TA DAH! I finally put the complete staging package together for my vacant listings. I have everything including pictures, modern furniture, decorative knickknacks and even air fresheners, but there is one thing I am missing. Here is my latest flip project in Gilbert’s Power Ranch community – can you find out what I’m missing?

Anything? Well, what I’m missing can’t been seen or touched, but only felt deep in a buyer’s soul. Yep, that’s right, Kenny G! The last piece of my staging puzzle is now complete with Kenny G playing the saxophone on light jazz 95.5 FM for prospective buyers. I picture it like those crazy guys playing the flute for snakes that come out of the woven baskets. You know what I mean? However the crazy guy is Kenny G with the woven baskets being buyers pockets and of course the snakes being money. Play on Kenny!

Recently, I have been trying to run my real estate business a lot more efficiently and cost effective. As you may know, I have a flipping company that I manage under the LLC of Nuff Said Enterprises. On average, I buy and sell (flip) three homes a month and have three full time contractors that I employ. Needless to say that this keeps me extremely busy.

I think there is a lot of synergy with the flipping aspect of my job and how I can provide a lot more service for clients that are looking to buy or sell a house. I mean if you really think about it, it’s all marketing that I do. I take a neglected property and rehab it to sell for top dollar in the current market. I’m kind of going on a tangent here, but the point I want to get to is how I can leverage my flipping business to provide the best service for my clients.

In doing so, I’m working on value engineering some solutions with different company’s to get the best deals on appliances, tile, carpet, granite, accessories, etc. This will allow me to keep costs at a minimum and also be able to provide the same deals to my real estate clients. By doing this and being able to provide the contractor services and staging aspects, I’m hoping to parlay it into the best real estate service possible. Any other thoughts on this or how else to improve? Thanks!

You have probably seen those string emails that ask you some random questions about yourself. You then proceed to answer a bunch of questions and then forward it to your friends and family to see how much they really know you. You know those emails? Well, that’s my inspiration for today’s post. I thought I’d list 3 random things that I’m good at and 3 things that I’m not so good at. Here goes…

3 Things I’m Good At

1. Picking out ripe avocados – It’s always bright green in the middle!
2. Remembering to put the toilet seat down – random I know, but hey I just remember.
3. That sequence game we played over Thanksgiving…MVP

3 Things I’m Not Good At

1. Getting plants to live – I doubt a biosphere in my backyard could keep them alive
2. Locking the doors before I leave the house – my wife has don’t forget post-its on the doors
3. Spelling – If you read my blog you know this one

Have a great day!

Check out this beautiful rainbow outside my home in Gilbert.

I usually don’t post too many articles, but I came across this one and thought that we all need some positive thinking during these current economic times.

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON | Posted Thursday, October 30, 2008

After the September financial meltdown, many abroad, and some at home, immediately – and with undisguised glee – blamed America’s problems on cowboy excess and forecast the end of American global influence. But while those opportunistic critics had a point that reckless Americans had taken on far more debt than they should, the growing global economic downturn may well hurt others far more than the United States.

We got into this mess not because the American political system was flawed or because its free market system was stagnant. The problem was that after some six years of uninterrupted growth, human greed drove us to demand even more than we had earned. Republicans let fast-talking Wall Street gurus gamble their firms into oblivion. Democrats allowed politically correct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bureaucrats to siphon off bonuses while guaranteeing loans to millions who had no business taking out a mortgage.

Will Drill

We, the people, ran up credit cards, borrowed for overpriced houses and drove gas-guzzling cars fueled by high-priced imported fuel. The result was a national-debt flu – but not a depression cancer – that sickened an otherwise healthy host. Why then would America in recession still be in better shape than others? First, oil prices are crashing. That will soon save us hundreds of billions in imported-fuel expenses – while denying our overextended enemies in Russia, as well as in Iran, Venezuela and others in the OPEC cartel, half of their accustomed cash to cause trouble.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is increasing natural-gas production; is likely to increase drilling offshore; will all but certainly soon build more nuclear power, wind and solar plants; and is sitting on the world’s largest coal reserves. A new generation of hybrid, electric and flex-fuel cars are on the horizon that could even shave off more from our imported-fuel bills.

Second, we are already way ahead of the rest of the world in dealing with toxic debt. Western Europe is discovering that its banks lent more against their reserves than did their U.S. counterparts. European real estate was often more inflated than our own.

Young(er) Americans

Bankers in Frankfurt, London and Paris are looking at trillions of dollars in uncollectible euro loans throughout Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe. Most of our toxic debt was at least owed as mortgages by fellow Americans; far more of Europe’s is owed by those outside the European Union. Even when the United States is reeling from financial panic, foreign investment continues to flow into America; the dollar, meanwhile, is climbing against the euro. China’s export-driven and Russia’s energy economies are in crisis. They may have hundreds of billions in dollar reserves, but as the world energy and consumer economies slow, both countries lack our institutions, infrastructure and broad flexibility to easily rebound.

Third, the United States is still growing as the population of Europe shrinks. The populations of Japan and China both age at a faster rate than America’s does. Russia faces the perfect storm of a declining, aging and increasingly unhealthy population. The result is that America can much more easily grow itself out of a housing glut.

Fourth, the war in Iraq is no longer even a war in a traditional sense. Four times as many Americans were murdered just in the city of Chicago at peace in July than all those Americans who were killed in Iraq at war in the same period. The cost of deploying American troops in Iraq is nearing the expense to station them elsewhere abroad. As Iraqis continue to take over additional provinces, the American presence will further shrink.

There are also long-term reasons to believe the United States will better weather the current storm. We are a transparent society that blares out problems, affixes blame and then fights publicly over solutions. Japan’s real estate meltdown of the 1990s took years to correct, given the emphasis on secrecy and shame within Japanese financial circles. The 50 states of a federal United States – some of them individually among the world’s top 20 economies – are also far better integrated than the 27 countries of the European Union. American banks are subject to uniform national policy and are forced to act in concert.

In contrast, British, French and German lending institutions are often unwilling to bail out other countries, and compete with each other to attract scarce capital in times of crisis.

Just A Reminder

The U.S. military remains far stronger – and more battle-hardened – than the rest of the world’s armed forces combined. Rogue nations and terrorists try to take advantage of economic uncertainty, but America remains the best-defended democracy in the world. The current financial crisis has startled America from a hypnotic trance of self-indulgence and irresponsibility. But as we return to American fundamentals, we may discover that our political, social and economic system – despite all the current election-cycle hysteria – is still by far the most resilient in the world.

How odd that it took a financial catastrophe to remind us of that.

© 2008 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

This post comes from my MLS provider, Diverse Solutions. Apparently they were bored one day and decided to search their database for the listing that has the most photos. The winner was a property in Jacksonville Florida with 121, however a condo in Scottsdale came in second at 106 photos. The kicker is that the condo is only 1,036 square feet, meaning that it has more than 1 photo for every 10 square feet. Oh, I’m not done yet…the condo is just a rental. Check out the link if you want, here.

Regardless of the ‘overkill’ of photos, it’s waaay better than zero!