Real Estate Views from St Pete

Federal judges recently ruled that the 3% federal excise tax on long-distance phone service was illegal. You can go back and add up the federal excise tax on all your phone bills for 41 months, from March 1, 2003 to July 31, 2006. Note - this isn't just on traditional long distance phone charges, but also to that tax on bundled services, such as calling planes on your cell phone - doesn't matter if it's flat fee or per minute if local and long distance calls are added together.  For some of us, that can be a lot of money. Claim this refund on your 2006 tax return byattaching Form 8913.  Businesses can take an easier route - take the two monthly phone bills for April 2006 and September 2006 and use these to estimate the federal excise tax for the entire 41 month period.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.

It's been known for a long time that response time is critical to following up on internet leads. Often the agent getting the business is not necessarily the best, but the first to respond (assuming they continue the dialogue).

Many Gen Xers want immediate information. That's immediate as in IM (instant messaging), not in waiting for an e-mail response. Boomers are very laid back compared to Gen X and Gen Y. They want to be involved in the process, and they want what they want NOW.

Are you ready?

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area. 

We noted an upswing in the market in the middle of December in the Tampa Bay area. January has seen even more showings, offers and contracts. While Tami and I have been away, Rob has been very busy - he's negotiated five transaction sides in five days. That's really great for St. Pete. We're proud of him.

It's so good to have a team, so when we're away attending or teaching classes, or attending conferences, Rob and Amy can keep everything going smoothly at home. I was only involved in one of the negotiations, I was in Texas, the buyer's agent in Florida, the seller in Puerto Rico, and the buyers in California. What did we ever do before the internet?

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area. 

I've heard so many people say that they wait for a class, such as a designation class, until it is given locally. I don't think that's the way to go, even if it does save travel time and hotel expense. First, your mind is more on your class and networking when you aren't conducting your business during every break. Second, you'll probably get more ideas from your classmates when they are doing business in another area. Most important, though - it's not likely that your local colleagues will be sending you referrals, or you sending referrals to them.

Go somewhere else for your class and you'll meet new colleagues who really may be sending you business. To maximize this, determine what states or cities most homebuyers are coming to your area from, or where most of your sellers are moving - and target that area for your classes.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area. 

Tami and I are in between planes at the Kansas City airport. We were here once before years ago, and it's a small area - if you want to use a restroom, stop at a shop or restaurant, all of that means you go outside of the small secured area and have to go through security again. It's 23 degrees and there are occasional snowflakes, and our Florida bodies do NOT want to go outside. As before, it's not crowded and the people are friendly. Like Tampa, Kansas City has free wireless internet access. How welcoming for guests, and how practical for locals waiting to fly out. Thanks, Kansas City - we'll come back to visit the city when it's warmer....

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area. 

Although we know the value of networking, and would like to spend some time discussing things with colleagues in other companies locally, coordinating two busy schedules rarely allows this to happen. Ironically, if you're away at a conference, where there's time for networking, it works with local colleagues as well as those from faraway. Frank Malowaney, a fellow luxury agent in St. Petersburg. Florida, was attending the Luxury Conclave (as I was) in Dana Point, California, and we found more time to chat there than back in St Pete, though our offices are only a couple of blocks apart. You may find yourself on a plane with a local colleague, too, and be able to talk together.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area. 

Angela Eliopolis, Jacqueline Grelinger and  Olivia Decker spoke on an International panel at the Luxury Conclave in Dana Point, California. Angela, an agent in Washington, DC, pointed out that 48% of international real estate investment is in the US. Buyers appreciate the stability of an investment in the US, and for many buyers, the exchange rate makes US property a great bargain. Jacqueline, an agent in Boca Raton, Florida, talked about how to list properties that are located in other countries. Olivia, a San Francisco area agent, discussed many ways to find international buyers for US properties.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area. 

Jennifer Cummings spoke at the Luxury Conclave about Potato Chip Marketing and how to generate profit in any market. She said it's necessary for agents to stop being commodities, and to create a USP, or Unique Selling Proposition. This is what sets you apart as an agent and makes a customer want to do business with you. She went on to talk about marketing, how it differs from advertising, and how it should include a call to action. Our marketing should be focused on the prospect, not on the property. Jennifer coaches individual agents as well as companies.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area. 

According to Barclay Butera, an interior designer who spoke this week at the Luxury Conclave at the St. Regis Resort, Monarch Beach, CA, indoor-outdoor living is a trend of which he is a great fan.

We've seen this trend in Florida in upper end homes - there is a roofed outdoor room, usually large, perhaps 20 x 20 feet, often with a fireplace, that is furnished with pieces and fabrics that look like an inside living room but are treated to withstand the outdoors. This is really inviting and comfortable, and is a wonderful lifestyle addition for enjoying the outdoors while feeling the comfort of indoors.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area. 

There's a new book that can now be preordered on amazon.com, written by Richard Frank, called Richistan. It is expected to be ready in June 2007.

Earlier this week Richard Frank spoke at the 3rd Luxury Conclave in Dana Point, California. He has done extensive research on the wealthy and uber-wealthy and spoke about some of the statistics and case studies that will be in his book. It should be interesting as well as a great resource, and I've already pre-ordered it through amazon.

One of the benefits often given for blogging is that you appear in the search engines, that you're on google, and that you reach a wide audience. 

The flip side of this is: you're on the search engines.  And your blogs stay accessible, while ads disappear. So, remember when you blog, that the entire world can see what you're writing. A year from now a potential client may find what you wrote on the web, either inadvertently or by researching you. It's so easy to blog that it's easy to vent, or complain, or point fingers  -  think before you post: do I want potential clients, referring agents, employers to see this post and know I wrote it?

Following up on that - your comments to other people's blogs become public, too. When someone's reading another blog and come upon your comment - is that how you want to be perceived?

I'm not suggesting that you not let your personality come out, or that you not express your opinion, but rather I'm suggesting that you look at both the content you're posting and the image you're portraying.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area. 

Since Matt is looking at several changes/improvements, I though I'd mention one I've wanted for a long time -

           Read  vs  Not Read

Each day we have a different amount of time to read new blog postings, and each day there's a different volume of blogs posted, not to mention that some take a long time to read through, read the comments, and visit all the links.

Whether in Featured Posts, Associates, Groups, or any of the headings on the Dashboard, I'd like to see a button we that would bring up all the posts that we have NOT read.  Once days go by, good posts get lost.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area. 

The University of Florida announced yesterday it's largest private gift ever - from St. Petersburg, Florida, resident and investment banker, William R. Hough. Both Tampa Bay area newspapers, the St. Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune had articles and photos relating to this recent gift. Hough gave $30 million for graduate business programs. Since his gift qualified for $20 million in matching state funds, the value of his gift is $50 million. His gift will establish an endowment for programs in the graduate business school., and will help pay for a new building, to be named William R. Hough Hall. The graduate school will be renamed the Hough Graduate School of Business. The renaming needs to be approved by various bodies at the University of Florida. Several years ago Hough donated $2.5 million to UF to start the Hough Program in Finance. This is one of many, many gifts that William and Hazel Hough have made to various educational institutions and museums. St. Petersburg has seen great benefits from the Houghs.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.

When we're blogging, it's easy to bold, underline or italicize a word or phrase because those buttons are right on top of the blog entry window.  But how to insert a symbol? 

When we use a registered trademark, it's important to use the ® symbol, because we don't want "Realtor" or "Cyberstar" to be used by an agent or public person who just wants to use that word.  So, you can use the Alt system.

Hold down the Alt key while pressing in sequence 0174 on your numeric keypad, and suddenly ® appears. So do this at the end of each word that needs the symbol. 

Here are some symbols/signs I frequently use:

    ®  Alt + 0174    Registered sign

    ©  Alt + 0169    Copyright sign

    °   Alt + 0176    Degree sign  (for when we're talking about Denver or Florida weather)

    ±   Alt + 0177    Plus or Minus sign

    ½   Alt + 0189   Fraction 1/2

    ¼   Alt + 0188   Fraction 1/4

    £    Alt + 0163   Pound sign

If you have the Word program, anywhere in the text you can click Insert, then Symbol and a whole list (more than one list, in fact) will pop out and you can choose the one you like. The ones you use frequently are automatically saved at the bottom of the window.  If you don't have Word, try this site, which categorizes the symbols. You may want to save the list on your computer.

For those of you who use notebooks or laptops without a numeric keypad, you can go to  another page, which will give you an alternative for entering symbols.

• Note, added 7-11-07  There's a really simple way to do this on a notebook that Brad Andersohn blogged about today. Check his post then try it out.
  

For more sites and information, just google  "Alt +" or "Alt symbols". 

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.   

Sam Miller, a fellow CyberStar®, asked me to explain the difference between Groups and Affiliates. I started to get long winded so decided to blog it, as other ActiveRain members may have the same question.

On the left side of your personal home page, there is a GROUP category and an AFFILIATE category.  

A GROUP, to me, is topic or subject related. The CyberStar® group would be where you see things of interest to and related to all the CyberStars®. The Photography group would be where you talk about things relating to photography. After you've written a blog, and put in your tags, and chosen Members Only or Public for viewing, you then include it in various groups. Following the basic "for real estate professionals" and "for consumers" are a list of the groups you've chosen to join. Click any of these that apply. Sometimes you'll have a post that will go only one place, other times it may fit more than one group or category. Just because you're a Cyberstar® you wouldn't post all of your blogs to that group.  Or, you can post a blog and send it only to a group, not to all ActiveRainers nor to the public. You might also want to include postings in state groups, franchise groups - whatever you'd like.

An AFFILIATE is people related. In the ancient history of ActiveRain you had one big bucket of Affiliates - now you can classify them into subcategories of your own.  To add an affiliate, you go to their home page (you can search their last name through the Search button at the top of most page views) and click on the ADD as AFFILIATE on top of the person's photo. It's up to each one of us to add whatever classifications we want - and you can add a person to one or more. For instance, I might add someone to my general affiliate category, then to Resorts, then to Luxury Agents, then to CyberStars®.  In my main bucket, which I've renamed to Colleagues, are people I know, and people whose blogs I've come to enjoy, so that I don't want to miss them. You might choose to have one sub category for people you know, and another for favorite bloggers. Your choice!

What's the point of Affiliate subcategories?  One is easy contact. You can click on the category or subcategory and you'll get a photo and link to every person you've added there. You can also make comments about that person - easier when you're adding one at a time than if you're catching up and adding 100. Second, you can click Posts (in parenthesis after the affiliate category name). There are over 10,000 ActiveRain members now, and most days I don't have time to read everyone's postings. So, I can click start my time by clicking on Colleague Posts and know that I won't miss the posts from my favorite bloggers. Or, I may want to set up a category for Lenders, and include people like Brian Brady, so that when I want to go back and find some lending posts, I can click there - and get my favorite lenders, not all lenders.  With my CyberStar® subcategory, I can look and see all the postings from CyberStars®, no matter what topic they're writing about. 

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.  

College President Carl Kuttler, president of St. Petersburg College, knows how to get things done. Locals know this, and so do leaders of Russia!  Dr. Kuttler works quietly behind the scenes, but somehow comes up with not only a plan, but action when somethings needs to be done.

The latest art coalition in St. Petersburg, Florida looks like a Win-Win-Win-Win, with  SPC as the central link. St Pete College has been expanding its satellite locations for some years, including expansion into downtown St. Pete. Dr. Kuttler envisioned an arts and museum studies program for SPC, and worked with the Florida International Museum to the advantage of both institutions.

Back to the Win-Win-Win-Win. If all approvals come in as expected, the following will happen:

• The row of storefronts across from Williams Park and adjacent to the downtown St Pete campus of SPC will become the new American Stage Theater.
• American Stage will sell it's current leaky and inefficient building, leave its 148 seat theater, and move to its new location.
• The Palladium, a mid-sized arts performance center with 880 seats, was converted from a church, and has been relying on pricate donations. It will be owned and operated by St Petersburg College, and will have both community and college productions.
• The Florida Orchestra, who had been planning to build their headquarters adjacent to the Mahaffey Theater, were stymied when costs came in a million dollars over budget. They would move to the third floor of St Petersburg College's current downtown location and have a new theater built. They could use the Palladium Theater for their rehearsals.
• A joint ticket booth would be built for American Stage, the Florida Orchestra and the Palladium. Since the Florida International Museum is now in the St Petersburg College building, they could participate in the joint ticket booth as well.

And all this is put together such that state matching grants will be available. Leave that to Dr. Kutler - he'll get it done.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.  

Two major newspapers, the St. Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune, both carried stories today about lockbox manufacturers. They pointed out that while the real estate community is bemoaning the high inventory, for other suppliers, such as lockbox manufacturers, are working round the clock to meet the demand. The Pinellas Realtor Organization has exhausted their supply.  Earlier this year, both Tampa and Pinellas were out of lockboxes.

Sign companies also are running to keep up. Often they are putting signposts together at night so they'll have something the next day to hand sign panels on.

We need to take such shortages into account when we tell Sellers when certain things will happen on our listings - no longer is it Next Day service. 

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.  

Pinellas County, Florida is on the central west coast of Florida, bordering the Gulf of Mexico - separated from Tampa by Tampa Bay, with three connecting bridges and various land connections in the north. It's main cities are St. Petersburg and Clearwater.

There are currently 1,089 properties over $1,000,000 listed in the MLS, nearly equally divided between single family homes (565)and condos-townhouses-villas (526).  101 properties, approximately 10% are under contract - 22 single family and 79 condos.  Last year 360 properties sold, showing about a 3 year supply.  The supply of single family homes is 2.5 years (224 sold) and the supply of condos is 3.9 years. If you view the supply from a three month history rather than a year, the figures change and you have increase from a 3 year supply to just over 4 years (50 months).  This breaks down to a 42 month supply of single family homes and a 63 month supply of condos.

There are far fewer properties in Pinellas County over $5,000,000. There are 16 properties listed, all single family homes. There were 2 sales in the last year, thus, statiscaly, an 8 year supply.

Having said all that, I need to warn you that the data is skewed, primarily by two factors:

1) Since Pinellas County is almost totally built-out, much new construction consists of buying a home in a prime location, tearing it down, and building a new one (flood restrictions often preclude a remodelling). Most of these would appear only as a sale of the old property, i.e. the land value, and then construction is done through the owner contracting with a builder - the amount of which is not recorded. Accordingly, most new construction of luxury homes appears neither in the Multiple Listing System nor in the public records, at the actual value.

2) Luxury condos are a fairly new phenomenon in Pinellas County, and many of the condo figures include pre-construction contracts, sales that were contracted a couple of years ago, and active listings that may not be built for another year or two. In addition, many new condos are NOT included in the MLS, so again, full statistics are not readily available.

For these reasons, and many more, please contact an agent experienced in the area and price range you're seeking. Contact that agent BEFORE you contact a builder or model center, so that you can be assured of representation - it generally won't cost you any more, and can provide many benefits.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.   

We've had warm weather while the rest of the country freezes. The headlines this morning led to a story commenting that this was the warmest stretch of warm winter weather that we've had in 73 years! Really strange weather all over the country.

San Antonio was pleasant last week, and now the Riverwalk is frozen over and the Alamo closed down. People all over are without power.

Many people are changing their vacation plans and heading to Florida - just be sure you don't fly through Denver or even Dallas.  You may only get part way. 

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.   

A new Cyberstars group has been formed, thanks to Margaret Rome and Allen Hainge.  I'd like to remind all the Cyberstars that you should also add each Cyberstar to your Affiliates Group - make a separate section there for Cyberstars - when you add them as a member of your overall Affiliates, you can also add them to a special affiliates group, Cyberstars. This is not the same as the topic group, it's a people group. You can also go back to an individual you've previously added, and add them to your CyberStar affiliated group. You can then click on this affiliates group whenever you want to read anything that a CyberStar has posted.

What a lucky time frame we had for CyberStars in San Antonio. When our Accountability Group spoke yesterday (Rick Lorenz in Durango, Colorado; Christina Whipple in San Antonio, Texas; and me in St. Petersburg, Florida)  Christina told us that San Antonio was shut down - due to an ice storm. I noticed temperatures there today below freezing. What a difference a week can make.

If any of you are interested in getting your CLHMS designation from the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing, there are still spaces in the February  8-9 designation class in Dallas, which Tami and I are teaching. Here's the class schedule.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.