Club Chaos Agents - All Things Hollish, Wacked, and Jacked

As promised, this is the 3rd video to help you speed up your own computer or laptop without having to call "the guy". 

In working with Realtors on a daily basis, particularly on technical issues, I'm frequently asked to "take a look at" their computer because it is running slow.  "Taking a look" can sometimes get to be a lengthy proposition as it happens to me quite often. 

I was late for dinner (again) and I (again) told my kids that I was going to make a video series on how to fix your own slow computer so I could just refer people to the video series.  That was a while back.  My daughter got tired of waiting and offered to do the video series herself. 

So here it is - a video series on how to fix your slow computer all by yourself.  Like Jessi says, "its so easy, even a 9 year old can do it".  

If you find the video series helpful, please share on Facebook, Twitter, or the social network of your choice. If you want to share as an email to a friend, the link to the entire video series can be found by clicking here. The first video in the series is at the bottom.  Thanks!

Also, don't forget there's also many more how to techy videos on my website.  <----- Click the link!

----- ©2011 - AmazingVideoTours.com - All Rights Reserved. Amazing Video Tours is Charlotte's Premier Real Estate Video Production and Photography Provider for Realtors, and other businesses looking to add compelling photography and/or video to their website or blog. We also develop and design WordPress blog websites

I get a lot of phone calls from buyer's agents in Sacramento asking me who the lender is on a short sale. They are wising up and realizing that not every agent in Sacramento who lists a short sale is likely to close that short sale except, perhaps, for me. So, their broker has given them a list of questions to ask a Sacramento short sale agent. The problem with this approach is they don't know what to do with the answers they get.

They think multiple loans is a bad sign, which is not true. They hear Bank of America and they shudder, which is also not true. Bank of America has stepped up to the plate over the years and dramatically improved its short sales. If you are a seller who has a Bank of America loan, you are actually sitting in a primo position and you might not realize it. Don't listen to the hoo-haw among the neophytes. Bank of America is a great short sale bank.

I close a lot of Bank of America short sales. There are different types of B of A short sales. Some are Fannie Mae; they could be Freddie Mac or even a HAFA short sale. It would not be so hot to do a Fannie Mae HAFA short sale or a Freddie Mac HAFA short sale, but those are another long story, which I can explain if I take you on as a client and you have such a loan.

They could also be a Bank of America FHA short sale or a Cooperative Short Sale or a traditional short sale. You've got almost as many choices for a short sale at Bank of America as you've got loan options. And they are all different. A client laughed as she got off the phone with B of A saying it's just like ordering a pizza. Do I want pepperoni or sausage?

If you'd like to know about a Bank of America short sale for you in the four-county Sacramento area, call this Sacramento short sale agent for more information at 916 233 6759. I'll say it again: I close Bank of America short sales. I know how Bank of America operates (it changes all the time). I stay on top of this stuff. You're in good hands.

I get calls from potential buyers every day that would like to explore the opportunity of purchasing a home.

But the vast majority of these would-be home buyers are not qualified to obtain a loan. Many have either low credit scores, little or no down-payment money, or a combination of both.

Somewhere along the paradigm shift to a high technology society the basic principles of finance have been relegated to a low priority.

The average consumer is more concerned about having the latest and greatest gizmo or whirligig than securing a roof over their head. I have encountered families with monthly wireless expenses which exceed $600.

If you throw cable or satellite into the mix, many are paying more for technology services than they are any other single household expense.

Discretionary spending is directed towards upgrades and faster speeds. Apparently as a culture, we need to be entertained at higher and higher rates of data transfer each and every day.

As a result of this cultural swing saving money for the purchase of a home or controlling one’s income to debt ratio is not nearly as important as being able to watch a video or making birds angry.

With record low interest rates and great prices, nearly anyone can afford a house in today’s market.

It just takes a little financial discipline and a determination to “set aside” a little every month!

There is so much concern and “Buzz” about Google shutting down Picnik.com, I decided to provide you with some alternative tools for editing and customizing your graphics, photos, and images.   While Picnik.com will be shutting down in April 2012, here are some other options you have available immediately.

FotoFlexer – Create some dazzling photo and image effects in your browser for FREE.  Use Animations, resizing, coloring, contrast and more.  Take a look at These 5 Demo’s for a quick tour of what FotoFlexer has to offer, you’ll love some of these cool features.  Smart Scissor is a favorite feature.

Pixlr – and for Picnik users, try Pixlr Express.  You’ll love the Editor, the Pixlr-o-matic, the Pixlr Grabber for Firefox and Chrome browsers, and the Pixlr Imm.io hosting, all of which are very robust and user friendly cool features.

LunaPic – This site will rock your world!  Lunapic offers more choices and options for photo editing and custom effects than some of the paid software applications I’ve purchased and used in the past.  Use vignettes, color bars, animated imaging, picture frames, retro color, collages, custom text, reflection animations, slide shows, and a ton more.  One of the most feature rich FREE online editors available.  You’re gonna love this site.

FreeOnlinePhotoEditor – A really simple and easy to use photo and image editor for those “quick fix and gotta go” graphics.  Very basic but simple and fast.  Some of the other online photo and image tools include:  OnlinePhotoTool.com: Online photo editor,  Automatically resize your images when sending it by email,  Create an Image from your RSS feed,  Create Image from your Tweet and Twitter account, and Create, save and email screenshots.

BeFunky -  Be Funky lets you do some pretty amazing things with your photos and graphics.  Most of the features and tools are focused on creating cool, fun, and funky effects and artwork.  The site’s name says it.  Some of the effects available would take hours to create in Photoshop or other high end and costly photo/image editors.

Definitely worthy of a visit and tour.

Photoshop.com – That’s right, you can use Photoshop online and for FREE.  You’ll need to register, but I promise it will be worth it.  The Photoshop tools are powerful and very easy to use.  Be prepared to spend a little time here, you’ll be amazed at what they have to offer and allow you to do online for free.  I’m not going to lie, this is one of my favorites and my personal replacement for Picnik.com closing down.

GIMP – GIMP is very similar to Adobe Photoshop except that GIMP is FREE.  It does require you to download the software but one huge benefit to that is it will never be bought and shut down on you.  It is a very powerful and feature intense program so unless you’re really experienced with editing and graphic design, or you have more time than it takes to close a short sale, you may want to stick with one of the others.

I personally like to use GIMP for graphic design more than image or photo editing.

Combine all these together and you’ll have more FREE editing tools and features than you’ll ever need or use and absolutely FREE.  Take a few moments to review each site, bookmark them, then give each one a try to see which one(s) best meet your photo and image editing needs.  Enjoy! 

I was asked yesterday if an agent should tackle an FHA short sale or leave that type of short sale to the pros. For starters, I don't believe any seller should be held at the mercy of an agent learning how to do a short sale. The agent either has negotiated and closed a bunch of short sales or the agent hasn't.

If the agent is not a short sale expert, that agent should not learn how to become an expert at anybody's expense, much less a client's. That agent should work under supervision. As a Sacramento short sale agent, I speak from experience about that. When I started negotiating short sales in 2006, I didn't jump into the water blindfolded. But few agents can afford to be supervised or are willing to be supervised. So, here is my secret for doing an FHA short sale.

First, realize that FHA will not make it easy. FHA has 2 faces. The face of a borrower taking out an FHA mortgage and the face of a borrower in default or about to go into default. The rules are different for both. They are at odds with each other. On the one hand, the government wants to help and on the other it does not.

FHA will do its own appraisal. It will be a full blown HUD appraisal, not a BPO. Before you price that short sale, look at the comparable sales and the pending sales, because the pendings and active short contingents will be your comparable sales at closing.

FHA will not allow a 3% buyer closing cost credit. That's not to say you can't get an exception because, believe it or not, I have obtained an exception for an FHA short sale, but those are few and far between. This will, of course, eliminate almost all of your FHA buyers for that short sale. Remember the part about the two faces of FHA? FHA will guarantee a loan for a buyer to buy a home as long as it's not one of its own or one about to become its own.

You can get a 1% concession without much trouble. The key to an FHA short sale is the net to FHA. This is the secret. You don't have to meet the sales price set by FHA, but you do have to meet the net. The net is 88% of the appraisal. See, this is why you should have paid attention during math class. The best way to meet the net without messing with the sales price is to lower those closing costs. This means moving some of them to the buyer's side of the HUD. And there you have it. Straight from your Sacramento short sale agent.

Tip: If you can't figure whether the loan is an FHA loan, look at the original sales price vs. the original loan balance, and you'll find your answer if the balance is near 97-98%. Odds are 95% LTV is a conventional.

If you are shocked by the widespread of mental illness found in the study from the Mental Health Services Administration's National Survey on Drug Use and Health, you probably do not work in real estate. The study shows that 1 in 5 people suffered from a mental illness in 2010. Heck, I could have told you that without any such study. Because I am a Sacramento short sale agent.

Who else encounters such a vast number of people in their intimate settings? You might think, oh, maybe a bartender, a hairdresser or a lawyer, but no, it's the real estate agent.

I get to interact with people via email, text, phone and in person. In their home and out of it. I see all kinds. We short sale agents employ a plethora of communication methods in our business, so we tend to experience the whole person and not just a fragmented portion. That fact that 20% of our population is off their rockers is not news to me.

What's hard is coming to grips with the fact that we can't help. Agents are natural givers. It's one of the reasons we are in the business, to help people. Not only is there too much liability attached to such efforts, but it's absurd to try. We are not psychiatrists. We are not social workers nor psychologists.

The best we can do when dealing with people from another planet is to stay grounded on Earth.

Business is cyclical. Marketing is not! A good marketing plan must be consistently implemented over time to be successful.

Too many businesses ignore marketing while they are busy, and then splurge on it during the slow times.

But pushing peaks of marketing against the troughs of weak business is reactionary and results in a significant lag between marketing and new business.

Consistent, dedicated marketing over time acts a damper that mitigates the extreme cycles of business and governs the fluctuations into a manageable flow.

So even the busiest of times demands an allocation of resources for marketing. It’s the best way to prepare for the inevitable downturn.

And steady business is a lot mare manageable and a lot less frustrating!

In working with Realtors on a daily basis, particularly on technical issues, I'm frequently asked to "take a look at" their computer because it is running slow.  "Taking a look" can sometimes get to be a lengthy proposition as it happens to me quite often. 

I was late for dinner (again) and I (again) told my kids that I was going to make a video series on how to fix your own slow computer so I could just refer people to the video series.  That was a while back.  My daughter got tired of waiting and offered to do the video series herself. 

So here it is - a video series on how to fix your slow computer all by yourself.  Like Jessi says, "its so easy, even a 9 year old can do it".   Here's video 2 of the series...

If you find the video series helpful, please share on Facebook, Twitter, or the social network of your choice. If you want to share as an email to a friend, the link to the first video in the series is http://youtu.be/_Z178FPODqU Thanks!

Also, don't forget there's also many more how to techy videos on my website.  <----- Click the link!

----- ©2011 - AmazingVideoTours.com - All Rights Reserved. Amazing Video Tours is Charlotte's Premier Real Estate Video Production and Photography Provider for Realtors, and other businesses looking to add compelling photography and/or video to their website or blog. We also develop and design WordPress blog websites

Square Dancing in Maywood, NJ

If you are interested in Square Dancing, and want to meet others who love Square Dancing too, then come to the Maywood Senior/Recreation Center (located at Magnolia and Duvier).

You dont have to be a Maywood resident !

Held every fourth Sunday of each month from 7:30pm and 9:30pm.

Come on by and have some Maywood Square Dancing fun !

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>> Dont miss other upcoming blog entries from "ThatBritishAgent" !

Sheldon Neal is a local Maywood Realtor ® with RE/MAX, specializing in Homes For Sale in Maywood, NJ.

Sheldon is also a proud Maywood resident !

I could say the seller should have called this Sacramento short sale agent sooner in the process. But so many drag their feet to the last possible worst moment. I could say the buyer should have increased his offer by $2,000 when I asked him to do it. But many buyers are dumb. I could say a lot of things about why this particular short sale went to public auction instead of to closing, like the rest of my short sales do. It is very, very rare to lose a short sale to auction.

Part of the reason is the investor is Fannie Mae. It's a well kept secret in short sale circles that Fannie Mae prefers to foreclose. Fannie Mae is a quasi-government entity. So, all of this talk you hear about how the government wants to prevent foreclosures and keep people in their homes is not necessarily true. It's a good sound bite but it's not the truth.

If the path to foreclosure is shorter than the path to short sale, Fannie Mae will choose the short cut.

I received the phone call that the seller wanted to avoid foreclosure and do a short sale about 3 weeks prior to the trustee auction. Against my better judgment, I took the challenge, listed and sold the home. We submitted the paperwork. This was last fall. Got the trustee's sale postponed. So, in one sense, we did buy the seller about 3 months of time. But in the other sense, they still lost their home. In a flash. Without warning.

Greentree asked us about a month ago to increase the offer. It was only a few thousand too low. But the buyer refused. At that point, Greentree said no problem, it would still submit the offer to Fannie Mae for approval. But yesterday, when we called to verify the home was pulled from the scheduled auction, Greentree said Oops. We didn't have time to call you. The investor, meaning Fannie Mae, rejected the offer and did not want to issue a counter. They instead demanded we go to immediate auction.

And that's how a seller can go from being told an approval from Fannie Mae will take 3 weeks to Oops, I did it again. Kind of gives new meaning to that Britney Spears song. Although, I prefer it performed by Richard Thompson. From now, on this is Greentree's signature song. But they don't deserve Richard Thompson's version. The least the damn bank could have done was call the agent. I don't know which is worse. Greentree or Fannie Mae.

Potential short sale sellers in Sacramento, please don't wait to call your Sacramento short sale agent. Don't wait for the Notice of Default to be filed before you take action. Get the process started early. Especially since HAFA, not to mention the 2007 Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, both sunset in December 2012.