I wanted to take a few minutes to voice my opinion on the presidential race. Please bear with me while I share my view.

Obama was the only Illinois congressman to vote against a measure that would have made it Illegal for Doctors to allow live born children to die after a botched abortion. This is not an issue of choice. We are talking about a fully born child that is living and breathing and Senator Obama believes it is ok to allow those children to die due to lack of attention given by the Doctor?

While John McCain was sitting in a POW camp in Vietnam Obama tells us in his book "Dreams from my father" that he was experimenting with marijuana and cocaine.

Did you realize that John McCain's own son is a soldier serving in Iraq? Wonder if he has the soldiers best interest at heart?

Barack Hussein Obama is not his birth given name. It is Barry. He changed his name to Barak Hussein Obama. Wonder what his motives were for that.

Obama kicked off his campaign at this mans home.

Thats Bill Ayers. Obama's personal friend who is a former member of the radical Weather Underground Organization that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings between 1970 and 1974.

According to the Wasington Post "

Both Obama and Ayers were members of the board of an anti-poverty group, the Woods Fund of Chicago, between 1999 and 2002. In addition, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's re-election fund to the Illinois State Senate in April 2001, as reported here. They lived within a few blocks of each other in the trendy Hyde Park section of Chicago, and moved in the same liberal-progressive circles."

I have heard some say that we should vote for Barack because his is Black and its time we had a Black president. I agree it is time for a change in America and is Colon Powell and Condelleza Rice were on the ticket I would be out campaigning for them but not Barack.

Obama said that drilling for our own oil is not a way to rid ourselves of foreign dependency on oil. His plan "everyone should inflate their tires.

I beg of you to think of one goverrnment program that works better than private industry? Can't think of one? Obama wants to nationalize healthcare and the oil industry.  Do you realize that the oil industry made 11B in profits on 100B in revenue last quarter? Thats sounds like alot of profit. On that same amount of revenue the government made 36B in tax revenue. Who's getting rich here?

When will we realize that government is the problem and not the answer?

So before you get caught up in the Obama whirlwind do your own research. This man is not right for America. Not now not ever.

Wow. If you are in a buying position right now there are tons of deals to be had. Never before has there been so many foreclosures on the market here in the Notheast Mississippi area. While I still believe our part of the country isn't as hard hit as other parts of the country we are feeling the mortgage squeeze. Right now Investors in real estate should be jumping all over the many homes they have to chose from.

Remeber the past and make strides in the future. Some of the wealthiest people in our world today always buy when the markets are tanking. Those people who were buying stock during the great depresson were quickly made into very rich people when the markets picked back up. Just like the great depression this real estate market will pick up and hum again.

The problem were are experiencing right now has its root in the exact same situation that has caused many recessions over the years. In 2007 we had a negative savings rate. People are getting into debt and are not able to climb out of the whole they have dug themselves into. Now I am not blaming bankers or lenders for this problem. Although they had a hand in it. We all know that banks were throwing money at anyone with a pulse just 2 years ago but no one held a gun to the consumers head and made them buy more home than they could afford. I am also not asking the governement to get involved in helping people who bought too much and now cant afford to make there payments. Hard lessons learned are not quickly forgottten

So my advice is Investors jump in full force and start buying up those foreclosures.

I have been gone from active reain for awhile and I guess I missed the memo on localism. I clicked there and saw my competitors face jump out at me. I will be blogging again now. So tell me guys what is the best way to  be the top neighbor? I hope to hear from alot of you. I hope I havent been absent for too long. :)

www.tuprealty.com

Well I am back from a long hiatus from Activerain. The weird thing is is that I am still getting contacts through this great network. Just yesterday I had a gentleman from Canada call me inquiring about my choice of cell phones. I enjoyed speaking with him about the phone I had chosen.

The moral of this story is that this blog really works.

Consider me back in full force.

 

I had a request to do an entry on the differences between owning a franchise and being an independent. First of all I think if I was going to own a franchise I would go with the one I was with. Century 21 is a well recognized name and They offer an array of great services.

I think the biggest part of my decision to be an independent is control. I want to be able to control the direction my company goes. Now Franchises do give you leeway to run your business the way you want to an extent. However, I see a drastic change in the real estate business over the next few years. I believe the days of the huge franchise offices are coming to a close. I see the industry moving toward technology more than big fancy offices. I think that unless you are running a lean office you will not make it. As a independent I am free to adjust my commissions to compete with anyone. I am free to build my website anyway I want and offer any service I chose from that website. I believe the web is going to be the market place very soon.

Just look at the numbers. 70% of home buyers are beginning their search on line. The actual riding clients around and showing them homes is shrinking. We can look at homes on-line now and only go see the ones the client likes.

Another reason is I don't have to pay those franchise fees keeping my over head to a minimum. If I can keep that over head down I can negotiate my fees. If I don't want to charge 6% or 7% on a home I don't have to.

I think most people like to work with local companies. Being pretty much the only independent real estate company in town I believe I can attract people who wish to do business with a small local business. 

I have found that people from out of town really don't care about franchises. If they find my website first they will use it to look for their home. If they are finding my site I capture them. If I ever get to talk with that client I do not lose them. Most of my business has been from the web and I have done a good bit of that business.

I hope I didn't ramble too much here.  

T.U.P. Realty is back and better than ever. We merged with Century 21 for a short time to explore the option of being a national franchise. After diligent study we decided we could better serve our clients as an independent brokerage. We can continue to bring great savings to our clients as well as providing the exact same service as a big name franchise. We thank Sue Gardner and Century 21 for allowing us the opportunity and regret that the merger did not work but we had to do what was best for our clients.

Well I finally did it. I broke down and bought the i-phone. I was skeptical but I jumped in both feet first and took the plunge into the world of apple.

 

There are some things I love some I like and some I wish were better.

The email function is perfect. It automatically checks email and I can easily type and send email from the phone.

The sms text is great works just as it should.

I love the calander. It seemlessly syncs with Outlook calander and both update each other.

The camera is great and takes very good pics for a cell phone.

You tube is good. I like you tube as well as the next guy. The weather option is a nice plus as is the maps with google earth. The clock works great and the calculater is awsome just like a regular calculater.

The phone works as good as any other phone I have had.

The Inter net is awesome. It is the full internet no blacked out unfunctioning pages. The ipod is good. With ear phones it rocks but the speakers in the phone leave something to be desired.

THE BAD

No games.

Nope none nada. I can't sit in a closing attorneys lobby playing solitaire. You also can't use your music as a ring tone.

I was reading one of my regular blogs this week. It was by Stephanie from the woodlands TX. She was telling about an idea she had to place the virtual tour shows at a web address specific for that home. I did that. www.829indianoak.com. i think this was a fantastic idea. I am going to continue to do this on my listings. It is a great idea that further seperated my from my competition. Steph is a great agent dealing in real estate in The Woodlands, TX. 

Thanks Stephanie. 

I recently took a trip to Las Vegas to a Cartus relocation group workshop and we went exploring the day before. I ran across this sign in the Arizona Desert. God bless you Angie how in the world do you sell real estate out here. This was a good 10 miles from the closest home and about 3 mile from the closest paved road.
The great story behind us find this sign will have you rolling. We rented a car in Las Vegas and decided to go to the West Rim of the Grand Canyon to see the new sky walk. Well we were smart and brought along our TomTom to help with the directions. My co pilot had set the TomTom on shortest route rather than quickest so we get off the paved road and here we go.
Did I mention we were in an Impala.

Any way being from Mississippi I really didn't think much about having to take a dirt road. We knew there were going to be some dirtroads anyway. OH BROtHER was that a mistake. If it were not for growing up driving in dirt we would have still been out there in the desert.

Here is the road we were on at one of the better locations were I could actual slow down.

All the while we were going through here we got slightly off the track the TomTom said to take so the British lady in the TomTom was saying at your first available opportunity turn around.

Needless to say on the way out we did not turn on TomTom or JoeJoe or anything else but went by the good oldfashion map.

All in all it was worth it though. we did get to see this

Thats an eagle flying over the grand canyon.

When you make changes to your website for the better give them time to work. The biggest mistake I see when people talk about making changes to their site is that they do not give Google time to catch up. Google is very slow when seeing changes. You might even make a change and drop completely out of the search engines. If this is the case don't panic. If you are confident that the change you made was for the better relax and let google have time to catch up. You can watch MSN to see if your changes made a difference. MSN is much faster at realizing changes. If you are doing good in MSN and Yahoo just relax. Google will catch up with them and then you will be fine in google.

Just use patience when trying to tackle seo.