Seperating the Pros from the Amateurs in Real Estate...

This current real estate market can all be summed up with this statement from one of the great real estate investors of all time, Sam Zell.

"First you Have the Investors, Then You have the Imitators and Then you Have the Idiots".

Sam tells you like it is and he expects his employees to do the same. They don't kiss butt like some other TV hound hogs wanting to tell the world how great real estate is to always buy and that it always goes up in price. In fact... most people don't even know who Sam Zell is and that includes a lot of real estate agents. Check this interview out and what one of the current employees told the HR director for Sam's company --> …

T. Boone Pickens has a Plan..

In case you do not follow the financial news like I do, you may have missed all of the T. Boone Pickens commercials on the business channels concerning a plan to help the American economy.... specifically called the Pickens Plan.

Regardless of what you might think is going on concerning the United States Economy, the fact of the matter is that approximately $700 Billion dollars a year is leaving the United States economy A YEAR for our Oil needs alone. Right now we are renting... and all real estate agents should know that eventually, renting is going to cost you money. (Make Sure you watch the Video Below.)

I posted a blog post over at Active Rain concerning the Pickens Plan and how $300 Billion would buy a lot of real…

In my blog concerning "The Next Great Real Estate Investment" posted on May 5th I highlight the benefit of investing in cheap farm land surrounding Chicago with some highlights of how much land has gone up in Iowa in the past year.

I would love to say I have some power followers for my real estate advice and take credit with what Crains Business Chicago featured in their article concerning Bill Gates buying up Illinois Farmland as highlighted on July 3rd,  Hitting Pay Dirt but I can't.  That's ok.. I'll live.

What it does mean as I highlighted in the original post... many cities in the Midwest like Chicago have always been able to continue building outward because builders could just keep buying cheap farm land to turn into tracts. If gas prices continue…

I'm going to assume that it's the multi-million dollar advertising budgets of certain third party websites that have created a completely new advertising business that is real estate related.

It's the push (in my opinion) for real estate consumers to search for homes online before searching for a real estate agent.

Like any special interest, advertise it enough and it becomes something that becomes a normal practice. Savvy third party real estate advertising sites know this and obviously are not going to advertise the best way to find real estate except to visit their site in which they can collect your information and resell it to real estate agents, refer it to real estate agents for a fee, or sell real estate advertising space based on a cost of how…

Realogy shareholders approve $9 Billion dollar buyout by Apolo Management.  For those of you not familiar with who Realogy is, it is a company that spinned off of Cendant just last August and is the leading franchisor of real estate companies that include the Franchises of CENTURY 21, Coldwell Banker, Coldwell Banker Commercial, ERA and Sotheby's International.  (Yes, technically all of these franchises are headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey under one building.) 

My wife and I had the opportunity to visit this impressive office building in April of 2005 and it is quite an impressive operation.  (I wish I would have taken a picture of it so I could post it here but you can Google Map it and get a pretty good idea of just how big this office complex is…