There Are No Jeans in the Pyramid Club

Having a great time teaching the CSM class for SMMI at the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia. The room is awesome, the venue is great (52nd Floor of the Mellon Bank Building), and the dining is very classy.

Too classy in fact to allow our lovely students to wear jeans in the dining room. However the lovely folks at the Pyramid have been kind enough to set up a special room for us to dine privately. Gotta give them credit for keepin' it classy while they keep it real !

Thanks Guys!

REBarCamp Virginia Beach

I'll be sharing information and learning from my peers later this week at ReBarCamp Virginia Beach.

ReBarCamps are a phenomena that have swept the real estate industry this year after the initial event in San Francisco held in July 2008. They are "Un-Conferences" where the agenda is created the morning of the event by the participants. This year saw these volunteer driven events spring up in New York, Portland, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Fredricksburg, Denver, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Orange County, and Boston, with events still to come in Lynchburg, Columbus, and Miami.

If you haven't been to one, you ought to try to get there - Its free, its fun and its a great place to learn.

Philadelphia Foreclosures and the Pareto Principal

The Pareto Principle is a statistical concept most commonly known as the 80/20 Rule, and is commonly applied in a variety of situations. for example "20% of the salesmen make 80% of the sales" or put another way "20% of your efforts generate 0% of your results"

Iin other words 80 percent of the effects come from 20 of the causes according to this principal.

Apparently, the 80/20 Rule applies to foreclosures, too -- at least according to data compiled by foreclosure-tracking firm RealtyTrac.

Based on data from May, 11 states accounted for 80% of the country's foreclosure activity. The remaining 20% was spread across the 39 others.

That's 80/20 almost to the tee.

The disparity goes deeper that that, though. The top three states in RealtyTrac's list -- California, Florida, Nevada -- were home to half of May's foreclosure-related actions.

Clearly, foreclosures are concentrated in certain geographies, generally where the spike in the real estate market was the greatest. Put another way, the places with the greatest increases, saw the greatest decreases in price, and were subject to the greatest abuses in mortgage lending. As a result these states are seeing the largest amount of foreclosures

But, even in Pennsylvania,where we are not suffering from as difficult a market as other places in the country, foreclosures still impact us. This is because mortgage lenders are often national companies, lending in all 50 states.

When home loans go bad -- in any state -- lenders respond by increasing downpayment requirements and by adding new borrowing hurdles. If you've applied for a mortgage in the last 18 months, you've experienced this phenomenon personally.

On the other side, if you're a home buyer in a foreclosure-heavy state, you're finding terrific value versus several years ago. It's one reason why Existing Home Sales in the West Region are up by 19 percent from last year, for example.

Chicago - A Great Place to Visit

Image via Wikipedia

You all know that I am Philadelphia native all my life, and I love our city, but I have a secret to admit. I love Chicago too - maybe because it reminds me so mch of home.

People in Chicago have the Cubs & The Sox instead of the Phillies, but they love and hate them the same way we do. Their Bears break easily as many hearts as our Eagles, and their fans react just as we do.

Their pizza may be a little chunky, and their Beef sandwiches aren't the same as a cheesesteak, but they're certainly good eating, and there's no shortage of good places to eat in this town.

But the people here are my favorite. They are kind, warm and funny and as good a group to hang out with as you'll find in South Philly or the Northeast. And they don't even laugh when I call their downtown Center City.