 U.S. Civil War battlefields and historic
sites. Get detailed descriptions of 384 major battlefields, and view
the 25 sites most in danger of being lost."
See it here.
Befuddled 