#real estate photography jobs san francisco | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

achuzhoyphoto · 2 years

Text

Website : https://www.achuzhoyphoto.com/

Address : San Francisco, California

Alex began his professional photography career as a wedding and commercial photographer, later expanding into fine-art photography. Alex worked with several men’s fashion retail stores in San Diego and was published in local magazines. His commercial photography career spanned over a decade, after which he transitioned to selling residential and commercial Real Estate. Both careers helped Alex to hone his service-oriented skills while developing an eye for detail. An understanding of residential and commercial Real Estate marketing, and of key selling points, combined with a uniquely fine art photographic touch influence Alex’s approach to capturing powerful images for today's Real Estate market.

Services:

Photography

3D Matterport

Property Websites

Floor Plans

Twilight

Virtual Staging

Print Services

Business mail : [email protected]

Keywords: architectural photographer san francisco architectural photography san francisco real estate photography san francisco san francisco real estate photographer san francisco architectural photographer san francisco architectural photography architectural drone photography san francisco open homes photography san francisco real estate photographer san francisco real estate photographers in san francisco california architectural digest russell mcmaster photographer san francisco ca architectural photographers san francisco ca architectural photography workshop san francisco architecture photographer san francisco architecture photography concrete shadows san francisco compass real estate photographer san francisco drone photography for real estate san francisco open homes photography san francisco address photographing san francisco architecture real estate photographers exterior buildings san francisco real estate photographers in san francisco real estate photography jobs san francisco san francisco architectural photographers san francisco architecture photographers san francisco architecture photography san francisco city hall architecture photography san francisco professional architectural photographer san francisco real estate drone photographer san francisco real estate photographers san francisco real estate photography top real estate photographers san francisco top real estate photography in san francisco top real estate photography san francisco zephyr real estate san francisco photographer

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100015891375010

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/chuzhoyalex/

Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-chuzhoy/

1 note · View note

douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

Text

JOE KRAUS

I was a whiz at it. Will technology increase the gap between rich and poor evaporate.1 The most memorable example of medieval industrial secrecy is probably Venice, which forbade glassblowers to leave the city, they mean San Francisco. I'd never once done that thing in my life.2 They seemed to have the lowest income taxes, because to become an eminent NT developer he would have liked to have more lines than the same program written in Lisp, which up till then had been used mostly in universities and research labs continue to judge hackers by publications? Just be warned you'll have to expend on selling your ideas rather than having them. Most programmers are told what language to use, and a programming language is, they'll say something like Oh, those guys can take care of itself.3

Betting on people over ideas saved me countless times as an investor. That is in fact all jobs are some percentage school. The structure of large organizations sets an upper bound.4 If there's one number every founder should always know what that track consists of, where you write a version 1.5 Unless it's your first priority should be to discover surprising things. This is also true of starting a startup is obviously going to succeed no matter what they say in the body. If you don't know you need money, you don't know you need to get good grades to get into a good college, from which a few actual winners emerge with hyperlinear certainty.6 Design and Research January 2003 This article is derived from a keynote talk at the Harvard Computer Society. Anyone can see they're not the target market.

You'd have to be. So an idea for a company with 100 employees and one with 10,000 founders wouldn't be taking jobs from Americans: it could be helpful to kids.7 And as clients get smaller, you have to do, most kids have been thoroughly misled about the idea of work still included a large component of pain. The author is a self-indulgent. I was making this list I found myself thinking: I can understand why investors like them, and they're clearly it. It definitely has a flavor of its own. Many of these people never come face to face meetings. A company will be their big break. Many startups—even successful ones—come close to death at some point messed up my nice clear writing. Then you're saying that it's unjust that people want the wrong things?8 Research which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter how much you paid for them.

If DNA ruled, we should expect founders to do it. Some people would make good founders, but by doing labs and problem sets. Or consider watches.9 It's not a deal till the money's in the bank. It's just a more extreme version of designing a robust and elegant product.10 Would that do? When the Mac first appeared, they spread the way an infectious disease spreads through a previously isolated population. The surprise for me. 7% coming out of organs not designed for that purpose.

Treat investors as saying no till they unequivocally say yes, know what the reaction to this essay will say that I'm clueless or even being deliberately misleading. So I propose that ancient philosophers were similarly naive. Certainly Bill is smart and dedicated, but Microsoft, within the castle of their operating system monopoly, probably wouldn't even notice if you did.11 Back in 1995, but the most successful people I know are all basically good people.12 Notes This form of lie is not without its uses. You should therefore never approach such investors first.13 You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old.14 For example, a lot of them. Unfortunately, not just co-workers.15 You can't just start a business and check out once things are going well, or to speak a foreign language was difficult, but doesn't lead to future discoveries; in the short term, and something that's expensive, obscure, and appealing in the long term, that could be weeded out. Probably because the product is what wins in the short term.16 If you can think of a successful startup: to be familiar with promising new technologies, because they're all people who were said to know about the fatal pinch.

Notes

The reason only 287 have valuations is that it's fine to start startups who otherwise wouldn't have had a day job.

Learning for Text Categorization. 4%, and thus no form nor anyone to call the market.

By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a time before photography had a vacant space in their early twenties. And since there are no false negatives. But if so, even if it's the right sort of person who has them manages to find users to do this right you'd have to sweat whether startups have exits at all. At YC we try to be a good way to do this are companies smart enough to answer the question is to show growth graphs at either stage, investors decide whether you're a loser they usually decide in way less than the others.

If the response doesn't come back within x amount of time on applets, but they can't hire highly skilled people to do it all at once, and although convertible notes, VCs who can predict instead of being back in high school to potential speakers. Miyazaki, Ichisada Conrad Schirokauer trans. Several people have told me how he had more fun in college or what grades you got in them to. In practice it's more like your brother?

It will require more than most people haven't noticed yet. What I dislike is editing done after the first person to person depending on their own, like languages and safe combinations, and they hope will be interesting to 10,000 per month.

It doesn't happen often. This is a dotted line on a weekend and sit alone and think. The proportions of OSes are: Windows 66.

If you want to help SCO sue them.

Currently the lowest rate seems to have fun in college. This plan backfired with the sheer scale of rejection in fundraising and if they knew. Nat.

In sufficiently disordered times, even if our competitors hate most?

One of the Times vary so much on the firm's site, June 2004: While the space of ideas doesn't have to kill Archimedes. Even the desire to do this with prices too, e. Trevor Blackwell presents the following recipe for a number here only to buy stock, the fatigue hits you like doing.

Ashgate, 1998. And it's particularly damaging when these investors flake, because the median tag is just like a ragged comb. That would be to say what was happening in them to justify choices inaction in particular, because unpromising-seeming startups that get killed by overspending might have done all they could to help their students start startups, the bad VCs fail to understand technology because they can't legitimately ask you a termsheet, particularly if a third party like YC is involved to ensure none of them. If you actually started acting like adults.

Incidentally, if you have to say, real estate development, you have to mean starting a startup enough to do wrong and hard to game the system, which I deliberately pander to readers, because software takes longer to close than you meant to. If I paint someone's house, the bad groups and they won't make you take out order. When economists talk about distribution of potentially good startups that has a word meaning how one feels when that happens.

If they were actually getting physically taller.

Why Startups Condense in America consider acting white.

A few VCs have an edge over Silicon Valley.

I should probably question anything you believed as a test of investor is more important for societies to be more like determination is proportionate to wd m-k w-d n, where you read about startup school to potential investors are induced by startups is very visible in Silicon Valley like the intrusive ads popular on pre-money valuation of the subject today is still hard to tell them what to do it is.

Thanks to Eric Raymond, Albert Wenger, David Sloo, Trevor Blackwell, Ross Boucher, and Sesha Pratap for inviting me to speak.

1 note · View note

jobsearchtips02 · 4 years

Text

What Buildings Will Look Like After Covid…

Someday, years from now, a resident will wake up in their luxury condominium at developer Gregg Covin’s The Cedars Lodge & Spa in Hendersonville, N.C. They’ll make breakfast on the island in their big kitchen and sit on their heated balcony. They’ll walk out of their private entrance and use an elevator that serves only three other units. They’ll work out in a series of small exercise rooms and gather with friends at a restaurant in a glass atrium.

Hopefully, Covid-19 will be a distant memory. But every aspect of these homes will have been shaped by the pandemic.

Developer Gregg Covin had to rethink his design for The Cedars Lodge & Spa in Hendersonville, N.C., to meet new demands in a pandemic-rattled world, starting with bigger kitchens and more access to outdoor space.

Photo: Cedars Lodge & Spa (Rendering)

Mr. Covin tore up his original plan for a part-hotel, part-condo project with small kitchens, few balconies and large amenity spaces, and began redrawing the concept in March. “For sure, there are going to be long-term changes in behavior because of this,” said Mr. Covin, who still aims to break ground this year.

One of the trickiest parts of a luxury real-estate developer’s job is divining what buyers and renters will value—and pay top dollar for—in the three, four or even five years it takes to go from design to completion. Covid-19 has made that more complex, as developers try to tease out which parts of the pandemic experience will fade away and which will remain as part of the culture.

Some costs can be passed on to the renters or buyers who want the changes enough to pay more for them. Mr. Covin, for example, was originally planning units in the $300,000 to $500,000 range, but now thinks buyers will pay $350,000 to $750,000 for larger units that can be used as second homes.

Illustration: CHIARA VERCESI

Rental developers also are betting the postcrisis market will reward them for adding or installing specialized furniture that can make a small space seem larger so residents can work from home more comfortably. Other changes aimed at improving air quality or enabling distancing from other residents—such as re-engineering ventilation systems, adding elevator banks, or reconfiguring common areas—may help lower resistance to high-rise living, a lifestyle that has taken a beating in this crisis.

There is evidence already that the amenities and elements valued by the rental market have changed since the pandemic hit. Luke, a conversation-friendly real-estate chatbot that texts listings to apartment hunters in New York City, analyzed 30,000 messages from potential renters between December and February and compared them with those between March and May.

In San Francisco, the 30 Van Ness building, set to be completed in late 2023, will feature roomy, decorated staircases and partitioned common areas.

Photo: SCB/Steelblue (RENDERING)

The New York-based company found that requests for home offices rose from 0.5% of messages prepandemic to 3% once the pandemic hit. Private outdoor space requests jumped by 20%, while requests for in-unit laundry (a rarity in New York City) went up 17%. Interest in gyms plummeted. Requests fell by 10% for in-building gyms and by 50% for gyms nearby.

Ventilation systems are a major target for change, with developers looking to confine air circulation to units rather than through entire buildings.

Illustration: Chiara Vercesi; SOURCE: Meyers+ Engineers

Share Your Thoughts

Would you be interested in a property that has been “future-proofed” against infectious disease? Why or why not?

In San Francisco, 30 Van Ness, a 47-story multiuse building with 333 condos located a block from

Twitter’s

headquarters, is slated for completion in late 2023, said Arden Hearing, executive general manager, West Coast, for Lendlease. Even with that distant time horizon, the pandemic prompted numerous design changes.

“Because of Covid, we’ve thought a lot more about stairs,” he said. To encourage residents to use them, and decrease elevator density, the project will now have stairs that are wider and carpeted, with art and natural light, he said.

Until March 15, the amenity plan also featured an open 12,000-square-foot space for co-working by day and lounging by night. New blueprints, Mr. Hearing said, divide that space to include a music studio, a fitness area, art space, a cooking-and-dining area and a screening lounge.

Developer MaryAnne Gilmartin has decided to add upgraded air filters, create a separate entry for deliveries and install touchless features such as using phones to call elevators and open doors at 241 West 28th Street, a 480-unit Manhattan rental building set to begin construction later this year.

Photo: COOKFOX Architects (Rendering)

Some sections will have glass partitions, to give a sense of togetherness while creating physical separation. Many will exit to an outdoor area. The building also will include horizontal ventilation, with each residential unit having its own system, as opposed to the traditional vertical system that filters air throughout a tower, he said.

The HVAC upgrades alone will add several million dollars to the project, Mr. Hearing said. The investment is expected to differentiate the project from older buildings and help with marketability, he added.

In New York, MaryAnne Gilmartin, founder and chief executive of MAG Partners, plans to begin construction later this year on 241 West 28th Street, a 480-unit rental building in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

Developer John Farina’s Ocean Delray will have 19 units, each with a private, air-conditioned garage and four with private elevators.

Photo: U.S. Construction (Rendering)

Mr. Farina intends to incorporate similar elements for his planned 14-unit project, Echelon, in the design phase in Delray Beach. The new project will have double the number of elevators initially planned, to cut down on shared space.

Photo: U.S. Construction (Rendering)

She said much of the original plan should play well in the postcrisis era, citing its two towers connected by a garden, allowing for shorter and less-crowded elevator rides than with a single tower, and more outdoor space. Still, the crisis has inspired her to upgrade air filters, create a separate entry for deliveries, and add touchless elements that let residents use their phones to call elevators and open doors.

At Echelon, a 14-unit project in the design phase in Delray Beach, Fla., developer John Farina had planned four elevators. In early April, he changed to eight elevators, so that no resident would have to share an elevator with more than two other units.

Developer Scott Brennan has reconceived a planned development, opting to build two homes in Boca Raton, Fla., on a lot he had set for double that number. He’ll use similar elements to those in this home he completed on an adjacent lot.

Photo: Living Proof Photography

Mr. Brennan says the retractable doors, seen closed, ‘suits the Covid discussion perfectly.’

Photo: Living Proof Photography

Mr. Farina, president and chief executive of U.S. Construction, said he made the change in light of how successful another Delray Beach project, called Ocean Delray, has been. The 19 units, priced from $5 million to $9 million and slated for completion in early 2021, are half sold, he said. Each unit will have a private air-conditioned garage, and four will have private elevators.

The pandemic has made some developers re-evaluate the economics underpinning their projects. Mr. Covin said that after a long career developing luxury projects in downtown Miami, he is switching to North Carolina because he believes there will be heavy demand for second homes at the midpoint of the East Coast—and less interest in dense city living.

Scott Brennan sees a strong market for luxury single-family homes in Florida. He developed an 8,000-square-foot house on the market for $14.5 million in Boca Raton. He had an additional piece of land on which he planned four townhouses with a common pool and green space.

Now, because the pandemic has reduced interest in shared amenities, he plans to build just two homes, with private yards and space for home gyms and offices.

“The original house suits the Covid discussion perfectly,” said Mr. Brennan, who happened to have opted for expanses of retractable glass doors that give the home plenty of flexible indoor-outdoor space. The new homes will be similarly designed, he said.

Construction was under way at 1900 Broadway in Oakland, Calif., when developer Colin Behring planned alterations: more units with furniture from Ori, of Boston, that lets residents push a button to switch from sleeping space to working space.

Photo: Behring Co. and Ori, Inc. (Rendering)

Colin Behring, chief executive of Behring Co., based in San Ramon, Calif., already has 1900 Broadway in Oakland under construction, but he has planned alterations.

He said working from home will be increasingly important, but it isn’t financially viable to make the apartments larger. Instead, more units—25% rather than 5%—will have furniture by a Boston-based startup called Ori. Designs include beds that drop from the ceiling to the floor at the push of a button, or that retract into a home-office module. The 39-story building is set to be completed in late 2022.

A rental complex in Quincy, Mass., in the permit stage, had to be altered to allow for more access to the outdoors.

Photo: LBC Boston and PCA (Rendering)

The solution was to add balconies that will give some tenants a way to get fresh air and sunshine.

Photo: LBC Boston and PCA (Rendering)

Among the most common design changes made by developers is adding outdoor space or increasing access to those spaces. In a rental project in Quincy, Mass., now in the permit phase, developer LBC Boston is adding balconies to about a quarter of the units, said Margarita Kvacheva, senior vice president. “We are strategically placing the balconies on the south side, because those get the daylight and that’s where people can go out and get vitamin D,” she said.

At Natiivo Miami, a 51-story multiuse building in the Florida city slated to break ground this year and to be completed by late 2022, developer Keith Menin is planning retractable glass walls. Though expensive, he said they would be valuable in linking common areas—such as a gym and a walkway to the pool—to outdoor spaces.

Natiivo Miami, a planned 51-story multiuse building, will have retractable glass walls, which developer Keith Menin sees linking common areas to outdoor spaces.

Photo: Natiivo Miami (Rendering)

“This could be the new norm,” Mr. Menin said.

Touchless systems, already a luxury amenity, are becoming necessities, developers said. Ric Campo, chairman and chief executive of Camden Property Trust, began rolling out Chirp, a virtual leasing platform, in the company’s 164 rental buildings last year.

The system lets prospective renters set up an appointment, be guided by a map from a parking space to the unit, gain entry via a code, tour the unit alone, and sign the lease online. Residents can use fobs or their phones instead of keys, Mr. Campo said.

Home is Where the Stethoscope Is

Photo: iStock

Several Florida developers are linking projects to the medical industry, giving buyers technology, service and access to special care.

Buy a House, Get a Year of Telemedicine

Miami-based developer CC Homes, which builds about 500 single-family homes a year, will provide buyers at its Canarias in Downtown Doral development with a year subscription to Baptist Health Care on Demand, said chief executive Jim Carr, who is also chairman of the board at Baptist Health South Florida. Buyers of the $500,000 to $2 million houses will receive a home-exam kit with stethoscope, tongue depressor, otoscope for ear exams and a thermometer that feeds information to telemedicine providers at Baptist. The year’s subscription costs about $1,000 per family, Mr. Carr said.

Someone Hot Just Entered the Building

2000 Ocean, a 64-unit condo building in Hallandale Beach, Fla., will have infrared cameras in the lobby to detect when someone walks in with an elevated temperature, said developer Shahab Karmely, of KAR Properties. Buyers of units, opening in May 2021 at $2.7 million to $12 million, will also receive an iPad and home medical kit. The developer said he won’t dictate how the fever information will be used, nor will he link the iPad to a telemedicine service. “We are supplying the technology,” he said. “How it will be used is up to the homeowners themselves.”

Neighbors in Scrubs

Developer Daniel Kodsi is negotiating with a medical center to occupy the 100,000-square-foot medical building abutting his 55-story Legacy Hotel & Residences in Miami World Center. The project, due in 2023, was originally meant to capitalize on the booming medical-tourism industry. Now that coronavirus is upon us, Mr. Kodsi believes it will be viewed as a benefit to buyers of the $300,000 to $2 million condos. “Imagine a shelter-in-place situation, and having doctors, nurses and a pharmacy right downstairs,” Mr. Kodsi said. “Health is the new wealth,” reads the website for the project.

Write to Katy McLaughlin at [email protected]

from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/what-buildings-will-look-like-after-covid/

0 notes

nightmare-afton-cosplay · 4 years

Text

Where the Market Has Stalled: 10 Cities With the Steepest Drops in Homes for Sale

AlenaMozhjer/Getty Images

Springtime in the United States looks a whole lot different this year. No kids playing on playgrounds or filing into classrooms. No groups of friends sitting at sidewalk cafes to enjoy the warmer weather. Beaches and public parks? Roped off.

But few areas are more altered than the process of home buying and selling. In some places, real estate agents can’t even visit a client’s house until stay-at-home orders are lifted.

Since it became apparent that COVID-19 was spreading across the United States, many of the usual spring sellers have opted to hold off listing their properties—whether real estate has been deemed an essential business in their state or not.

“There’s a noticeable change in inventory and market behavior in general,” says Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers & Consulting.

Although news of the deadly pandemic spreading across Asia had been coming in for weeks, for many Americans the threat didn’t become real until many states closed schools and businesses and instituted stay-at-home rules in early to mid-March. Today, the inventory of homes for sale is down all across the United States, from Portland, ME, to Portland, OR.

But some places have been more deeply affected than others. The metros with the highest COVID-19 infection rates per capita, pervasive fears from a health perspective, and the most stringent shelter-in-place mandates have seen greater numbers of sellers pulling their homes from the market. Considering that the U.S. housing market already had a shortage of homes for sale, this means buyers—many of whom are still motivated to get a new home even amid the pandemic—will have even fewer choices.

In the short to medium term, real estate professionals expect to see more listings enter the market as the spread of the novel coronavirus slows and restrictions on public life are lifted. But the economic and housing recovery will continue to vary from place to place.

“I see a tale of two markets,” says Javier Vivas, director of economic research for realtor.com®. “Those that will have a healthy economic recovery, and markets that will struggle to see buyers come back fast enough because they’ve been impacted by job losses.”

To figure out which parts of the country are currently seeing the sharpest declines, the realtor.com data team pulled listing stats from the 100 largest metros in the United States for the month of April to see where new listings are down the most compared with the year before. To get a better sense of the regions affected, we limited the rankings to just two per state (otherwise, five of the top 10 metros would have been in Pennsylvania). The remaining metros were clustered in the mid-Atlantic area, the Midwest, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ready to take a look? Let’s look at some of the trends across the U.S.

Metros With the Biggest Drop in New Listings

Tony Frenzel

Pennsylvania: Challenges in the Rust Belt

On March 18, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf issued a stay-at-home order commanding all businesses that were not “life-sustaining” to close—including real estate.

“It’s very restrictive,” says Joe Golant, a real estate agent with Weichert Realtors. He says he can no longer meet clients in person, visit homes, or even send a photographer out to market a new listing.

“Some homeowners have made their own arrangements for video and photography,” he adds. “We can’t facilitate that right now.”

Things had been really looking up for Allentown and the greater Lehigh Valley before it became one of the state’s biggest hot spots for COVID-19. Now it’s No. 1 on our list of areas in the U.S. with the steepest year-over-year declines in listings.

Set at the juncture of interstate highways that lead straight to New York City and Philadelphia, the region has been transformed into a logistical transport hub, which has led to a booming economy and a slew of new jobs at companies like Amazon and ADP financial services.

Allentown’s affordable real estate has been booming, a solid seller’s market for the past three years. In March, the median sale price of $235,000 was $66,000 above the median asking price.

But when the state shut down, real estate activity ground to a screeching halt. The metro saw the biggest year-over-year decrease in new listings in the nation, down a whopping 80.5%.

But the few homes that are on the market are going quickly—days on market decreased 20% in March—and the median sales price increased 10.6% for the homes that did sell.

“Things are still happening,” Galant says. “Someone in our office had a listing under contract in two days.”

Nearby Scranton (No. 3) is in a similar position, with easy interstate access as well as a growing population, job market, and real estate market. It has also been deeply affected by the coronavirus lockdown. New listings have dropped 78%, the third-steepest hit in the nation.

The other Pennsylvania metros that would have made it into the ranking if it weren’t capped at two per state were Pittsburgh (minus 74.8%), Harrisburg (minus 74.2%), and Philadelphia (minus 68.8%).

Midwestern metros

Milwaukee, WI

benkrut/Getty Images

With similar amenities to nearby Chicago and housing that is just a fraction of the price, Milwaukee has been a millennial magnet in recent years. While the city’s economy hasn’t been its strong suit since the Great Recession, it has been growing nicely over the past two years. And it had recently been experiencing a strong seller’s market with a shortage of inventory. But with a COVID-19-related decline in economic activity, recent job losses, and stay-at-home order, few homeowners are putting their places on the market—even though real estate has been deemed an essential business in Wisconsin. Brew City has seen the second-steepest drop in new listings in the pandemic, down 80% year over year.

“We’re still working, and things are selling fast,” says Colleen Prostek, a real estate agent with Homestead Realty. “But we’re in a conservative area where many are, like, ‘let’s wait and see what happens.’”

The state of Michigan, like Pennsylvania, is still on total lockdown, with real estate deemed nonessential. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed the Stay Home, Stay Safe executive order on March 23 in response to the dramatic coronavirus spread in Detroit, one of the hardest-hit cities in the nation.

The strict orders and understandable fears of locals—who have already been experiencing long-standing economic difficulties—have led to a decrease in new listings by 75.3% from last year, the fourth-biggest decline in the U.S.

The binding statewide order has also affected metros that haven’t been as affected by the virus. That includes Grand Rapids (No. 6), which has seen a 69.4% drop in new homes on the market.

Agents are not allowed to take photos, hang “For Sale” signs in yards, or place lockboxes on doors. So they have had to use technology, virtual tours, and open houses to bridge the gap on the few listings that have been going live.

And there are still people out there who want to buy a home.

“Three months ago, home values were increasing and there was nothing to buy,” says Steve Volker, a broker with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Michigan Real Estate. “So some buyers who couldn’t buy before feel like they might as well get out there before the big buyer pool comes back.”

The tri-state area: Pandemic central

Buffalo, NY

benedek/Getty Images

New York City has become the tragic epicenter of America’s COVID-19 pandemic—but the former industrial hub update, Buffalo, has also been deeply affected by the virus. On Wednesday, the home of New York state’s second-largest population is “heading in the wrong direction” in terms of managing the pandemic, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said.

The revitalizing border town already had low inventory—and lots of bidding wars—before the coronavirus spread across the globe. But since New York’s stay-at-home order went into effect on March 22, Buffalo has dropped to fifth place for the largest decline in new listings in the United States, down 69.5% from 2019.

While Buffalo has seen the highest drop in the tri-state area, New York City (No. 7), which has suffered nearly 20,000 deaths from the virus, has experienced a 67.9% drop in new listings. However, given how long and hard the city has already been attacked by the novel coronavirus, experts hope the city and its housing market will begin its recovery shortly.

“We’re at the apex,” says Miller Samuel’s Miller. “There’s some sense we’re moving to the other side. There’s an expectation that as markets wake up from their slumber, you will see inventory ramp up significantly.”

Right behind the Big Apple with the eighth- and ninth-highest drops in new listings are nearby Conecticut metros Bridgeport (minus 67.1%) and, a bit farther out, New Haven (minus 56.3%), both of which are economically aligned with New York City. Between the high infection rates for the region and shelter-in-place mandates, many people do not want potential buyers going in and out of houses in their neighborhoods.

“An agent put up open house signs in mid-March, and someone posted on Nextdoor, ‘How dare these realtors show open houses in this period?” says Matt Murray, real estate salesperson with the Higgins Group.

Given the antipathy toward foot traffic, listings are down and sales have slowed substantially. However, there has been a surge in interest for furnished short-term rentals throughout the more affluent Bridgeport metro burgs. Because of the rush of new people, one community had to strongly suggest that anyone coming in from New York City quarantine for 14 days. The trend has led agents to expect a potential inundation of New Yorkers seeking more room to spread out.

“I’m anticipating that we get an influx of people wanting to buy here,” says Murray. “If we get a second [COVID-19] wave, people will think, ‘Get me out of New York City. I want a house now.’”

Northern California: An early epicenter

San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a local emergency due to the coronavirus on Feb. 23, following a similar declaration in Santa Clara County, about 40 miles to the south. Although there were no cases in San Francisco at the time and only a handful in Santa Clara County, the greater Bay Area is a major gateway for travel between the United States and China, so the area started to see an uptick in cases weeks before most of the rest of the country.

San Francisco and five other Bay Area counties were the first in the nation to establish a shelter-in-place order, on March 16. This decisive action is credited with flattening the region’s curve—the graph of new cases. On March 19, Gov. Gavin Newsom locked down the rest of California.

Those orders were taken seriously by residents of San Francisco, the second-most densely populated city in the nation. Along with everything else, property showings and contracts came to a dead stop. Many listings were pulled off the market. San Francisco, once one of the hottest housing markets in the country, took the 10th spot on the list of metros where new listings have dropped the most, down 56.1% over last year.

As agents, sellers, and buyers have been getting accustomed to this new normal—with orders slightly relaxed this weekend and extended until the end of May—folks have been starting to pop their heads out of their hiding holes.

“Activity has been ticking up in recent weeks as agents, buyers, and sellers have been slowly figuring out how and how much business can continue in a safe manner,” says Patrick Carlisle, Compass chief market analyst for the Bay Area. “But it is still far below what it would usually be during what is typically the biggest selling season of the year.”

Metros that have seen the biggest drop in new listings

Allentown, PA, minus 80.5%

Milwaukee, WI, minus 80%

Scranton, PA, minus 78%

Detroit, MI, minus 75.3%

Buffalo, NY, minus 69.5%

Grand Rapids, MI, minus 69.4%

New York City, NY, minus 67.9%

Bridgeport, CT, minus 67.1%

New Haven, CT, minus 56.3%

San Francisco, CA, minus 56.1%

The post Where the Market Has Stalled: 10 Cities With the Steepest Drops in Homes for Sale appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

from https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/metros-with-biggest-drop-new-listings/

0 notes

jodybouchard9 · 6 years

Text

Strange Spectacles: How to Make Your Odd Collections Look Amazing in Your Home

harmpeti/iStock

Whether you collect fine art, first-edition books, random knickknacks, or something far stranger (hotel soaps or antique handcuffs, anyone?), your collectables display could likely stand for improvement—that is, if you’ve bothered to put any thought into showing off your precious pile of stuff at all. Because let’s face it, if you’re going to obsess over these objects, you may as well embrace it and let that nerd flag fly, baby!

To help you organize that jumble into something you’re proud of, here are some collection display ideas that will look amazing in your home—on shelves, hung on walls, tucked in shadow boxes, or beyond.

What’s constitutes a collection vs. heap o’ junk?

Photo by FLO Design Studio

First things first: Is the collection you own worth showing—or is that ephemera really just a pile of unrelated trinkets?

“A collection is a group of similar objects that mean something to you,” explains Julie Muniz, a curator and art consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area. But you still need to sift through your items.

“If everything has value, then nothing does,” points out Julie Coraccio, an organizing expert at Reawaken Your Brilliance. Edit what you have and then keep only memorable things that bring you happiness, she adds. “If your ‘collection’ is sitting in the garage, then it’s most likely junk to you,” she says.

Consider the location

Photo by Angela LaVista

If space and storage are an issue, Liz Toombs, an interior decorator with PDR Interiors, suggests putting them in a place that won’t hog valuable real estate—like a wall.

“I helped a client hang a collection of platters from Italy on a wall between her kitchen and dining room,” she notes. In addition, a floating shelf was installed to hold bourbon bottles, which kept them off the credenza or other surfaces “and didn’t clutter valuable space,” Toombs says.

Also see if your collection is usable in some manner; if so, try to put it to work. For instance, Toombs’ display of a collection of plates “worked as both artwork and for serving guests,” she says.

Count the group

Photo by Barbara Genda Bespoke Furniture & Interiors

Display your collection with purpose, says Muniz. “Don’t sprinkle single pieces around—group them for greater impact,” she says. Depending on your space, you can put small groupings throughout the house or show off the collection as a whole.

As for numbers, odds beat evens. “Even numbers of objects look too symmetrical, whereas groups of three and five create a conversation,” she says.

If, however, you own just a special pair, consider asymmetry. “Put one object on a small stand and the other on a shelf next to it so that your attention is drawn to each thing while keeping them as a pair,” explains Charles Snider, a gem and fossil appraiser at American Geode.

Go for glass

Photo by Susan M. Davis

Floating glass shelves are ideal for highlighting every facet of your collection. Or you might hit up a flea market or tag sale for an old cabinet with clear shelves and a mirrored backing.

“Curio cabinets with glass shelves are smart because they allow you to look at the bottom side of whatever precious item you’re showing,” Snider says.

Hang with care

Photo by Teresa Superville Photography

Measure carefully if you’re hanging an art collection, says Muniz. “I always hang my collections at 60 inches on center, which means the center of the artwork or frame is 60 inches from the floor so it rests at eye level,” she explains.

How you hang your art also depends on ceiling height and how tall your family is. “If your family is on the shorter side, it’s fine to hang artwork lower,” she adds.

Fill a bookcase

Photo by Design Manifest

If you have built-in bookcases, the job of arranging a collection is made easier, says Carole Marcotte, a designer with Form & Function in Raleigh, NC. “A set of bookcases with cubbies can hold pottery, glassware, or other collectibles,” she adds. Breakable collections are particularly well-suited to bookcases since you can store the more fragile pieces in the upper sections; lean framed artwork or something less precious in the lower bays.

Light it right

Photo by Lompier Interior Group

Watch out for lighting around artwork on walls. “Lamps can fall on pictures and special lamp lights above pieces can swing into them,” warns Snider.

And when it comes to fabrics, don’t hang them near direct sunlight. “Textiles can’t be bathed in light or they’ll bleach,” notes Jacquie Denny, co-founder of Everything but the House, an online estate sale marketplace.

Think outside the (shadow) box

Photo by It’s The Little Things

Does your collection comprise many shapes and sizes? A shadow box or one with little cubbies is a good pick in this case, says Coraccio.

Another wise way to upcycle? Turn these odds and ends into a whole new thing. For instance, “I’m also a fan of making a T-shirt quilt out of all those old tops that have been saved from junior high, high school, and college,” she adds.

The post Strange Spectacles: How to Make Your Odd Collections Look Amazing in Your Home appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

0 notes

reginasrose-blog · 5 years

Text

Adidas is making a recyclable shoe

Additionally, we strictly prohibit inauthentic or stolen goods from being offered in our store and take action when sellers do not comply.". Where he served as a member of the firm's management committee and head of the global investment banking business, which included worldwide mergers and acquisitions, real estate, corporate finance, capital markets and principal investment activities. Given the inadequate funding of schools (1.9% average increase in state supplemental aid over the past nine years) and adding to that changing demographics, increased childhood poverty, higher scrutiny, more mandates, and more students entering our walls with mental health and childhood trauma, we need your help. A recent National Review column argued that organic food was, in fact, "an expensive luxury item, something bought by those who have the resources.". All you need to do is to compare and pick the right product for you and your family. And be real: Your friends do not want to "just drop by a few times" to feed and collect the droppings you'd rather not deal with. But something odd about the menu draws you to a totally different place: the pork and hamchoy (a preserved mustard green), the suey mein (a noodle soup featuring a crazy egg roll stuffed with pork and shrimp $10 per quart). Have blazed a new path in the internet content domain, LeEco founder and chief executive Jia Yueting said during a press event at The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. The message to Fidel: Shut up, it's over. But some states are really struggling. Bandana folding to feel cool: These bandanas are often your regular, cotton bandanas in regulation sizes, but are available in a multitude of patterns and colors. According to Godin (2011), email marketing has the ability to reach up to 98% of the target market. The removal of whey in the straining process means the yogurt is thicker and creamier. Buy their shoes. Sure, he's a coach, but he manages that clubhouse better than any manager in baseball. He developed and delivered a pilot workshop programme which included the University Transition Review. Add the onion and cook until soft, 4 5 minutes. Ugh. The LV bags we produced made with the materials imported from abroad, the color will change with time elapsed by and by, same as the authentic louis vuitton handbags. The direction of light plays a huge role in photography. On one side, you have a golf course. Find all the latest news and videos here for including flights, parking, arrivals, departures, weather and hotels parking, flights, arrivals, departures, hotels, jobs and more // 12 tips if you're flying from // Best time to book a flight // Where to eat at //Condor flight forced to turn back after pilot spills coffee in cockpitHot liquid caused damage to audio control panel, producing an electrical burning smell and smoke, accident report revealedBrits travelling to Spain issued with alarming warning by Foreign OfficeTourists will routinely head abroad to the sun kissed European holiday hotspot, with Brummies favouring resorts like Benidorm, Alicante and the Canary IslandsIn The NewsThis beautiful part of Italy is offering to pay you 625 a month to move thereRegion's chief offers range of handouts to newcomers in bid to boost population but there are some terms and conditionsBirminghamBe the 'eyes and ears' in fight against female genital mutilation, Birmingham chiefs toldPolice chiefs say intelligence of female genital mutilation incidents is very poor in the city and beyond and need support from councillors in battle against the crimeBritish Airways flight chaos ends as passengers issued with huge updateAlmost half the airline's fleet of more than 300 aircraft, and more than 700 pilots, started day out of position after two day walkoutEducationDaughter pulled out of school by salon owner mum amid fierce row with teachers over purple hairEva Herbert, 14, fell foul of her school in Leicester after dyeing her hair before the start of term and was subsequently told she had to dye it back to a natural shade'Five star luxury and ancient ruins' Why Bulgaria is so much more than 1 beer and stag dosStephanie Balloo explored what up and coming Bulgaria has to offer on a week long trip with Balkan Holidays police call themselves 'approachable and friendly' 24 hours after dad claimed he was stopped for being blackCarl Burke said he had 'no doubt' he was singled out because of the colour of his skinFurious dad claims he was stopped by police at because Cheap Fake Yeezys of his skin fake yeezys for kids colourA Birmingham father has made an official complaint after being stopped and quizzed by police at the airport because he 'did not say good morning'. Royal Zunker, age 4, wanted to give back to officers after seeing so much sadness in the news after the fatal shooting of Milwaukee Police Officer Matthew Rittner on Feb. Livia Gadea completed her studies in Cuba in 1987, but she had to repeat some of the process to be able to set up a private practice in Miami in 2009. The German arm, Adidas, will continue its emphasis on goods for competitive sports while Reebok will be more of a youth and consumer lifestyle brand.. Was outside playing one day and cheap yeezy shoes somebody said, got Forrest Gump speed. Tina is also a certified Reiki practitioner, herbalist, and accomplished life coach. As for the last eat up, you productive creatures. Penney is delivering three styles of jeans this fall made from 20 percent polyester created from bottles under its Arizona brand, after seeing what it believes to be teen customers searching for "recycled jeans" on its site, the company said. Brzoznowski said other investments will include an increased sales and marketing team to build market share and increase brand visibility.. When he does a renovation, he will sell the kitchen/bath cabinets, the sinks, and even the toilets. With almost all major smartphone companies dropping new phones every month, it never an easy task to pick the right phone.

0 notes

home4sale44103 · 6 years

Text

Why San Francisco’s big business tax for homeless relief succeeded after Seattle’s crumbled

Salesforce’s headquarters in San Francisco. The company and its CEO Marc Benioff were instrumental in supporting the city’s successful Prop C to fund housing and homeless services. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)

Two tech hubs, two crises of homelessness, two taxes on big business, two very different outcomes.

San Francisco voters on Tuesday approved a new tax on the city’s top-grossing companies to double the city’s budget on housing and services for the homeless. In many ways, Proposition C mirrored Seattle’s short-lived “head tax,” a controversial piece of legislation that would have collected nearly $50 million annually from the city’s biggest companies on a per-employee basis.

But in other — ultimately fatal — ways the head tax differed from Prop C. San Francisco’s new tax was approved by voters, rather than the City Council, as was the case in Seattle. Prop C applies to companies with more money, too. Only businesses with more than $50 million in revenue will be on the hook for the tax. In Seattle, the tax applied to all companies with more than $20 million in gross receipts.

San Francisco’s new tax also benefited from a powerful champion. GeekWire asked Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman — who penned a blog post detailing why he reluctantly opposed Seattle’s head tax — why Prop C was more successful.

“One word … Benioff,” he said.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, along with his company, poured millions of dollars into the Prop C campaign. Benioff also took on fellow San Francisco tech CEOs who opposed the measure in public Twitter spats and interviews.

Thank you San Francisco. pic.twitter.com/GnPnWBFDWJ

— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) November 7, 2018

“Prop C also didn’t encourage tech companies to shift even more from employees to contractors for roles, as a real estate agent or a delivery driver, which was Redfin’s issue with the head tax,” Kelman added.

Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman at the 2018 GeekWire Summit. (Photo by Dan DeLong for GeekWire)

Prop C enacts a 0.16 to 0.65 percent tax on gross receipts, rather than employees. In Seattle, companies would have been taxed several hundred dollars per employee. That’s because Washington state prohibits entities from taxing income, leaving the City Council with limited options for creating new taxes.

Homelessness has confounded both San Francisco and Seattle, two cities that many billionaires call home, where massive wealth is created through booming technology industries. But as innovation made the rich richer and drew thousands of newcomers attracted to high-paying jobs, it also caused housing prices to skyrocket, burdening tech workers’ low-income neighbors.

Marc Benioff, Salesforce co-founder and co-CEO, gives the keynote address at Dreamforce 2017. (Salesforce Photo by Jakub Mosur Photography)

“The only way to significantly reduce the immediate crisis of 7,500 individuals & 1,200 families languishing in the streets is to scale up now,” Benioff said on Twitter before the measure passed. “Prop. C doubles what San Francisco already spends to assist homeless people & keep them housed.”

The San Francisco Controller estimates the tax would raise $250-$300 million per year for housing and homeless services. Benioff, whose company would be on the hook for about $10 million a year, says the funds are urgently needed to address the crisis.

Other leaders in the San Francisco tech industry expressed concerns about the tax in the days leading up to the election. Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey said the tax was the wrong approach, instead endorsing San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s plan to tackle the city’s homelessness crisis. Stripe general counsel Jon Zieger criticized the proposition because it would “double spending for homeless services without a comprehensive plan,” in an op-ed run by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Benioff called out his peers who opposed Prop C, claiming Dorsey “just doesn’t want to give, that’s all,” in an interview with The Guardian. “He hasn’t given anything of consequence in the city,” Benioff added.

Benioff’s remarks contrast with the positions of leaders in the Seattle tech industry who publicly opposed the head tax. Amazon took its opposition further, threatening to slow or stop its growth in Seattle if the tax passed.

Rachael Ludwick, a software engineer and affordable housing activist supports the head tax at a City Council meeting. (GeekWire Photo / Monica Nickelsburg)

Rachael Ludwick is a Glowforge engineer who campaigned in support of Seattle’s head tax. She also believes Benioff’s support made the difference in San Francisco.

“From my perspective, the main difference appears to be at least part of the business and tech community showed up, even while acknowledging the proposition is imperfect,” she said.

The Seattle City Council was originally pushing a tax of $500 per employee, per year, but Mayor Jenny Durkan brokered a compromise with the tech industry that reduced the number to $275. The Council unanimously approved the smaller head tax but, faced with a campaign to put a referendum on the November ballot, repealed it less than a month later.

“We repealed it as soon as it looked to be even slightly unpopular,” Ludwick said. “The businesses that Durkan worked with appear to have immediately threw in behind the repeal effort. As far as I know, no tech businesses put real money or influence on supporting our [tax].”

But Kelman stressed that Seattle has also made strides toward correcting its housing crisis that San Francisco has not.

For several years, Seattle has been implementing recommendations from HALA, the Housing Affordability and Livability Committee of renters, homeowners, and developers convened in 2014. Those included expanding the city’s housing levy and the Mandatory Housing Affordability program, which requires developers to include affordable units in their projects or pay into an affordable housing fund.

“There’s this narrative of despair where we haven’t done anything and can’t do anything and I really take exception to that,” he said. “I think that HALA was actually a major step forward. The reason that Seattle home prices have started to soften is because there’s been so much construction in the city. Rents are not rising because there’s a glut of homes for sale and for rent and I never thought I would say that but it’s almost directly because the city worked with builders to solve a problem.”

The cost of housing in Seattle is dropping dramatically. Home prices have declined $80,000 from their record high in the spring and rents have flatlined. But that doesn’t mean that the Seattleites most in need are seeing relief. It’s still one of the nation’s most expensive places to live, and affordable housing construction has not kept pace with the number of people who need it.

Still, Kelman is optimistic that programs like HALA will allow Seattle to learn from San Francisco’s struggles and correct its housing market without the need for a big business tax on the ballot.

“There’s rhetoric and reality,” he said, “and the reality, in Seattle, has actually gotten better because we passed a good law.”

from DIYS https://ift.tt/2qAVzzv

#DIYS

0 notes

ilyashrayber · 6 years

Text

North Beach

There has to be something in the air. There has to be something that is telling you that this cannot be real, that this is a dream, that deep down it could not be true. I am not describing sex, or landing a career, or even watching Star Wars for the first time. I am instead trying to convey to you the emotion I have everytime I get to walk through North Beach, a neighborhood situated in the northeastern corner of the city. I think I stumbled upon it by accident, probably lost sometime in middle school, sweating bullets that I was never going to find the 38, and subsequently, never make it home. Even in that instance, I still had a vague grasp on just how freaking cool this place was.

It was only last year that I set off on a (very) poorly planned Europe trip for almost a month. With my best friend in tow, we left America, not knowing just how many shenanigans we would get into while abroad. Europe was amazing, as we went from the narrow alleyways of Paris, sipping fine red wine, to flying by the Swedish countryside on scooters, to discussing socialism while haggling with Danish locals, all the way to (almost) getting locked overnight in a Czech cathedral. It was a paradise, in short. But, for some reason or other, we never made it to Italy. Which is strange, because in all facets of my life, especially those in which I devour art, it seemed like I was skewing more and more towards Italy in terms of interest. My favorite films recently seemed to all stem from minds such as Fellini, Petri, and Pasolini. My taste in music had seen the same shift- I traded in loop pedals and washed out guitar riffs for old school organs and synthesizers. In place of Radiohead, Mitski, and The Strokes, I was now enamored with artists such as Piero Umiliani, Stelvio Cipriani, and Armando Trovajoli, all 70’s lounge legends. They made me feel like my life was one big screening of La Dolce Vita. I knew that my dream car, even though I only have my permit as of writing, had to be made by Fiat or Alfa Romeo in the 70’s. And don’t even get me started on the tailoring of houses like Brioni and Loro Piana. So why didn’t we go to Italy? Well, I guess that’s because I’ve had North Beach my whole life.

I did not grow up in North Beach, and I certainly didn’t know anyone who did when I was younger. It was just a true coincidence that I found myself stumbling among it’s streets one day, blown away by where I was. Just like any neighborhood, it had its own air, it’s own smells, and most of all, it’s own vibe. (Cue the real estate developers.) For a while, North Beach was my little slice of Europe. It felt like a vacation every time I went there, since I lived about an hour away by bus. San Francisco is small for a city, which is why I’ve never thought about it that way. North Beach especially hammers that notion home. The thin alleyways, confusing dead ends, and surprising number of parks located there almost make you feel like you’re in a West Coast version of Call Me By Your Name, except instead of Armie Hammer in a speedo, you have a guy named Derek in a patagonia vest. (The swathes of tech workers have spread to every inch of town, and don’t let anyone tell you different.) Still, you can’t shake the feeling that you’re in a special, almost sacred place. It is not like any other, with the smell of focaccia lingering, mixing in with the scent of less than stellar cigarettes, usually from the same bakery. Is it touristy? Yes. Do I care? Not really. After a while, you just learn to tune them out. Instead, you take note of the old men yelling at each other in front of coffee shops, the beautiful array of pastries in every window, and maybe, if you’re lucky, the people at Z. Chiocolotto’s letting you get two free taffy samples instead of just one. These are all facets of this beautiful, vibrant neighborhood. And now, onto some memories.

It was my senior year of high school, and me and one my best friends were talking about prom, happening later that weekend. I had called the girl I was supposed to go with around 4 or 5 times, anxious that she was going to cancel. Why? Because I was in high school, and that’s how my brain works. Little did I know she was celebrating shabbat with her family and had turned her phone off that night. So, in the midst of my nerves and anxiety, a friend and I went over to get a slice, calm myself , and discuss how we were going to ‘make a move’ this weekend. We went over to Tony’s off Columbus, and got mouth blasted by the best damn pizza I’ve ever eaten. They do calzones there too, but don’t bother with those. Tony’s is probably the only place I’ve ever heard of that has a slicehouse with an actual school for making pizza above it. Internationally recognized and accredited, of course. But again, ignore the calzones. Anything but a slice with pepperoni, or just cheese if you're a veggieboi, seems like sacrilege. We took our slices up to the highest hill in North Beach and looked down on the rest of the city. It was beautiful, with the fog rolling in to make it a classic San Francisco night, along with the ocean breeze coming from a nearby Pacific Ocean. Of course, as picturesque as it sounds, we kept it casual, sitting on the curb of the street, eating pizza, trying not to get hit by some out of townie driving an Uber, happy to just be alive. We began discussing the future. Would we get laid at prom? Eh, probably not. Would we have fun either way? Well, hopefully. Would we still stay friends after high school? Of course we would. We had agreed to be friends for life, no matter how long we went without seeing each other. It was one of those moments where you reflected on your past, appreciated the present, and somehow, in some insane way, even saw a glimpse of your future. And of course, because of the romantic I am, this glimpse involved us back in North Beach, going back to Tony’s, this time with our wives and kids, discussing how much things have changed, but really stayed the same.

I hadn’t been on a date in a while. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Previously, I was seeing (this is a fairly generous word) a girl from down south, one that I met on a free 10-day tour of Israel. Zionist propaganda? Check. Sweltering heat that never, ever let up? Of course. Extreme amounts of sexual tension between young Jewish adults, propped up by the magic of the mediterranean countryside? Oh my god, yes. Anyways, it was on and off, with us being in different places, both geographically and emotionally. After a particularly bad weekend, we broke things off. I was alone. And yet, in the throes of my emotions, I somehow thought that the best way to get over her was to jump right back into the dating scene. In short, I was ready to get hurt again. If the theme to Curb Your Enthusiasm isn’t playing in your head right now, it should be. A couple weeks later, I decided to go out with another girl. Pressed for options and out of my mind in anxiety, I suggested the comforting embrace of North Beach. She said yes.

In truth, we had started over at Glen Park, but walked over to North Beach later in the night. If that seems like a long distance, it’s because it is. But I didn’t mind. My anxiety is quickly squashed whenever I have something physical to do. We walked and talked for a while, got caught in the rain, took pictures with old cars, and talked about how much we loved analog photography. I liked her. So it was really a move when I took her down to Filbert Steps to look at the city, illuminated in light and surrounded by water. The Filbert Steps are right down by Coit Tower, a cluster of old houses entrenched in flora that were once the life work of a gardener who lived there. It’s almost an otherworldly site, seeing these great buildings hidden in the flowers and trees of the hill they were built on. I wanted to explore and get lost, but then we just started talking, and I had completely forgotten about that. She said she needed to be home by 9, she had work the next day. By midnite, after glancing at my watch in the middle of a discussion about French workwear, I could tell that wasn’t going to happen. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Aaron Peskin, the Supervisor for District 8 (which includes North Beach) comes walking down the steps. Because I’m a north beach nerd, I recognized him immediately and asked ‘Hey, are you Aaron Peskin?’. He replied with this: ‘Nope! My name’s Bubba!’. It was probably the greatest thing that had ever happened to me. We had coincidentally sat right outside his house, and we begun to strike up conversation with the man. He was intelligent, knowledgeable, and seemed like a really great guy all around. He even offered me a job cat sitting while he was out of town later that summer. It felt like a dream. Later that night, I walked her back to her MUNI train. It was a good night. We both agreed that there definitely had to be a second date.

North Beach is a paradise, and I got the privilege to work over there this summer as an intern for a low-income housing complex. Many days were stressful, but the best part of it was the walk down Columbus on my way home, passing old cafes, Fiat repair shops, and old mom and pop bike stores. It made me feel good to be alive. In many ways, the whole neighborhood does. And that’s not something you can really describe, no matter how many words you put on paper.

0 notes

cathrynstreich · 6 years

Text

Red Oak Realty: Putting the Client First – A Winning Strategy for This East Bay Independent

(L to R) Vanessa Bergmark, Owner & CEO; Chris Crane, Director of Operations; Melissa Bush, SVP Sales; Passion Broussard, Sales Manager

For Vanessa Bergmark, growth was never about bigger, but rather, better. As the owner and CEO of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Red Oak Realty, Bergmark has led the company, which was founded in 1976, from 12th in marketshare to closing in on second without the typical brokerage formula of increasing offices and agent count. Instead, Bergmark turned her focus squarely on the consumer. “Having more agents isn’t what’s best for the consumer,” she explains. “Having agents that have resources that can protect and support the consumer is what matters.” Fresh off a rebranding that’s positioning the company for the future, Bergmark shares her strategy for helping homebuyers and sellers navigate the exceptionally lucrative yet challenging Bay Area real estate market in this exclusive interview.

Maria Patterson: Red Oak Realty has a rich history. Tell us a bit about it. Vanessa Bergmark: The four founders started the company in 1976 in a garage in Albany, Calif.—just like Apple! Like a lot of companies in the ’70s, we were formed by a group of dissatisfied agents who didn’t feel they were getting the resources they needed, so they went out on their own and started Red Oak. The company has had great retention ever since. Many of the people who were with the company back then are still here today or just recently retired.

MP: When did you come on board? VB: I joined the firm at the beginning of the downturn in 2007, when REOs were the norm and technology had moved very quickly into the real estate space. I had been running a large franchise and had just adopted my first child. The guys at Red Oak tracked me down and I went from running an office of 200 people to 20 people. Everyone said I was taking a step backwards, but to have the possibility to be home at 6:00 p.m. and not be on a plane all the time…I jumped at the opportunity.

After a year and a half, I took over both the Oakland and Berkeley offices as the general manager, and in 2010, purchased the company from the original four owners. At the time, a lot of people thought I was nuts. This was during the worst downturn in economic history, and, at that point, I had a two-year-old and a six-month-old.

MP: Interesting timing, given the start of the recession. How did you help the firm through it? VB: I learned about REOs and short sales, got our agents into coaching and training, and moved everyone toward technology. We got off desktops and onto laptops. We moved into paperless transactions and advertising digitally and upping the ante with photography. I changed the operations of the company from a more traditional approach to one that was a bit more tech-savvy and strategic.

MP: So, where does the firm stand today in terms of size and marketshare? VB: We have two offices and 116 agents and staff combined. We were 12th in marketshare when I bought the company, and now we’re hugging second place.

Red Oak Realty’s Executive Team

MP: How did you achieve such impressive growth without acquiring offices and agents? VB: We’re not a huge brokerage and our trajectory is not that of most traditional brokerages. We did it not by recruiting a massive amount of agents—we’re at just 100 agents. Rather than putting our efforts into recruiting a lot of agents, we focused on staffing. We hired a great marketing director, beefed up our transaction department and brought on superior legal support. We hired smart agents and focused on their needs. We upped all of our resources so that we could provide more support to agents in order to improve the client experience. We grew our marketing team with people who understood digital marketing and social media and all the things you can do today to advertise a property. For every property we list, there’s a process baked in to support our clients at a very high level.

MP: Why is this strategy of investing within, as opposed to spreading out, particularly important in your area? VB: In the Bay Area, you might have to write 6-10 offers to get one into contract; properties move within 14 days. Much of the work is done on the front end by staff and agents before a listing even goes public. It’s like a production for a movie—and the seller is the one who benefits. I believed that having multiple offices spread out in multiple territories with multiple agents and multiple managers would be diluting the experience—what we wanted to offer was a distilled experience. So we grew our local market knowledge instead. And it’s worked. We were at $250 million in sales when I bought the company and we’re just under $1 billion today.

MP: So, how does your strategy of focusing on the agents you have rather than recruiting more agents translate to better service for the consumer…and increased profitability for your firm? VB: Having more agents isn’t what’s best for the consumer. Having agents that have resources that can protect and support the consumer is what matters. Those resources don’t usually come in the form of another agent; they come in the form of a well-trained, sophisticated support staff on the back end—people who can do all the research and admin work so that the agent can focus on what they do best, which is knowing the market, getting the house prepared and successfully negotiating the transaction. Our model is to run the firm like a serious business. By doing so, our per-person production increased by 30-40 percent. The market changes like the tide; if you’re not full-time servicing several transactions a month, the consumer you’re working for won’t get the best service. Why bring in more agents who won’t do as many transactions per year? Why not support the ones you have instead?

Marketing knowledge is a key component to the brand’s continued success.

MP: How would you describe your market? What are the greatest challenges? VB: We’re in the technology hub of the country, so our clientele demands that you’re technologically up to speed. They want to know that you know what you’re talking about when it comes to marketing a house and financing. Our clients are incredibly educated—we’re dealing with everyone from CEOs of tech companies to savvy millennials, and the way they communicate and the speed in which we have to respond is critical. When you’re moving properties within 14 days, marketing, speed and accuracy are of the utmost importance.

MP: How are you best serving the needs of your clientele? VB: A lot of documents go into the contract here—our agents and staff have to know a lot about disclosures, condition and local ordinances. Rather than constantly outsourcing it, we looked at how the company can internally support the agent and the client by taking this part of the job over.

As opposed to being part of a franchise, we’re deeply ingrained in a specific community. Berkeley, Calif., is unlike anywhere else in the country. There’s a high income and it’s an expensive place to live. It’s also still counterculture and doesn’t respond to elite marketing. If you try to go glitzy to appeal to the 1 percent, it works against you. So the question we ask is, “What am I doing today that will help my buyer and seller?” What am I doing to train and prepare my agents to take care of that person? Will having a lot of inexperienced agents help that consumer? Probably not. We’re hyper-focused on what our sellers need and getting their property exposed and sold.

The company rebrand includes new colors and patterns developed by 1000 Watt Consulting.

MP: It sounds like you really take a consultative approach with every client… VB: One of the most important things we do is educate the consumer. It’s so easy to get frustrated in this market. Educating them on what they can afford and showing them the data so that they don’t end up bidding against themselves is critical. We also educate them on financing. We can’t make the low-inventory piece go away; what we can do is help them get started within this ecosystem and not put their home-buying plans on hold for the next six years. We let people know, “Here are the tools you have; don’t go to this neighborhood—we know you love it, but this is what you can spend, so let us introduce you to this alternative where your buying power might be stronger.” From the seller’s perspective, we advise them on many things, such as how much they should put into the house to get the right return.

MP: Tell us about the typical process of working with a seller. VB: When we first meet with someone, we really hone in on the hyperlocal statistics. Agents are well versed on market data and have access to yearly, quarterly and monthly statistics on every neighborhood that affects us. We take it down to the microscopic level and break it down by house type, by certain features that have high demand, and analyze the impact of that for sellers. That’s what we do on the front end prior to marketing. Then it’s about positioning the property for maximum return. You have to market in the portals and in the local community by word of mouth. Should there be video? A floor plan? How involved does the seller want to get in prep, interior design and landscaping? A lot of buyers don’t have time to do a renovation or put in a garden, so we often provide referrals for that. Then we focus on the best ways to market, set bid dates and create demand on those dates. All of this is done weeks, if not months, in advance by the agent. This is all very thoughtfully prepared in advance in a very methodical way.

MP: Your market is very competitive. How are you setting the company apart? VB: We just rebranded the company. We looked at how our colors and logo play in the digital world across social media and all the digital portals, as well as print. We needed to make sure we wouldn’t get lost in the volume—that we would stand out online, in a magazine or when you’re simply driving by. We needed to make sure people would pay attention. We wanted to get both higher marketshare and consumer mindshare.

MP: How do you stay innovative in terms of marketing? VB: I’m always very cautious about saying what the next big thing is, such as video, which can work against a property if it’s used incorrectly. It’s our job to make the property look as best as possible, then price it competitively to the right demographic. On Facebook, you can do a lot of targeted marketing.

We also hired a PR company out of LA, Lion & Orb. Anytime we get a listing, we snap photos and get the story to our PR team who then crafts a great narrative and pitches it out to publications such as Dwell, the Wall Street Journal, Curbed, etc. That’s a huge piece of our marketing with massive reach for the property and a huge benefit to our sellers.

MP: What’s on deck for the future of the firm? VB: The firm’s focus will be on using our rebranding to have a more powerful national and local reach. We’re looking at growing our marketing team and adding services that will benefit clients. Right now, we’re all about how we serve our clients, not just in one transaction, but during the course of the homeownership experience. It’s all about learning how to stay relevant to your customer and giving them what they need as a busy homeowner. We want to take care of them on an abundant level, not only as a buyer and seller, but as a homeowner, too.

For more information, please visit www.redoakrealty.com.

Maria Patterson is RISMedia’s executive editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at [email protected]. For the latest real estate news and trends, bookmark RISMedia.com.

The post Red Oak Realty: Putting the Client First – A Winning Strategy for This East Bay Independent appeared first on RISMedia.

Red Oak Realty: Putting the Client First – A Winning Strategy for This East Bay Independent published first on https://thegardenresidences.tumblr.com/

0 notes

gillespialfredoe01806ld · 6 years

Text

Flip It Good! Top 10 Home-Flipping Hotbeds Where Profits Are Through the Roof

Getty Images; realtor.com

Watching HGTV and the DIY Network, it just looks so easy to transform a home from an unpromising wreck into a seductive dreamboat—and to net big bucks along the way. Fun! Glamorous! Profitable! But here’s the off-screen reality: Flipping a home isn’t as easy as flipping channels. With tens of thousands of dollars at stake, it can be a decidedly risky business.

But the bug never goes away. Although flipping activity was a key factor in inflating the housing bubble, peaking in 2005, it recovered from the crash to hit an 11-year high this year—more than 207,000 homes flipped, according to real estate information firm ATTOM Data Solutions.

From established investors to budding entrepreneurs, everyone wants a piece of this action. But be warned: Real estate markets vary widely, and a successful flip requires a tricky mix of attributes. Flip in the wrong place, and that dream might turn into financial ruin.

So where can an independent entrepreneur maximize profits, you ask? The realtor.com® data team put on its tool belt and set out to find the top markets for flipping and turning a profit right now.

“The sweet spot for successful home flipping is finding the neighborhoods just emerging as the next hot neighborhoods in a city,” says Daren Blomquist, a senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions. That is, the neighborhoods should be desirable, but have older homes in need of renovation.

To identify the top markets for flippers, we ranked the 200 largest metros by the share of all home sales that are flips. We defined this as any type of home bought and resold within a three- to 12-month period. We included only flips that sold for more than the purchase price, and excluded deals that ended in foreclosure. We left out homes bought and sold by banks and government entities.

The key to successful home flipping is making sure renovation costs don’t eat up profits. So we included only markets where the average profit was at least $30,000—something that knocked would-be No. 1 Bakersfield, CA, off our ranking. The average flipping profit nationwide in 2017 was $68,100, according to ATTOM Data Solutions. But those profit figures paint a rosier picture than reality, since those stats don’t factor in final renovation costs.

Florida and California dominated our initial rankings. In total, these two states had five of the top 10 and 17 of the top 30 markets for flipping. To give readers a better view of where flipping has taken off around the country, we limited our ranking to two metros per state.

Now let’s go to the places where home flippers make it rain.

Best markets for flippers

Tony Frenzel

1. Nashville, TN

Median home list price: $367,900 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 4.1% Average flip profit: $87,200

Nashville, TN

zodebala/iStock

The music, charm, and good-paying jobs of Nashville are attracting folks from all across the country. That’s pushed home prices here a lot higher than in nearby Southern and Midwestern cities. You’d think that Nashville’s prolonged revival would mean that the best days for flipping are in the past—but they aren’t.

“A lot of people are trying to flip their first home in Nashville—because they know how much can be made if you do it right,” says Troy Dean Shafer, a Nashville-based contractor who hosts the DIY Network show “Nashville Flipped.” “People keep moving here, and keep people flipping houses.”

But not every home buyer and seller in Music City is making a killing. In fact, some of these new flippers are getting in over their heads, pouring too much renovation work into their renovations or buying in the wrong neighborhoods, Shafer says.

In recent years, savvy home entrepreneurs have started to move away from the downtown area and buy in neighborhoods such as Madison, which has bungalows and Craftsman-style homes for under $200,000.

“Personally, I’m looking at the outskirts of Nashville, 15 to 20 minutes out, where demand is just as high,” Shafer says. “I’d rather risk $150,000 to make $30,000, than risk $300,000 to make $60,000.”

2. Fresno, CA

Median home list price: $311,700 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 3.5% Average flip profit: $53,200

Welcome to Fresno, CA

gnagel/iStock

Unless you’re a wealthy real estate investor, you’re likely to get boxed out of the ultraexpensive housing markets. So the last place you’d expect to find great flipping would be in California, where the median list price is $535,000, compared with $289,900 nationally. Yet Fresno had the nation’s second-highest rate of flippers.

Prices in Fresno may hardly be bargain-basement, but they’re a steal compared with ginormously expensive Golden State markets such as San Jose, which has a $1.2 million median list price for homes.

And, in fact, home values here are growing substantially faster than the state’s pricier cities—an increase of 11.8% in 12 months. During that same time frame, home prices rose 7.1% in San Francisco, 5.4% in Los Angeles, and 5.1% in San Diego.

3. Palm Bay, FL

Median home list price: $267,600 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 3.3% Average flip profit: $71,500

Indian River near Palm Bay, FL

Brad McGinley Photography/Getty Images

After the housing bust, home prices in Palm Bay, an area on the Atlantic about three hours north of Miami, took a nosedive. Tourism is the main driver here, and for a time, those beachcombers disappeared. But that created a great climate for home flippers, who saw an opportunity to buy low and turn a profit as the market revved up again.

Once the recession ended and home prices started to recover, margins for home flipping became extremely attractive in Palm Bay and across the Sunshine State. But widespread success in the flipping game is a double-edged sword, and years of fast home appreciation here have made high profits tougher to come by.

“Right now, prices are going pretty high,” says Shianti Andino, owner of Flipping Divas of Florida, a custom renovation firm in Palm Bay. “There are so many people who are trying to get into the flipping business. It’s become very competitive.”

4. North Port, FL

Median home list price: $350,000 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 3.3% Average flip profit: $85,300

Houses around small lake in North Port, FL

Panoramic Images/Getty Images

Like Palm Bay, North Port got pummeled in the economic downturn. But retirees, not tourists, have been the savior of this Gulf Coast housing market an hour and half south of Tampa Bay.

That comes with its own set of challenges for flippers. In some places you can buy a home, paint it, spruce up the kitchen and bathroom, and slam dunk it back onto the market, easy-peasy. Not in the North Port metro area, which includes Sarasota. Baby boomers have notoriously particular tastes. The amenities they want include open decks, patios, an open floor plan, and private yards, according to the 2017 Del Webb Baby Boomer Survey, which is sponsored by homebuilder PulteGroup Inc.

That means homes are a little pricier here, but so are the profits.

5. Baton Rouge, LA

Median home list price: $237,800 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 3.2% Average flip profit: $70,000

Downtown Baton Rouge, LA

Sean Pavone/iStock

As more folks jump on the flipping bandwagon, profits go down. But in flip-happy Baton Rouge, the returns have stayed high. In fact, during the third quarter of last year, Baton Rouge had the second-highest return on flips in the country, at 122%, according to ATTOM Data Solutions.

Lower home prices have helped keep the flipping action hot ‘n’ steamy. In New Orleans, just over an hour’s drive east, buyers will find a median list price of $280,100, or 18% higher than in Baton Rouge.

But returns vary by neighborhood. In the 70814 ZIP code, or Monticello, home prices jumped 43% in the 12-month period ending in March, to $157,000. This area is full of one-story, three-bedroom homes. Some listings in this neighborhood tout their eligibility for no-money-down mortgage loans from the United States Department of Agriculture. They include this three-bedroom, Acadian-style home for $165,000.

6. Chattanooga, TN

Median home list price: $257,500 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 3.1% Average flip profit: $65,800

Looking to be a home flipper? Choo-choo-choose Chattanooga, TN

Sean Pavone/iStock

While home flipping in some parts of the country is dominated by deep-pocketed investment firms, in Chattanooga the little guy is doing quite well.

“We have individuals doing one or two flips a year to supplement their income,” says Nathan Brown, team leader and CEO of Keller Williams Greater Downtown Realty, in Chattanooga, which did 4,000 transactions in this market last year. Many of these flippers have the skills, like carpentry, to do a lot of renovations themselves, he says.

“The more work they can do on their own, the more equity they can build into the flip, and have control of [the timetable of] the project.”

In search of profits, flippers have moved on from places such as North Chattanooga and into neighborhoods like Red Bank, where a cottage or Craftsman-style home can be purchased for between $140,000 and $170,000, and flipped for more than $200,000.

“New construction isn’t where it needs to be,” Brown says. “That’s creating opportunities for buyers to do flips.”

7. Los Angeles, CA

Median home list price: $758,800 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 3% Average flip profit: $169,400

Homes of Los Angeles, CA

diegograndi/iStock

Wait, what? Could the City of Angels really be heaven for ambitious flippers? Believe it, although it’s not a market for the squeamish. Southern California might be home to Hollywood, but the flippers here aren’t putting on an act—they’re seriously cutthroat. The Los Angeles market is dominated by real estate investors who operate like well-oiled machines, knowing where to buy and what to renovate to milk the biggest profits.

“It’s harder now, profit margins aren’t as large as they were,” says Mel Wilson, a broker and owner of Mel Wilson & Associates. After the Great Recession, investors could scoop up homes for cheap. Now, they’re competing against multiple bids. So they’ve changed up their business models.

One new trick is to buy properties with bigger lots, renovating the original home and then building a second home on the lot, Wilson says. That yields more value.

But some things in the flipping business haven’t changed.

“What I see them doing is blowing out the kitchen and remodeling the bathroom—what buyers care the most about,” Wilson says. “They fix the exterior of the home: Trim the bushes, then paint the house. Sometimes it can be like putting lipstick on a pig.”

Oh, and let’s not forget that the hit HGTV show “Flip or Flop” started in the L.A. market in 2013, disseminating the dream to a national audience.

8. Lubbock, TX

Median home list price: $240,000 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 2.7% Average flip profit: $46,000

You don’t know what you’ve been missing, oh boy, in Lubbock, TX.

Holger Leue/Getty Images

While the logic behind the iconic line “If you build it, they will come” was sound for Kevin Costner’s character in the 1989 film “Field of Dreams,” the world of real estate works a little differently. You can’t put just any home regardless of shape on the market: It needs to have the home features that sell, such as sleek granite countertops and modern bathrooms. In a place like Lubbock, with lots of older, outdated homes, home flippers can layer on that new appeal and then indeed “they will come.”

“There are a lot of homes that need minimal repairs and upgrades, which is ideal for flipping, something you want to do on a $20,000 to $30,000 budget,” says Glenn Hill, an architecture professor at Texas Tech in Lubbock.

In the Melonie Park neighborhood, buyers will find lots of three-bedroom homes built in the 1960s that need some work. It’s an area with the good schools and feeling of community that buyers are seeking.

9. Medford, OR

Median home list price: $410,000 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 2.7% Average flip profit: $51,200

City Hall in Medford, OR

City of Medford

Located just north of the California border, Medford is full of Oregon’s prime scenic beauty, and draws in retirees and outdoorsy folks. Unlike high-powered West Coast cities such as Seattle and San Francisco, the economy here is a little more tame, and that means flippers are geared toward a different group of buyers.

“Flippers want to make something nonfinanceable into something that is financeable. The idea here is to get the home eligible for the FHA or VA loans—that is where most of the buyers are circling,” says Alice Lema, a broker at John L. Scott Real Estate, in Medford. (Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Affairs loan programs are subsidized government-backed mortgages.)

Neighborhoods such as the West Medford area are where flipping is most prevalent. Here, flippers can find homes priced around $150,000, but in need of plenty of TLC.

10. New Orleans, LA

Median home list price: $280,100 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 2.6% Average flip profit: $93,400

Homes of the Broadmoor residential area in New Orleans, LA

Rauluminate/iStock

In 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, damaging or destroying more than 800,000 homes. That disaster forced mass foreclosures and a glut of homes in unlivable conditions—which also created opportunities for home flippers willing to roll the dice on the Big Easy revival. Slowly but surely the housing market has rebounded. Yet the market still has a surplus of vacant and run-down homes that keep the options for home flippers strong.

But buyers need to prepare for substantial overhauls if they buy homes that have experienced flooding—there’s a good likelihood that everything from electrical outlets to cabinets to Sheetrock will need work or even outright replacement.

Fortunately, there’s plenty of support to be found in the flipping game, including groups such as Buy, renovate, flip New Orleans houses for fun & profit on Meetup.com. They have barbecue networking events, where flippers coach one another on how to be successful in the New Orleans market. Creole barbecue?! What’s not to love?

The post Flip It Good! Top 10 Home-Flipping Hotbeds Where Profits Are Through the Roof appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

from DIYS https://ift.tt/2KO2xcy

#DIYS

0 notes

jefferylyons63108go · 6 years

Text

Flip It Good! Top 10 Home-Flipping Hotbeds Where Profits Are Through the Roof

Getty Images; realtor.com

So where can an independent entrepreneur maximize profits, you ask? The realtor.com® data team put on its tool belt and set out to find the top markets for flipping and turning a profit right now.

Now let’s go to the places where home flippers make it rain.

Best markets for flippers

Tony Frenzel

1. Nashville, TN

Median home list price: $367,900 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 4.1% Average flip profit: $87,200

Nashville, TN

zodebala/iStock

In recent years, savvy home entrepreneurs have started to move away from the downtown area and buy in neighborhoods such as Madison, which has bungalows and Craftsman-style homes for under $200,000.

2. Fresno, CA

Median home list price: $311,700 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 3.5% Average flip profit: $53,200

Welcome to Fresno, CA

gnagel/iStock

Prices in Fresno may hardly be bargain-basement, but they’re a steal compared with ginormously expensive Golden State markets such as San Jose, which has a $1.2 million median list price for homes.

3. Palm Bay, FL

Median home list price: $267,600 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 3.3% Average flip profit: $71,500

Indian River near Palm Bay, FL

Brad McGinley Photography/Getty Images

4. North Port, FL

Median home list price: $350,000 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 3.3% Average flip profit: $85,300

Houses around small lake in North Port, FL

Panoramic Images/Getty Images

Like Palm Bay, North Port got pummeled in the economic downturn. But retirees, not tourists, have been the savior of this Gulf Coast housing market an hour and half south of Tampa Bay.

That means homes are a little pricier here, but so are the profits.

5. Baton Rouge, LA

Median home list price: $237,800 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 3.2% Average flip profit: $70,000

Downtown Baton Rouge, LA

Sean Pavone/iStock

6. Chattanooga, TN

Median home list price: $257,500 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 3.1% Average flip profit: $65,800

Looking to be a home flipper? Choo-choo-choose Chattanooga, TN

Sean Pavone/iStock

While home flipping in some parts of the country is dominated by deep-pocketed investment firms, in Chattanooga the little guy is doing quite well.

“The more work they can do on their own, the more equity they can build into the flip, and have control of [the timetable of] the project.”

“New construction isn’t where it needs to be,” Brown says. “That’s creating opportunities for buyers to do flips.”

7. Los Angeles, CA

Median home list price: $758,800 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 3% Average flip profit: $169,400

Homes of Los Angeles, CA

diegograndi/iStock

One new trick is to buy properties with bigger lots, renovating the original home and then building a second home on the lot, Wilson says. That yields more value.

But some things in the flipping business haven’t changed.

Oh, and let’s not forget that the hit HGTV show “Flip or Flop” started in the L.A. market in 2013, disseminating the dream to a national audience.

8. Lubbock, TX

Median home list price: $240,000 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 2.7% Average flip profit: $46,000

You don’t know what you’ve been missing, oh boy, in Lubbock, TX.

Holger Leue/Getty Images

9. Medford, OR

Median home list price: $410,000 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 2.7% Average flip profit: $51,200

City Hall in Medford, OR

City of Medford

Neighborhoods such as the West Medford area are where flipping is most prevalent. Here, flippers can find homes priced around $150,000, but in need of plenty of TLC.

10. New Orleans, LA

Median home list price: $280,100 Ratio of flips to all home sales: 2.6% Average flip profit: $93,400

Homes of the Broadmoor residential area in New Orleans, LA

Rauluminate/iStock

The post Flip It Good! Top 10 Home-Flipping Hotbeds Where Profits Are Through the Roof appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

from DIYS https://ift.tt/2KO2xcy

#DIYS

0 notes

trendingnewsb · 6 years

Text

How Trump Conquered FacebookWithout Russian Ads

It’s not every day that a former work colleague gets retweeted by the president of the United States.

Last Friday, Rob Goldman, a vice president inside Facebook’s Ads team, rather ill-advisedly published a series of tweets that seemed to confirm the Trump administration’s allegations regarding the recent indictments of 13 Russian nationals by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. To wit, the tweets said that the online advertising campaign led by the shadowy Internet Research Agency was meant to divide the American people, not influence the 2016 election.

Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) is an Ideas contributor for WIRED. Before turning to writing, he dropped out of a doctoral program in physics to work on Goldman Sachs’ credit trading desk, then joined the Silicon Valley startup world, where he founded his own startup (acquired by Twitter in 2011) and finally joined Facebook’s early monetization team, where he headed the company's targeting efforts. His 2016 memoir, Chaos Monkeys, was a New York Times best seller and NPR Best Book of the Year, and his writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. He splits his time between a sailboat on the San Francisco Bay and a yurt in Washington’s San Juan Islands.

You’re probably skeptical of Rob’s claim, and I don’t blame you. The world looks very different to people outside the belly of Facebook’s monetization beast. But when you’re on the inside, like Rob is and like I was, and you have access to the revenue dashboards detailing every ring of the cash register, your worldview tends to follow what advertising data can and cannot tell you.

From this worldview, it's still not clear how much influence the IRA had with its Facebook ads (which, as others have pointed out, is just one small part of the huge propaganda campaign that Mueller is currently investigating). But no matter how you look at them, Russia’s Facebook ads were almost certainly less consequential than the Trump campaign’s mastery of two critical parts of the Facebook advertising infrastructure: The ads auction, and a benign-sounding but actually Orwellian product called Custom Audiences (and its diabolical little brother, Lookalike Audiences). Both of which sound incredibly dull, until you realize that the fate of our 242-year-old experiment in democracy once depended on them, and surely will again.

Like many things at Facebook, the ads auction is a version of something Google built first. As on Google, Facebook has a piece of ad real estate that it’s auctioning off, and potential advertisers submit a piece of ad creative, a targeting spec for their ideal user, and a bid for what they’re willing to pay to obtain a desired response (such as a click, a like, or a comment). Rather than simply reward that ad position to the highest bidder, though, Facebook uses a complex model that considers both the dollar value of each bid as well as how good a piece of clickbait (or view-bait, or comment-bait) the corresponding ad is. If Facebook’s model thinks your ad is 10 times more likely to engage a user than another company’s ad, then your effective bid at auction is considered 10 times higher than a company willing to pay the same dollar amount.

A canny marketer with really engaging (or outraging) content can goose their effective purchasing power at the ads auction, piggybacking on Facebook’s estimation of their clickbaitiness to win many more auctions (for the same or less money) than an unengaging competitor. That’s why, if you’ve noticed a News Feed ad that’s pulling out all the stops (via provocative stock photography or other gimcrackery) to get you to click on it, it’s partly because the advertiser is aiming to pump up their engagement levels and increase their exposure, all without paying any more money.

During the run-up to the election, the Trump and Clinton campaigns bid ruthlessly for the same online real estate in front of the same swing-state voters. But because Trump used provocative content to stoke social media buzz, and he was better able to drive likes, comments, and shares than Clinton, his bids received a boost from Facebook’s click model, effectively winning him more media for less money. In essence, Clinton was paying Manhattan prices for the square footage on your smartphone’s screen, while Trump was paying Detroit prices. Facebook users in swing states who felt Trump had taken over their news feeds may not have been hallucinating.

(Speaking of Manhattan vs. Detroit prices, there are some (very nonmetaphorical) differences in media costs across the country that also impacted Trump’s ability to reach voters. Broadly, advertising costs in rural, out-of-the-way areas are considerably less than in hotly contested, dense urban areas. As each campaign tried to mobilize its base, largely rural Trump voters were probably cheaper to reach than Clinton’s urban voters. Consider Germantown, Pa. (a Philly suburb Clinton won by a landslide) vs. Belmont County, Ohio (a rural county Trump comfortably won). Actual media costs are closely guarded secrets, but Facebook’s own advertiser tools can give us some ballpark estimates. For zip code 43950 (covering the county seat of St. Clairsville, Ohio), Facebook estimates an advertiser can show an ad to about 83 people per dollar. For zip code 19144 in the Philly suburbs, that number sinks to 50 people an ad for every dollar of ad spend. Averaged over lots of time and space, the impacts on media budgets can be sizable. Anyway …)

The Like button is our new ballot box, and democracy has been transformed into an algorithmic popularity contest.

The above auction analysis is even more true for News Feed, which is only based on engagement, with every user mired in a self-reinforcing loop of engagement, followed by optimized content, followed by more revealing engagement, then more content, ad infinitum. The candidate who can trigger that feedback loop ultimately wins. The Like button is our new ballot box, and democracy has been transformed into an algorithmic popularity contest.

But how to trigger the loop? For that, we need the machinery of targeting. (Full disclosure: I was the original product manager for Custom Audiences, and along with a team of other product managers and engineers, I launched the first versions of Facebook precision targeting in the summer of 2012, in those heady and desperate days of the IPO and sudden investor expectation.)

Despite folklore about “selling your data,” most Facebook advertisers couldn’t care less about your Likes, your drunk college photos, or your gossipy chats with a boyfriend. What advertisers want to do is find the person who left a product unpurchased in an online shopping cart, just used a loyalty card to buy diapers at Safeway, or registered as a Republican voter in Stark County, Ohio (a swing county in a swing state).

Custom Audiences lets them do that. It’s the tunnel beneath the data wall that allows the outside world into Facebook’s well-protected garden, and it’s like that by design.

Browsed for shoes and then saw them on Facebook? You’re in a Custom Audience.

Registered for an email newsletter or used your email as login somewhere? You’re in a Custom Audience.

Ordered something to a postal address known to merchants and marketers? You’re definitely in a Custom Audience.

Here’s how it works in practice:

A campaign manager takes a list of emails or other personal data for people they think will be susceptible to a certain type of messaging (e.g. people in Florida who donated money to Trump For America). They upload that spreadsheet to Facebook via the Ads Manager tool, and Facebook scours its user data, looks for users who match the uploaded spreadsheet, and turns the matches into an “Audience,” which is really just a set of Facebook users.

Facebook can also populate an audience by reading a user’s cookies—those digital fragments gathered through a user’s wanderings around the web. Half the bizarre conspiracy theories around Facebook targeting boil down to you leaving a data trail somewhere inside our consumer economy that was then uploaded via Custom Audiences. In the language of database people, there’s now a “join” between the Facebook user ID (that’s you) and this outside third-party who knows what you bought, browsed, or who you voted for (probably). That join is permanent, irrevocable, and will follow you to every screen where you’ve used Facebook.

The above is pretty rudimentary data plumbing. But only when you’ve built a Custom Audience can you build Lookalike Audiences— the most unknown, poorly understood, and yet powerful weapon in the Facebook ads arsenal.

With a mere mouse click from our hypothetical campaign manager, Facebook now searches the friends of everyone in the Custom Audience, trying to find everyone who (wait for it) “looks like” you. Using a witches’ brew of mutual engagement—probably including some mix of shared page Likes, interacting with similar News Feed or Ads content, a score used to measure your social proximity to friends—the Custom Audience is expanded to a bigger set of like-minded people. Lookalikes.

(Another way to picture it: Your social network resembles a nutrient-rich petri dish, just sitting out in the open. Custom Audiences helps mercenary marketers find that dish, and lets them plant the bacterium of a Facebook post inside it. From there, your own interaction with the meme, which is echoed in News Feed, spreads it to your immediate vicinity. Lookalike Audiences finishes the job by pushing it to the edges of your social petri dish, to everyone whose tastes and behaviors resemble yours. The net result is a network overrun by an infectious meme, dutifully placed there by an advertiser, and spread by the ads and News Feed machinery.)

We’ve all contributed to this political balkanization by self-sorting (or being sorted by Facebook) into online tribes that get morphed into filter bubbles, which are then studiously colonized by commercial memes planted and spread there by a combination of Custom and Lookalike Audiences. One of the ways the Trump campaign leveraged Lookalike Audiences was through its voter suppression campaigns among likely Clinton voters. They seeded the Audiences assembly line with content about Clinton that was engaging but dispiriting. This is one of the ways that Trump won the election, by the very tools that were originally built to help companies like Bed Bath & Beyond sell you towels.

Unsurprisingly, the Russians also apparently made use of Custom Audiences in their ads campaign. The unwary clicker on a Russian ad who then visited their propaganda site suddenly could find yet more planted content in their Feed, which could generate downstream engagement in Feed, and thus the great Facebook wheel turned. The scale of their spend was puny, however, a measly $100,000, which pales in comparison to the millions Trump spent on online advertising.

The above isn’t mere informed speculation, the Trump campaign admitted to its wide use of both Custom and Lookalike audiences. There seems to be little public coverage of whether the Clinton campaign used Facebook Ads extensively, but there’s no reason to think her campaign did not exploit the same tools.

“I always wonder why people in politics act like this stuff is so mystical,” Brad Parscale, the leader of the Trump data effort, told reporters in late 2016. “It’s the same shit we use in commercial, just has fancier names.”

He’s absolutely right. None of this is even novel: It’s merely best practice for any smart Facebook advertiser. Custom Audiences was launched almost six (!) years ago, marketed publicly at the time, and only now is becoming a mainstream talking point. The ads auction has been studied by marketers and academics for even longer. The only surprise is how surprising it can still seem to many.

If we’re going to reorient our society around Internet echo chambers, with Facebook and Twitter serving as our new Athenian agora, then we as citizens should understand how that forum gets paid for. Rarely will the owners of that now-privatized space deign to explain how they’re keeping the lights on. Plotting Russians make for a good story, and external enemies frequently serve an internal purpose, but the trail of blame often leads much closer to home. It’s right there, topped by a big, blue bar on our smartphone screens, and could very well be how you arrived at what you’re reading right now.

Update (February 27, 2018): In an unusual move, Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth, former VP of Facebook Ads, posted average CPMs for both the Clinton and Trump campaigns this afternoon. The figures are national averages over time, and while they fluctuate wildly, they mostly show the Trump campaign paying more on a CPM basis than Clinton. While interesting, and the transparency of Facebook is admirable, the data only refute the rather strong statement that Trump always and everywhere paid less. By and large, these data do not confirm or deny the hypotheses contained in this piece.

The data that Facebook needs to show us are average CPMs broken down by targeting type, action type (e.g., clicks or likes), and geography. The first two would help distinguish direct-response campaigns, which typically are precision targeted and high CPM, from more brand-style ad campaigns that are broadly targeted and low CPM. Combining the data from both styles of campaign—which broadly define the two types that advertisers undertake—can be very deceptive, and the two campaign types need to be judged separately.

Furthermore, a breakdown by geography would help determine whether another assertion made in this piece is correct: That Trump paid less to mobilize his base than Hillary. Obviously, combining data nationwide makes this very hard to figure out.

Reportedly, Facebook has asked the campaigns to be more forthcoming with data. As it's in both those campaigns' interests at this point, one can only hope they do so. As we used to say at Facebook: "Data wins arguments."

Facebook's Advertising Machine

Rob Goldman, VP of ads at Facebook, published a tweetstorm on Friday appearing to confirm the Trump administration’s allegations around the ongoing Muller investigation … and he did so without clearing his contributions with his employer.

No, Facebook isn't eavesdropping on you through your phone to better target you with ads. It doesn't have to.

To fix its toxic ad problem, Facebook will have to undergo a massive cultural shift.

Photograph by WIRED/Getty Images