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West Hartford, CT (March 4, 2013) ? The Connecticut Real Estate Investors Association, or CT REIA, in association with Damon Remy, is announcing its March 2013 monthly meeting. This event will take place on March 11, 2013 from 5:30 pm to 9:00 pm. The location for this event is the Four Points Sheraton, located at 275 Research Parkway in Meriden, CT. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early for networking opportunities.
For more than two decades, Damon Remy has made a home for himself on the leading edge of technology. Utilizing the Internet since the dial up days of yore, he continues to create progressive systems that allow businesses of all sizes to operate faster, more effectively, and most importantly more profitably. In 2001, the world of real estate opened its arms to Damon, offering him a place as a consultant with a fast growing mortgage company that focused specifically on real estate investors. In that rapidly expanding high-speed market, Damon developed systems for management workflow, lead tracking, and total business automation that skyrocketed many of his Loan Officers to national production rankings.
Attendees of this event will learn: how to reach millions of buyers of property in 5 minutes; one click Craigslist ads to stand out from the competition; deal analysis in 60 seconds; how to increase a business network and grow a list of buyers, sellers, and vendors; how to manage email lists with a simple one-click interface; how to never make a cash flow mistake again; one-click social media sharing; one-click websites that capture leads; and much more.
The schedule for this event is as follows. At 5:45 pm attendees can network with vendors. At 6:00 pm there will be an Early Bird Workshop. At 6:30 pm there will be speed networking. Attendees are encouraged to bring plenty of business cards. At 7:00 pm CT REIA members will present their deals. At 7:15 Damon Remy will begin his presentation.
About The Company:
CT REIA is an organization that provides motivation, networking opportunities, and up-to-date education for people who want to buy their own home or investment property. Each month nationally recognized real estate investing trainers hold seminars at CT REIA. Real estate professionals, entrepreneurs, investors, landlords, property managers, realtors, contractors, wholesalers, rehabbers, and the general public are invited to attend our monthly meetings for educational and networking opportunities. For more information on this and other?real estate investing training?from CT REIA, please call (860) 265-4414 or visit the?Connecticut Real Estate Investors?Association website.
Contact:
Nicole Post
press@ctreia.com
(860) 265-4414
http://www.ctreia.com
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This video image shows an aerial photo of a sinkhole Monday in Seffner, Fla., that opened up underneath a bedroom and swallowed Jeffrey Bush. Florida is one of only two states where insurers of residences have to cover damage related to earth movement.
ABC Action News-WFTS TV/AP
EnlargeIt?s been an eventful geological week in Florida. Just days after a massive sinkhole opened up in Tampa suburb, swallowing an entire home in the process, another smaller (yet sizable) sinkhole appeared a few miles away, in a residential neighborhood between two homes in Hillsborough County.
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Sinkholes that large, sudden, and disastrous are relatively rare. However, thousands of smaller ones occur in the eastern United States every year, and because of its geological makeup, the entire state of Florida is particularly prone. They can occur gradually or all at once, causing damage as small as a cracked sidewalk or as large as a swallowed car. The recent spate of newsworthy sinkholes may have many homeowners wondering: Does my insurance cover that?
In most states, the answer is no. Only in Florida and Tennessee ? where sinkholes are common ? are home insurance providers required to offer coverage for damage related to earth movement. ??In California, earthquake coverage is optional,? says Lynne McChristian, the Florida representative for New York-based Insurance Information Institute. "The home and your property are covered but not the land. Insurers in Florida are required to cover land as well.?
Florida Statute 627.706 requires insurers to include coverage for ?catastrophic ground cover collapse,? and offer additional separate coverage for other sinkhole damage. Under Florida law, ?catastrophic ground collapse is defined as 'geological activity' that results in all of the following:
1; The abrupt collapse of ground cover
2. A depression in the ground cover that is clearly visible to the naked eye
3. Structural damage to the building including the foundation
4. The insured structure being condemned and ordered to be vacated by the government agency authorized by law to issue such an order for that structure.
In other words, if a sinkhole swallows your home or part of your home outright, you should be compensated with a typical home insurance policy. Beyond that, things get a little tricky. All-encompassing sinkhole coverage was required in Florida until 2007, but it was dropped in favor of the ?ground cover collapse? language, leaving additional coverage to be offered as a supplement. Then, in spring 2011, Florida Senate Bill 408, narrowed the definition of damage that qualified in the face of fraud and rising costs for insurers.
Sinkhole insurance in the Sunshine State has been somewhat of a nightmare for policyholders and providers alike in recent years. Rates for sinkhole coverage jumped last year, with state-run Citizen?s Property Insurance hiking rates 50 percent in parts of? ?sinkhole alley? ? pockets of Hernando, Pasco, Hillsborough, and Pinellas counties, in and around the greater Tampa area, according to the Consumer Insurance Guide. Private insurers hiked rates?up to 200 percent.?
Part of the reason: Residential insurance claims for sinkhole damage ballooned. The Tampa Bay Times reported that sinkhole claims for Citizens nearly tripled between 2007 and 2011. ?We ended up with an enormous explosion in the amount of sinkhole claims coming forward,? says Robin Westcott, Florida?s Insurance Consumer Advocate, in a telephone interview with the Monitor. ?We were handing out checks to people with cracks in their driveways and patio for sinkhole damage and it didn?t mean repairs were required. There was not a clearly defined threshold for what structural damage was covered.?
What?s going on underground in Florida's tricky geology can be difficult to predict and diagnose. ?To do a thorough engineering test for sinkhole damage, it costs at least $10,000,? Ms. McChristian says.? In many of the fraud cases, it was more expensive for an insurer to verify a sinkhole claim than to go ahead and pay it.
Bill 408 ?tightened up the loopholes,? she adds. ?Now, if you get paid for sinkhole damage you have to use the money for repairs.?
But with less serious structural damage largely written out of insurance claims, Ms. Westcott expects insurance claims to plummet, and she would like to see those hiked premiums do the same, eventually. ?Catastrophic ground cover collapse? accounts for less than 1 percent of sinkhole claims, which she argues will lower the cost for insurers substantially in the coming years. ?You had a game changer of a bill in 408 that should reduce your claims substantially. And even if you could justify a 100 percent increase it would be unfair to people.?
For homeowners worried about their coverage, she recommends assessing the risks associated with your location and being proactive in going over them with your insurer. But while recent news has driven some curiosity over sinkhole coverage, such discussions are a matter of routine for the typical Florida homeowner. From hurricanes to sinkholes, the state?s capacity for natural disaster is so wide-ranging that ?consumers get completely fatigued trying to figure out what is and isn?t in their homeowners insurance down here,? she says.
?
?But frankly, we?re probably a little more aware because of it," she adds. "We have a lot of specific touch points with our insurance that I doubt people in other places even think about.?
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Michael Pistillo, Jr. right, with Barclays, calls out the price of Tiffany & Co. stock to Joseph Lawlor at the New York Stock Exchange, Tuesday, March 5, 2013 in New York. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped nearly 100 points early Tuesday, reaching an all-time high, powered by China's strong economic growth targets and a jump in European retail sales. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Michael Pistillo, Jr. right, with Barclays, calls out the price of Tiffany & Co. stock to Joseph Lawlor at the New York Stock Exchange, Tuesday, March 5, 2013 in New York. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped nearly 100 points early Tuesday, reaching an all-time high, powered by China's strong economic growth targets and a jump in European retail sales. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
NEW YORK (AP) ? The Dow is closing at a record, beating the previous high it set in October 2007, before the financial crisis and the Great Recession.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 125.95 points, or 0.9 percent, to close at 14,253.77 Tuesday, beating its previous record by 89 points.
The index is up 8.8 percent this year, capping a remarkable comeback. The Dow has more than doubled since hitting a 12-year low in March 2009.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 14.59 points, or 1 percent, to 1,539.79. The S&P is also within striking distance of its record close of 1,565.
The Nasdaq gained 42.10 points, or 1.3 percent, to 3,224.13.
Three stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was light, 3.3 billion shares.
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A baby girl in the US born with HIV appears to have been cured after very early treatment with standard drug therapy, doctors say.
The Mississippi child is now two-and-a-half years old and has been off medication for about a year with no signs of infection.
More testing needs to be done to see if the treatment - given within hours of birth - would work for others.
If the girl stays healthy, it would be the world's second reported 'cure'.
Continue reading the main story
There is currently no cure for HIV.
This latest case of a baby girl in the US who was treated within hours of birth and has since been disease-free off HIV medication does not mean we have found this Holy Grail.
While the findings are encouraging, it remains to be seen if the treatment will provide permanent remission.
Experts also say the same treatment would not work in older children and adults with HIV as the virus will have already become too established.
Public health doctors say prevention is still the best way to beat HIV.
If expectant mothers with HIV are given anti-HIV treatment during pregnancy and then have a low-risk Caesarean delivery and do not breastfeed, their babies have a 98% chance of being HIV negative.
Dr Deborah Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, presented the findings at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta.
"This is a proof of concept that HIV can be potentially curable in infants," she said.
Cocktail of drugsIn 2007, Timothy Ray Brown became the first person in the world believed to have recovered from HIV.
His infection was eradicated through an elaborate treatment for leukaemia that involved the destruction of his immune system and a stem cell transplant from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection.
In contrast, the case of the Mississippi baby involved a cocktail of widely available drugs, known as antiretroviral therapy, already used to treat HIV infection in infants.
It suggests the swift treatment wiped out HIV before it could form hideouts in the body.
These so-called reservoirs of dormant cells usually rapidly reinfect anyone who stops medication, said Dr Persaud.
Dr Deborah Persaud, Johns Hopkins Children's Center: "This sets the stage for paediatric care agenda"
The baby was born in a rural hospital where the mother had only just tested positive for HIV infection.
Because the mother had not been given any prenatal HIV treatment, doctors knew the baby was at high risk of being infected.
Researchers said the baby was then transferred to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.
Once there, paediatric HIV specialist Dr Hannah Gay put the infant on a cocktail of three standard HIV-fighting drugs at just 30 hours old, even before laboratory tests came back confirming the infection.
Continue reading the main storyEnd Quote Dr Rowena Johnston Foundation for Aids ResearchWe really can quite confidently conclude at this point that the child does very much appear to be cured?
"I just felt like this baby was at higher-than-normal risk and deserved our best shot," Dr Gay said.
The treatment was continued for 18 months, at which point the child disappeared from the medical system. Five months later the mother and child turned up again but had stopped the treatment in this interim.
The doctors carried out tests to see if the virus had returned and were astonished to find that it had not.
Dr Rowena Johnston, of the Foundation for Aids Research, said it appeared that the early intervention that started immediately after birth worked.
"I actually do believe this is very exciting.
"This certainly is the first documented case that we can truly believe from all the testing that has been done.
"Many doctors in six different laboratories all applied different, very sophisticated tests trying to find HIV in this infant and nobody was able to find any.
"And so we really can quite confidently conclude at this point that the child does very much appear to be cured."
A spokeswoman for the HIV/Aids charity the Terrence Higgins Trust said: "This is interesting, but the patient will need careful ongoing follow-up for us to understand the long-term implications for her and any potential for other babies born with HIV."
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21651225#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on Monday cautioned airline passengers to get to the airport extra early because U.S. spending cuts have already led to long lines at some security checkpoints, and said the coming furloughs will only make the situation worse.
Napolitano said mandatory spending cuts ordered on Friday by President Barack Obama have led to the elimination of overtime for Transportation Security Administration officers and customs agents. She said furlough notices would begin going out to employees on Monday, and Customs and Border Protection said it would send them out later this week.
Hiring freezes for both agencies will also prevent any open positions from being filled.
"We are already seeing the effects at some of the ports of entry - at the big airports, for example. Some of them had very long lines this weekend," Napolitano said at a "Politico Playbook" breakfast event.
She pointed to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as examples of those with long lines.
Napolitano said delays were between 150 percent and 200 percent at certain airports. Customs and Border Protection said in statement on Monday that the agency had begun reducing overtime over the weekend and effects were already visible.
"Lanes that would have previously been open due to overtime staffing were closed, further exacerbating wait times at airports with typically longer international arrival processes," the statement said, noting that additional effects were expected in the coming weeks as furloughs - which will go out on March 7 - take effect.
According to passengers and the TSA website, delays in customs and security were minimal through Monday morning but began to grow in the early afternoon.
Musician Phil Tucker, 27, and his band mates from the group Alpine, waited for an hour in Los Angeles before clearing customs after flying in from Melbourne, Australia. Tucker said that several of the customs booths were closed.
In Chicago's arrivals terminal, Dave Wagner, 51, of Boston, Massachusetts and his brother John, 48, of Chicago, arrived late Monday morning on a flight from Hong Kong. They said it took them an hour to clear customs - and that the wait appeared to be growing.
"It should have taken maybe 15 or 20 minutes," said Dave Wagner. "But there was only one agent for 12 lines."
At O'Hare International Airport's Terminal 2, which serves domestic passengers, a five-lane line for the TSA security checkpoint snaked back into the check-in area at 1 p.m.
Most passengers crossed through to their gates in about 30 minutes.
Some lawmakers have accused Napolitano and other administration officials of fear-mongering and exaggerating the impact that would be seen from the deep spending reductions known as the "sequester" which cut a total of $85 billion from government agencies between March 1 and October 1.
But Napolitano said the problems were real.
"Look, people, I don't mean to scare, I mean to inform. If you're traveling, get to the airport earlier than you otherwise would," she said. "And please don't yell at the Customs officers or the TSA officers - they are not responsible for the sequester."
The TSA issued a statement predicting lines and wait times would increase as the year goes on, especially during busy travel periods. It said the agency would have up to 2,600 TSA officer vacancies by the end of the fiscal year.
The Secret Service, which is also part of DHS, will see a five percent cut in spending but Napolitano said it would not impact security of the president.
The cuts at the agency will be on the investigative side which handles financial and identity theft, cyber crime and counterfeiting cases.
(Reporting by Deborah Charles; Additional reporting by James B. Kelleher in Chicago, David Beasley from Atlanta, Dana Feldman from Los Angeles and Atossa Araxia Abrahamian in New York; Editing by Jackie Frank)
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You listed with a real estate broker to sell your house, right?
Actually, that?s probably not the correct syntax. What you really did was to list with a broker to get your house sold.
It?s a subtle difference in wording, but one that points out the disconnect between thought and reality for many real estate consumers. The first phrase imbues the broker with near magical powers: he is going to take the house, wave his magical real estate wand, and cause someone to buy it. That?s really not what happens, although many brokers would like you to believe the myth that it does. Phrase two is closer to the mark: you?re going to use a broker to gain access to the natural matching of buyers and sellers that?s already going on. The broker is not magical. He is just a skilled gatekeeper.
Of course, I was selling real estate when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I?m sure things have changed (yeah, right), but . . .
Sellers used to be very concerned about what I was going to DO to sell their house. They wanted to see examples of the advertising I would run on their property, thinking that it was advertising that would cause the house to sell. They wanted to know how many open houses I was going to hold, thinking that the activity of allowing people easy access would cause the house to sell. They seemed to think that selling a house was an active process, that somehow advertising and activities would cause otherwise disinterested potential buyers to suddenly want the home.
I toyed with the idea of telling the truth ? that that?s not what happens at all ? but opted instead to do what I was taught in one seminar or another: play to the sellers? misconceptions and overwhelm them with all of the advertising and activities I was going to DO.
By the way: this ?grin at ?em and tell ?em what they wanna hear? attitude is how salespeople die. Truth is always best.
The TRUTH was probably best expressed by my old broker back in Stone Mountain, Georgia, Richard Williams. Richard was and still is a real estate visionary and one of the smartest brokers I ever met. I was railing on one day about how he needed to do more advertising in this publication or that one when he calmly said, ?Jim, a certain number of buyers are going to buy houses in the neighborhood today whether you are there or not. Your job is to get in front of as many of them as possible.?
That statement encapsulates the marketing function of a real estate broker as accurately as it can be. People can?t be made to want to buy real estate. They either do, or they don?t. A little education can help them make an informed decision, but it is a decision beyond anyone else?s control. Their decision to buy one house over any other is not a decision at all, it?s a choice, an illogical, personal, quirky choice. No amount of full page advertising is going to cause them to choose one house over another.
The broker?s job is to orchestrate a marketing program that puts his or her office in front of as many of these potential buyers as possible. Once that is achieved, ?selling? real estate becomes a matching process: buyers? hopes and needs to inventory.
So how does a smart broker market to get in front of as many potential buyers as possible?
Job one is to be SEEN, to be VISIBLE. The consumer needs to see your sign, your logo, your name everywhere to have a comfort level that you may be able to help. The most effective way to accomplish this is with For Sale signs . . . SO: the best thing your real estate broker can do to sell your house is to go out and get another listing and another listing and another listing. The company with the largest number of signs in the neighborhood* is probably going to get the largest number of calls . . . of course, what they do with the calls is another issue, one we?ll talk about in a moment.
Job two is to GENERATE LEADS: to put marketing pieces into the hands of consumers that will motivate them to make contact with the office. When a broker decides to create a marketing piece, he or she should do it dispassionately . The decision to advertise one house or another should be made based on which one will cause the largest number of potential buyers to contact the office, not on which seller is ?owed? advertising this week. This is an important point. Truth is: almost always, the property that motivated the potential buyer to contact the office is NOT the property they eventually buy. There are dozens of kick-out factors they may encounter as they do their investigation. But that doesn?t matter. What?s important is that they contacted the office.
So, when a broker decides to advertise a property, it?s not to get that particular property sold, it?s to generate buyer contact. It is this general lead generating activity that will cause your house to sell and it may not even involve advertising your house at all.
Now, in today?s ordinary agent centered real estate world, this ?orchestration? of marketing rarely occurs. Agents, stumbling all over one another to beg for listings, promise the one tangible thing they can think of: advertising. And sometimes they actually do it: willy-nilly, this property, that property, whichever seller is most cranky this week. The broker is not taking control of this process, is not doing the higher level job of deciding what to advertise and what not to advertise, because he can?t afford to. He?s already paying his willy-nilly agents SOOO Much that he has no money for carefully planned marketing. In a universe where agents who do 6 deals a year command a 75% or even 80% split of the commission, marketing becomes the responsibility of the agent, not the broker, and there is no coordination, no strategic planning of marketing, no sense to it at all.
Ok: we?ve got Job One and Job Two. Here?s the third thing the real estate broker needs to do: CAPTURE LEADS. When marketing causes a potential buyer to contact the office, what will then cause them to agree ? however subtly ? to letting the office match them with a perfect property? It is a process that often occurs on the telephone, and smart brokers work on it constantly.
It?s important to understand what courage it takes for a potential buyer to pick up the phone or fill out an online inquiry form. They know they are likely going to hear from a salesperson . . . and that?s not what they want at all. What they want is the information. Period. So there is a very natural defensiveness on the other end of the line when the agent answers the phone.
How the agent handles the call, how he or she relaxes the caller, provides valuable information, builds a comfortable rapport with the caller is EVERYTHING. All of time money and effort the broker has used to generate the lead can be lost right here if the agent is not prepared to earn the caller?s trust and then to begin the matching process. Now, think back to the last time you called a real estate office for information on a property. Uh-huh. I know. It was a painful experience. If the agent made any attempt to earn your business at all, it was probably lame, stupid and full of sales scripts. And that?s IF they tried to get your business at all (most won?t).
As a business consultant to real estate companies, I can almost always increase the company?s bottom line by several percentage points (and that?s a lot) by simply working with whomever is answering the phone and responding to buyer inquiries. I?m not kidding. That phone call, that inquiry, is the ARENA. That?s where the process of ?selling real estate? begins. It is so important, I think it makes perfect sense for a home seller to call the office of the agent they are considering and see how they are handled. If the person on the other end of the line can?t comfortably communicate competence, if they can?t skillfully earn the right to help you find your next home, how are they going to capture the real caller who might be perfect for your house?
Bottom line: advertising wont sell your house. An agent or broker won?t sell your house. What will sell your house is an office with an active lead generation and capture process. And where will you find such an office? I?d suggest you look at Help-U-Sell. Our offices continue to keep the broker in charge of marketing, lead generation and capture. We are completely focused on the process and we do it better than anyone in the industry. AND: with low set fee pricing, we save sellers a lot of money, too.
*I talked about visibility in terms of signage only. It?s simpler that way. But understand that visibility extends far beyond your front yard. Today it?s getting the inventory all over the Internet. It?s putting the best houses in the inventory everywhere a potential buyer is apt to be looking. Marketing is like building a spider web: the more strands in the web, the more places the company?s identifiers and best listings can be seen, the more potential buyers can be caught.
Source: http://setfeeblog.com/2013/03/02/marketing-nuance-subtle-point/
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