ARTUR'S ATTITUDES

Why Banks CEOs should have public performance reviews - OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 23:23:00 +0000

Dear President Obama,

I am writing this letter because of my frustration with banks over the last two years. I have surrendered. I have just stopped my efforts to assist clients with loan modifications.

I am a real estate broker in California and for the last two years I was trying to help tens of people to save their properties. I worked with anyone, from regular folks trying to save their only residence to property holders of multiple, multimillion dollar properties. At the end I felt like an Orwellian horse working harder and harder in vain towards the goal that cannot be accomplished.

It was a Friday evening a week ago. For months I was spending 100 hr weeks trying to move my clients’ cases forward. The number of my “by referral only clients” grew significantly. I enjoyed the respect of someone who can get to lenders through back doors and get clients relief they needed. However, my business had a tremendous fault. The number of my clients was increasing much faster than the number of cases I was able to close.

That’s true, I was not taking cases that just required filling up an on-line applications. In spite of my in depth knowledge of processes and procedures of key lenders and contacts developed over time, I finally realized that I am on a Mission Impossible.

From day one I knew that I will not get rich doing loan modifications. From day one, even when it was still perfectly legal here in California, I was not charging my clients upfront fees. I knew that lenders’ activities were so unpredictable that no-one could foresee the final outcome.
But as a former scientist and engineer, I got caught up looking for a better solution. I had this engineering desire to find a more efficient way of doing modifications. That ominous Friday, I made my decision to walk away from loan modifications. I was supposed to finalize a few cases I was working on for a long time.

My hopes came to a grinding halt. Despite my experience and connections I developed, day after day from early morning to late evening I heard over and over polite statements: “Sir, this form does not have the number “2008” filled up in the line so and so and it is already 2 month old. Please fax us a correct form; No, we have not received this fax. Can I give you a fax number?; we have only June and July statements and it is already August; there is no signature here, there is not date there, etc, etc, etc.

And despite the fact that in anticipation of these questions, I kept sending new statements ahead of time. And despite that I knew that signatures and dates were there, and the number 2008 and 2009 were all there and despite that I could tell bank reps where to go on their computer screens to find information they said that did not have or did not see, I heard day after day, call after call, “Sir you need to resend…”. That Friday, I finally realized that I was Don Quixote of La Mancha trying to fight wind mills. I realized that during the last two years lenders mastered ways of how to say no and not what I naively expected they should - ways to offer real solutions to their clients.

But even if I got through all obstacles and landmines created “by our neighborhood banks,” they reserved the best answer for the end. Once I thought that finally our paper work was absolutely perfect, I would hear a statement: “Sir, we thought your client qualified, but the investor said ‘no’ and of course there is nothing that we can do”. And you didn’t know on the day we started the process what loan investor requirements were, did you? You needed me and our client to jump hoops for 6 to 18 months to find out?

And then I finally understood! This is the banks’ way to increase employment and reduce joblessness! It is part of the stimulus plan to create jobs with no purpose! No-one ever expected to solve anyone’s mortgage problem. It was all about the jobs. What a fantastic idea! To siphon more tax payers’ funds to create gigantic IT centers with hundreds of IT and customer service employees whose only purpose is to take tax payers on a journey at their own expense. Do I sound frustrated? Yes, I am. Do I exaggerate? No. It is beyond me to understand how banks can justify these huge “cost centers” serving no real objective and post multibillion profits every quarter.

It is irrelevant why people need loan modification - should they receive them or should they be offered - for the purpose of my call “for bank CEOs to have public performance reviews”. I am assuming that loan modifications are important. Otherwise you and your government would not support them. That’s good enough for me.

I follow closely your administration’s attempts to come up with a “stick” to encourage lenders to do loan modifications and enforce directives and incentives already in place. I also know how large corporations operate. I spent many years working for a few of them, before I decided to be a “small businessman”. I worked on three continents and “labored” as a part of many economic systems. I settled in California’s Bay Area as I saw it as the most dynamic and future oriented “country” in the world, both socially and economically.

I am not an economist, but I can observe and think. Communism did not lose its historical battle with capitalism because of Reagan’s brilliance (as a matter of fact, I do believe that there was greatness in his ability to follow his beliefs and set of principles) and Gorbachev’s missteps (control without fear? What was he thinking about?). Communism lost, because persons at the top of hierarchical systems could not figure out how to productively occupy millions of their followers. It was the dynamism of American system letting people do what they can do best (unfortunately, it allows for self destruction as well) that excited (and still does) millions of minds in the US and around the globe that tipped scales of history.

No, I am not criticizing your effort to “correct” the course by injecting funds to the economy and centralizing certain functions. The reason I voted for you and still am in the shrinking group of your supporters is because you impressed me with your ability to grasp facts, analyze and draw conclusions. I saw you and still see as the best qualified politician to take on the challenges we are facing and feel comfortable entrusting our future in you.

Not to lose the American way to evolve and reinvent itself it will be necessary to limit central functions again, hopefully sooner than later. It will not be easy as large institutions including governments develop a sense of self-preservation. We observe great corporations grow and fail once they cut and destroy mechanisms that made them grow in the first place. We see governments grow and not able to shrink themselves back to the size (we don’t have go even abroad to see it today – just look at us in California!). But it has to happen.

So, why do I care about banks? Obviously banks crossed the line of being just “private enterprises”. If they were, we could leave them alone and let them self destruct. After all most of large corporations fail to grow sooner or later, assuming that they have no monopoly or government backing. Banks protect their independence of private enterprises while being supported by government’s pay outs and tax payers’ funds. As long as public funds are used to bail out banks there should be much closer scrutiny of how and why banks are spending their resources.

The “loan modification spending binge” is an insult to every American. Tremendous funds are being committed and results are laughable. Show us, how and why you are spending these funds. It is not because you want to help.

To all Bank CEOs (insert your name here): Obviously loan modifications were not your objective. But let assume for a second that they were. If it was the case, you should be fired! All of you! It should not take two years to build non-working systems to process millions of loan modification applications.

Do you know how many millions of transistors have today’s computer chips? Do you know how much more complex and difficult they are to build? And it is happening every day. We design and build hundreds of complex computer chips every year. And do you know why it is possible? It is possible because it is done by a competitive industry that is not supported by government give-aways. The industry that allows for the positive selection, where best engineers and managers move forward and those mediocre are discarded and not just pushed to the top.
I agree, starting new processes and handling hundreds of thousands of new clients is not easy. However, it could be accomplished by competent executives knowing how to build and run a modern enterprise, assuming of course that they were serious about their objective.

I do not expect you to voluntarily develop transparency that you owe the American public. And this is why you should be forced to explain yourselves. You are partially public employees, as you are using and mis-using public funds. So you should prove to public that you deserve to be entrusted with those funds in a first place. You should have public performance reviews and this public input should be a major factor of your review by your Board of Directors.

Dear President Obama,
Getting banks to show greater financial transparency will not be an easy task and the need for such scrutiny should not be seen as a good excuse to further grow the government. But I am sure that it can be done and that you can devise appropriate solutions. And as soon as you get our financial system back on track I will send you a letter reminding you to shrink the government back.

Sincerely,

Artur Urbanski, Broker

I Met Stalin

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:11:00 +0000

I MET STALIN

Yes, he was the real one. He was dead, had a large mustache and was smiling with his benevolent, innocent smile. I noticed that he was short as his counterpart in the Red Square mausoleum, Lenin. That’s all I could really see. How little I could see and how little I knew at the time!

But let me start from the beginning. A few weeks ago, San Francisco Chronicle published an article “Pickled dictator tour’s first stop: Tiananmen Square” that caught my attention. It is about the hot tourist spot “Memorial Hall” where the preserved body of Mao Zedong is displayed. The article included a list of 10 embalmed leaders of communist states. Today you cans see only 5 of them. Other 5 bodies were removed and, either buried, or cremated. While I have seen only 4 of them, I realized that I am probably one of the few in the Western Hemisphere today who has seen the embalmed body of Stalin. It was a beautiful sunny day in 1959 and after many hours meandering with the crowd through the Red Square, I entered the mausoleum and seen, Stalin and Lenin. I was 7 years old at the time and remember it vividly. I was with my Dad (he was the student at the Leningrad’s Naval Academy at the time), my Mom (more about her later) and my older sister. We were part of the tour to Moscow with a group of my Dad’s colleagues from the Academy. What struck me was the size of Lenin’s and Stalin’s bodies. They definitely looked small. In 1961 as a result of continued post-Stalin political thaw started by Khrushchev, the body of Stalin was secretly removed and buried outside Kremlin wall.

Here, I was to start my story of 10 “pickled men”, and possibly comment on the birth and growth of the Communist system that was embraced by the half of the world’s population in 100 years after Marks and Engels devised the system concept. In 60-ties and 70-ties it was the system to fear! Not a surprise they we tried to find the way to stop it and became embraced in the second Indochina war. But I will comment on it another time.

All of this changed last night when I met the monster again. I was just about to start working on this post, but I decided to watch a DVD of a Polish movie “Katyn”, I had just received. The movie was shown last week as a part of the Polish movie festival in the Marin County, CA. I couldn’t make it so I ordered the DVD instead. The movie is about 22,000 of Polish officers killed on Stalin’s order in the spring of 1940. In one of the movie scenes there is a huge Stalin’s picture filling up the office of the NKVD officer.

This face with a large mustache and a benevolent smile. The monster who was responsible for killing millions of people of different nationalities, but who also created a powerful fatherly image by mastering a personality cult and taking all credit for saving Soviet Union from the Hitler’s army invasion. His image as Russia’s savior was so powerful that even people whose parents he killed admitted to crying and grieving after his death! He was even considering killing his top military man General Zhukov as he thought he was getting too much credit! Seeing the Stalin picture again evoked memories, suddenly the story of 10 leaders became very personal and centered on Stalin.

But back to my viewing of Stalin’s body. It was 1959, I was 7 years old and it was my third trip to Russia. I remember all of them vividly, but especially the first one in 1957. It is amazing how little I knew and understood then. I hope my age was the excuse. A train trip to the Russian border, walking back and forth on a crowded station at 4 AM, the wall clock in the little train station of Terespol and waiting for the train. This wall clock engraved in my mind for ever; I could not believe how slow the clock’s handles were moving forward. Russia’s ( Soviet Union then) train tracks have a different width than most of other countries in the world, so crossing the border required disembarking. But at the same time –train schedules were not existent. Can you imagine that the trip from the Soviet border to Leningrad (St. Petersburg today) took us 3 days and nights? We were in a lonely carriage attached to different trains pulling it forward and then leaving it on “bocznica” for hours. I didn’t realize how brave my Mom was to make this trip. Luckily two smiling faces of my sister and I elicited the help of Russians. I still remember how charming and helpful they were. Dragging me and my sister to Soviet Union in 1957... It took me years to realize it how epic this event was. The war with Germany ended in 1945. Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939 two weeks after Germans did and moved the Polish border West to where it is today (it one point Poland occupied a vast territory from Baltic to Black Sea and even Moscow for a very short period in 1620, even Moscow was part of Poland). At the end of 1945 Stalin closed the border stranding hundred of thousands of Poles in the Soviet Union unable to reconnect with their families and return to the shrunken homeland. The border didn’t open again until 1956. Those who could were moving west going back to their homeland, looking for their lost families. I have two aunts who were stranded in Russia, one from 1948 in the infamous Magadan gulag when NKVD could not find her husband, the Home Army officer so they just took her instead! My aunt Zosia’s life story was a story of amazing courage and strength), My other aunt, Aunt Anna was testifying in a trial in Lvov in the case of murdered Armenian bishops when the border closed. She spent 10 years waiting to get back to Poland to her husband. She did come back bringing a great historical treasure with her, a carpet collection of her husband and husband’s father including pieces taken from the conquered Kara Mustafa’s Army during the 1683 Battle of Vienna, that she managed to secure through the war – but that is another great story I would like to share with you one day.

And here was my Mom, taking me and my sister in the opposite direction. But what was my Mom thinking about? She had a luggage of very recent history with her. Wasn’t she afraid? It was only a few years prior that she saved her father, a Home Army hero, from the hands of NKVD. He was sentenced to death (for being part of the pro-London Home Army, instead pro-Soviet People Army). Then suddenly his sentence was commuted to hard labor and after spending two years in copper mines of Legnica he was released. Many years later my grandpa and my grandma both received Virtuti Militari orders for their Home Army underground fight against Germans. The only thing my Mom told my sister and I about the miraculous release of our grandpa was that the NKVD officer that arrested him had a crush on her, but she never got into details (she took her secret with her now; she passed away of leukemia - some say a result of the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl that passed over my parents city on its way to Sweden where it was detected).

A few years after saving her father my Mom married a young (and handsome) Navy officer who was making a quick career in newly communist Poland. He was only 26 when he became the commander of Communist Poland Navy ship visiting London in 1955, for the first time since the end of the Second World War. He even met Queen Elizabeth and his young face showed on the cover pages of magazines in Poland. He was a Communist role model! In 1956 he was sent for three years to study in the Naval Academy in Leningrad. Three years away from his family (you have prison furloughs now, but there were no furloughs for the Naval Academy students then!). My father was gone for three years and for my Mom and us, the only way to see him was to travel to Soviet Union in 1957 and years after that, against the stream of people leaving Soviet Union as fast as they could once Khrushchev open the border.

Not only was my father a good Communist, he also was a good father and husband. Once my grandpa left prison he stayed in the little flat of my father. My father was the only person who could and would help someone who was on the wrong side of the political spectrum! My Mom was caught between two worlds of prewar prosperity and post war new power. So she was departing the old world of her parents and crossing the border of the enemy to reconnect her family at least for a few weeks per year!

But back to Stalin. He affected the lives of millions for many years and that includes many in my family. This is my story of Stalin and how his image evolved in my mind from seeing his body as a child to viewing the Katyn last night. Did you know that Russian denied this crime until 1990? I was growing up not knowing the truth. Finally, Gorbachev and then Yeltsin admitted the crime in 1990 and respectively 1992 50 years after it happened. Putin however reversed back to the old Soviet line that there is no proof that it happened! As recently as in June 2008 a court in Moscow rejected a request to hear a case on two issues: the declassification of documents about Katyn and the judicial rehabilitation of the victims! To read more on the Polish Russian relations regarding Katyn – a very sore point of their bilateral relations, click here. Stalin’s legacy is still alive! And while Stalin caries responsibility for killing approximately 25 million people, he is only the #2 killer in the 20^th century - behind his “student”, Mao-Zedong, blamed for death of 35 million people.

Note about my father. He is 80 years old. We were on different sides of the political spectrum in Poland for years. During the bloody workers uprising in Gdansk shipyard in December 1970 (9 years before The Solidarity Union was born in the Gdansk Shipyard, I was 18 at that time), we bitterly disagreed. Beaten and scared I owe him getting me out of the hands of police. But in 1979 when I decided to leave Poland, just 9 later, he told me “this is the best thing you can do”. By then he was totally disillusioned with the system and people who demonstrated that without any “checks and balances”, communism is just yet another totalitarian system. Communism in Poland in 1979, the year I left the country, while not as bloody as it was 25 years earlier, was still a system that didn’t tolerate different views or dissent. When I left, my father was expelled from the Communist party and forced to retire from the Navy. His guilt? He allowed his adult son to escape from the country! But history took yet a new turn. In 1989 Berlin Wall collapsed and the democracy returned to Poland first time since 1939. My father was welcomed back to the Naval Academy in Gdynia where he still teaches part time and continues publishing in the scientific magazines (click here to see his most recent publication). He is a respected role model for Navy officers again! And who were the people who welcomed him back? The same people, mostly his former students, who brought him down in the 80-ties got him back on the pedestal in the 90-ties. Just a paradox of countries going through political upheavals.

Directory of my real estate evolution related posts

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 07:46:00 +0000

I am passionate about CHANGE in general. A lot can be done to promote change in real estate. Hera are a few of my posts on the subject:

Who Started the Real Estate Revolution? - emergence of Zillow and Trulia create new market dynamics prompting MLSs to action
Can Zillow annihilate Realtors? is Zillow Realtors' ally or foe? It really doesn't matter. It has a lot to offer to clients and agents - so take advantage of it!
GOOD and BAD about NAR: Can we fix NAR? - NAR is in danger of becoming irrelevant; its actions to protect a single commission based business model might lead to its undoing.
Can We Fix NAR - Sequel part 2 - more comments and facts on the NAR and its future role
Is your income below $12,000 per year? - comments on Mark Nadel's report Critical Assessment of the Residential Real Estate Rate Structure lead to a very interesting exchange of ideas and thoughts with Mark Nadel
Is your income below $12,000? - Important update from Mark Nadel - more comments and updates
Call for Supplanting NAR - comments on the post by Greg Swann's at Bloodhound Blog; the call for a new organization to guard the quality of agents can be compared to fixing a car with a broken engine by replacing the engine with another broken one.
Comments on "Call for Supplanting NAR" from Mark Nadel - Mark Nadel, the author of "A Critical Assessment of the Traditional Residential Real Estate Broker Commission Rate Structure" authorized me to post his comments regarding the post of George Swann.
NAR and Blogging - we don't need more rules! - As rumor is making its way around that NAR might step in and forbid agents to blog this post is explaining that compliance rules are already in place and that we don't need new ones.

Enjoy reading!

If you want to quickly visit a few places in CA....

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 05:50:00 +0000

....like this one:

.....then I have a few links for you:

Saturday afternoon in Half Moon Bay and Princeton

Beautiful Pacifica

Fascinating secrets of Easton Addition

South San Francisco (SSF) Contrasts

Directory of posts on Burlingame, CA by Cimpler Real Estate

Enjoy!

A few things about San Mateo, CA

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 05:41:00 +0000

There are many “nice” things about San Mateo, CA. It has a mild climate, a lot of beautiful homes (as the one below), interesting (but not necessarily exciting) history, etc. But is there anything special or unusual about San Mateo?

Here are 10 things I came with:

You Tube was a San Mateo startup (http://youtube.com/ ). They are in San Bruno, CA now. Here is their Last Day in San Mateo
Movie studio around 1923-5 - I read about in the Daily Journal, but cannot find the link!). San Mateo had a shot at becoming Hollywood, but I guess the weather in the South is better! Can you help to find the link???
Bay Meadows Race Track – it still exist, but it might be its last year. Seabiscuit ran here! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Meadows )
Lure Restaurant – if you look for a special (San Francisco like, expensive place with great food and décor, make sure you come here. It is in walking distance to San Mateo movie theaters (see #7) http://www.lurerestaurant.com
The San Mateo Performing Arts Center located on San Mateo High School, is one of the largest theatres on the peninsula outside of San Francisco (per Wikipedia)
Pier 1 Imports – was founded 1962, in San Mateo (per Wikipedia)
B Street cinema district - cinema brought the evening traffic to the City and local restaurants. A great place!
The local economy successfully withstood the dotcom industry crash – the credit goes to the San Mateo City Council! As a matter of fact, they continue doing a great job. Click Here to visit a very informative city website.
Coyote Point Museum (one of the best natural history museums and wildlife centers in California, according to Wikipedia entry )
Yul Kwon, winner of Survivor: Cook Islands.

To read the entire post, please go to:

Is there anything special about San Mateo, CA?

The reasons you might want to live in Millbrae, CA

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 09:05:00 +0000

Why would you want to live in Millbrae, CA? Really. It is sandwiched on the San Francisco Peninsula between Burlingame and Hillsborough with their great houses and restaurants to the South and San Francisco a few miles away to the North. But prices of homes are only slightly lower than in Burlingame. So what is the reason you would want to pay so much?

There is a very good reason to do so – Millbrae schools. There are four elementary schools (Meadows, Green Hills, Spring Valley, and Lomita Park) and one middle school (Taylor Middle School, named after the family that owned land along Taylor Blvd Mills High And then – there 's Mills High School - a real gem on the Peninsula.

It is the best public High School in San Mateo County. Two years ago it became the first High School in the history of San Mateo county to cross the threshold of excellence (Academic Performance Index -API - score of 800 points) scoring 832. It bettered this score last year by raising it to 840. Every year, large numbers of its students are accepted to the best colleges in the US including Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, MIT, NYU and many other top universities in the country. And what about Cappuchino High School? Wikipedia notes: ”Although surrounded by land that is part of Millbrae, nearby Capuchino High School in fact belongs to San Bruno,” which leads many (like me) to assume Millbrae has two high schools. Click on Wikipedia to find more historical facts and interesting Millbrae trivia.

Recently Millbrae became the end stop of the BART train connecting it with many locations in San Francisco and East Bay. You can connect in Millbrae with Caltrain. The station building is impressive and became an instant landmark.

Another landmark – being completed “as we speak”. These are new Millbrae condos. where a popular bowling alley previously occupied previously. The project took many years to complete, but according to the 88 South Broadway contact, the sales office should open on April 28, 2007.

Hope you find it interesting. Follow on the above links to find out more information about Millbrae (its shops, Green Hills Country Club, hotels and others or email me. There is much more about Millbrae and its schools. Have you heard about Mills HS Robotics Team or its great Dragon Dance Team? Some of you could see the Mills Dragon Dance Team during this year Chinese New Year Celebration in Millbrae and then - two weeks later - in San Francisco. Another important piece of information - The Mills Robotics Team needs a new corporate sponsor. May be you can recommend one? Please don't hesitate to contact me!

Know other reasons for living in Millbrae? Share it with others by responding to this entry.

Are Sacramento County and Central Valley, CA a real estate disaster area?

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 07:02:00 +0000

How long will it take for Sacramento County and Central Valley markets to recover? After many years of a real estate Eldorado - the markets over there hit a slump. Many investors doubled their money in 2 years: a new 5 bedroom, 3 bathrooms homes increased in value from $300k-$400k in 2003 to $600k - $700k in 2005. But for investors, who have not sold a prolonged market slump is in store (according to some opinions it will take 2 to 3 years for prices to level off and 6 to 7 before they will start moving up again). A 3 year old house, which could sell for $650 k a year and half ago might sell for $550k - $575k today and only if it is in perfect condition as they have to compete against new homes still being built. 2 years from now its value might be below $500k.

I am a San Francisco (SF) Peninsula broker and I helped some of my SF Bay Area clients to buy and sell properties in Elk Grove (Sacramento County). However, some of them are facing a difficult decision.

What would you do if you were an investor in this situation? Should investors hold on to their properties and wait through the slump or sell a soon as possible? Selling is not easy too. If you drive by the area you will find 4 to 5 “For Sale” signs on a single block in newly built communities. Average time on the market there is 90-120 days. But waiting out might be difficult or impossible for many investors as prices of rentals have gone down. You will have a negative cash flow even if you have 30 - 40% of equity and are paying a minimum payment on the 1% Option ARM loan (many investors got 100% financing and after 2 years combined loans to a single Option ARM loan). Of course, one solution does not apply to everyone, but what would you do or what would you advice your customer who found himself/herself in this predicament?

Why is Burlingame, CA so desirable? More reasons and more facts.

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 08:03:00 +0000

In my recent blog entry "Why is Burlingame, CA so desirable?" I mentioned the death of Charles Frank Burlingame III, whose plane crashed to the Pentagon on 9/11. He was a descendant of Anson Burlingame, after whom Burlingame was named. On December 5, 2006, the Burlingame family suffered another loss. Wendy Burlingame, 32, a daughter of Charles Frank Burlingame, was found dead in a fire at the Galaxy Towers apartment complex in Guttenberg, N.J. The following article, published on December 6th by New York Post, reports the tragic event. According to the New York Post report "the quick-spreading, four-alarm fire - has been ruled suspicious, - but that no accelerant had been used." The suspicious character of Wendy Burlingame's death spurred speculations about the link to the so called "9/11 conspiracy theory".

I encourage those of you who read my first story about Burlingame to click on the following link to Wikipedia. You will find there a number of interesting facts on Burlingame's history. For example, did you know that the movie Dangerous Minds with Michelle Pfeifer was filmed on the Burlingame High School Campus in the spring 1994? Or that Charlie Howard, the owner of Seabiscut, owned a home in Burlingame? So click on the link above and endulge yourself in discovering Burlingame. And if you get interested to read more about Burlingame's history, please don't miss the article published by the Burlingame Historical Society. According to their entry "In 1893, 23 years after (Anson) Burlingame's death, a group of wealthy young men from San Francisco set about organizing a country club on the Peninsula. In casting about for a suitable designation they were inspired by the nice sounding name still found on county maps of the area. They decided to call it - The Burlingame Country Club. The village that was developing nearby, around the railroad station, was known as “Burlingame”, reflecting some of the prestige of the glamorous club, but it was not until 1908 that the town was incorporated. So was the name of the town selected because it was "nice sounding" (as it was in the case of the Club) or as a tribute to Anson Burlingame - our nation's famous diplomat and China's first ambassador to the United States?

Cimpler Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 07:33:00 +0000

Burlingame is one of the most desirable locations in Northern California. It is #3 to be exact, right after San Francisco (SF) and Palo Alto (PA). The city was named after Anson Burlingame , a former minister to China (Burlingame in Kansas was also named after Anson Burlingame). Incidentally, one of the heroic 9/11 pilots Charles Frank Burlingame III, whose plain crashed to the Pentagon, was Anson's decendant. While SF and PA are quite obvious (SF is probably one of the most desirable cities in the US and PA – a host city to the Stanford University and numerous tech companies), popularity of Burlingame requires some explanation.

Before I do it, let me clarify that the Burlingame zip code – 94010. There is a city and town with the same zip code, Burlingame and Hillsborough, respectively. There is more than zip code that connects these two cities, however. According to a local hearsay – Burlingame was conceived as a “service city” for Hillsborough. However, the truth (according to the Hillsborough town website) is that Hillsborough was created as some of early Burlingame inhabitants were not willling to pay taxes to build sidewalks and light streets. so, they decide to seeceed and incorporated hillsborough. And this is how it stayed until today as Hillsborough is the town with very few services a “services-less” City. Click on the following link to read more about the City’s early history. Hillsborough is a city of beautiful and expensive homes with no shops, no high school, no sidewalks and its streets are not lighted at night (for the most part).

Burlingame has a little bit of everything, beautiful homes priced from $800k-$900k for a 2 bedrooms, 1 bath to, $2.4M (median price is approx. $1.4 - $1.5 M at the moment), 2 nice downtown centers, one around Burlingame Ave. – Primrose Ave.) and another around Broadway - with an abundance of wonderful shops, great restaurants (yes – this city is alive in the evening) and a few clubs providing entertainment - for some too much and for some not enough till late at night - and very good schools, both public and private (several elementary schools, Burlingame Intermediate, Burlingame High School and Mercy High School to mention some of them). You can find more about Burlingame schools by clicking on the following link.

Another important secret to Burlingame popularity is its location at the Northern San Francisco Peninsula, 5 min away from the San Francisco Airport and 20 min from San Francisco. The traffic, for the most of the time, is not an obstacle on the way to San Francisco. You don’t have to drive to get to the City, you can take either Caltrain or BART trains (the latter from the neighboring city – Millbrae). To San Jose is only 30 min drive, but this is quite often not the case as Expressway 101 is quite notorious for its traffic. The 280 provides a more scenic, but longer commute alternative.

Here are a few views of Burlingame, its typical homes, points of interests, and of course it’s Kohl Mansion. If you are visiting – there is a plenty of hotels to choose from. Click on the directory of the Burlingame Chamber of Commerce to find out one which suits you.

If you are interested in homes currently on the market, there are 30 houses in Burlingame in the price range from $849k to $2.395 M as of December 29, and 32 houses in Hillsborough in the price range from $1.650 M to $28.5 M (even if you don’t want to buy the latter one, you might want to see it! It is a new listing - of December 11). To search for Burlingame and Hillsborough listings click HERE and then on Home Search (at the menu on the left side of the page).

To look at Burlingame statistics click HERE.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Dramatic events - the week of December 4, 2006

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:26:00 +0000

Following is a short entry in the Inman news on events of last week. Anouncements by Zillow and Homegain. Not long ago MLS was the only place listing could we placed or found.

Thursday was a big day for online listings
As the market slows, numerous Web sites are offering Realtors new places to market their listings to prospective buyers. But Zillow isn't the only one who stepped up with an offering of this kind this week. HomeGain, which operates an online service to match consumers with real estate agents, on Thursday announced it would allow agents to post listings at its Web site, which gets millions of visitors each month. And HouseValues, an online lead generation source for real estate agents, also on Thursday announced it would enable its agent clients to push their listings out to the Google and Oodle search engines.

Not long ago, these offerings were unheard of -- a lot of time and energy went toward keeping listings info in the hands of industry professionals only. There was Realtor.com and IDX for broker Web sites, and not much else.

But times are changing, along with broker attitudes toward marketing listings to the world. The slow market could be the best thing that ever happened to consumer access to for-sale data. 2007 will be the year that listings make primetime: Google Base, Zillow, Oodle, Trulia, HomeGain, edgeio … lots of free marketing avenues for agents to woo in buyer clients.
--Jessica Swesey, Inman News

MLS Turmoil Continues - Northwest MLS get rids of Realtor.com

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 20:26:00 +0000

The MLS turmoil continues. Big brokers exert pressure on MLS' to limit dissemination of listings. Here are excerpts from http://www.inman.com/inmanstories.aspx?ID=59748

"Broker members of Northwest MLS, a regional broker-owned MLS operating in western and central Washington, will soon be on their own in submitting property information for display on popular home-search site Realtor.com. The Northwest MLS board has voted to discontinue the practice of sending a compilation of member-provided property information for display on that site, which consistently ranks among the most-visited real estate Web sites.
.....
While MLSs are in some cases facing pressure to shift more decisions to brokerages, that is not necessarily good for consumers, Kelman said. "We're seeing real estate become more and more like fiefdoms again," adding that decisions that fragment the total inventory listings can make property searches more cumbersome for consumers."

Market changes - interesting statistics

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 01:51:00 +0000

In previous postings we discussed MLS changes and their drivers. We mentioned that "big brokers" are putting a presure on MLS' to offer search across existing MLS boundaries. As clients are getting more used to benefits of Internet, and their needs and expectations are becoming known to "big brokers" we can expect more changes and demands. But can we envision how these demands based on changing demographics? According to Bernice Ross from Inman News:

"A fundamental shift is occurring in the real estate industry. Just a few weeks ago, the number of single people in the U.S. exceeded the number of married couples. In 2007, 60 percent of our transactions will be with immigrants and minorities. According to Tchong, we also have many more single female buyers as opposed to male buyers: 11 percent of single buyers were male as compared with 28 percent of the female buyers. Even more surprising, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has launched the first futures program that will allow homeowners to hedge their home's value."

We certainly will see the continued, increasing impact of the Internet. However, the pace of this change will depend on demographics of this group. How many immigrants are educated in the US, what will be a break up olders vs. younger clients? Whta brokers and agents should be doing to adapt to these changes?

What do you think? Please share your opinion with us.

MLS gateway

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 03:59:00 +0000

"MLS Future Presidential Advisory Gateway" published report in which it "suggested that the master database, called the "gateway," would serve as a growing collection of property information, housing current and historical data that would be immediately and easily available directly from the gateway or through participants' service provider of choice. The proposal does not provide for public access, as the group plans to study that matter separately."
You can find more details in the article "Removing local boundaries key to MLS future".
The proposal seems to fall far short on what is needed. Why it acknolwdges the impact of sites, such as zillow.com, cyberhomes.com and realestateabc.com its vision of the future fails to acknowledge a possible impact of companies such as trulia.com and other alternative sources of the listing data in the future. Pls check also a previous posting in this Blog "MLS in Turmoil".

Public Access to SFAR MLS Goes Away

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 23:13:00 +0000

You might have heard the news from San Francisco Association of Realtors (SFAR) that starting in 2007, they will disable public access to the San Francisco MLS. Bill Quick sent an entry to the San Francsco Real Estate Blog entitled "Unintended Consequences, Dead Ahead". Bill pointed out that "It is an old internet maxim that information wants to be free. I don't know if that is necessarily true, but I do know that whenever parties have attempted to improve their performance by instituting secrecy and gatekeeping, they've generally accomplished exactly the opposite".

What do you think? SFAR does seem to understand that what real estate clients are saying is: "We like to do our research first, before we commit to an agent. Once we know what we want, we will look for an agent and contact him or her. Until then, we would like to do our search ourselves and be an agent independent." How do I know it? Because I listened to the presentation of Leslie Appleton - Young, Chief Economist of California Association of Realtors (CAR). She talked about the newest Trends in Buyer and Seller Behavior by Robert Kleinhenz & Sara Sutachan a research carried out by CAR. New research clearly says what Internet customers want. Therefore, I agree with Bill Quick - SFAR is in for surprises! What do you think? SFAR MLS might loose a lot of traffic to the Realtor.com and other sites!

By the way, in the same research, clients clearly said that they would like to use agents. However, they want to do their Internet research first. Finding the right agent is part of the research. Also, as I pointed out in my previous entry (MLS in Turmoil), clients want MLS to move in the opposite direction - to provide more consolidated data across traditional MLS boundaries. Big Brokers (REMAX, Coldwell Banker and others) noticed this and are demanding it from the MLS. SFAR will be meeting their requirements in the Quattro project. If the public is demanding better, agent independent data from Big Brokers, why would they agree to go directly to agents? They know that it is possible. Or Big Brokers and MLS think that clients will go back to where they were in 2002? I wouldn't count on that. Zillow and Trulia are clearly showing that more choices are coming.

MLS In Turmoil

noreply@blogger.com (Artur Urbanski) — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 07:08:00 +0000

I remember a discussion I had 2 years ago with several brokers on the role of MLS. They were 900 of MLS' nationwide at that time and they had a monopoly on listing data. The bureaucracy created by MLS' caused a lot of resentment as they were extremely uncooperative and slow in sharing its data it with anyone. There was a lot of talk on cooperation and sharing data. National Association of Realtors (NAR) and regional real estate associations lead to creation of the Real Estate Transaction Services (RETS) standard to make the integration and consolidation of MLS data possible. However, there was no business incentives for MLS' to do anything until the launch of companies such as Zillow, Trulia and others. Finally MLS' realized, that while they still might have monopoly on most of the listing data, all other data transaction are in public domain once transaction is recorded and can be duplicated and provided to clients. That's what Zillow did. Trulia started to create its own listings. Customers embraced newcomers. These developments put a squeeze on Big Brokers (Coldwell Banker, Prudential, REMAX, etc), as they realized that customers not only demand data across MLS boundaries, but they have alternative choices to go with. To compete with Trulia and similar companies in the future - Big Brokers have to meet their clients demands. So Big Brokers put pressure on MLS to provide data across MLS boundaries.

MLS' got the message! Today MLS' in Northern California are in the race to consolidate their databases and meet changing market place demands. Within a few months, we will most likely be able to receive all real estate data in Northern California from 2 sources, NCREX and Quattro. Quattro is a new MLS data-sharing initiative among San Francisco Association of Realtors (SFAR), Bay Area Real Estate Information Services Inc. (BAREIS) in the North Bay and MetroList in the Sacramento area. Northern California Real Estate eXchange (NCREX) "is in the effort to explore how to consolidate the MLS operations across the region to better serve their subscribers needs". Local MLS organizations who initially founded NCREX included RE Infolink, Contra Costa MLS, East Bay Regional Data (EBRD), Central Valley MLS and SFAR. SFAR switched alliance to Quattro on September 25. You can find more information about Quattro and NCREX efforts by clicking on the link below.
http://www.rateempire.com/mortgage/10_12_06/news63789.html

What are potential implications of these changes? If MLS' do not adapt fast enough to meet requirements of its main customers - Big Brokers - it is not impossible for Big Brokers to take its listings away from MLS' in the future. This would mean the demise of MLS and would have extremely negative impact on clients and agents. One of the key virtues of MLS - a legal promise of paying commissions to cooperating brokers would go away and with it the ability and willingness of agents to quickly share their listings with other agents. Personally, I don't believe that MLS will go away, however it will loose its monopoly on the listing data.. In a few years from now, in all likelihood, there will be a single consolidated MLS in Northern California competing with other owners of listing data, such as Trulia and other companies to enter the market. Everyone expects Zillow to become listing provider in th future as their funding levels cannot be justified by projected advertising revenues. Additionally MLS', are starting to provide agents with functionality that used to be provided by independent vendors, such as Homeworks, e-Neighborhood, Settlement Room, etc. An example of a new functionality to be provided by MLS' is RELAY transaction management system. SFAR and other Quattro members plan to provide RELAY as a part of their membership as soon as in the beginning of 2007. The willingness and ability of MLS' to provide more functionality to agents upsets Big Brokers, as this was their value added they provided to agents. Even if MLS' will charge for some of this new functionality beyond that basic membership fee, it will undercut Big Brokers ability to attract and keep agents. Agents will be able to go to independent brokers who provide the same or better tools, but higher commission splits. As Trulia and Zillow provided services that are forcing MLS' to cooperate, consolidate and compete, new brokerages will emerge. They will provide highly automated transactions, high commission splits and lower operating costs.