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Tim Moncrief, Co-Owner-Bartlett RE Group

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Perhaps missing your goals may actually be good......Perspective

08-01-09
Tim Moncrief, Co-Owner-Bartlett RE Group
Look at this year's goals with perspective of what our market conditions we have been working with for the last couple of years. I reviewed our goals for July and was a bit frustrated as we barely missed our goals. Mind you we set fairly loft goals this year to keep our mindset on improving from our dismal year last year. As imperfect of the English language as I can get, we were the 2nd least worst group in the city of Austin. We had a hard time rejoicing our 2nd place finish last year (Austin Business Journal) as our performance was sub par to the previous year. This first half of this year was not the most exciting time as we have been hard pressed to keep up to last year's dismal performance.

So I thought we had a pretty darn good July, but then I saw that we fell short of our goal. But then I looked at our last 5 years, and this July exceeded any of the past 5 years. Perhaps June and July were fluke months.....perhaps they are a sign of great things to come. Who knows. What I can safely say is that I feel pretty darn proud of our little group for beating some pretty darn good July months from previous years.

There are advantages and disadvantages about putting lofty goals. There are times when we just want to sit in a corner and not be seen after goal failure after goal failure. I am one of these odd ducks that has always set goals beyond what anyone would think would be reasonable. And that is true. I have been in real estate for 28 years and can safely say that I have never met an annual goal during those 28 years. Am I a loser? Well, if you look at our goals and performance, it would be quite easy to say yes. If you look at where we stand compared to the rest of the crowd, that is where the results look much better.

At Keller Williams there are several thousand teams and groups. Our goal when we started in 2003 was to get on the radar screen of the thousands. Then, it seemed impossible. Last year we not only got on the radar screen, but moved to #29 in the nation. Reaching that number was not even a thought of ours, much less a goal. We focus on what how we can improve each year and do not let the market affect our goals. The market may affect our results, but so be it. We will keep plugging ourselves out of this mud pile until we achieve our ultimate goal of a true level 7 group as noted in the Millionaire Real Estate Agent book by Keller Williams. We have been floating at level 6. Level 7 is where we are totally running a real estate business and not running around in the real estate business. We will get there....... We hoped we would be there this year, but that will not be the case; but it is no fault of ours and we acknowledge that.

This is not meant to toot our horn but to have all focus on continued improvement despite the market. At time it will test your soul. We have been tested and look forward to tomorrow. It is now August, so July is behind us. Make tomorrow a better day.
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Austin annexes River Place on Lake Austin

08-01-09
Tim Moncrief, Co-Owner-Bartlett RE Group

The City of Austin and the River Place Municipal Districts (MUD) are proposing to enter into a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) relating to city annexation and acquisition of the MUD's utility infrastructure, among other things.

The purpose of this post is to inform you that two public hearings are scheduled for the proposed SPA. At the the hearings, the city council will hear and consider comments on issues related to the SPA and annexation. Attend the hearings to provide comments about the proposed SPA, which is described below

Hearing date: August 20th and 27th City Council Chambers

In addition the MUD will hold two public hearings about the SPA.

CLICK FOR TOUR OF RIVER PLACE ON LAKE AUSTIN

The city consented to thecreation of the MUD in 1984. In December 2008, the City Council amended the city's municipal annexation plan (MAP) to include the River Place area. According the MAP, annexation will take place in 2011. Earlier this year, district representative s and city staff met numerous times to discuss the potential effects of annexation on MUD residents and explore alternatives to annexation under the three year MAP process. Adoption of a strategic partnership agreement (SPA) is an alternative outlined below.

  1. Full purpose annexation of the MUD by the city will be deferred to December 31st, 2017 including all city services and taxing authority.
  2. The city will assume any remaining drainage, water and wastewater debt upon full purpose annexation, and no post annexation surcharge will be applied.
  3. The city adopts an annexation service plan as part of the SPA.
  4. Upon full purpose annexation by the city and subject to voter approval, the MUD will convert to a limited district with the initial term of 10 years for the purpose of:
    1. Maintaining and operating recreational facilities of the MUD
    2. Maintaining non balcones canyonlands conservation plan property in the MUD
    3. Providing solid waste services with single stream recycling
  5. Limited purpose annexation of the MUD by the city will take place in 2009, including zoning and voting privileges but not city property tax assessment
  6. The city will assume ownership of River Place MUD's water and wastewater infrastructure in 2009.
  7. The MUD will continue to operate and maintain its water and wastewater utility systems through October 1, 2014; the city will assume operations and maintenance responsibilities thereafter.

Information in the post provided by they city of Austin planning department........

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Speachless Sunday: Just let yourself go.........

07-19-09
Tim Moncrief, Co-Owner-Bartlett RE Group

It is times like these that the successful become more successful, and the stagnant stay stagnant. The successful see times like this as great opportunities to expand their business(es) more than ever as very few others are either able or willing to do so.

Tim Moncrief

The tough part is to make that decision to make that big plunge further than you ever had before. It is so easy to say, this is the time to hold back and see where are the cards end up. I say this is the time where you can expand your market share so much easier than you could during a boom market. Yes that first step is a bit tough as you don't see the financial rewards. You will see market share expansion while income goes down.

Tim Moncrief

But then you see finally see the bottom and realize that all the effort and the financial risk was worth it all. The worst thing that could happen is that you fall flat on your face. Odds are pretty good if you stay stagnant you may end up on your face anyhow.

So get out there and make the big jump of your life. Everyone will tell you not to do it. It's too scary.....you might get hurt.....what if your "parachute" does not protect you.....what if....what if....what if....what if......

J U S T D O I T ! ! !

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What does the DOW Jones Average have to do with a Farm?

07-17-09
Tim Moncrief, Co-Owner-Bartlett RE Group
So what is the correlation of either the stock market or interest rates to your market? Or is it both? Or are you throwing darts at the wall for answers?

I have been farming an area that has a price range from abut $300k to $4mm, with about 6000 homes for the past 15 years. (Californians: that is sizable amount of money outside CA). Though this has been my market I have also worked entry level housing as well. What I have noticed for the areas that I have farmed, is a break point of somewhere in the vicinity of about $400k and below where interest rates are a primary motivating factor to purchase, and investment holdings are secondary; and from $400k to $2mm where investment holdings are primary motivation to purchase and interest rates are secondary; and over $2mm where, in most cases, the buyers are set and interest rates and investment holding have an effect, but are not major motivating factors as compared to the previous two sectors.

In the lower sector, this market is greatly influenced by interest rates, and the slightest tick up or down can have a dramatic effect on the demand for homes. Depending on the area of the country, this market may also be hit by unemployment. In our local market, this sector has not been heavily affected by unemployment as unemployment has hit the higher income producers to a much higher degree. Thus, at this point in time, this market is doing quite well in our area.

In the middle sector, interest rates have had an opposite affect on the market as a motivation to purchase. The lower the interest rates go the more fear is brought to our buyer that the market may be falling further. Though interest rates are a factor, this buyer is more concerned about what is in their back pocket over their monthly payments. Over the last year, this market has been devastated as the market has had a tremendous effect on the confidence of this market. What has hurt this market is unemployment, as our area has been hit with unemployment for higher wage earners. When the country sees Austin with relatively low unemployment, it is quite misleading, as the unemployment may not be vast, but it hit a high wage earner that affects all areas of the economy to a greater degree.

In the upper sector, the market over $2mm has been recently affected mainly from acquiring borrowed funds, but has not had a tremendous reduction in the demand for homes. We just saw a $4mm home in our neighborhood sell in 30 days. A nice some of cash made this deal work. Though this market sector has been hit, the buyer has, to a degree, made their money, and is, to a degree, not heavily involved in the recession; thus it has barely affected their buying demand; just their borrowing power.

So my little farm goes hand in hand with the stock market. When the stock market goes up, my business goes up. When the stock market goes down, my business goes down. In most cases we see about a two week lag time in what is going on in the stock market to what is going on in our real estate market in our farm. So the past two weeks have seen a noticeable slow down, and odds are pretty high that we will see an increase in activity in about a week or so from the activity seen this past week.

It has been a fun to watch the consistency of this trend over a long period of time. The point of this is not to put a universal conclusion on all markets or all sectors within a given market; but to understand what makes your particular market tick. It is vital that you know this as you can start following statistics that have nothing whatsoever to do with the market that you work. Our markets are very localized; thus understand the economics of what makes your market move up or down. You data may be completely different than what is in my market; but, my market is what it is.

We are hearing wonderful things from different parts of the country and terrible things from other parts of the country. The question you have to know, is why is your market moving and is the trend based on reality of what that market normally does or is it just bump.....either up or down.
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Who authorized my AR pictures to show up on Google or Bing searches?????

07-16-09
Tim Moncrief, Co-Owner-Bartlett RE Group
I read this post about a month or two ago on AR that said that we are supposed to name our pictures before posting them. The name of the picture would be whatever one would think one would blog about to gain attention to their property. What they hay, I will try it for a bit to see if this guy was puffing smoke or if this guy actually knew what he was posting.

Well, this post may be a tad early as I have yet to dominate a Google or Bing search in pictures, but I am getting there. Give it a shot. You may not see result stick high up in the rankings for a month or so, but, in time, you will start to dominate the pictures/images section of a search. I grabbed a few.....left the one's that were not mine for copyright protection. But with a click on the picture, your blog will pop up.

I have been doing this for about a year or so on podcasts; thus when one searches the areas I farm and clicks on videos, we are page dominate. In time we will get there in pictures. Just put some serious thought on what people are searching to find you. Go to your website and find out what phrases people are clicking and then go to adwords.Google and search the search word desired to see if there is a reasonable amount of searches for that word(s). Once you find a adword that appears favorable for your area, test it out.

It's free advertising.....and for some reason, I like free. If you would rather pay for search placement, just ignore this post.

5106 Gold Crest Ct.; River Place ...
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5106 Gold Crest Ct.; River Place ...
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RIVER PLACE on LAKE AUSTIN: Austin ...
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River Place
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