American Recovery & Reinvestment Act in Texas

Comptroller Susan Combs has set up a website that will allow Texans to see where the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act dollars are being spent. Good idea.

Getting Started in Social Networking

Yesterday the ABoR Education & Professional Development committee met for our regular monthly meeting. Our lunch was sponsored by my favorite store ever - Costco! Thank you Michaela for sponsoring lunch!

We try to make sure that the meetings are productive, that the participants are the first to know about upcoming events (they got to see the 4th Quarter education offerings before anyone else), and that we provide a short 10-20 minute "Education Express" presentation. Topics for the presentation have included the city's new Energy Efficiency Ordinance, Short Sales, Foreclosures and several other interesting topics. This month we talked about Social Media.

The presenter: Yours Truly!

Sometimes this whole "technology thing" can be really overwhelming. So the Education Express talk presented a way to get started in just 5 easy steps. I've recorded the slide show and posted it to YouTube as well.



If you'd like to know more, please check out the education schedule on abor.com and sign up for the Technology Series in October. Hope to see you there!

Austin Market Stats

Good news in the Austin Real Estate Market, friends! Although our area has not been hit nearly as hard by the real estate "meltdown" that much of the country has experienced, volume has been impacted. The good news is, we're getting back on track!

The chart below shows where we are right now compared with the past three years. While we're certainly not at 2006 levels, we're still pretty strong. Hopefully as indicators continue to improve, our market will get just a little stronger - allowing for a moderate correction over the past 24 months, but without the huge decline that so many markets have experienced.



By the way - who do you know that could use my help, right now, to benefit from the current market? Please, don't keep me a secret!

Another fun internet find

Last night I was so excited about the Jello 1-2-3 and Pepsi Clear finds that I couldn't hardly stand it. Today another find - a great article on 3-D printers! What the heck is that you ask? Well - it's a crazy contraption that lets you "print" your own 3-D stuff...belt buckles, ipod docs, etc. And you can build your own 3-D printer for under $1,000! Like most new technology things, this is just the beginning, and these printers will likely get even more advanced and less expensive as time goes on.

Isn't it amazing where technology has taken us....even more amazing where we're headed - if you can even imagine that!

Do you remember these cool things?

So tonight I ran across this article as I was checking out the interwebs. I was first excited about the mention of pepsi clear - but THEN I ran across the mention of Jello 1-2-3! I remember having that so often in college and grad school it isn't even funny! Now Jello has a 1-2-3 recipe on their website so that we can get something close. Just a few months ago I was trying to share my love for Jello 1-2-3 with some friends and they all looked at my like I was crazy....and you know sometimes I am...but I swore this was for real and now I have proof!

Anyway, check out the story on cool things that came to an end before there time. Well, maybe not all of them...but it's really sad that some of these things are gone. Who knows, maybe we'll have some companies want to reintroduce some fun stuff from days gone by.

Feds Scold BoA, Wells Fargo on Loan Modifications

Interesting story came in today from REALTOR® magazine.

I've had so many conversations with people that needed assistance or have friends/family members that needed assistance and were being turned away - the question kept coming up - are they helping anyone???

Here's the scoop....

The Treasury Department on Tuesday announced that only 9 percent of eligible home owners had been helped by the federal program to modify home loans and prevent foreclosure.

It scolded banking giants Bank of America and Wells Fargo, both of which received federal bailout money, pointing out that these banks have been among the least willing to assist troubled borrowers.

Bank of American modified 4 percent of eligible loans, and Wells Fargo modified 6 percent.

Big banks that did better included JPMorgan Chase & Co., which modified 20 percent of eligible loans, and Citigroup Inc., which modified 15 percent.

The bank with the best results was Saxon Mortgage Services Inc., which helped about 25 percent of its eligible borrowers.

Source: The Associated Press, Alan Zibel (08/04/2009)

The first of the month???

It's really hard to believe it's August 2nd already! Time flies when you are having fun.

Some of you know that I've had some major changes in the past month...all of them good. I'm not 100% ready to make official announcements - but they're coming soon.

As I was spending some time on the internet tonight doing a little research for some projects, I decided I needed to know more about how flikr works. While it doesn't do what I was hoping it would, and there does not seem to be any reason for me to stray from Google's Picassa, I did find this very cool photo in a random album.

I've always been fascinated with old and abandoned buildings. There are so many beautiful buildings that are suffering from neglect - amazing examples of classic architecture across our country. This shot is from a spectacular building in downtown Detroit. If you're into that kind of thing, go to www.flikr.com, create a free account, then search for "abandoned detroit" and see what you find. Amazing!

We have had a friend in town since last Thursday. Good to spend time with fun people and just relax for a while. Have a few big weeks coming up, so the low-key weekend was perfect.

Hope you enjoy your week!