I get by with a little help from my friends - 09/28/07 12:59 PM
The official myClosingSPACE.com blog has moved to our own server and one of the first projects is going to be a little interactive series to help consumers as well as real estate professionals. I would love to get some assistance from my fellow Active Rainers if you have the time.
Basically we want to run an ongoing feature called "Ask the Title Expert". The idea is to allow consumers and other real estate professionals to ask our team questions they have about the title and closing process. Our goal is to bring more transparency to the title industry and help anyone who … (0 comments)

Are you Stumbling? - 09/27/07 09:39 AM
Well, are you? One of the great social networking tools that is overlooked (by me as well as many others) is Stumble Upon. I have had this tool on my toolbar for a few years now but have only recently really started looking into how it can help my business. I had primarily used it as a way to find interesting sites and spent a good bit of time just stumbling around without actually contributing. After learning more about I realized that I was barely scratching the surface of it's potential. Sure it can be fun to play around with but … (5 comments)

Spam, Spam, and More Spam - 09/21/07 01:24 PM
I get quite a bit of spam between my 5 or so email addresses. Some are better at filtering it than others but I really don't apply my own filters. Mainly because sometimes real email gets caught in spam traps but also because sometimes there is nothing better than a poorly written and outrageous spam email for a good laugh. Today I got one that was not really that funny but it was intriguing because it seemed at first to be a real email but after getting through the first part I realized it was spam. It was a different kind … (3 comments)

The Great Directory Smackdown of 2007 - 09/20/07 02:18 PM
 
Well, it appears that Google has decided to put the smack down on the proliferation of PageRank focused web directories. If you visited the Digital Point forums a week or so ago you could see the beginning of this nuking and slowly but surely it began to spread. Those directories that seemed to pop up every day with the promise of "INCREASING YOUR PAGE RANK" or "MOVING UP IN THE GOOGLE RANKINGS" were starting to lose their own ranking and while they were still indexed they were next to impossible to find unless you typed their URL into the search box. … (5 comments)

Foreclosures Up Again in August - 09/18/07 08:07 AM
CNN.com is reporting that foreclosures for August were up 36% over July's totals. It is also stating that defaults and deliquencies have doubled over the previous year to 243,947. This information is coming from RealtyTrac. While the midwest was still hit pretty hard some of the largest increases were in Florida. The article also discusses that this increase in foreclosures may not have peaked yet with many hybrid loans about to reset in October. 
Will this lead to a bigger downturn and home prices? If so would it be enough to turn the market around? I understand that huge numbers of foreclosures … (1 comments)

New ALTA Initiative focused on consumers - 09/14/07 08:21 AM
Today's ALTA newsletter announced a new consumer initiative by the organization. Basically they are attempting to implement some of the ideas presented in the 2007 GAO Report on Title Insurance. According to the article and their new site they want to help educate consumers about title insurance and inform them that they do have a choice when it comes to choosing a title company. I commend them on this initiative and will keep my eyes on how much effort they put forth. Hopefully they can actually help bring change to the industry and make all title companies focus on consumers when … (2 comments)

Deal of the Century - 09/13/07 10:42 AM
I was perusing today's New Jersey Star Ledger and came across an article about K. Hovnanian Homes "Deal of the Century" happening this weekend. Apparently the homebuilder has decided to offer extreme price cuts on a number of homes this coming weekend. The article in the Star Ledger is reporting that prices on some homes will be cut up to $249,000 with many houses seeing six figure price cuts. This is being done in response to a weakening market in New Jersey. The company lost $80 million las quarter after turning a profit in the previous year.
Obviously many other builders and … (2 comments)

Housing Widgets - 09/13/07 09:29 AM
I am not sure if anyone has discussed this so I will throw it out there. There is a newer site, called HousingWidgets.com, that offers free real estate tools that you can add to your blog or website. It also allows members (membership is free) to add their own tools and widgets. If you are looking for new tools to add to your site you may want to visit them. You should also check them out if you have developed a tool or know about an interesting tool that you want to share with everyone. I have just started exploring it … (5 comments)

House Panel to Grill Regulators Over Housing Slump - 09/05/07 07:16 AM
I just found this article in my handy Google Reader this morning. It seems that with elections coming up our fearless leaders in congress have decided to do some digging into the problems in the housing market. Being a free market guy I am always leery about the federal government involving themselves in these situations. Of course I understand that there are many people facing serious financial hardships and the possibility of losing their homes but I have seen too many instances of government stepping in and actually making things worse. In this case it looks like it just may be … (6 comments)

 

Mark Pilatowski

Manhattan, NY

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