Robert Abalos is the author of Investing in Land, the most widely sold real estate book in publishing history with sales in more than 91 countries around the world. This blog offers news and advice for real estate investors and land developers.
The only reason 1963 is cited is because new home sales figures only go back that far. 2011 was also the worst year for new home construction on record.
Where are the gurus who predicted in 2007 that all would be well by 2011?
One now widely discredited guru in the advertising for one of his 2006 seminars claimed that 2007 was "Your Last Chance" to get in on all the real estate bargains. All those foreclosures were going to get quickly scooped up and smart investors were going to make millions by 2008.
Since 2007, real estate prices in this guru's own local market has fallen another 25%. Some last chance, huh?
Investment gurus of all kinds, and especially the "Nothing Down" get-rich-quick in real estate type, sell nothing but optimism. There message is BUY NOW, THINK LATER. Real estate prices are always headed to the moon and if you are smart you will get in on their program---for $495 up front, of course.
The next time you consider buying ANY real estate book, home study course, seminar ticket or whatever, find out what the author was saying about real estate in 2004 and 2007-2008. Most real estate authors have websites these days, Twitter accounts, Facebook, and more.
Before you spend $295, $997, or $2,500 or more on some real estate investing course, find out how good a prognosticator your future instructor/teacher/guru really has been in the past.
If you get nothing but bullish sentiments both times you can see with your own eyes how good there 2012 predictions will be---which I'm sure are 1,000% bullish, brimming with nothing but blue skies and clear sailing ahead.
For the record, I was warning investors in both 2004 and 2007 NOT TO BUY properties.
I'm warning you still.
U.S. residential real estate is a bust until at least 2020. Basing a retirement plan or future income needs on single family home values is reckless and downright silly.
In fact, this book has sparked a new personal obsession. To find and research the original Blanding homes built for the famous Cary Grant film.
One of my favorite real estate movies of all time is the 1948 classic MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE. This extremely funny comedy is on the American Film Institute's 100 Years....100 Laughs list at #72. You can watch the entire film by clicking the link to YouTube.
The Mr. Blandings of the title is Jim Blandings, played by Cary Grant. He lives with his wife Muriel (Myrna Loy) and their two daughers in a tiny Manhattan apartment. Jim works in the advertising game and normally writes copy that drives others crazy. But one day Mr. Blanding is smitten with an advertisement for some homes in Connecticut and he is hooked, literally.
After buying a fixer-upper with the plan to rehab the place, the Blandings soon realize they are in far over their heads. Think Tom Hanks and Shelly Long in the 1986 comedy, THE MONEY PIT which recycled many of the jokes from BLANDINGS. Jim and Muriel make just about every mistake novice real estate investors make. Only in the film it's funny. In real life, it's heartbreaking.
Eventually the too-smooth-by-half lawyer friend of Jim (the brilliant Melvyn Douglas) enters the picture to help and only seems to make matters worse!
In the end of course, as it must in every 1940's era Hollywood film, everything works out for the Blandings. Jim's ultimate lesson, which he recites like a good ad man, should put chills up the spine of any experienced real estate rehabber:
"Some things you do buy with your heart."
YIKES!
What I learned from my new Los Angeles architecture book THAT I NEVER KNEW is that the Blandings home actually was built and still stands in Malibu Creek State Park. Here is the passage in the book.
Wikipedia says that 73 Blandings homes were built all around the United States as a promotion for the film. Some of these Connecticut Colonials were sold by raffles. Sixty of the homes were equipped with General Electric appliances and promoted by GE, an early example of cross promotion. The advertisement from this source is below.
I started doing some Internet searches to find pictures of the Blandings home for comparative purposes and found these from the film.
One blogger posted that this photograph is of the original movie set home in Malibu Creek State Park which is now used as an office.
I certainly will be visiting Malibu Creek State Park to visit this movie set myself. Films from M*A*S*H to PLANET OF THE APES were also filmed there.
Wiki lists sixty cities where Blandings Homes were built. If you know anything about a Blandings home in your city, please contact me at robertjabalos@gmail.com. A photograph would be amazing. A story even more fascinating. They just don't do movie promotions like this anymore!
I am working on a project concerning the National Environmental Policy Act (42 USC 4321, et. seq.) and Presidential Executive Order 13337.
I am seeking a legal researcher who has familiarity with civil engineering concepts and can do write up some briefs and other executive summaries on matters related to large scale industrial development projects.
This project should last 2-3 months. Compensation is by agreement in advance depending how much research you can do and when you can do it.
I am looking not just for a person who can do legal research but also has some familiarity with Federal environmental regulations and can coherently write about them, often with short deadlines. I am prepared to hire two part time workers if I can't find one full time person.
Other responsibilities of this position may include editing and proofreading documents, doing supplemental legal research beyond the two provisions described above, and other non-research assignments related to the completion of the project such as indexing and collating research documents.
My office is in downtown Seattle but face-to-face meetings are not essential so applicants beyond the Seattle area certainly qualify. This position does not involve travel of any kind.
Successful applicants will certainly be considered for future employment opportunities.
Please describe your work experience in an email to RobertJAbalos@gmail.com.
Do not send me emails with attachments. If you want to include a resume or some other document please copy-and-paste it within your email. Emails with attachments will not be opened.
If you walk around downtown Seattle for about ten minutes you can't help but notice all the ground floor retail space vacancies, especially for restaurants, coffee shops, and cafes. The number of empty storefronts is unprecedented.
Here are a series of photographs I took along Seattle's Third Avenue this week. THREE vacancies in just one block. This is not some distant commercial district but literally the city's downtown core just blocks from thirty large urban hotels, Pike Place Market, and the Washington State Convention Center.
So why all the vacancies?
Politicians like to talk about the "bad economy" as if it were a monster like Godzilla that ate up all the good jobs. Panda bears eat eucalyptus leaves. The Bad Economy eats jobs.
Sorry, but a bad economy is really little more than poor political choices that affect business owners and indirectly employees looking for jobs and real estate investors trying to lease out commercial space.
Just look at the business math for restaurant owners and the real estate investors that want to lease them space.
Washington State, for example, just raised the minimum wage for 2012 to $9.04 per hour. Unlike 44 other states, in Washington minimum wage workers receive the full hourly wage PLUS tips, in other words, no "Tip Credit."
Inevitably, when wage costs increase the number of employees decrease. Business owners aren't stupid. If the cost of labor per hour rises, simply decrease the number of hours you need to buy.
In other words, don't hire new workers or fire some that you already have.
70% of Washington State restaurant owners are cutting staff or reducing business hours. In other words, reducing the number of labor hours they have to buy.
What does all this mean? If you are a low skilled employee of a restaurant like a waitress or hostess you can make $20 per hour. But you are also trapped into a job where it is difficult to leave. Where else can a high school dropout earn a skilled machinist's wage? Plus you work harder and longer to earn that higher wage since there are, on average, fewer workers per shift.
If you are real estate owner trying to lease space, it means the mom-and-pop breakfast place that served eggs and coffee in the lobby for twenty years is now gone---along with all of its employees, tax revenues, and business dreams.
But the story gets worse.
Seattle, in an effort to prove it is a more progressive city than Portland or San Francisco, recently gave nearly all salaried workers five days of PAID sick leave per year. Only two other cities in America, Washington DC and SF, provide such a benefit. Once again, who really pays the cost for this public largess? It's not the Seattle City Council who passed the law. It's the employees who won't get hired and the business owners that will either pay yet another cost that cannot be passed on to their customers or go out of business.
It is now more expensive to park in downtown Seattle than in Manhattan in New York. Something is wrong there---especially if your business is trying to attract customers with cars such as suburban homeowners.
The epidemic of restaurant vacancies in downtown Seattle is no accident and this contagion is likely coming to a city, county, and village near you.
It's not Godzilla that is destroying the Seattle downtown commercial core, it's these monsters below.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here a few million "words" on the job report released today. Pick your source. Why should I write more criticisms of the unemployment numbers released today when thousands of other writers and commentators have already done so for me?
Until there is a gain in unemployment, a REAL gain, there will be no bottom to the U.S. residential real estate market. Realize the gain in employment is a sign of the bottom, not a catalyst for a new bull market.
When I listened to the lyrics, I realized how appropriate they are for the upcoming year. Here they are.
Came in from a rainy Thursday on the avenue Thought I heard you talking softly. I turned on the lights, the TV and the radio Still I can't escape the ghost of you What has happened to it all? Crazy, some'd say, Where is the life that I recognize? Gone away But I won't cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world, Somehow I have to find. And as I try to make my way, to the ordinary world I will learn to survive. Passion or coincidence once prompted you to say "Pride will tear us both apart" Well now pride's gone out the window cross the rooftops, run away, Left me in the vacuum of my heart. What is happening to me? Crazy, some'd say, Where is my friend when I need you most? Gone away But I won't cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world, Somehow I have to find. And as I try to make my way, to the ordinary world I will learn to survive. Papers in the roadside tell of suffering and greed Feared today, forgot tomorrow Ooh, here besides the news of holy war and holy need Ours is just a little sorrowed talk (Just blown away) And I don't But I won't cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world, Somehow I have to find. And as I try to make my way, to the ordinary world I will learn to survive. Every world, is my world (I will learn to survive) Any world, is my world (I will learn to survive) Any world, is my world Every world is my world
If your city is like mine, you see lots of cranes on the horizon building apartment buildings.
Five years ago, those same lots were destined for condo towers. But today those very same buildings with very little interior modification are being put up as apartment towers.
Do you see the problem?
The same out-of-whack forces that drove condo prices into the ground are destined to do the same for apartment building owners. Simply put, there are too many apartments being added to a supply of apartments that is already too large.
I know there's a bubble in apartment building valuations when I read that large NON-RESIDENTIAL developers are started to get the apartment itch. In Seattle the bubble is obvious even to the lamestream media which usually can't find an pink neon elephant in a conference room. When developers are chasing yields you know the bubble is in its last days.
Apartment REIT valuations are high---and headed higher. The industry currently reflects a P/E of 21, way too high for a real estate sector facing major headwinds. That said, most of the individual REIT charts look less than stellar. Here is EQR as an example.
What is the logic of apartment building ownership? Simple. People can no longer afford to buy homes or are unwilling to do so in previous numbers. Since people have to live somewhere, the choice is either rent or buy.
Sounds good, right? WRONG.
The first problem is that the number of households in the United States is shrinking. The growth rate has been NEGATIVE for FORTY YEARS.
In the 1970s, on average 1.7 million new households were created each year.
In the 1980s, the number fell to 1.3 million per year.
In the 1990s, down to 940,000 per year.
In the 2000s, down again to a mere 716,000.
Remember the issue is not population growth but the number of people living together in households.
In downtown Seattle where I live, for example, it is common to see three or four people living in one apartment due to the high cost of rent in the city. What does this mean? Demand for SOLO apartment living is not as high as could be estimated. Unless there are two, three, or four roommates/workers/employees available to fill each of those new and existing apartments you have a vacancy problem.
So 60% of the new apartments you see being built better have more than one person supporting the lease or the rent is likely not to be paid. NOT the way it is supposed to work for rental property investors.
I fully expect the apartment building bubble to grow and finally burst when either too much supply comes online (in late summer or fall 2012), when the economy dips again (in early 2013 after the U.S. Presidential election).
Of course, with historically low interest rates the moment condos are in demand those apartment buildings will begin languishing on the market. Remember 2004 and 2005 and all those FREE RENT incentives? The slightest loosening of underwriting standards will pop the apartment building bubble.
In the meantime, sell those buildings if you own them.
I am pleased to announce that my Los Angeles Investing in Land Live Seminar will take place at the following date and location:
Monday, April 30, 2012
9:30AM to 12:00 Noon
Century Plaza Towers
2029 Century Park East
Los Angeles, CA 90067
The seminar is FREE. The material covered is substantive and not some sales pitch for some other get-rich-quick program. Aside from my one book, I have no products or services to sell anyone.
If you want to attend this event, please send me an email to FreeAbalosSeminar@gmail.com with the words "Los Angeles" in the subject line.
What makes this seminar super exciting for me is a chance to finally visit Century City, the location of this seminar. I've been to Los Angeles many times but on this trip I want to explore one of the most famous planned "city within a city" developments in history.
Century City is the legendary 176-acre brainchild of genius developer William Zeckendorf. The entire complex, including the building where I will be giving my Investing in Land Live Seminar, was literally the backlot of the movie studio, Twentieth Century Fox. Or more specifically, the western backlot which was used for decades in a large number of Hollywood westerns.
Fox did have real estate development plans for the western backlot as early as 1957 but the financial losses from CLEOPATRA forced the company to sell 180-acres of land to Zeckendorf and his unlikely partner in the deal, ALCOA, the aluminum giant.
Zeckendorf then built Century City, his "city within a city" near the boundary of Beverly Hills.
Most people of my generation remember Century City because of the ABC Entertainment Center that was located there for many years, including the now demolished Shubert Theater.
If you have been watching TV and the movies over the last fifty years, you have seen Century City many, many times. If you want to get a good glimpse of what the original Century City looked liked, watch the 1972 science fiction film CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES starring Roddy McDowall and Ricardo Montalban. In the film, the entire "Ape Management" complex is literally Century City. All those street battles between apes and humans are fought on the plazas between Century City office buildings and retail shops.
For a more contemporary view of Century City, watch the 1988 action film DIE HARD starring Bruce Willis. His fictional battlefield, the Nakatomi Plaza building, is really Fox Plaza located in Century City. This 1987 addition to the original Zeckendorf blueprint and the surrounding streets in Century City can also be seen in the opening scenes of the 1994 action film SPEED starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock and also being blown up at the end of the 1999 drama FIGHT CLUB starring Brad Pitt.
After my lecture, I'm going to be exploring Century City IN DEPTH and anyone who wants to come along with me is welcome. I'm told fragments of the original Fox movie lot still exist and I'm determined to find them. I also want to visit certain movie sets from films as diverse as the 1967 comedy A GUIDE FOR THE MARRIED MAN starring the incredibly beautiful Inger Stevens and Walter Matthau as her bored husband determined to cheat on her(!!!) and even the bizarre spy thriller of the same year CAPRICE starring of all people Doris Day as a corporate executive battling industrial spies!
Again, the seminar and the tour are all FREE and I hope you can learn something about real estate and have some movie fun too.
The Marlborough Apartments is an 82-unit building in downtown Seattle. Built in 1927, this Gothic Revival architectural gem was purchased by a group on investors for $12.75 million in September 2010.
The new owners spent about $4 million on rehab costs and put the new Marlborough back on the rental roles in January 2011. By the middle of the summer, the building was fully leased.
The cash-on-cash calculation is an approximately (less friction costs) profit of $11.95 million on an investment of $16.75 million over fourteen months.
Or about 59.4% for the year. Of course, using leverage the actual return for these investors is much, much higher, well into triple digits in less than a year and a half.
Still, I wanted to see how they pulled off this stellar accomplishment. What lessons can be learned from their success?
I shot the video and photographs outside the Marlborough Apartments on very busy and noisy Boren Avenue in downtown Seattle. As you can see, the exterior of the building is gorgeous. Of particular note is the covered driveway which as far as I remember has been part of the building's original design. Here is an older picture of the Marlborough without all the shrubs and barriers setting off the street from the drive.
These investors made their money five ways and all real estate investors can apply the very same techniques whatever the size of the investments.
2. This was a foreclosure purchase. The previous owner had tried to convert the building to condos but got burned when the bubble burst. In other words, these investors bought cheap.
3. The exterior improvements to this building are not expensive but impressive. The dirty old Marlborough is clean and sharp again. You expect to see Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Cagney walking out the lobby. The place has a museum feel. The covered drive and the building's awning give this place a sense of class that others in the area lack.
5. They sold the building fully leased with a solid and growing cash flow statement. All the above Steps #1-4 above are really designed to affect Step #5 which is to get tenants in every unit paying above market rents so the value of the property can be maximized to the extreme.
When you read about real estate investment successes in your area, visit the locations and see for yourself what you can learn. Little details mean a great deal. For example, on the Marlborough there are two banners hung on the corners of the front facade. On many buildings these advertisements look cheesy and detract from the beauty of the building. In this case, the banners highlight the architecture of the Marlborough. Even the colors used on the banner is consistent with all the building's signage. Notice in the old picture of the Marlborough above the banners on the building are an awful garish green!
This is an impressive achievement and I'm sure there were lots of celebrations when the contract was signed. Super nice job.
For a long time I was confused about Twitter, how to use it, or what all those ### really meant. When I grew up people communicated over copper wires and if you weren't home when the phone rang you never knew who called.
I had a Twitter account. But honestly, it was like giving a five year old kid the keys to a Boeing 767. Nice toy, but how did it work?
Most of all, did this website really offer substantive benefits or was it merely just online playtime and fun and games by another name?
A reader of this website was kind enough to help me realize what ann amazing resource Twitter can be for investors and news junkies like myself.
This video below explains some basic Twitter functions. The speaker does a great job of explaining how Twitter works, teaching me some tricks I did not know.
Twitter is an absolutely wonderful means of learning news about people, places, and events.
The best way to think of Twitter is as a personal news feed. When you follow others, you can read their news. When you post, they get to read your news.
My primary use for Twitter is subscribing to massive numbers of official news feeds like from the Associated Press, U.S. State Department, Seattle Times newspaper, CNN, Fox News, CNBC, and dozens and dozens more. Instead of going to a single news site, say NBC.com, I can read the simultaneous feeds of NBC plus all the networks around the world.
Most people use Twitter for following their friends and their personal news. Some use it to follow the pseudo news generated by celebrity Twitters like Kim Kardashian or Ashton Kutcher. These are the same people who thrive on gossip magazines like The National Enquirer and People. Either of these functions can be lots of fun.
Twitter has enormous real estate implications, so many I'm going to be speaking about them more this coming year. The idea of being able to post FREE online and REAL TIME information about anything can literally revolutionize the industry.
For now, I hope you follow me on Twitter for the article links I post, especially to official government and industry websites and publications.
I am pleased to announce the addition of two new Investing in Land Live Seminars to my 2012 speaking tour.
Philadelphia, PA
Los Angeles, CA
All of my Investing in Land Live Seminars are FREE. Ticket information for all my seminars will be posted on my InvestingInLand website in a few days.
So far in 2012 I will be speaking in Chicago, Memphis, Cincinnati, Fargo, and Detroit. The addition of these two stops literally makes this new Investing in Land Live Seminar Tour coast-to-coast.
Despite this provision being overwhelmingly rejected by the voters of Seattle by referendum in 2009, the City Council last night held hearings on the idea---which, of course, makes little real sense since most of the members of the Council have already said they will vote for the ban.
The only problem with this report is that it is a sham.
NO ONE could read this report, including Mr. O'Brien, and conclude that any rational case has been made for a plastic bag ban in Seattle or anywhere else. This entire document is a series of non-sequitors written by someone without a clue how to do research, statistical correlation, or anything else except make political statements in favor of unproven science.
Given the fact I could raise about 250 objections to this piece of sloppy investigation, let's take three at random.
There is plastic in Puget Sound.
Yes, there is. BIG DEAL. Given the fact that plastics are and have been one of the most common substances on earth for nearly the past hundred years, you will find TRACE AMOUNTS of plastic everywhere. You find trace amounts in every human body. The Environment Washington report mentions plastic in Puget Sound but in no statistically significant amounts. The report wants to make the presence of plastic in the water as ominous and threatening but it's not. NOWHERE does this report mention any significant level of plastic in Puget Sound that would endanger human or animal life.
The proportions of plastic in Puget Sound water is microscopic, in parts per billion. No person or animal is harmed at such concentrations, nor does the report suggest a threshold of toxicity for plastic.
The plastic in Puget Sound comes from supermarket garbage bags.
This is the biggest lie in the report of all. There is no link proven or even attempted in the report between supermarket garbage bag plastic and plastic residue found in Puget Sound.
The author's of this report want you to believe Gil Grissom and his CSI team have conclusively linked through intensive chemical analysis like "Plastic DNA" supermarket bags to the plastic found in Puget Sound.
There is NO ANALYSIS in this report making such a claim. The idea that millions of plastic bags are migrating from landfills miles away into Puget Sound is ludicrous. Has any member of the Seattle City Council ever visited a landfill?
The almost certain causes of the plastic residue in the Sound are:
1. Decades of industrial production and manufacturing on the shores of the Sound now rotting.
2. Thousands of tons of plastic debris sunk and decaying at the bottom of the Sound.
3. Hundreds of tons of plastic debris added by boaters and consumers every year, things like soda bottles, food wrappers, etc.
Can the authors of the Environment Washington report please explain how tens of millions of plastic bags get into the Sound each year? HOW?
Plastic bag bans are accepted by the public.
There is no a single fact in the report that proves efficacy of a plastic bag ban beyond one year. NONE. The report even goes so far as to say this:
Fee programs and taxes can have multiple purposes. First, by establishing a price on disposable bags, governments can send a price signal to citizens to mo- tivate different behaviors. For example, in 2002 the Republic of Ireland established a15 Euro cent tax on plastic bags (roughly equivalent to about 28 U.S. cents per bag today), applied to consumers at the point of sale. In the first year of this policy, consumers used 90 percent fewer plastic bags. The tax grew relatively less effective over time, so the nation increased the tax in 2007. Overall, plastic bags have gone from 5 percent to less than 0.25 percent of the waste stream.60
It is clear that even the proponents of these bans admit that their effect fades over time. Consumers will just begin buying paper bags and paying the "tax" unless it is constantly boosted. Nowhere does this report make the case that these bag bans are wanted anywhere, Seattle residents sure do not want it. So why is the assumption made that people will meekly go along with the social direction suggested by the ban?
Also, notice how the Irish call the bag fee a "tax" but the Seattle City Council refuses to label the same mandatory fee as such. The bag fee is "voluntarily"unless you need a bag. Right now the bags are free to customers but what should that fee paid by consumers to retailers and then forwarded to the government really be called?
This Environment Washington report on Puget Sound is one of the most pathetic documents I have ever read in my life, filled with at least a dozen intentional attempts to mislead on nearly every page.
For example, the report coins the term "single use plastic bags" when describing supermarket bags but each of us knows that term is false. Many plastic bags are recycled, including reused by consumers for all sorts of purposes such as lining kitty litter boxes and kitchen wastebaskets, and even "Pooper Scooper" duty on the street.
Ask yourself this simple question. If you currently use the plastic bags you get at the store for your cat or for the trash pail in your home, what happens when these bags are banned and you can only buy PAPER bags at your local store?
Yes, you will use fewer SUPERMARKET plastic bags. BUT you will use MORE non-supermarket plastic bags.
In other words, you won't be bringing home free plastic bags any more. You will have to buy the same number of bags. Same number of bags, just a different label given to them.
The efficacy and effectiveness of the bag ban is wildly overstated by the report, on purpose of course. The subject of forcing consumers to buy new plastic bags for non-grocery purposes is never addressed once in the report.
Has any member of the Seattle City Council ever been to a paper mill? I will gladly take anyone who wants to go.
This bag ban is politically offensive. No member of the City Council ran on this agenda despite being elected back into office just a month ago. Seattle voters have rejected this idea once already. Does the city really need another contentious referendum and lawsuits on this issue?
PAPER BAGS in SEATTLE make no sense. Mr. O'Brien, it rains in Seattle. The other day when I bought a magazine at Walgreen's, the clerk asked me if I wanted a plastic bag because of the pouring rain. I guess under the new regime I could buy a paper bag---but why?
This foolish idea needs to immediately tabled and an investigation launched by the Seattle media over how such a worthless report could be given such high regard by politicians when anyone with an open mind who reads it can instantly conclude the report is bogus and a sham.
The Seattle City Council needs to stop catering to the elitist whims of a tiny sliver of the city's residents and start addressing REAL concerns that people who live in Seattle have, like the deteriorating infrastructure, rampant homelessness, rising street crime, and the declining business base.
Unemployment Rate Falls to Lowest Since March 2009
But few of the journalists writing these headlines are actually looking at the raw numbers they themselves report and ask "How can the unemployment rate REALLY be falling when the numbers do not add up that way?"
Unemployment rate falls to 8.6%, down 0.4% from 9% last month
The private sector added 140,000 new jobs in October 2011.
The public sector cut 20,000 jobs in October 2011. (A net of 120,000 new jobs created.)
But 190,000 people LEFT THE LABOR FORCE IN OCTOBER because (a) their unemployment benefits had run out and they no longer can file claims for compensation; and (b) they gave up looking for work since no jobs in their area are available, so-called "discouraged workers."
So ask yourself this simple question using the U.S. Government's own numbers.
If 120,000 new workers joined the U.S. labor force in October but 190,000 workers also left the very same labor force in the same month because they could not find jobs, how can the unemployment rate go down?
How? The BLS assumes you can be unemployed, not have a job of any kind, but still not be "officially unemployed" for their calculations. This is not how I learned to do math. This video explains how you REALLY calculate an unemployment rate.
The fact the government does not count unemployed workers who are so discouraged they can't find work as "not unemployed" is indicative of what is really going on here. According to you, me, and common sense, someone who is "not unemployed" is employed. According to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, your brother-in-law or your daughter who has exhausted their 99-weeks of unemployment and has given up trying to find a job is unemployed---but they aren't "officially" unemployed for government accounting purposes. To be blunt, they and the millions like them just don't count. Here is the BLS' official definition of discouraged workers. You read it. If you are not in the labor force, aren't you unemployed? No, you are merely discouraged....
This is statistical madness. Kafka and Orwell would be proud of such reasoning. Some unemployed are more equal than others???
The lamestream media is in full cheerleader mode on the economy since the actual economic numbers are grim and not radically improving. With their candidate Mr. Obama languishing in the polls, someone in New York and Los Angeles needed to turn the economic lemons received from the BLS into lemonade.
I am pleased to announce the first Investing in Land Live Seminar of 2012 will take place in Chicago, Illinois.
Monday, February 27, 2012 (9:00AM - 12 noon) Chicago Mercantile Exchange 30 South Wacker Drive Chicago, IL 60606
Tickets to this Investing in Land Live Seminar are FREE and are made available to the public while they last.
This seminar is designed for intermediate and professional investors, although "newbies" are welcome and will understand much of what is said.
Topics at this seminar will include:
1. SWOT analysis in land transactions
2. Land banking from an investment perspective
3. Predicting future land appreciation
4. Increasing the yield on land investments and MUCH MORE.
You should know that this is a substantive lecture on real estate investment and NOT NOT NOT a three hour sales pitch for some home study course or mentoring service. Aside from copies of my book, I have nothing else to sell you. Please come to this event prepared to learn, not to buy.
If you want a ticket for this seminar, please email me at FreeAbalosSeminar@gmail.com. Include your full contact information (name, address, phone) along with your email request and why you want to attend. Given the limited number of seats, preference will be given for professionals already in the business.
All my Investing in Land Live Seminars are FREE and by invitation only.
I will be announcing future events for the Spring 2012 in four other locations including Cincinnati, Detroit, Fargo, and Memphis.
Here is some video I recently shot of the Occupy Seattle protest that has taken up residence on the campus of Seattle Central Community College. Located in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle, this neighborhood on Broadway and Pine Street is heavily commercial. Local businesses are not happy with the Seattle encampment, echoing the same opinions from other cities.
The protesters chose this location after being evicted from Westlake Center Park because the college administration had no legal rights to evict campers from the campus. Apparently, no school official or member of the Board of Trustees that regulates such educational institutions had ever thought of adding a "No Camping" restriction to the usual public protests that are drawn to universities. An emergency vote of the SCCC Board needed to be taken just to get the legal right to file an eviction proceeding in district court.
If I was writing such a lease, I'd draft not just the words ("No Camping or Outdoor Sleeping Overnight") but also ban all the indicia of camping, like tents, sleeping bags, portable stoves, generators, and the like.
Despite the chantings of the 99%, this review of commercial leases should prove a financial windfall to the 1% who are the partners in the law firms that do this work. If I ran a commercial real estate practice, I'd be sending out friendly "Dear Client, I just checked your lease agreement and guess what I found?" letters to every lessor I knew---here, near, and far.
But what if you are a small real estate property owner with apartment buildings or even single family homes? YOU NEED TO CHECK YOUR LEASES MOST OF ALL. Brookfield Properties can afford high legal bills to evict tenants but many small owners obviously cannot.
My reading of some residential leases over the last few days have very weak provisions with respect to camping in yards, in courtyards, even parking lots. No one really has given this need or provision a great deal of thought. The bottom line, however, is simple.
If you give a tenant use of a public space, you need to carefully regulate the use of that space.
For example, if you let your tenants use the backyard of your apartment building for reading and even cooking (assume a BBQ pit), what stops one of them from inviting some friends to live in his backyard? You might say the lease has been breached, but how? You gave the tenant use but did not regulate what use is permissible. One lease I saw said spaces could be used 24/7 so long as the use was "quiet and not bothersome to others." So if someone is sleeping in the backyard and not making noise is there a breach of the lease?
Check those leases now before you need to check them later. Ask Seattle Central Community College and its Board of Trustees.
I have more questions about such a lawsuit than this article answers. It looks more like a press release than a journalistic piece on a new Federal complaint. So I've reprinted the entire article below for future reference in case the original link gets pulled.
The article mentions the law firm of Bursor & Fisher and they do class action lawsuit work. But their website makes no mention of the Tigrent suit. This article does not even mention which district court the case is filed. Although the headline mentions "Manhattan", Tigrent is a Florida company and Kiyosaki is from Arizona.
While Tigrent has been sued before, this is the first case that I have seen that names Robert Kiyosaki personally. What I can say about the suit (if true) is that the claims made below against Tigrent look exactly like the objections I have raised in the past such as in this blog post from April 2011 when I actually attended a Tigrent event. And since I'm a fan of Robert Kiyosaki and have publicly urged him to distance himself from Tigrent, real estate guru Russ Whitney's old company by a new name, seeing him named as a defendant does make me sad.
I would appreciate if any reader with PACER access to pull up the case for me. Thanks.
************************************** MANHATTAN (CN) - A federal class action claims Rich Dad Education and its affiliates use their "free classes" and $199 seminars about financial success as a come-on in a high-pressure "sales scam" to sell worthless courses for tens of thousands of dollars. Named plaintiff Robert Crewe says Rich Dad's "sales scam is built on a misleading three-tiered sales pitch where customers are sold increasingly expensive financial training programs using pressures tactics and false promises." Crewe says he paid $199 to attend a "Rich Dad Education Stock Success 3-day Training program, which was supposed to provide training and education in trading stocks." But he says, "Defendants did not provide any training or education at the workshop. Instead, the sole purpose of the workshop was to up-sell 'students' into additional useless but more-expensive coursework and monitoring, which costs up to $64,899 per enrollee." Also sued are Cashflow Technologies, Tigrent Learning and two entities, two Rich Dad affiliates, and Robert Kiyosaki, who lives in or around Phoenix and allegedly "approved, authorized, either expressly or tacitly directed, ratified and/or participated in the acts complained of herein". Crewe says the defendants advertise their 3-day program as "'designed to help you effectively pursue the many wealth-building opportunities provided by the stock and options market. You now have the entire Rich Dad education team to share their knowledge and experience in the markets with you. ... "Your 3-Day Training is comprehensive. It will cover everything from thinking like the rich to developing a personal plan and executing on that plan." But Crewe says, "Rich Dad Education workshops and training do not provide attendees with any financial education that leads to financial success or independence. Rather, they comprise an aggressive sales scam where attendees are encouraged to spend up to tens of thousands of dollars and encumber themselves with crippling debt to buy useless courses. "Defendants' sales scam is built on a misleading three-tiered sales pitch where customers are sold increasingly expensive training programs using pressure tactics and false promises concerning the programs' ability to produce financial results for trainees. Initially, customers are lured to attend one of two free workshops that are advertised as providing a financial education to attendees in a specific area of investing. However, the workshops do not provide any financial education, and their whole purpose is to sell attendees the paid 3-day training programs that are associated with those free classes. In turn, the purpose of the paid 3-day training programs is not to provide financial education and skills training as promised, but to sell attendees on additional 'advanced' training courses and personal mentoring. This is the laddered sales pitch, or up-sell, that forms the core of defendants' business. "In large part, the up-sell is executed by defendants' training instructors who hold themselves out as experts in their investment field but have no discernible investing expertise or successful track record." The defendants are Rich Dad Education LLC, Rich Global LLC, Rich Dad Operating Co. LLC, Cashflow Technologies Inc. Tigrent Inc; Tigrent Learning Inc., Tigrent Brands Inc., and Robert Kiyosaki. Crewe seeks costs and damages for breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trading Practices Act, unjust enrichment, negligent misrepresentation, and fraud.He is represented by Scott A. Bursor with Bursor & Fisher.
