Tulia has an interesting new real estate search tool that places photos of either the most expensive, least expensive, newest listings or oldest listings on a Google map. This makes for an interesting new way to look at real estate with in a specific city. Check out Trulia Snapshot.

This link is to a terrific Newsweek article discussing one benefit coming out of the mortgage crash & crunch – financial literacy. I think this commentary points to the necessity of each of us acting financially responsible and seeking help where needed. I thought you would enjoy reading the piece:

Clues for the Clueless - The mortgage crisis may create momentum for improving our financial literacy. It’s about time.

I just took a test drive of a fantastic mapping application called Policy Map. It tracks real estate (my favorite), neighborhood conditions, mortgage orientations, education, money and income, demographics, owners and renters, jobs, energy and even presidential election data. Just enter you area and click on the statistic you desire. You will receive a heat map describing the data for your specific location. This is a great way to look at the demographics in a specific location.

A good friend and past client just sent me this National Public Radio podcast that explains how the Liquidity Crisis was born. I had listened to this on the radio the other day. It gives a real ground level, human perspective of how we ended up where we are today.

You can download the pod cast for $.95 or listen to it for free online. It is 1 hour long but worth the time spent if you want to understand why the liquidity crisis occurred and who it affects. Click the link below and give it a listen.

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=355

I wanted to also thank my client who sent me this pod cast link. In his e-mail he said that this pod cast helped him to have a much more in-depth understanding of the Liquidity Crisis. His contact gave me a chance to reflect in this post and also gave me some more in-depth thinking about why our clients have fared so well in this crisis. The good thing I see about the Liquidity Crisis is that it has gotten our clients to take a closer look at their finances.

For years, we have been offering our clients financial help when buying and selling property. We did this because we could see how easy it could be for a buyer or seller to betray their financial concerns in a transaction without even knowing they had. I believe this is why my clients have prospered during this crisis while I have watched other home buyers and sellers suffer. As I have long said, “Real estate agents must be competent to care for all of their clients concerns.” Thus, as stated in the previous posting called, Guidance Verses Advice: Which Is A Philosophical Standard Of Care, this is why I distinguish myself as real estate advisor not as a typical realtor. The tactic of making a real estate transaction is simple and often fairly standardized, but creating strategies that care for your client’s futures and putting them in a better situation after the transaction than before is a completely different story.

Boomer 411 has just released a new version of their site. Beyond the nice new color scheme, The new site has some great new features such as a questions and answers section and the ability to increase the font size of the articles for those that like reading larger print.

Many people have asked me why I take such an interest in Boomer 411. I believe that the average Baby Boomer has not saved enough money for their retirement. As I recently state in a posting, The Retirement Drum Beat Gets Louder, the average retirement savings for Baby Boomer’s is less than $50,000. This means that there are many Baby Boomer’s that need help. This fact will affect not only the Boomer’s, but it will have a significant impact on the children of the Boomer’s and the US economy as a whole.

To illustrate why I am interested in the Boomer population I have compiled a series of links to relevant articles about the boomer population. Read below and then let me know how you think the situation of this large demographic will affect the situation of our country as a whole. So, I congratulate and applaud Boomer 411 for doing something to help the Baby Boomer population!

Links to Baby Boomer Articles:

Ben Stein How Not to Ruin Your Life: Living Hand to Mouth — and Barely Getting By

Are Baby Boomers Financially Prepared for Retirement?

Net Worths and Retirement Savings of Baby Boomers

The Big Squeeze

Baby boomers turning 50 must face hard facts

Seven in Ten Baby Boomers Now Less Confident Their Retirement Savings Will Last

Retiring Baby Boomers’ Home Equity Under Valued

The baby boom generation and aggregate savings - includes article about use of Survey of Consumer Finances to calculate savings rates

Thanks Joshua Davis for this photo

I just read this article in the San Francisco Chronicle called Retirement Money Wories Mount for Workers. I am finding it interesting that the media is finally picking up on the fact that the average American does not save enough money for their retirement needs. The United States Department of Labor did a study on the retirement accounts of Baby Boomer’s back in 2005. As stated in their analysis…

There was at least one retirement account in 57 percent of the households. The average or mean amount in the retirement accounts was $49,944, but the standard deviation was $174,193, suggesting that the dollar amount held in retirement accounts varies widely by individual households. The median amount held in retirement accounts–$2,000–provides another indication of the wide variation in the amounts held by households.

This means that the average Baby Boomer has the ability to generate $1,960 in income per year in a safe 4% investment. I don’t know about you, but I could not live off of $1,960 a year. For an individual to generate annual retirement income of $72,673 (which is the average annual income of the Baby Boomer Population) they would need $1,816,825 in retirement at 4%. This shows that there is a lot of suffering ahead for those Baby Boomer’s that just don’t have enough and don’t have enough time to accumulate it.

I have found that retirement is a long term conversation that many people either avoid (they decide living in the present is more important than thinking about the future) until it is too late or they do not constantly and explicitly hold their retirement concerns when making important decisions that will affect their retirement futures. Either way people end up in the same place with not enough money for retirement and not enough time to do anything about it. Retirement should be an immediate concern that we are explicit about when making large financial decisions. This is because we cannot escape the mechanics of the time value of money any more than we can escape gravity.

This can be a grim subject, which is why I think the media has avoided it for so long. Yet, it can also be an enlightening conversation about how we can plan our futures so that we take care of our retirement concerns. I believe the saying, “Live long and prosper” needs to be updated to, “Plan to live long and prosper!”.

I just read an article posted on The Real Estate Bloggers stating that Zip Realty an online discount real estate firm based in Emeryville, California just had a first quarter 2008 loss of 7.2 million dollars. It does not surprise me.

Don’t get me wrong, I applaud the real estate firms that are using new technological tools of communication to drop the cost of a real estate transaction. Yet, I see the biggest problem is not the technology, but it is in the lessening of service with the lessening of fees. I have had many transactions with discounted brokers and I have found that throughout the transactions they are constantly trying to cut their cost even if it is not in the best interests of their clients. They consistently attempt to save time or cut corners. I don’t think they are bad people, but they have to discount their services and increase their volume of transactions in order to make a living. My question is does this model best benefit the consumer? I would say that that as illustrated by Zip Realty’s large losses it does not.

As our market shifted, so did the total volume of transactions. As regional volume diminished the ones most effected were those who counted on it. Through our volatile market we are also seeing a shift where buyers and sellers are needing more powerful advice in order to take care of all their concerns. Thus, discounted brokers are being suffocated in both directions. The less volume means less revenue on an already slim budget. The increased care needed means that they cannot compete with the more robust services that full service agents provide. There is now a lack of efficiency in the market that makes a cookie cutter approach to buying and selling real estate obsolete. Gone are the days of putting a sign in the front yard at 9:00am and having hoards of buyers by 12:00pm.

I am all for cost conservation, but I have found that I make and save my clients far more money through our complete services then I would by giving back some of my commission. Dropping margins only puts agents and their clients at odds with each other in a time where the customer needs more help than ever before if they want to avoid unwanted consequences in a vastly changing marketplace. I believe that buyers and sellers need top notch service in order to gain competitive advantage. Sellers need heightened property visibility and superior strategies for selling their homes in a slowing market. Buyer’s need knowledgeable agents who can make powerful observations and assessments. They both need a competent adviser who can offer them the capacity to get the best deal possible.