"A day spent with champions is more rewarding than an eternity spent with mediocrity."

Who do you spend your time with? Are the people in your life professionally and personally at the place you aspire? Statistics indicate that your attitudes about money, work and love are influenced (and often determined) by the 5 people you spend the most time with.

I recently took inventory of the people in my life to see if they were pulling me toward or away from my goals. I quickly realized the majority of them were impeding my ability to move forward in my career and personal life. One-by-one I made contact with each "debilitator". In some cases I needed to set expectations/barriers for future communication, for others I needed to end the relationship completely.

The result was a week of liberation. With my life inhibitors gone, I was free to think about who I wanted to spend time with moving forward. I created a list of the 5 people - 2 influencers and 3 raving fans - to contact next week. The influencers are people who inspire me through their leadership in business while my raving fans are past clients who as a result of my service gladly refer me to others.

As a Realtor and/or small business owner it is easy to get caught up in trying to be everything to everyone. If you focus on the masses you (and your message) will get lost in the crowd. Find your key clients and create a plan to care for them. Meanwhile reach out to industry influencers in your field of business. Find ways you can help them and in return they will help you.

Don't settle for mediocrity. Determine the life you want, surround yourself with raving fans and high-achievers and watch a world of opportunity open up for you.

How do YOU feel?

If a job is a means to an end but work is the passion that drives your soul - what did you do today?

When was the last time a colleague or manager asked you how do you feel about your job? How you feel about your performance? How you feel about him/her as your manager?

I am fortunate to work in a company where my manager (broker) asks me how I feel on a weekly basis but others are not so fortunate. Ironically we live in an "experience" based society and yet we have been conditioned to believe we should not feel pleasure at the one place we spend 80% of our time - our jobs.

Ok, what does this have to do with real estate...if you can't changed your job because of some preconceived limitation then you should find pleasure when you arrive home. If are unhappy with where you live but you can't afford to buy a new home you should make the home you have a haven.

One technique for creating your place of tranquility is to de-clutter. Clutter subliminally restricts you from achieving your ultimate success. Work on one room at a time by placing your belongings in three piles: keep, give away, and throw away. Throw away everything that is broken and purge through useless paper. If you own something you enjoyed but it no longer serves its purpose give it to someone who will benefit from it. Only keep the stuff you LOVE.

Another technique for creating your "haven" is to paint. Find an item in your home that inspires you and paint a room that color. Seeing that color will bring you back to the joyful experience and cause your brain to work to recreate it. An instant mood boost.

Then buy one item you LOVE. How many times do you buy an item because its priced right not because you love it? Every time you spend money you make a personal statement about your values and the receipts are proof of your values. Make a pledge to yourself that you will only buy what you love.

Too often we wait until we are going to sell our home to make the improvements we have always wanted. Make those improvements today and then ask yourself...how do I feel?

Olympic Recovery?

Despite an increase in housing sales for the month of July, The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets created a negative story around the increase in the inventory of houses on the market and the fall of new construction stocks. The highlight of their doom and gloom story was that the Olympic recovery they want to report isn't expected until mid-2009. No kidding.

Let's put these unrealistic expectations in perspective...in Fairfield county the average list price of all 8773 homes currently listed on the market is $935,073. The average sale price is $663,035. All you buyers eager to benefit from the market don't misconstrue these numbers - houses are NOT selling for 70% of list price - the average list price of SOLD homes is $701,985. All these numbers are meaningless without looking at days on the market. The average market time for ACTIVE listings between $200K-$600K is 123 days. The average market time for houses that have SOLD is 96 days.

What does all this mean??

There are too many overpriced houses. Inventory continues to increase because people who have had their houses on the market for 100+ days are not listening to the market and either reducing their price or improving the condition of their home.

People should focus on the increase in sales and see it for what it is...an increase. It's only going to get better. In Fairfield County 417 houses have gone PENDING during the past 30 days as compared to 185 PENDING sales during the 30 days prior. Buyers are buying.

If journalists are using the term "recovery" to mean prices will go back to what they were 5 years ago, they are right we are not going to have an Olympic "recovery" until closer to 2011. However as a REALTOR working with buyers and sellers this is a GREAT market. There is no better time to sell if you want to upgrade your home and no better time to buy - period!

Don't Believe The Hype - It's Always A People Market

I feel like a broken record but a couple of things happened during the past week to reinforce my motto - it's never a buyers market, it's never a seller's market...it is always a people market.

I had a listing in Bridgeport that was withdrawn on Friday. It had been on the market for 114 days. Despite marketing, open houses and price reductions the listing didn't get much attention... until another house on the same street came on the market. We had 10 showings in a week and 3 agents call to say they had interested clients. Last Thursday we received a solid (but not full price) offer. I contacted my client to learn that she was no longer interested in selling the house. It had been on the market for awhile, it wasn't a full price offer and life circumstances caused her to reconsider her decision to sell. I informed the buyer's agent. The agent's response was one of shock. She went so far as to questioned if the house would appraise for it's list price. Ultimately the list price was irrelevant because my client withdraw the property the next day. A couple days later the same buyer's agent called to say her client wanted THIS house and was willing to pay full price. Unfortunately my client was not interested in selling. change The buyer's agent called one more time with her client crying in the background (I swear I am not exaggerating this story) to see if there was any change. Still the answer was no.

I share this story because it is only one of many which proves that it is always a PEOPLE MARKET. What seller in this "buyer's market" would say no to a full price offer? Someone who felt it was more important to be "home" than to get the cash and run.

One of my KW colleagues had a house listed in Shelton that got a couple offers within 14 days of being listed. This house was priced at more than $700K and the offer was for full price. During the appraisal the house did not appraise for as much as the offer. The buyer's didn't care. They had a large enough down payment that the appraisal price did not impact their mortgage and they purchased the house anyway.

What buyer would buy a house for more than it appraised for in a "buyer's market"? Someone who understands that coming home to a house you love is more important than securing an "investment" (read previous blogs if you want my opinion on your primary residence as an investment).

Since markets are based on supply and demand conventional wisdom has everyone believing we are in a "buyer's market" because the supply is high. However the popular statistics that justify buyer/seller terminology does not take into consideration basic human nature which is truly the driving factor in a more traditional market. NOTE: We are not in a "declining market" we are in a traditional market. After the BOOM of the previous 5 years things had to correct themselves which technically means sales will decrease.

So don't believe the hype. Yes, prices will continue to drop (however they are not declining at .05% per month as predicted by analysts - it's less) during the next 8-12 months. It is a great time to buy but you need time to weed out the junk. It is also a great time to sell. Price it appropriately and property prepare it for sale and it will sell quickly.

Are We Serious?

This winter many people will be faced with the challenge of keeping up with their mortgage payments. To make matters worse we are all faced with exorbitant oil prices. I use the term exorbitant because of what we are accustom to paying NOT because I think the price of oil is outrageous. To put things into perspective I will compare the cost of oil to the cost of bottled water.

FastCompany.com reports that Americans move 1 billion bottles of water each week - that is the equivalent 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water. We drink more bottled water than coffee, beer and milk combined. Furthermore the US is the largest consumer of bottled water in the world and yet we are the only country of the top four - Brazil, China and New Mexico - that has universally reliable tap water.

How does all of this relate to oil prices. Well take the price of a bottle of water...last weekend I paid $5.00 a bottle at a professional baseball game...however for the purpose of this example I will use the conservative price of $1.00 per 16 oz. bottle. Converted into gallons there are 128 oz. in a gallon dived by the average size bottle of water (16 oz) and we pay $8 a gallon for something we can get from the tap for FREE.

I won't even discuss the other additional costs/wastes related to the packaging and transporting of this non-essential item or the fact that 1.5 tons of plastic is used annually to package this ridiculous product. So here we are wasting money on bottles of liquid we could get for FREE while we complain about the cost of a non-renewable resource like oil.

The increase has made me a more educated consumer. I have been wasting for years. One of things we are doing in our home is putting in a fire place insert. We have fires almost every day during the winter but we have allowed the heat to go up the chimney. Not only were we wasting oil by not taking advantage of our fireplace but we were wasting wood by burning it and not using it to heat our home. Shame on us.

The other thing we are going to try this winter is an outside thermometer for our boiler. I learned that boilers are designed to heat your home during the coldest days of the year. (For us in the Northeast that's about 4 weeks a year.) This means that for the remainder of the year the call for energy from the boiler is the same even though the call for heat is less. An outside thermometer tells your boiler to use less energy and therefore less oil. I can't imagine how much oil I have wasted. It's embarrassing.

It took this increase price in oil for me to research other ways to heat my home. It took the fall of sub-prime lenders for buyer's to learn that they need to live within their means. Now the foreclosure market is bringing seller's to their senses about the true value of their homes. The good news is that there is no need for alarm. We will get past high oil prices, we will get through the mortgage issue and in due time the price of homes will rise. Until then (and hopefully after) it is time we work together to be better consumers.

I can't believe it has been so long since my last post. I hope you had a great 4th of July. It's important to remember the meaning of the day we declared our independence. We live in a country where we have freedom of choice and the ability to achieve the American dream of home ownership. That's something to celebrate!

Today my favorite contributing blogger David Reed is going to talk about paying points and answer the big questions: To pay or not to pay.

Numerous closing costs come with any mortgage. There’s a fee for an appraisal and a fee for a credit report… and the lender has its fees, too. And don’t forget about the attorney fee, title insurance and escrow charges. Closing costs can vary from state to state and province to province, but you really don’t have much choice of whether you want a survey or if title insurance is right for you. There will be a variety of services performed and records searched by different companies, and none of these come free of charge.

But there is one closing cost that you can control: discount points or, more simply, points. A discount point reduces the interest rate on your mortgage. One point is equal to 1 percent of your loan amount, so on a $200,000 loan one point equals $2,000.

Why do some lenders charge points? In reality, all lenders pretty much have the same rates; it’s just that sometimes a lender will advertise a rate with a point or a rate without a point. But the decision to pay a point is yours alone.

A point will typically reduce your interest rate by a quarter of a percent on a 30-year mortgage. If your lender offers a 6.5 percent rate with no points, then you may also get 6.25 percent with one point. So how do you decide?

It’s simple. Just take the difference in monthly savings gained with the lower rate and divide that into the point. The result equals how many months it will take to “recover” the amount
you paid in points. Let’s look at an example.

A 30-year fixed-rate mortgage of $200,000 at a 6.5 percent interest rate would mean a monthly principal and interest payment of $1,264.14. By paying an additional $2,000 in the
form of a point, your rate would drop to 6.25 percent and the resulting payment would drop to $1,231.43; saving you $32.71 each month. When you divide that $32.71 monthly savings into $2,000 you get 61.14, or about 61 months. Your recovery period is slightly over five years. That’s a little long in my opinion and I’ve never been a big fan of paying points. Instead, I’d encourage you to take that same amount and pay down your principal.

Remember: The quarter percent difference in interest rates when paying a point is an imprecise, general mortgage rule of thumb. Whichever rate you get, be sure to divide the savings into the points paid to see how long it will take to recoup the difference.

Welcome back our financial contributor David Reed who will discuss the pros and cons to locking in a mortgage rate...

The Best time to Lock in Your Mortgage Rate

“What do you think about rates … should I lock in now or wait to see if they fall further?” Think I’ve been asked that a time or two over the past 18 years? You better believe it. It’s a good question—one that goes through every single buyer’s head at some stage.

A quoted interest rate is no good unless you’ve confirmed, in writing, that your loan is indeed “locked,” or guaranteed for a designated period of time. You need to be proactive with your locked rate as well and don’t assume that your loan officer already locked you in. In fact, your loan officer shouldn’t lock in your rate without your specific instructions. If it was locked in and rates went down you’d be pretty mad, wouldn’t you?

While neither real estate agents nor loan officers are in the business of predicting the future, it’s still possible to make a prudent choice in the face of uncertainty. Would you rather lock in your rate and watch rates fall or not lock in your rate and see rates go up?
If you decided to lock and rates go down, you’ve secured the market rate that you were happy with. But if rates went up and you didn’t lock, you’d be paying for that mistake for the rest of the loan.

There is an even worse possible scenario: After not locking in your rate, rates shoot up and you no longer qualify for the loan. So it’s important to ask yourself: “Which way would I rather be wrong?”

If you are comfortable with the rate you’ve been quoted, talk to your real estate agent about the possible consequences of waiting to lock it in.

Share your thoughts and experiences by posting your opinion here.