How do you know if your business is headed for a crash? Will your income fall off a cliff in 60 to 90 days or will you keep your momentum?
Before there were reliable Seismometers, earthquakes were even more destructive than they are today. Entire cities were built on fault lines and there would be no warning before destruction would ensue. Before tornado sirens, tornadoes would hit and no one would have time to hide in cellars and basements. There was no warning to take action. Before planes and pilots had the ability to detect and report turbulence to the planes around them, turbulence would seemingly come out of nowhere and surprise the passengers, wreck their lunch trays, and freak everyone out. Now they have on-board weather radar and better reporting so they can warn everyone and steer around the disturbances.
Fortunately, we now have seismometers, tornado sirens and turbulence indicators, but what about your early warning signs? How do you know when you’re heading for a crash before you’re actually experiencing turbulence, earthquakes or a tornado to your own income stream?
Five early warning signs you’re headed for a crash
Warning Sign: you’re blaming everyone and everything for your lack of momentum
The blame could be put on market conditions, your broker, lack of inventory, higher interest rates or what party is in office.
Solution
Put down your ‘blame-thrower’ and embrace these affirmations:
“If it’s meant to be, it’s up to me!” and “I’m a do-er, I do things now, I get things done!”
Warning Sign: You’re not exercising
If you’re experiencing a lack of energy or feeling depressed or unmotivated, it could be because you’ve stopped your work out routine.
Solution
There’s an African proverb that says: “When you pray, move your feet!” Get back to exercising, but make it even better for your business. Join OrangeTheory, Zumba, CrossFit or form a walking club in your neighborhood. Being around other people gives you an opportunity to talk about real estate while you’re getting back on your exercise routine!
Warning Sign: You’re not following a profit-driven schedule
Hoping, waiting or speculating for your next few transactions is not a plan. Your daily, profit-driven schedule must include proactive lead generation, furiously fast lead follow-up, pre-qualifying, presenting, negotiating and closing.
Solution
Set a specific, short-term goal of generating new, pre-qualified appointments and leads. If you need three new listings in the next 30 days, your short-term goal is to set at least one new listing appointment this week. What are you doing today to achieve that goal?
Warning Sign: The overconsumption of negative news
You could also call this one the association with negative people or incessantly doom-scrolling. How do you feel when you spend your time this way?
Solution
Follow a media-free morning or media-free day. Unless what you’re watching or listening to is in support of your powerful mindset or providing you valuable market or business knowledge, step away from that media!
Warning Sign: You’re not making enough contact with people ready to transact
Are you conflict-avoiding, contact-avoiding and hiding out from potential business?
Solution
Are you in a position to hear the word ‘no’ every day, so you can hear the word ‘yes’ more often? If not, you’re not having enough conversations about real estate. You must make a minimum number of contacts every day in order to meet or exceed your goals. If you have to do 18 transactions this year, you must make 18 contacts every workday, until your skill drives that ratio down to a lower number.
Follow these solutions to your early warning signs and soon you’ll be back on track and ready to take on the world. Don’t ignore your early warning signs, if you do then you’ll have a big crash ahead!
Tim and Julie Harris host a podcast for real estate professionals. Tim and Julie have been real estate coaches for more than two decades, coaching the top agents in the country through different types of markets.
In our latest real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with Ivan Levchenko from iGMS.
Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Ivan Levchenko, and I’m a co-founder and the CEO of iGMS, a cloud-based vacation rental management software for hosts and property management companies. I’m an entrepreneur by nature and have built business projects from scratch in the B2B and B2C sectors, growing companies from 5 to 150 people. I’m also a host myself and, so, many of my expertise lies in the short-term rental market.
What problem does your product/service solve?
As a host, I’ve found that there are many time-consuming, routine tasks relating to the vacation rental industry that can actually be automated to help fellow hosts and property management companies work more efficiently. iGMS vacation rental software helps hosts to handle these day-to-day business activities and consequently scale their business.
Our major features include automated messaging, guest reviews, cleaning and team management, and financial reporting. Our tools take the headache out of listing on multiple platforms as hosts can manage all of their Airbnb, HomeAway & Vrbo accounts via one single interface.
What are you most excited about right now?
I’m most excited about developing our vacation rental software further and equipping it with the best functionality. Our roadmap for 2020 includes integration with Booking.com and a direct booking engine. We’re also going to pay attention to developing our API so that more partners can integrate.
The industry has grown tremendously and that really inspires and motivates me. I want to help our clients to enjoy the same growth so that they too can take their business to the next level. Some of our clients have tripled their number of properties in a year. That’s so exciting and we’re proud of their results!
What’s next for you?
In short, our vacation rental software wants to become the one-stop-shop with more integrations to cover the full scope of activities and automation for hosts. Our dedicated R&D team is working on developing AI and machine-learning solutions (we don’t want to do just scripts like most companies, but real AI). This will allow property managers to automate business processes to the max, as well as reduce the risks associated with human error.
The world of technology is changing every day. If you don’t embrace the changes, your business is doomed. There are hundreds of old-school PMS solutions that are already struggling as they don’t meet the new customer requirements. We certainly plan to stay ahead of the curve and will continue to do our best to support our clients with their arising needs.
What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?
First thing, I’m passionate about my children and family. My life changed dramatically when my children were born and I really try to spend as much time as possible with my family. I like to take them out into the countryside and on hiking trips. I spend all evenings now only in the circle of my loved ones.
I’m also passionate about nature and our planet. Last summer, after a cruise to Alaska, I was deeply shocked at what Alaska’s largest glacier turned into: from a huge snow-white mountain to a small black hillock. It’s horrifying how many whales died from a lack of plankton and by how much the salmon were reduced. All of this happened in just 15 years!
I’m also concerned about plastic pollution. In our family, we not only refuse to use any plastic bags, but also don’t buy any plastic household utensils, including furniture that contain plastic materials.
We all choose and vote for what we want to support. If more people will buy eco-friendly and organic products, fewer harmful products will get produced that will just destroy our planet. Ultimately, for economic reasons, manufacturers will have to adapt to the new demand and change their technologies to what’s now relevant to the market.
Thanks to Ivan for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, find him on LinkedIn here.
We’re constantly looking for great real estate tech entrepreneurs to feature. If that’s you, please read this post — then drop me a line (drew @ geekestatelabs dot com).
A character doesn’t become entirely evil or wrong just by virtue of being the villain. Villains suffer the brunt of it all; their primary intentions usually revolve around acts to kill, destroy, and wreak havoc.
Sometimes, it’s okay to write off these characters. Other times, it’s worthwhile to gauge things from a different perspective. After all, according to a famous quote, every villain is a hero, given a different context.
Are there times villains were right even once? Yes. One of my favorite instances is Scar from The Lion King, who believed Simba didn’t deserve to be king just because he was the firstborn son of Mufasa. Although he’s bad (and perfectly good at it), he was right.
There are others, too.
1. Chef Skinner From Ratatouille
Photo Credit: Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios.
You might remember the angry, possibly sadistic head chef from the Pixar animated film Ratatouille. One probably shouldn’t trust a man named Skinner, and he may have been wrong about many things, but he wasn’t wrong about not letting rats in the kitchen.
1. Chef Skinner From Ratatouille
Photo Credit: Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios.
Some people don’t even like another human in the kitchen while they cook, let alone a rodent. Even though he did it for selfish, dishonorable reasons, many people think Chef Skinner was right to keep Remy, the enthusiastic rat, out.
2. Magneto From X-Men
Photo Credit: Twentieth Century Fox.
Either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain, eh? Magneto is the bane of the X-Men – but he wasn’t born with dreams of being evil.
2. Magneto From X-Men
Photo Credit: Twentieth Century Fox.
Nine times out of ten, he starts with a good motive, a righteous cause. But the line between good and evil is so thin that he slips into becoming the monster he hoped to destroy. According to someone, “He doesn’t want justice. He wants revenge. And that’s the narrow line that separates a hero from a villain.”
3. Shere Khan From The Jungle Book
Photo Credit: Walt Disney Animation Studios.
In my books, a close second to Scar is Shere Khan, the formidable tiger in the animated Disney film The Jungle Book.
3. Shere Khan From The Jungle Book
Photo Credit: Walt Disney Animation Studios.
When Bagheera finds Mowgli, a human baby, in the jungle, she takes him to a mother wolf so she can care for him. Shere Khan, who knows the damage humans are capable of and once did to the jungle, warns everyone and tries to chase out Mowgli – for this, he’s seen as the bad guy. But I’m sure you’d see his point if you’ve seen the film to the end.
4. Zemo From Captain America: Civil War
Photo Credit: Marvel Studios.
A popular meme shows the Avengers have saved the world…after destroying everything in it. The irony, huh? Baron Helmut Zemo is a Sokovian nobleman and a major antagonist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Was he to blame for who he became? A surprising number of people debate this.
4. Zemo From Captain America: Civil War
Photo Credit: Marvel Studios.
Losing your family in warfare and finding their bodies later, while the ones you considered responsible returned home safely, is enough to turn anyone into a Thanos. And although he wanted the right thing – to avenge his family, vengeance consumed him.
5. Dr. Jake Houseman in Dirty Dancing
Photo Credit: Vestron Pictures.
All fathers want to do is to protect, even when it seems like they are taking it “too far,”, especially with their daughters. I can think of some instances myself, but let’s keep the spotlight on Dr. Jake Houseman of Dirty Dancing. Fans think he wasn’t wrong to be wary of a guy in his mid-20s hanging around his teenage daughter. I agree.
6. Loki From the MCU
Get in here, Marvel geeks (draw out a seat for yourself). One believes “Loki wasn’t wrong about Thor being unfit to rule Asgard.” Adding, “In the end, Valkyrie ended up ruling while Thor ate Cheetos.”
6. Loki From the MCU
Photo Credit: Marvel Studios.
One might laugh about that – or see sense in it. Thor, or the mighty Thor, was entitled, self-absorbed, and perhaps unfit to be a ruler.
7. Count Dooku From Star Wars
Photo Credit: Lucasfilm.
Here’s another example of an antagonist who strayed too far from their original intentions. Even though good ideals guided him, the dark side corrupted him, and he became what he fought to get rid of. Still, fans give him his flowers. One said, “Count Dooku is an elegant, criminally underrated character.”
8. Tom Cat From Tom & Jerry
Photo Credit: American Broadcasting Company.
Tom Cat (yes, he has a surname) may have never said a word in the cartoons, but still, we all understood his pain. He was the villain for always pursuing and trying to hurt Jerry, but he was only doing his job. Once you looked beneath the cute mouse façade, Jerry was the devil.
9. Killmonger From Black Panther
Photo Credit: Disney/Marvel Studios.
This one is a hot debate involving cultures, racism, and colonization. But it revolves around the primary question? Was Killmonger the true villain? Someone felt like “they were grasping at straws to make Killmonger look bad in Black Panther.”
9. Killmonger From Black Panther
Photo Credit: Disney/Marvel Studios.
Many believe his motivation was right. One countered, saying, “He’s trained in propaganda and deception, and all his noble talk about Wakanda helping the world his manipulations.” As I said, hot debate.
10. Rodrick From The Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Photo Credit: Twentieth Century Fox.
“It’s ironic when you grow up and realize Rodrick is the least toxic person in the family,” someone said. Dude just wanted to play in his rock band, Löded Diper, and occasionally get on Greg’s nerves. Which brother doesn’t? Often, his opinions of Greg and best friend Rowley Jefferson weren’t wrong!
Source: Reddit.
10 Crazy Good Movies Where Women Are the Bad Guys
Image Credit: Lionsgate
Are you looking for a movie night with a twist? Look no further than these Reddit-voted top ten films where women take on the destructive bad guy role.
10 Crazy Good Movies Where Women Are the Bad Guys
15 Cover Songs that are Better than the Original
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.
Sometimes, a cover of a song ends up doing far better than the original. Some covers are so good that we didn’t even realize the cover version wasn’t actually the original.
15 Cover Songs that are Better than the Original
These 11 Movies Are So Bad You’ll Wish You Could Unsee Them
Photo Credit: Lightstorm Entertainment / TSG Entertainment II
The movies we love best are a combination of excellent characters, plots, stories and cinematography. But if these factors can make great movies, they can also make terrible movies—the ones that make people cringe, the ones we swear they’ll never watch again.
These 11 Movies Are So Bad You’ll Wish You Could Unsee Them
10 Celebrities Who Are Universally Disliked
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.
People will always have preferences and something to say about celebrities. What you might love may not be the same for others. Whether it’s about their past behaviors, legal issues, or feuds with other celebrities, here is a list of celebrities people just cannot stand.
10 Celebrities Who Are Universally Disliked
25 Extraordinary Sequels and Remakes That Outshine the Originals
Image Credit: Rosebud Releasing Corporation
Every once in a while, a movie sequel or remake surpasses the original film. After polling the internet, “Name a single movie where the sequel or remake was better than the original?” Here are the top-voted responses.
25 Extraordinary Sequels and Remakes That Outshine the Originals
At least, his home is pretty average, as far as movie star properties go. Diesel, bought this Hollywood Hills 2 bedroom/3 bathroom house in 2000 for just $562,500. Vin Diesel previously tried to sell the home for $1.3 million in 2013 and rented it out prior to that. Now it’s on the market for $1.395 million.
While the home may be lacking the 5+ bedrooms, basement bowling alleys, and ballroom-sized living rooms of most celeb crash pads, it still has some great features to help get you past the slightly dated bathrooms. It has beautiful hardwood floors throughout, as well as skylights and a beamed ceiling. Plus there’s also a pool out back. Not bad.
Zillow Group Inc. is offering mortgages with just a 1% down payment as it tries to attract house hunters facing the most-unaffordable market in almost four decades.
The 1% down payment program is even lower than Freddie Mac’s best of 3%, with Zillow offering to pay 2% of the down payment at closing, according to a statement Thursday.
It comes after mortgage rates in the US hit a 22-year high Thursday, further squeezing would-be homebuyers. The average for a 30-year, fixed loan was 7.23%, the highest since May 2001 and up from 7.09% last week, Freddie Mac said in a statement Thursday.
The 1% offering comes as Zillow looks to grow its customer base and may “even the playing field with larger competitors,” Bloomberg Intelligence said, but it will likely hurt margins and paying 2% at closing could prove costly in the long term.
Zillow is offering the new program in Arizona first before expanding to other markets. The company shuttered a similarly ambitious foray into home flipping in 2021 after steep losses.
After more than 2 weeks of relentless selling that took yields to their highest levels since 2007, bonds have increasingly been sitting on dry powder–at least from a technical standpoint. Today’s PMI data provided the spark. The explosion of bond buying began in Europe where PMIs were much weaker across the board in the services sector. US numbers weren’t as bad by comparison, but far enough below consensus to greenlight the rally. Interestingly, and perhaps importantly, the rally didn’t let up ahead of the 20yr Treasury auction, but the auction was decent nonetheless. This increases the temptation to conclude “the top is in” for rates, but that top is only as good as the forthcoming data is bad. We also need to see if Powell has anything interesting to say on Friday (or at least if enough of the market was waiting on Jackson Hole before making even bigger moves).
S&P Global PMI
Services: 51.0 vs 52.2 f’cast, 52.3 prev
Manufacturing: 47.0 vs 49.3 f’cast, 49.0 prev
09:33 AM
Big gains on EU PMI data. 10yr down 9bps at 4.24 and MBS up nearly half a point.
12:58 PM
Sideways at stronger levels, despite some volatility in MBS due to illiquidity. UMBS up half a point and 10yr yields down 12.4bps at 4.208
03:59 PM
10yr down 15bps at lows of the day, 4.184. MBS up 18 ticks (.56).
Download our mobile app to get alerts for MBS Commentary and streaming MBS and Treasury prices.
Average mortgage rates for 30-year and 15-year mortgages fell to all-time lows this week, Freddie Mac said in a report on Thursday.
The 30-year average is 2.86%, breaking the prior low of 2.88% set in the first week of August, and the 15-year average is 2.37%, beating last week’s record low of 2.42%, the mortgage financier said.
The rates are driving demand in the housing market, helping to counter-balance an economic slowdown that showed signs of worsening after the COVID-19 pandemic flared in some of the nation’s largest states in recent months, said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist.
U.S. home sales surged at a record pace in June and July as purchases that were delayed during pandemic lockdowns were shifted later in the year.
Seasonally adjusted existing-home sales jumped 25% in July, beating the prior record monthly gain of 21% set in June, the National Association of Realtors said in an Aug. 21 report.
The supply of homes on the market was the lowest for any July since NAR started tracking the data about five decades ago, said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.
Existing home sales in 2020 likely will total 5.4 million, a gain of 1.1% from last year, Yun said. Sales of new houses probably will rise 17% to 800,000, Yun said.
Early in the pandemic, before it was clear the Federal Reserve’s intervention in the bond market would drive mortgage rates to all-time lows, Yun projected home sales in 2020 would plummet 15% this year.
“The buyers are coming in because of the low interest rates – that’s the No. 1 reason in my view,” Yun said in an interview.
PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) – According to Freddie Mac, mortgage rates have hit a 22-year high this week at 7.23%. The higher interest rates could be pricing out new homebuyers in the Valley.
Alexz Jones with Bison Ventures said if you can afford it, you should buy now and not wait until the rates go back down. “My advice is get into the door now; it’s not the forever home. We know rates will drop, we don’t know when, we don’t know how much,” he explained.
There is still some demand since the inventory is so low in Arizona, but it is not the same feeding frenzy sellers experienced when the rates were much lower. Jones advises buyers who can afford it to get back into the game and build equity, then refinance when rates get lower. “For people putting minimum down, or payment assistance program, this is still your time to shine because of the other people are scared of their interest rates,” he explained.
In the Phoenix metro area, the average non-mortgage debt is slightly higher, at $40,484.
He says the lower inventory could partly be attributed to sellers not wanting to return to buying a home with these higher rates.
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The long awaited Fed announcement came yesterday to little fanfare, perhaps because market pundits were fretting about a taper for so long that the actual event was lackluster.
The Federal Reserve announced yesterday that it would taper its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities beginning in January.
Instead of buying $40 billion in agency MBS each month, the Fed will buy $35 billion. They will also reduce their monthly purchases of longer-term Treasury securities from $45 billion to $40 billion.
In other words, they’ll be pledging $75 billion a month in monetary accommodation instead of $85 billion, with further cuts expected as time goes on.
They chose to take action because the economy seems to be getting back on track, with labor market conditions improving the unemployment beginning to decline.
Of course, we’re still not out of the woods, which explains the very modest reduction in Fed purchases.
Further, the Fed noted that its “sizable and still-increasing holdings” of mortgage securities and Treasuries should keep downward pressure on home loan interest rates.
How Did Mortgage Rates React to the Taper News?
At first glance, mortgage rates did rise a bit, but not by much. Instead of a rate of 4.625% on a 30-year fixed mortgage, that rate might be 4.75% instead.
Or the fees for the same rate might be a little bit higher. In reality, the taper won’t make or break any mortgage applications.
When it comes down to it, this taper was a long time coming, so the pricing is already factored in mostly.
After all, mortgage rates had already climbed more than 1% from their record lows reached about a year ago, so the damage was already done.
Another thing to consider is that mortgage origination volume is down considerably from recent levels.
When mortgage rates were hovering near all-time lows, refinance activity was humming. But since then it has fallen substantially.
Just take the latest mortgage application report from the Mortgage Bankers Association, which noted that weekly mortgage apps fell to their lowest point in more than 12 years last week.
Both purchases and refinance applications have taken a hit thanks to the higher mortgage rates, higher home prices, lack of inventory, and seasonal conditions.
So if we do the math, far fewer loan applications and funded loans means there will be a lot less mortgage-backed securities out there.
With the Fed still pledging to purchase $35 billion a month, they could in fact wind up buying a larger share of a smaller pool, thereby keeping even more downward pressure on mortgage rates than before the taper.
All that said it might not be much of an event, aside from the next few days as everyone panics slightly about the news and uncertainty.
Instead, perhaps mortgage rate movement will be dictated by the fundamentals again, like the state of the economy.
Unfortunately, as more good economic news comes down the pipe, mortgage rates will likely rise, which is the way it has always been and should be.
There are also the new credit score adjustments to worry about for conforming mortgages, which could easily outweigh the effects of continued tapering.
70% of the Country Remained Affordable in Q3
Wondering how the recent mortgage rate increases are affecting housing affordability?
During the third quarter, the average interest rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage was 4.4%, low enough for more than 70% of the country to be deemed affordable, per Freddie Mac.
However, only 36% of the West was affordable by that measure, compared to ALL of the cheaper North Central region of the United States.
And if mortgage rates rise to 5%, only 63% of the country will be affordable, assuming home prices and income remain constant, which they probably won’t.
Assuming rates rise to 6%, roughly 55% of the nation would be affordable, and at 7%, that figure drops to 35%. Not good.
So let’s hope mortgage rates stay low for a lot longer, or else we’ve got a problem. Again.
The FTC’s administrative hearing on the deal is scheduled for July 12.
“Preliminary relief is warranted and necessary,” the FTC said in the complaint. “Should the Commission rule, after the full administrative proceeding, that the Acquisition is unlawful, reestablishing the status quo would be difficult, if not impossible, if the Acquisition has already occurred in the absence of preliminary relief.”
The FTC sued ICE to block the transaction in March on the premise that merging the country’s two largest providers of home mortgage loan origination systems and other key lender software tools will drive up costs, reduce innovation and reduce lenders’ options for the tools used to generate and service mortgages.
“ICE is fully confident in our position and look forward to presenting it in court,” the company said following the FTC’s suit against ICE. The company affirmed its plans to complete the acquisition in the third or fourth quarter of 2023.
In an effort to quell antitrust concerns regarding the merger, ICE and Black Knight amended the terms of their proposed deal to reduce Black Knight’s valuation to $11.8 billion — about 11% lower than its valuation when the agreement was announced last year.
Black Knight sold its loan origination system, Empower, to a subsidiary of Canada’s Constellation Software Inc. in March, prior to the FTC’s suit against ICE. The deal included its Exchange, LendingSpace and AIVA solutions.