Rich Sweum's Blog
Residential Mortgage Musings
Real Estate Industry News
ARCHIVED BLOG POSTS
2012
Richard Sweum : December can be a powerful time to buy real estate. The decorations are up, darkness falls earlier, no one is thinking about buying a home in the middle of the holiday season, right? But, sellers need to sell. They were hoping that they would have been in contract back in Oct...
11/30/2012
Richard Sweum : Business planning-- what is in the cards for 2013. Ben Franklin wrote “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” And while that is true, there are a few more things that we can be certain of as we make our action plans for 2013 for those of us in th...
11/28/2012
Richard Sweum : Resistance to Change, a Fact or Two About Stability. Everyone has a different appetite and capacity for change and gravitation toward stability. Too much change all at once tends to put people in a defensive and reactive posture which ultimately makes them less productive. Viz… ...
11/27/2012
Richard Sweum : QM Rule, Acceptable DTI Ratios and Basel III. Sooner or later, the QM (qualified mortgage) rule that has so many in the real estate industry nervous, is going to make its way to Main Street. Sooner or later…buyers that were qualified for a $200,000 purchase under the lending stan...
11/26/2012
Richard Sweum : Five essentials to a functional business plan. In a previous post, I covered the relationship between business planning and failure and success. I’m sure that anyone could come up with any number of essential elements of a business plan but I would like to focus on five elements ...
11/21/2012
Richard Sweum : Business Planning is Critical to Success and Failure. Every Thanksgiving week I dust off my previous years business plans as well as the business plan that I created for the current year. Typically, the last time that I have used/reviewed my current years business plan is July or...
11/19/2012
Richard Sweum : Thanksgiving Week… a New Business Plan Cycle. The week of Thanksgiving provides a mental and emotional conclusion to the previous year. It’s a time of reflection, evaluation, and provides a little bit of business downtime (who really can do any work on the Wednesday before Thank...
11/18/2012
Richard Sweum : Would you really be better off if you had sold in 2007? “If I could turn back time!” I can’t believe that I know the melody to the chorus of a Cher song, crazy…what is crazier is that I can actually remember watching the Sonny and Cher Variety show on our 19” B&W TV that got 5 c...
11/15/2012
Richard Sweum : Grading our economy on a curve! I’m old enough to have gone to public school when many teachers still graded on a curve. I found a great deal of comfort in knowing that as I sat in the fat part of the curve, short of an “A” there were many kids in my class who were looking to th...
11/12/2012
Richard Sweum : In honor of service, Veterans Day. Veteran’s Day. It has been said, always show more kindness than appears to be due, because it is likely that the one in need of kindness needs more than they make known. Most Vet’s you run into don’t seem to need any affirmation, there is a qu...
11/12/2012
