From the museum to the iPhone, the new cartographers have arrived -- and they're transforming what "going digital" really means.

By training, they aren't really cartographers at all. They're architects, designers, and machine-learning specialists who are mining human behavior to build maps that are more about people than places. Like traditional cartography, the new maps combine science, technical skill, and aesthetics to display information spatially, but the information they display is radically different. And the map itself--dynamic, thematic, changeable--has become an instrument of discovery. That's why everybody from epidemiologists seeking to understand how an infectious disease is spreading to advertisers wanting to know where an ad will reach the most eyes is interested in their ability to reveal previously invisible patterns and relationships.

There is more and finer information available now, a planetload of accessible, aggregatable, and anonymous location data out there, much of it originating from the spread of mobile phones, GPS systems, and other wireless products with "device discovery" functionality. "We have this condition where digital technology is becoming increasingly smaller and distributed in the environment," says Carlo Ratti, director of SENSEable City Laboratory and associate professor of the practice of urban technologies at MIT. "In a certain sense, this is the first time ever we can describe a city in real time."

 

Geographical maps are the preferred canvas on which to visualize all these digital bread crumbs, but they are anything but static. "It's not just latitudes, longitudes, and streets, but, Who are these people hanging out in this place?" Tony Jebara, chief scientist at Sense Networks, explains. "These ideas go back. Shakespeare said, 'What is the city but the people?' And instead of saying here's the city and the street grid, you let the people define the city." There are also simply more people creating and editing maps. Online mapping tools like Google Maps have spawned endless interactive mash-ups that do everything from rate a neighborhood's walkability to calculate cab fares.

The best maps, of course, are functional and pretty.

 

There's a staggering amount of data powering these pretty maps, which depicts ongoing population changes across the earth. Each spike's highest or lowest point, depending on whether a city is growing or shrinking, represents the projected difference in population between 1990 and 2015. These figures were given life by Laura Kurgan, an architect and director of the Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia University. Kurgan visualized the data by displaying longitude and latitude on the x-axis and animating the y-axis to show population for a particular year. The urban areas projected to grow the most: Beihai, China; Ghaziabad, India; and Sanaa, Yemen.

Population shifts: Cities

Detail from "Native Land: Stop, Eject," Cartier Foundation, Paris, November 21,2008, to March 30, 2009. Project team: Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan, Ben Rubin. In collaboration with Jeremy Linzee, Robert Pietrusko, Stewart Smith, Aaron Meyers. Visualization of CIESIN Gridded Population of the World, 1990-2015.

 

The founder and creative director of Stamen Design in San Franciso, Rodenbeck has carved out a niche as a multidisciplinary designer with a serious technological bent. Recent projects range from a dynamic hurricane-tracking map for msnbc.com to a series of live interactive maps visualizing activity on the Web site digg.com. Much of his and his studio's emphasis is on creating interactive environments where users can explore data and discover patterns themselves.

ArtScope, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The museum asked Stamen Design to create a "map" for wandering online among thirty-six hundred works from its permanent collection. Stamen produced this giant, interactive matrix - or canvas, or "slippy map." We had a long back-and-forth about what we were going to name the thing," says Chad Coerver of SFMOMA. "Is it a browser? Is it a map? An online gallery? The fact that we had a difficult time coming to a consensus is probably the best indication that we've gotten our hands on something new and interesting." As a user moves the cursor over a piece, it enlarges and information about it appears on a side panel. You can find it at sfmoma.org/artscope.

 

An architect and civil engineer who practices in Turin, Italy, Ratti studies technology's effect on how people interact with their cities. Or in his own words, "How to marry concrete and silicon." In 2003, he established the SENSEable City Laboratory at MIT, where he is an associate professor of the practice for urban technologies. His lab's current work includes a New york City trash-tracking project in which trash will be digitally tagged with "smart dust" and tracked to its final destination, revealing inefficiencies in the waste-disposal system.

Real-Time Rome

Rattie overlaid live, aggregate data from existing mobile-phone and transportation networks during the course of two days onto a basic map of Rome. The result: a picture of the city as a pulsing organism.

 

A graduate of the Media Lab at MIT, Jebara combines computer science, statistics, and graphic design to create new ways for humans and computers to interact. He is now the director of Columbia University's Machine Learning Lab, which explores how to take massive amounts of existing GPS data and reduce it to more user-friendly forms. Jebara is also the chief scientist at the technology company Sense Networks, which has developed a proprietary analytics engine called Macrosense that collects huge streams of location data in real time for its consumer application, Citysense.

Citysense

A free mobile-phone application, Citysense locates people with similar interests in the same locale. By collecting various sources of GPS data, Citysense produces a visual description of the flow of people around a city. (It is available for Blackberry users in San Francisco and will be rolled out in new York and Chicago in 2009. An iPhone version is expected in December.) Citysense 2.0, out next year, will be able to build a model of a user's interests and where he or she spends time, and then "sense" where others with similar interests are at any moment. It will also place the user into a color-coded tribe, e.g., bankers are green, metalheads are red. You look at your phone and see a concentration-density map of where they're congregating.

Keep up the old chin

1) Keep up the entrepreneurial spirit. Being an entrepreneur has more risks, but also more rewards then traditional big business. Understanding and reacting to business drivers is what small business owners do every day. Big business has a harder time reacting. They tend to hunker down. Small businesses have been the growth engine that has pulled the US Economy out of previous downturns.  16 of the 30 corporations that make up the Dow Jones industrial average got their starts during the recession.

 

Disney (1923-24 recession)

Hewlett-Packard (Great Depression)

Microsoft (1975 recession)

MTV (1981 recession)

IPOD (2001 recession)

 

2) Tap into your existing customers for more revenue.  Existing clients are the best source for more business. Provide value to them.  Be the best you can be. Continue to build your brand and trust with them.  E-Newsletters are a great way to show your value and stay top of mind.

 

Thank you.

Nancy Ploeger-President 

Manhattan Chamber of Commerce
1375 Broadway, Third Floor · New York, New York 10018 

Standard & Poor Lower Ratings For Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Bonds

Tishman Speyer Properties is in a pickle. After making the biggest real estate deal ever when it purchased Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan, the company took out bonds to cover the cost of 5.4 billion dollars.

However in the meantime the property values have dropped 10 percent on the two landmark communities and efforts to gentrify the communities and reduce the amount of rent controlled apartments faces tough community opposition.

The net result, less potential earnings and the companies reserve funds have been being spent forcing Standard & Poor to cut the bond ratings.

So now Tishman Speyer is caught in a pickle. They are facing higher costs on their bonds and have an impaired cash position so investments in Peter Cooper and Stuy Town will have to be cut back.

Was this New York’s greatest real estate boondoggle? MetLife is looking very smart right now getting this price and getting out of a Manhattan real estate market that is heading south.

And there was an immediate reaction in the real estate world: Tishman Speyer Properties, which controls Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building and scores of other properties, abruptly pulled out of a deal to buy the former Mobil Building, a 1.6 million-square-foot tower on 42nd Street, near Grand Central Terminal, for $400 million, two executives involved in the transaction said.

Commercial properties are not the only ones facing problems. On Friday, Standard & Poor’s dropped its rating on the bonds used in Tishman’s $5.4 billion purchase of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village apartment complexes in 2006, the biggest real estate deal in modern history. Standard & Poor’s said it cut the rating, in part, because of an estimated 10 percent decline in the properties’ value and the rapid depletion of reserve funds.

The rating reduction shows the growing nervousness of lenders and investors about such deals, which have often involved aggressive — critics say unrealistic — projections of future income. via  NYTimes.com.

How did Wall Street get into this mess?

The unexpected 228-205 defeat of the housing bailout in Congress Monday threw a curveball across Wall Street. It contributed to a large sell-off on Wall Street, where the bailout had already been "priced" into the market. The Dow shed just over 6 percent, the 18th largest drop in its history. But given the dire warnings about financial chaos that would result unless there were a bailout, this seems fairly modest.

Let's be clear: This is a Wall Street crisis, not a national economic crisis. The overall economy, while a bit weak, is still growing. Some politicians are comparing the current environment to the Great Depression. But in 1932, when the federal government last moved to bail out the banking sector, economic output had fallen 45 percent and unemployment was a staggering 24 percent. Today, economic output is actually up and unemployment is a historically modest 6.1 percent. 

The overall economy doesn't even face a liquidity crisis in the current turmoil. Consumer, commercial/industrial, and real estate loans are all up over last year. Main Street is doing fine. The liquidity crisis is confined to Wall Street, between and among investment banks, insurance and securities firms, and hedge funds. There is the possibility that the contagion could spread, but in a global capital market, this is hardly certain.

It is the intersection of several underlying trends that have brought us to this point, not a breakdown in any specific part of the financial sector. The fundamental flaw with the bailout approach is that it ignores these trends and simply seeks to shore up the finances of certain Wall Street institutions. 

Mortgage-backed securities (MBSes) are the principal source of pain in the current environment. Investment houses would bundle individual mortgages from several banks together into a bond-like product that would be sold to individual investors. Mortgages have historically been seen as among the safest investments. In an era of rising house values, "safe" became "guaranteed returns."

One of the major factors pushing investors into these securities was the Federal Reserve's weak money policy. Immediately after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Fed began a sustained period of easing interest rates. Its efforts went so far that, at one point in 2003, we had effectively negative interest rates. Institutional investments needed a place to park money and earn some kind of return. Mortgage-backed securities became a favorite investment vehicle. Under traditional models, they were very safe and, because of Fed policy, even the most conservative fund could earn better returns than they could on treasury notes. 

In the early years of this century, mortgage-backed securities exploded. Their growth provided unprecedented levels of capital in the mortgage market. There was a lot more money available to underwrite mortgages. At the same time, investment houses were looking to replace the healthy fees earned during the dot com bubble. MBSes had fat margins, so everyone jumped into the game.

The additional capital to underwrite mortgages was a good thing...up to a point. Homeownership expanded throughout the decade. Over the last few decades, the American homeownership ratehas been around 60 to 62 percent. At the height of the bubble, homeownership was around 70 percent. It is clear now that many people who got mortgages at the height of the bubble should not have. But Wall Street needed to feed the MBS stream.

At the same time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going through a crisis. In 2003 and 2004, an accounting scandal was revealed. The two public-private partnerships were cooking the books to show phantom profits. The Bush administration and its allies on the Hill pushed a strong bill to reform how these institutions operated. The measure came very close to passing, but Fannie and Freddie cut a deal. They would refocus on expanding mortgages for low-income borrowers if the feds kept out of their operations. The bargain worked. Virtually all the Democrats and a few Republicans backed the two companies and the reform effort failed.

Fannie and Freddie then went on a subprime bender. They made it clear that they wanted to buy all the subprime or Alt-A mortgages that they could find, eventually acquiring around $1 trillion of the paper. The market responded. In 2003 subprime mortgages made up less than 8 percent of all mortgages. By 2006, they were over 20 percent. Banks knew they could sell subprime products to Fannie and Freddie. Investments banks realized that if they laced ever increasing amounts of subprime mortgages into the MBSes, they could juice the returns and so earn bigger fees. The rating agencies, thinking they were simply dealing with traditional mortgages, didn't look under the hood.

Unfortunately, after several years of a housing boom, the available pool of households who could responsibly use the more exotic financing products had dried up. In short, there were no more people who traditionally qualified for even a subprime mortgage. However, Fannie and Freddie were still signaling that they wanted to buy these products. At the same time, activist groups were agitating for more lending to low-income families. Banks realized they could make even more exotic loan products (e.g., interest-only loans), get the activists off their backs, and immediately diffuse their risk by selling the mortgages into MBSes. After all, Fannie and Freddie would buy anything.

Everything worked as long as housing prices continued to rise. The most pessimistic scenarios on Wall Street showed a leveling off of housing prices; no one foresaw an actual decline in prices. Suddenly, though, there weren't enough buyers. In hot real estate markets, builders raced to bring inventory to market that they thought was inexhaustible. But at this point everyone (essentially) who could possibly qualify for a mortgage had received one. At the same time, the first wave of the more exotic mortgages began to falter. Interest rates on adjustable rate mortgages moved higher—the Fed was finally tightening the money flow—and mortgages that were initially interest-only were close to resetting, with monthly payments jumping to include principal. A not insignificant number of these mortgages moved into default and foreclosure. 

The overall numbers moving into foreclosure were small. Someone simply looking at housing stats could be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. Nationally, the number of mortgages moving into foreclosure is just around 1 to 2 percent, suggesting that 98 to 99 percent of mortgages are sound. But the foreclosed mortgages punched way above their weight class; they were laced throughout the MBS market.

Then the MBS market collapsed. The complexity of these financial products cannot be overstated. They usually had two or three "tranches," different baskets of mortgages that paid out in different ways. Worse, as they moved through the system—being bought and sold by different firms—they were sliced and diced in varying ways. A MBS owned by one firm could be very different when it was sold to another.

No one fully understood how exposed the MBS were to the rising foreclosures. The market for them dried up. No one traded them. The market became effectively "illiquid." American accounting standards, however, required firms to use "mark-to-market" to value their assets. This means that you value your assets based on what you could sell them for today. Because no one would trade MBSes, most had to be "marked" at something close to zero.

This threw off banks' capital requirements. Under U.S. regulations, banks have to have a certain percentage of assets to back up the loans they make. Lots of banks and financial institutions had MBS assets on their books. With these moving to zero, they didn't have enough capital on hand for the loans that were outstanding. They rushed to raise capital, which raised fears about their solvency and compounded into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We should pause here to note that two simple regulatory tweaks could have prevented much of the carnage. Suspending mark-to-market accounting rules (you could use a 5-year rolling average instead, for example) would have shored up the balance sheets. And a temporary easing of capital requirements would have provided banks breathing room to sort out the MBS mess. Although it is hard to fix an exact price for these in this market, they aren't worth zero.

Alas, the Fed and the Treasury decided simply to provide the capital to meet the regulatory requirements. They moved into crisis mode, making a series of tactical moves to deal with specific, present challenges. The first misstep, in March, was to force a hostile takeover of Bear Stearns. The Fed put up $30-40 billion to back JP Morgan's takeover of the investment bank. In the long term, it probably would have been better to let the bank fail and go into bankruptcy. That would have set in motion legal proceedings that would have established a baseline price for MBSes. From this established price, banks could sort out their balance sheets.

It is worth noting that immediately after the collapse of Bears Stearns, rumors quickly circulated on the Street of trouble at Lehman Brothers. Lehman went on a PR offensive to beat back those rumors. The company was successful, but then did nothing over the next several months to shore up its balance sheet. Their recent demise was largely their own doing. 

The collapse of the MBS market now started to pollute other financial products. (The Fed moves did nothing to deal with the MBS market, but simply provided temporary means to cope with it.) Credit default swaps and derivatives, both of which amount to hedges against the risk of bonds defaulting, came due. Suddenly, stable firms like AIG were overexposed. Insurance companies regularly sell these swaps, as an insurance policy against bonds defaulting. Traditionally they are fairly conservative investment products. These developments threw off the accounting in one division of AIG, threatening the rest of the firm. Given a few days, AIG could have sold enough assets to cover the spread, but iron-clad accounting regulations precluded this. So the government stepped in. 

The one-two punch of Lehman's failure and the government's $85 billion bailout of AIG on September 16 seriously spooked the Street and the Bush administration. With Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already in government receivership, there were fears that the MBS weakness would spread through the entire financial system. There was a big sell-off on the Dow. The next day, the government announced there would be a bold rescue plan. The marketrebounded. Details emerged over the weekend. On Monday, the Dow had another sell-off. But, the most important signal was the rise of oil. The spot price for October delivery of oil jumped $25 a barrel. Some of this was covering trades, but a sizable amount of this appreciation was probably a "flight to quality," a place to park money while everything was sorted out. It was also a signal that the government's plan might not work.

The original plan crafted by Treasury would authorize the department to spend up to $700 billion to buy MBSes and other "toxic" debt and thereby remove them from banks' balance sheets. With the "bad loans" off the books, the banks would become sound. Because it was assumed that the MBS market was "illiquid," the government would become the buyer of last resort for these products. There is a certain simple elegance to the plan. 

Except that no market is truly illiquid. It just isn't liquid at the price you want to sell. This summer,Merrill Lynch unloaded a bunch of bad debt at 22 cents on the dollar. There are likely plenty of buyers for the banks' bad debt, just not at the price the banks would prefer. Enter the government, which clearly intends to purchase MBSes at some premium above the market price. That was the nature of the bailout that failed on Monday.

Congressional leaders have vowed to bring a new proposal for a vote, possibly as soon as Thursday, proving yet again that Washington is fertile ground for really bad ideas. But with the market rebounding—as of this writing the Dow was up almost 300 points—and public opposition hardening, signs are emerging that banks are starting to clean house. The crisis may have already peaked. Of course, Congress' ability to further screw this up can't be overstated.

Mike Flynn is director of government affairs at the Reason Foundation

Some Luxury Properties See Slowdown as Jittery Buyers Head for Exits

Wall Street's Woes Hit Highest End

New York

For months, as housing values were falling for midsize ranch houses in Stockton, Calif., and Las Vegas high-rises, sales of high-end properties in financial centers like London, New York and San Francisco continued to percolate along.

But that was before last week, when turmoil in the credit markets brought down Lehman Brothers Holdings and imperiled thousands of high-paying jobs. While those rare properties priced at $20 million or more are still holding up, there are signs that the crisis is exacerbating a downturn that was already plaguing properties in the $2 million to $10 million range, a market often sought by Wall Street workers.

Since last Thursday, there have been 200 price cuts on properties listed at less than $10 million on Manhattan's Upper East Side or Upper West Side -- a 17% jump from the week before. Deanna Kory, a broker with New York-based Corcoran Group who's handling nearly two-dozen properties priced between $2 million and $10 million, says her showings are down by about 40% in the last two weeks compared to the same time last year. A slew of new buildings set to open in the next year will only increase supply.

The impact is reaching beyond Manhattan. On Massachusetts's North Shore, where the average sale price of luxury homes is about $3 million, Lanse L. Robb says he's lost more than $15 million in listings and transactions in the last week. First, prospective buyers for a $4 million waterfront home canceled their showing. Then two clients spooked by the financial meltdown held off listing their houses or looking for new ones.

One buyer who was poised to put an offer on a $15.7 million. 10-acre oceanfront estate in Manchester-by-the-Sea suddenly stopped returning Mr. Robb's calls. "I still haven't heard back," says Mr. Robb, of Christie's Great Estates affiliate LandVest. "It's total silence."

In San Francisco, a buyer in the market for an $8 million to $10 million property told Mark Allan Levinson last week to hold off on the search because his stock portfolio had just taken a big hit. "People are still buying, but they're not quite as bullish," says Mr. Levinson, of Sotheby's International Realty in San Francisco.

 

Last Wednesday, a New York City buyer haggling over the purchase of a $1.9 million apartment used last week's turbulence to win an additional $100,000 discount. Arguing the situation had dramatically changed, the buyer contended that the market was headed for a steep decline. "He had lowballed the price to start with," says Anne Snee, a broker at Corcoran. "But given what's going on, I'm not sure that [the sellers] didn't make the right decision."

So far, the strongest part of the high-end market are the few "trophy" properties -- penthouses and other apartments with one-of-a-kind features that rarely come up for sale. "There are always people with money. Somebody's always on the other side of these crises," says David Ogilvy, a broker in Greenwich, Conn., who this year sold a $30 million house -- the second-most-expensive house ever sold in the area.

In New York on Tuesday, 50 people perused a 5,500-square-foot duplex penthouse on an in-demand Park Avenue block. Put on the market that very day, the 10-room cooperative apartment once owned by Broadway playwright and director Moss Hart and actress Kitty Carlisle boasts high ceilings, stunning city views and a $20 million pricetag.

According to Katherine Marshall, the broker whose family owns the unit, five prospective buyers have already returned to check out the apartment a second time.

Leighton Candler, a broker with Corcoran, says she has seen solid buyer interest in her top-shelf listings, which include a $46 million penthouse at 778 Park Ave. Previously owned by Manhattan socialite Brooke Astor, the apartment features 14 rooms, six terraces, five wood-burning fireplaces and city views.

Ms. Candler is also selling a $46.5 million penthouse at 1020 Fifth Ave., with a 40-foot grand salon and views of Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It has been owned by the same family since it was built in 1925.

Just a few weeks ago, San Francisco saw one of its priciest listings ever, a 20,000-square-foot penthouse topping the St. Regis Residences. Encompassing two floors and featuring four terraces as well as a two-story waterfall, the still-unfinished unit has an asking price of $70 million.

So far, places like New York and San Francisco are still faring better than many other areas of the U.S., particularly areas of Southern California and Florida. "I think everyone is taking a hit," says Suzanne Perkins of Sotheby's in Santa Barbara, Calif., where prices have fallen 20% in the last year. "I still have buyers in the $20 million range, but they're looking for deals and they're looking for sellers who will negotiate."

In the run-up to the real-estate boom, brokers sometimes slapped headline-grabbing asking prices on highly desirable homes just to drum up interest and create buzz. Now, many of the tricks brokers are using to sell properties at the high-end are the same ones used with their more modest counterparts. The first and foremost: persuading the seller to list the home at an attractive price.

In Miami, Nelson Gonzalez of Esslingler Wooten Maxwell Realtors says he recently had to tell a client who wants to put his house on the market for $25 million to $30 million that it's really worth about half that amount. "I'm not willing to just put it on the market at the seller's pricing. I'm putting things on the market that are priced so they will sell," says Mr. Gonzalez.

Amid the financial crisis, agents say many buyers are also more reluctant to buy splashy properties for reasons other than the cost. "I don't think anybody is going to be bidding for at least the next several weeks," says Kirk Henckels of Stribling Private Brokerage. "You'd feel pretty silly walking into a cocktail party today and saying you bought an apartment today."

The Real Story

Lavish New York City Condo Project Contends With Lenders' New Demands

By ALEX FRANGOS
August 20, 2008; Page C1

To see how difficult the condominium-development market has become, consider the plight of 100 Eleventh Ave., which was designed to be one of the hottest addresses in New York.
Developers Craig Wood and Curtis Bashaw hired cutting-edge French architect Jean Nouvel to design a 23-story building that features a shimmering facade with thousands of unusually shaped windows looking out on the Hudson River. High-end buyers such as Blackstone Group's incoming chief financial officer, Laurence Tosi, and fashion photographer Mario Testino plunked down deposits to purchase apartments, according to documents and people familiar with the project. The pick seemed like a coup when Mr. Nouvel won the Pritzker Prize this year, the top award in modern architecture.
But like many other real-estate developers, Messrs. Wood and Bashaw have learned that there are no sure things in the current credit climate. Some $50 million over budget and nearly a year behind schedule, their company, Cape Advisors Inc., is under the gun to refinance its construction loan in the midst of pouring concrete, or it risks the possibility of having to halt work next month, according to several people familiar with the project.
A Cape spokeswoman says that there is "huge interest" from potential investors. The developers could strike a deal with new investors as early as Friday, according to two people familiar with the deal. But that unnamed capital source is expected to get a 25% return, slashing into profits Cape hoped to see from the project, these people say.
The developer's predicament comes at a time when the biggest condominium construction lenders of the boom times -- like iStar Financial Inc. and Corus Bankshares Inc. -- are under the gun themselves, facing skyrocketing defaults and plummeting stock prices. In this eat-or-be-eaten world, lenders are squeezing developers like Cape Advisors that have stumbled, several people familiar with the market say.
Indeed, iStar Financial is forcing the developers to refinance a $110 million first-mortgage construction loan with much higher rates, according to people familiar with the project. IStar is asking that the interest rate go from three points above the London interbank offered rate, a common benchmark interest rate, to six points above Libor. The bank is also asking for a $6 million fee to reprocess the loan.
An iStar spokesman, Andrew Backman, declined to comment on this specific project, but in a statement said in general the lender works with troubled borrowers to "find an appropriate resolution for any issues," and that may include "an appropriate extension fee and a new 'market interest rate' which will compensate us for these concessions."
Messrs. Wood and Bashaw declined to comment. People close to the company play down the problems and note that the project has presold 70% of its units for $190 million, or $2,300 a square foot, considered high even in New York.
Making matters worse, however, the Manhattan real-estate market, once seen as an island separated from the national housing decline, has shown signs of weakness. Inventory of condos and co-ops are up 37% in July from the year before, according to Miller Samuel Inc., a market-research firm. Jonathan Miller, Miller Samuel's chief executive, says market prices are "moving sideways," and he is concerned about how the market will perform in 2009.
But internal project documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal paint a troubled picture. Cape Advisors, like many real-estate developers, failed to keep costs down amid construction problems and sprung for even more lavish fixtures and finishing touches midway through development. Units that lack full river views and that face a women's prison are proving a tough sell.
Cost overruns were "less relevant when sales prices were going up every week and Wall Street bonuses going up and the pool of buyers growing," says Ronnie Levine, a managing director at Meridian Capital Group, a brokerage that arranges financing for real-estate projects. But in today's credit-constrained environment, even a high-profile project in the less hard-hit Manhattan market is struggling to raise cash.
Cape Advisors acquired the small plot of land in December 2005 for $47 million. It sits next to architect Frank Gehry's swooping IAC/InterActiveCorp's headquarters building and among trendy art galleries. Most apartments will have Hudson River views; the women's prison is on the other side.
Well-heeled buyers include R. Martin Chavez, a partner at Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., who is slated to purchase the top floor for $20 million. A limited-liability company attached to shipping heir Michael Recanati purchased eight apartments over two floors to join into a single $24.5 million manse, according to the documents.
Insiders also took pieces, including three brokers with the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, the brokerage handling the building. A spokesman for Mr. Recanati declined to comment. Mr. Chavez didn't return calls. Blackstone's Mr. Tosi didn't return requests for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Testino, the photographer, declined to comment.
But the documents show how costs escalated quickly. Foundation work found mudlike pudding instead of bedrock, causing a 10-month delay. The cost of concrete swelled from a budgeted $8.3 million to $14.3 million. The developers upped the ante on the interior design, tripling the price for flooring to $3.1 million.
Mr. Nouvel's intricate facade proved complicated and is currently being assembled in China and expected to cost $14 million, $1 million more than budgeted. The marketing budget increased from $1 million to $4 million. Because of design changes Mr. Nouvel is now expected to charge $1.3 million instead of $600,000. The fee for the local architects, Beyer Blinder Belle, went from $700,000 to $2.7 million. Mr. Nouvel, the lead architect, declined to comment.
In total, the budget has swelled to $205 million from $151 million, and the target opening of Dec. 1, 2008, has been pushed back six to nine months. As costs mounted, Cape Advisors in the spring tried to raise money by replacing its $110 million construction loan from iStar Financial with a $126 million loan from condo specialist lender Corus Bank. But the Corus deal didn't gel, forcing Cape to look for more equity from outside investors. Cape has put in $19 million in cash as equity in the project, according to documents. Representatives for Corus declined to comment.
Buyers, who had once expected to take ownership by year's end, now aren't slated to move in until summer 2009. Their deposits are in escrow. The sales contract will make it difficult to pull out without litigation. However, if delays push the closings into 2010, the buyers could have greater recourse to pull their deposits, according to people familiar with the project.

A Few Shortcuts to Juice Up a BlackBerry

Published on July 15, 2008
by Katherine Boehret

If you’re a BlackBerry user, you’re probably getting tired of hearing about all the things Apple’s iPhone can do. Rumor even has it that a more iPhone-like BlackBerry is in the works. But don’t despond: Your current trusty emailing device has a few tricks up its sleeve that you may not know about.
This week, I gathered up some useful shortcuts that come built into most of the BlackBerrys, even older models, made by Research In Motion Ltd. but not many owners actually use or know about them. Ironically, most of these shortcuts are conducted using a BlackBerry feature that the iPhone lacks: its physical keyboard. (The iPhone uses a virtual keyboard that appears on-screen only when needed.)
Some of these shortcuts are seemingly obvious, like number or capitalization locks, but others are more obscure, like codes that can be entered to display the BlackBerry’s precise signal strength. Some shortcuts are performed with a single keystroke; others work in conjunction with a trackwheel or trackball, depending on your BlackBerry model, and still others work when two keys are pressed simultaneously. BlackBerrys with condensed keyboards that use auto-correcting SureType may require extra or different keystrokes.
Navigation Simplified
A series of keystrokes work in various BlackBerry applications to make navigation much faster. Pressing the Space bar works like Page Down on a computer keyboard, moving down one screen per press. Holding Shift while pressing the Space bar moves in the opposite direction, like the Page Up key. To quickly move to the very top or bottom of a page, press “T” or “B,” respectively. Another way to page down or up through lists is to hold the ALT key while scrolling with the trackwheel.
Users can toggle between the BlackBerry’s running applications without the extra step of navigating back to the Home screen. To do this, press ALT and the Escape key, then release Escape and use the trackwheel to scroll through a display of icons that represent running programs until you reach the desired program, then release the ALT key to select that program.
Messaging Magic
Shortcuts in BlackBerry messaging can be a real boon when you’re trying to get work done quickly. While looking at a list of emails, hit “C” to immediately start composing a new email. When a specific email is highlighted, pressing “R” will reply to that message; “L” will reply to all and “F” will forward it. Hitting “J” while an email is highlighted will jump directly to the oldest message in that email chain.
A list of emails can be more neatly organized from the message screen by holding the ALT key and pressing a letter. “I” will alter the list to show only incoming emails, “O” will show just those emails that were sent. “P” shows a phone log, including dates and times, and “s” displays all SMS messages made or received on the BlackBerry.
In the body of a message, pressing the Space bar twice inserts a period and capitalizes the next word. When the left Shift key and ALT are pressed together, the keyboard’s number lock is on; the right Shift key and ALT work as the caps lock. Holding any letter down will capitalize it, saving users from pressing another key to do so. To type a letter with an accent, hold the letter key down while scrolling up or down with the trackwheel until you find the correctly accented letter.
Type Less, Say More
While composing emails, a series of AutoText codes can be typed in the email body to automatically display certain phrases or information. Typing “mynumber” and a space in the text of an email will automatically display your BlackBerry’s phone number. Similarly, when “LD” is entered the local date is displayed, and when “LT” is typed the local time appears.
If your email inbox is full and you can’t send emails, find out the PIN of your recipient’s BlackBerry and use it to message the person directly. (To find your own PIN, type “mypin” and a space into the body of an email. This code can be used to send PIN messages from one device to another without using the device’s usual email system.)
Geeky Codes
If you’re just dying to know some techie details about your BlackBerry, the “Help Me!” screen will be right up your alley. To view the “Help Me!” screen, press ALT, Shift and “H” simultaneously. This displays data that won’t matter much to the average person, such as the device’s vendor ID, platform and free file space. But it also shows the exact percentage of remaining battery power on the BlackBerry, which could be helpful if you aren’t sure how to interpret the imprecise battery indicator bars at the top of the home screen.
Another way to geek up your BlackBerry is to change its signal strength indicator from bars to numbers that tell how many decibels per milliwatt the device is transmitting. To do this, go to the Home screen and hold down the ALT button while typing “NMLL.” My BlackBerry displayed a minus 75 when I made this change. Strengths of minus 50 to minus 90 are said to be good, while anything higher, like minus 100, isn’t. Though this numerical indicator won’t likely be of any practical use, you could use it to turn to a friend and compare reception during an excruciatingly boring meeting.
One way to impress a technophile on a date is by pulling up a BlackBerry’s Event Log. To do this, go to the Home screen and hold down ALT while typing “LGLG.” This retrieves a long list of numerous confusing codes representing the functions that were performed on your device. The Menu screen in the Event Log gives users the option to clear this log, freeing up some BlackBerry memory, while an Options screen lets people set the log up to record only certain kinds of activities.
Finally, to reboot your BlackBerry without removing its plastic back and taking out the battery, press ALT, Right Shift and Delete simultaneously. More codes can be found in the blogosphere or in a special section of RIM’s Web site: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/support/blackberry101/tips/. Adopting just one of these shortcuts can significantly change the way you use your BlackBerry.

How to Sell a House, When You Have to Sell It Now

Seven tips for homeowners who can't wait until the market turns around
By DAVID CROOK
July 14, 2008; Page R1 Wall Street Journal
So you say you're selling your house?
Hey, it could be worse. You could be selling a Hummer.
If you've been waiting for a good offer to come through, this probably isn't exactly big news to you: This is the worst home-selling market since Herbert Hoover was president. In much of the country, prices are already way down and probably heading even further south. Houses are sitting on the market for months longer than sellers expected.
And don't think this is just a momentary lull, a short slowdown before the market recovers and then takes off again. What you see today is the market you have, for now and, quite possibly, for a long time to come.
"At best, I think we're a year away from the bottom," says Sally Bodmer, who has sold Tampa-area real estate for 31 years and has never seen a worse selling climate. She operates mainly in the newer suburbs on the far eastern edge of the metropolitan area. It was a super-hot area in 2005, when developers couldn't build houses fast enough. "Now," she says, "you can't give them away."
To be sure, things are not awful everywhere. Prices in metropolitan areas bypassed by the Big Bubble -- places such as Charlotte, N.C., or Rochester, N.Y. -- have held relatively firm or risen modestly through the Big Bust. And in some of the worst markets, elite properties and houses in the best neighborhoods may still buck the trends.
But even the perennial playgrounds of the upper crust aren't immune. According to Zillow, a real-estate Web site, prices in Palm Beach, Fla., are down about 10% from last year. Prices are down 13% in Santa Barbara, Calif.
So what's a home seller to do? What does it take to sell a house today?
If your job or life circumstances leave you no alternative other than to sell in this market, you must be prepared to go well beyond the usual feints and gimmicks if you want to get potential buyers in the front door and, ultimately, to the closing table. By all means, feng shui the living room, bury a statue of St. Joseph in the front yard and bake brownies before the open house.
But if you really want to sell the place, you need to think and act like a salesperson. Most important, you must separate your emotional attachment to your family home from your financial interest in your family's largest asset. Selling a house is business, and you must approach the sale in a businesslike manner.
Here are seven points to keep in mind:
1. DON'T WAIT AROUND.
Even in the better housing areas, it's taking a long time to sell houses; and in the hardest-hit metro areas, inventories of unsold homes are stretching well past 180 days.
So, don't try to sit out the market. That's what hundreds of other timid sellers are doing, each of them hoping -- somehow, some way -- that hanging on the sidelines will improve prices and, ultimately improve his or her chances for selling success. It won't. Not if you expect to sell anytime soon. If you want your place sold, the best way to make sure that happens is to put it up for sale.
Obviously, you should take advantage of your local market cycles -- early spring is usually better for selling in much of the country -- but otherwise don't try timing the market. You won't have any better luck than a stock trader who's always holding out for the market highs or lows.
2. FIX IT UP AND CLEAN IT UP.
Buyers are taking your house out on a date. It has to make a good impression.
Don't spend a lot of money -- absolutely no big-ticket renovations -- but do see that everything is in good repair. And give the place a new paint job and a general sprucing up. (Caution: This won't necessarily give you any pricing advantage over less fixed-up places, but it will attract buyers and keep them interested.)
As you get closer to the date that the house actually goes up for sale, start moving out by decluttering the place. No buyer wants to see a house filled to the rafters with other people's things. They want to imagine their stuff filling the place. "Stage" the place with only enough furniture to make it look livable; put the rest in storage.
3. PRICE IT CHEAPLY.
Don't fight the market by trying to price your house at bubble-era levels or by factoring in all those improvements you made. It won't fly.
Set a realistic, salable price on day one. Don't let the house hang around on the market as you gradually lower the price. Forget what you think the house should be worth or what it was worth three years ago. That's not what it's worth today.
Smart buyers will be looking for bargains. So you must set your price below comparable nearby properties. Look at the asking prices of neighboring houses, and set your price to beat them. If prices in your area are generally down 20% from where they were at the bubble peak in 2005, then price your house 25% to 30% below its peak bubble value. Your area down 40%? Be prepared to take just half of what the house was worth three years ago. Yes, it's painful. But if you want to sell, you don't have much choice.
And remember: In much of the country, renting is still a better deal right now than buying. As you try to settle on a price, look at rents on comparable properties. Buyers are not likely to be counting on huge price appreciation, as they did during the bubble, so they may be less willing to take on the higher monthly costs of home buying and owning. You must set a price that makes someone's prospective mortgage and home-owning costs look like a better deal than a month's rent.
4. HIRE A TOP REAL-ESTATE AGENT.
Get the best, most aggressive selling (listing) agent you can find.
When everything was selling before it even hit the market, of course, you didn't need the best. You just needed the cheapest. But not these days.
Fortunately, in this market, real-estate brokers are even more anxious than you. They're eager to get whatever work they can, so don't rely on your cousin with the real-estate license or your best friend's wife.
Ask, instead, for the local real-estate office's top salesperson. All offices have one or two sellers who greatly outperform their colleagues. That's who you want.
Interview various agents and insist that they present you with a well-conceived marketing plan that goes way beyond the usual Internet page, one or two open houses and a yard sign. (Think about using a professional photographer for multiple shots on the primary Web listing, your house as the featured "home of the week" in the local newspaper, a decorating segment on a morning chat show, a stop on the local garden club's spring tour.)

Sellers of higher-end properties should be able to negotiate a lower commission percentage, but this is no time to quibble over a couple of percentage points. Also, offer the agent a big bonus if he or she sells the house in 30 days or at your asking price. Offer other agents bonuses if they bring in the ultimate buyer.
5. PROMOTE. PROMOTE. PROMOTE.
Don't rely on the agent to do all the work. The agent should pay the usual marketing costs, but you should be prepared to pony up for extras, especially if you insist on more expensive or untraditional promotions.
You want the house listed regularly in local newspaper classifieds and, if it's a special, high-end property in a desirable location, in national publications, too.
Make sure your house is on the leading real-estate Web sites; Trulia, Zillow, Cyberhomes, Eppraisal and Realtor.com are some of the top ones.
Beyond that, get really creative. Advertise in corporate newsletters and intranet listings. Check in with local relocation firms that help transferring corporate executives find new homes. List the house on eBay. Put it on Craigslist. Put it in your church bulletin.
Trophy house in an upscale neighborhood? Hire a string quartet for the open house. Something a bit more midmarket in a family-friendly subdivision? Put a clown on the corner handing out brochures.
6. PLAY THE BANKER.
As bad as things are, there's one big factor in your favor: the tight credit market. If you have no mortgage you have to pay off, your strongest selling point might be your ability to finance all or a substantial part of a buyer's purchase.
You're a lot more flexible than a bank that has the Federal Reserve looking over its shoulders, so you might even be able to charge a higher interest rate than a commercial lender as well as command a higher sale price. (You'll need a real-estate lawyer to make sure everything is done to protect you and an accountant to set up a payment system. Peer-to-peer lenders such as virginmoneyus.com3 have systems to handle mortgage payments.)
Worst case? Your borrower defaults and you take the property back. And sell it again.
7. TAKE THE OFFER.
If any qualified buyer comes in with a reasonable offer, be prepared to accept it.
You don't want to lose the deal by digging in your heels over a few dollars. Every real-estate office keeps records that show the percentage difference between asking and selling prices, so it's easy to figure what's an appropriate offer and what's not.
Negotiate, of course, but recognize that the buyer has a lot more clout than you do. Your house, as wonderful as you think it is, is worth only as much as someone is willing to pay for it.
And that, unfortunately, will probably be a lot less than you think.

To Sell to Gen-Y, You Have to Meet Them Online

By Ilyce R. Glink with Samuel J. Tamkin
Saturday, July 5, 2008; F06

 Despite the housing recession, there are still more than 1.5 million real estate agents in the United States.

Real estate agents are used to competing heartily against one another for listings. They're used to competing against other agents who have comparable houses for sale in the same neighborhood. Local Realtor organizations host award ceremonies each year to recognize real agents with the most sales. Heck, real agents are even used to fighting for ad space in the local media.

But on the World Wide Web, the nature of real estate competition is changing -- particularly for those interested in snagging Gen Y-ers, those young and future home buyers who are now in their 20s.

For real estate agents, finding these buyers and interacting with them requires some of the same skills your teenager might have already mastered, combined with a mastery of local real estate and demographic information.

The second iteration of the Internet is known as Web 2.0, and at its core is social networking. Over the past four months, we've been dipping our toes into the social networking world, to better understand how today's teens and those in their 20s interact with one another and the outside world -- and what this means for real estate.

We started by launching Ilyce Glink sites at Facebook, MySpace, Current.com, Friendster, Bebo and elsewhere. These sites feature some of the real estate and personal finance content I've created through the years. The other part of our social networking strategy includes "twittering" regularly at Twitter.com/glink, uploading dozens of videos about real estate and personal finance to YouTube.com/expertrealestatetips, and signing up for LinkedIn.com, a site that allows business colleagues and partners to network, and tends to pitch toward a somewhat older crowd.

There are plenty of real estate agents, brokers, investors, educators and mortgage lenders who are already active on these sites.

Are you a real estate professional who wants to stand out in a crowd? There are fewer than 14,000 members of the "Real Estate Investing" group on MySpace, and fewer than 15,000 members of the top five real estate groups on Facebook. While that seems like a lot of people, there are probably few who live in your own neighborhood. You can also demonstrate your expertise by engaging in a group discussion.

Or, go for the "big fish in a small pond" mentality. There are loads of real estate-related groups to join that have fewer than 100 members. Social networking sites allow you to "friend" members of these groups, and start a group of your own.

You can join or start real estate-related groups with location-specific ties. Brokers with expertise in a specific neighborhood start groups that might provide information about a three-block-square area. Buyers and sellers interested in the happenings of that micro-market will be able to find out information that may be unavailable elsewhere. That can make your group popular.

If you're a broker in a college town with students who may be looking for a home, you might be able to link them into your site so they could get updates about neighborhoods they might want to live in after graduation. Agents are also connecting to one another, setting up relationships that can be profitable by increasing their referral networks.

The person heading up our initiative is our intern Claire Young, a student at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Her observation? Although she says she learned about social networking in college, the next generation of kids will have social networking in their blood.

More than that, she confirms recent news reports that suggest people in her age group are using social networking to make many big-picture decisions, including renting an apartment, buying a car, getting married, buying a digital camera or buying a house.

Today's teenagers will grow up using the Internet to connect their social and business interactions. This clock can't be turned back.

Whether you work in real estate or some other business, here are some things to think about if you're going to dabble in Web 2.0:

· Social networking takes time. Connecting online can help build your business, but it takes awhile -- and time generally is in short supply for real estate agents.

· Be flexible. You can start with a plan but be prepared to make changes along the way. Be willing to try out new groups, change your profile and add features and content.

· Stay attuned to new technology and Web sites. New social networking sites pop up all the time. Most of them won't make it. But if you're among the first to sign up, you'll be able to get a jump on making connections.

· The more connections, the better. LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, your other social networking sites and your blog can all be linked together to help you build a strong online community. Create links from one to another. Connect Twitter and your blog so that they automatically upload to the other sites. Try to get your friends, colleagues and online connections to try out your other sites.

You don't have to be a technical genius to make this work. Most of the social networking sites we have joined make it easy to get started, upload written content, photos and video, and get going.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting these are uncharted territories by any stretch of the imagination. There are thousands of real estate agents and mortgage lenders who have signed up for these sites and are spending time trying to forge connections that will bring in business.

What's becoming clear is that you've got to be there, or you may be left behind.

Q I have a Veterans Administration loan and want to do a streamline refinance, which I've done before. I can't find what I believe is a true source of current VA loan rates. I've been to Bankrate.com and don't see the information I'm looking for. Can you help me find this information and choose the best lender? I also have a home equity line of credit that I would like to roll into the streamline refinance. Is this possible?

A Many lenders that offer conventional loans may also offer VA loans. But most VA loan rates are not advertised the same way conventional loan rates are advertised.

To find a good lender with expertise in VA loans, I'd start with the VA regional loan centers ( http://www.homeloans.va.gov/rlcweb.htm). Each of the regional loan centers has a Web site as well as a bricks-and-mortar office, and is set up to help veterans, active duty personnel, Reserve members and National Guard personnel with financing a home.

When shopping for a good lender, it helps to start with a couple of reputable lenders in your area. You should check in with a local bank or savings and loan in your area, particularly if they are active residential lenders who work often with VA loans. You should also contact a mortgage broker in your area and a national mortgage lender.

Ask each of the lenders to quote you the VA rate, and then ask them to tell you what fees they charge in connection with the loan. While VA loans have higher fees than conventional loans, you want to make sure the lender you approach does not add any additional fees to the transaction. If they do add additional fees, then you want to be able to compare the various lenders on equal footing.

If the lender is a good lender for conventional loans and they have experience with VA loans, you should be okay. The key is to make sure that that lender has done enough VA loans to get the deal done, but just because you find a lender that does only VA loans does not mean that the lender will be a good lender.

As far as your equity line is concerned, you should be able to obtain a VA loan to refinance both your loans. Unfortunately, whether the lender will be able to "streamline" your application may depend on your particular circumstances.

While VA loans have not been affected the same way as the rest of the mortgage market by the credit crunch, my impression is that your application for a VA loan will require full documentation.

You may be able to get a streamlined loan, but I don't know if your circumstances or even the general real estate market in your area would affect your ability to obtain a VA loan with limited documentation, particularly when you are paying off the equity line you have and increasing the amount you want to borrow.

Your best bet is to sit down with a lender with extensive experience with VA loans and go over these issues.

How has the residential market been in Albany, N.Y., over the past year or two? I have an investment property there (three-unit), and I am trying to get an idea how badly I will get hit if I try to sell, or if I will escape the worst of the housing slump. Do you know of any reports or studies that would be helpful?

It's difficult to know how any particular real estate market is doing. You can look at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight home price index, which indicates that housing in New York state fell just over 4 percent in value in the past year. Or, you can look at the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, which are based on 20 top housing markets (not including Albany), and which indicate that home prices are down roughly 15 to 16 percent from their high.

None of these tell you what's going on in a neighborhood. And, when it comes to real estate, the old mantra of "location, location, location" remains valid. It's all about what's going on down the block and in your back yard.

If you're thinking about selling your investment property, you should invite three top neighborhood agents in to do a comparative marketing analysis of the property. This analysis is an agent's calling card. He or she will walk through your property, go back to the office and pull up the comparable sales of similar properties in the neighborhood. Then the agent will come back with a marketing plan and a suggested list price. You'll be able to see the research: what has sold in your neighborhood, when it sold, and for how much.

After reviewing the data, you can make a decision to sell or keep your rental property.

My daughter is buying a house from me with 25 percent down in cash. We can close anytime, and, at age 28, she has excellent credit (over 700). Should she get a mortgage now or should we hold off a few months for a better interest rate, as rates are now climbing again?

I don't think anyone knows where interest rates are going at the moment. But it's true that mortgage interest rates have been on the rise lately, despite the Federal Reserve lowering the short-term federal funds rate. That, in conjunction with falling home values, is making some buyers nervous.

I hope mortgage interest rates don't climb much beyond where they are at the moment. If they go too much higher, first-time buyers may have trouble qualifying for a home.

In your case, it sounds as though you have the luxury of time. If I were you, I would help your daughter find a quality lender and get pre-approved for her mortgage. That way, when you're ready to close, the lender will be ready as well.

If your daughter decides to obtain financing now and rates go down to a level that would justify her refinancing the loan, she can do that later. The interest rate your daughter gets on her loan today is still near a historically low level.

Rates may rise over the next couple of months, and if she waits she will have lost the opportunity to get today's rates. But if she takes today's rates and over the next year or two rates decrease, she can refinance. And, if rates decrease after she applies for the loan, many lenders will give her the ability to re-lock her loan rate once or twice before the deal closes.

My father and I are joint tenants with rights of survivorship on a two-family house. He is 88 and is not well. We went to a real estate lawyer and had the house put in my name.

If Dad goes into a nursing home, what is the lookback period for Medicaid? Would Medicaid be entitled to half of the equity in the property? Would I have to sell the house?

Under new federal rules, the Medicaid lookback period is five years from the date of transfer. In other words, if Medicaid has to pay for your father's stay in a nursing home because your dad is broke, the government could reverse any transfer of wealth from your father to anyone for the previous five years, if they suspect him of trying to hide assets or he transferred assets that could have been used to pay for Medicaid costs.

Would you have to sell the property? Maybe. It's also possible the government would put a lien against the property that would have to be satisfied when the property is sold or refinanced down the line.

For more details, talk to a real estate lawyer or an estate lawyer.

Ilyce R. Glink is an author and nationally syndicated columnist. Her latest book is "100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask." Samuel J. Tamkin is a real estate lawyer in Chicago. If you have questions for them, write Real Estate Matters Syndicate, P.O. Box 366, Glencoe, Ill. 60022, or contact them through Glink's Web sites, http://www.thinkglink.comandhttp://www.expertrealestatetips.net.