Lasher's List

My first words of 2010

2010-02-10T06:19:00.000-08:00

When I go to the gym, and am working out on either the Life Cycle or the Cross Trainer, I am also playing SUDOKU. When I first started playing SUDOKU I played Easy games, but quickly worked my way up to medium. Now I am primarily playing Evil, unless I can't complete it, then I go back to Hard, until I complete a Hard, then I go back to Evil until I can't complete it, and back to Hard.
I go to a site online and print them out in LARGE print so I can play them on the machines at the gym without my glasses on. Sometimes when I'm in the car, or waiting someplace for something, like an appointment to show up, I take out my clip board where I keep them, and start to play. It keeps me busy and makes the time fly. SUDOKU requires some concentration and repetition to complete it successfully. Sometimes you need to write notes. Sometimes when I'm in the car, I really can't give it the time that it requires, and so I'll just give up.
But the bottom line is that some days I can do SUDOKU, and some days, I can't.
Today while at the gym, working on a Hard SODOKU, and being stumped, I stopped and said to myself, "Self - HOLD ON- you can do it, it's only a hard," and sure enough I completed it. So then, while still on the machine, I had a thought - we decide what we can do and what we can not do, and maybe this can be an interesting email. Henry Ford once said "If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right."
When I tell myself I can't complete an Evil, I can't. When I tell myself that I can, I may or may not be able to, but at least I have a chance. (Some of them are real tough). Aha- an excuse.
Ever find yourself in a situation where someone asks you to do something and you come up with all of the reasons why you can't do it. You come up with reasons why it won't work or just say it can't happen? This in effect is making up excuses why you are going to fail.
Can you imagine if you would only put the energy into thinking of ways to do it, thinking of ways to be successful, coming up with ideas to make it happen- instead of making up excuses why you can't- can you imagine how successful (spelled HAPPY or RICH?) you would be?
By the way, that is what is called a self fulfilling prophesy. When someone tells you that I'll do it, but I know it's not going to work, then it's not going to work. The outcome has been determined in advance.
I am well organized, and I make and maintain lists of things to do on my computer, that I print out each day and carry with me on my clip board. I have calendars and tasks, and reminders, and notes, and all that other stuff you find in Microsoft Outlook.
Some days, I tackle the list, and make the calls, make the visits. Other days, I can't do a thing. I can't pick up the phone to make a call, because I've decided that I won't be able to hear. On these days, very often, the best that I can do is play solitaire. I know that this happens to you too. We all have our moments of brilliance and our down days.
Meanwhile, my hearing is pretty good, especially using my own amplified phone either at the office or my house, in the morning. It is also true that by the end of the day, regardless of my mood, my hearing goes. My one ear that is doing the job of two gets tired. Also since I've been eating right, and exercising regularly, the ringing (tinnitus) has lessened greatly (until the end of the day). But is this something that I've created in my head? Is this physiological or psychological? (And how about the changes in barometric pressure resulting from the change of seasons, when it is hot one day, cold the next and then back and forth- forget it- my hearing goes kaput.)
I went to a shrink many years ago who told me that every thing wrong with us is at least partly physiological. That's comforting, isn't it?
Stress finds your weakest point, whatever or wherever that point may be. Some people get headaches, back aches, stiff necks, ringing in their ears, break out in hives and lots of other weird and not so weird symptoms. Everyone has their mishegas, medical problems or issues, whatever or wherever they may be, and stress makes it worse.
Stress, affects us all, regardless of the cause, whether it's real or imaginary (I stole that from "Cranial Command" @ Disney World, the show where the 12 year old boy is commandeering a human brain in the GE Pavilion). Always loved that ride (It's not really a ride - it doesn't go anywhere, I guess it's an exhibit?).
Another thing the shrink told me was that a person who is depressed finds something wrong with everything, even winning the lottery (Oh no, people are going to try to rip me off, faux friends will show up out of the woodwork, and I'm going to have to pay taxes on it- oh no).
Bet you think this is an email about positive thinking, versus defeatist attitudes. Nope. It's not.
Well maybe it is. Sorta.
We are in a bad time right now. Every one of us and all of us collectively. Well maybe not every one of us. I heard that tailors are doing very well because people are trying to squeeze an extra year out of their suits and clothing, and wall street people of course, (Did you see the article on Sunday about how Goldman Sachs is being blamed for the collapse of AIG by demanding and getting billions from AIG on their bets that the mortgage industry would crash, while AIG was in their cash poor predicament, just before they were about to crash and we had to bail them out to the tune of $180 billion?
So anyway, this email is addressed to every one of us, except for the wall street types and the tailors.
This is an email about what to do.
I can't give you specifics, although if you want me to sit down with you, I probably can come up with some ideas, but that really is not my forte. The bottom line is that you have to figure out things to do, and then you have to do them. You have to keep trying. You have to try something new. And if that doesn't work, then try something else, or try it again sideways or upside down, you just got to keep on plugging away. (not keep on truckin, like the Grateful dead) keep on plugging. What do you suppose plugging means? I say it all the time and I just realized that I haven't got a clue as to what it means. Think maybe it has to do with the little Dutch Boy who stuck his finger in the dike to stop the flood? Am I all over the place today? Nah. Someone hopefully will tell me what plugging away means. Last time Ed Heavey told me what Honkey Dorey was all about. I betcha he will come through again and tell me what it means and/or where it came from.
And yes, it is about attitude.
But in order to know what to try, you need to know where you are trying to end up. Which brings us back to GOALS- which is the real subject of this email. (Not to beat a dead horse, as my father used to say, BUT you can't say enough about them).
What do goals have to do with it?
Plenty
One of my goals is to sell a property per week. I try to come up with lots of different plans, or strategy's, or ideas, to help me reach this goal. One of the things that I do is send out emails. Since my email list was just cut so dramatically because so many didn't give me permission, I want to increase the number of people that read my emails. Previously I created a flyer. That worked, many of you got on this list by responding to the flyer. I tried mailing the flyer to various groups of people. It worked with modest success (i.e.- It failed miserably, only got a few responses from the mailings). Today I started to think about working on the mailings again. What can we do this time that will improve the mailings to get a better response? I came up with a couple of ideas, which we will now put into play. Maybe this time more people will respond. And if they do, that's great, and if they don't, and even if they do, we'll continue to try something else. We'll keep on "plugging away". (I hope that plugging away isn't really something terrible that I am wishing on myself).
Which brings us back to setting goals again.
As you all know, every book written by successful people, habits of successful people, all of the motivational speakers Tony Roberts, Zig Ziglar, Tom Venuto, the weight lifting guru, say that you have to set goals. It is not open for discussion, it is a fact.
Do you want to be (more) successful?
Of course you do. You want to be successful in everything that you do.
So right now, take out a piece of paper and a pen and on the top write the date of one year from today and the word my goals.
Now write down 10 goals that you have for this year. Write them in the present tense of a year from now, as if it is a year from now, and you've already accomplished them. For instance, "I do 100 push ups every other day". How about, "My novel was published to raves and international acclaim." "I just sold my first house through LANDMAX that we built entirely as a partnership between me the land owners and the money guys. This one is my favorite, "I look so good now that I've lost the 100 pounds that heads turn when I enter the room, whether I'm wearing a custom fitted suit, or jeans and a tee shirt." No one says that you can't have a good time making your list. The goals can be financial, social, health, family, travel, whatever you want. Just do it. Write them down. (How about, "I finished the NYC marathon, with the fastest time of any 60 year old first time marathon runner")
Go ahead. DO IT! You won't be sorry. You'll thank me.
I can go on and on about everything else there is about GOALS, like creating deadlines, making lists of who and what you need to help you reach your goals, and all the other stuff you can do, BUT that doesn't matter right now. Right now, just take out a piece of paper, and write. Writing down 10 goals puts you in the top 3% of the people in the WORLD.
The rest is simple. Take your list and look at it. Read it. Say it out loud. Refine it. Update it. Re-write it. Picture yourself the way you will be, look, or feel when the goal has been reached. Picture yourself enjoying the results, whatever your goals may be (driving your brand new Rolls Royce, swimming in your private beach in Maui, admiring yourself in your new fur coat or in a bathing suit).
Finally, on a regular basis, or periodically, or when you find yourself losing control, feeling down or depressed, &/OR when you find yourself feeling great and needing to take a step forward, simply take out the list, read it, and figure out something that you can do to help you reach one or more of your goals, and then just do it.
And remember, failure is not an option. You may not reach your goal by your deadline, so you set a new deadline, you don't drop the goal. Quitting is not acceptable, and I will repeat it again, FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!

..............to be continued

My last words for 2009

2009-12-30T11:12:00.000-08:00

Ladies and Gentlemen. Boys and Girls, and Children of all ages.
Where did that come from- a tv show in the 50's?
It's that time of the year again.

It's the end of another decade. Holiday advertising and sales are over, early Winter, short days, dark at 4:30pm. The New Year starts tomorrow night/Friday morning. That means its' time to review our goals for 2009, and make our new goals, for 2010.
Are New Year's resolutions goals?
Our country is not in its best shape. In fact, some are saying that the "naughts" was the worst decade of our country's existence.

Unemployment is at record high's; and we all have our problems.

That's right, each and every one of us has our own set of problems. There is no one without problems.

Johnny Carson said that having money eliminated money problems, but left him with all of the other problems. Of course, for most of us, our number one problem has to do with money, or the lack thereof. But it doesn't make life any better or any worse then those who don't have money problems. And if you think otherwise, if you think that just having money makes everything honkey dorey then you are mistaken.
(honkey dorey? what does that mean?)
Many of us look around and think that everyone else has it better than we do. Many people live their lives in envy, haunted by the green eyes of jealousy. Many people live their lives thinking that everyone else got a better hand from the deck, gets better chances at life, and has more luck then they do. And many of us might look at a certain someone else, who might seem to have a lot of money, good job or business, lots of friends, and think, "I bet they don't have any problems", or "I wish I had his or their problems". Unless you walk in my shoes, you cannot know what I see, and feel. (There is a great expression that I just messed up terribly). How about- the grass is always greener on the other side.

At various times in my life many people were envious of me. I seemed to have it all.

While writing this story, I was reminded of the old Simon and Garfunkel song, Richard Cory. (Now I can't stop singing it to myself).

They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town,
With political connections to spread his wealth around.
Born into society, a banker's only child,
He had everything a man could want: power, grace, and style.

But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be
Richard Cory.

The papers print his picture almost everywhere he goes:
Richard Cory at the opera, Richard Cory at a show.
And the rumor of his parties and the orgies on his yacht!
Oh, he surely must be happy with everything he's got.

But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be
Richard Cory.

He freely gave to charity, he had the common touch,
And they were grateful for his patronage and thanked him very much,
So my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read:
"Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head."
Oh to be Tiger Woods? I wish my life was as good as Britney Spears'? Charley Sheen? Phil Spector has such a great life -- bet he doesn't have a care in the world! Princess Diana- she really had the world by the short hairs, all of the money in the world.

If we all took our problems and we put them into a hat, the chances are we would want our own problems back, and not anyone else's.

Really it's not about what our problems are, what we perceive our problems to be, but it is our own attitude towards them.

We might consider our problems to be monumental and insurmountable. Some people can't handle their problems. So but what are the options? Run away? Nervous Breakdown? Alcohol or drug? Therapy? Death? Suicide?

But my problems, they're mine, and I'll take them, I'll deal with them, because I have no choice. Life goes on, which is a lot better than the alternative. And besides that, I am happy.

Remember the children's book- The giving tree? The giving tree gave the boy his apples so the boy could sell them and have money, and the tree was happy. The giving tree let the boy cut down the branches so the boy could build a house, and the tree was happy. The giving tree let the boy cut down the trunk of the tree so the boy could build a boat, and the tree was happy, but not really. Then the boy came back, and there wasn't much tree left, just a stump, and the giving tree said to the boy, "I have nothing left to give you," but the boy said, "I am old, all I want is a place to sit and rest." And the tree was happy.

My father had a series of strokes, which took away his ability to walk and talk and communicate with the world; and ultimately he became a vegetable. After the strokes, my parents moved to Florida because Staten Island just wasn't handicap friendly. For my parents to go anywhere, I had a couple of guys who would have to go to carry my father in and out of wherever he wanted to be. Florida is handicap friendly. Everything is on one level, and accessible. I used to visit them quite frequently. I remember one time my mother introduced me to a man in a wheel chair, just like my father, also out to lunch like my dad was at the time, and my mother telling me that this man was the president of this huge bank. This was in the late 80's, when the buzz around was that the person with the most toys at the end, wins. Wall Street was out of control. Real Estate was out of control. The great crash at the end of the 80's hadn't happened yet.

I will never forget that after I met this man and his wife, with all of their money, power and prestige, I realized that the winner isn't the one having the most toys; it's about how you feel as you age.

I guess that is when I really set my first goal- which was then and still is today, to live a healthy long life, without medical problems interfering with my quality of life, by eating right and exercising regularly. Now I have plenty of medical issues. I go days with no hearing, I had toe surgery, and my toes still hurt (I am currently being treated by a pedicurist- not a podiatrist- Blue Cross won't pay Anna Nails, even though they should- manicures and pedicures are probably more beneficial to people than psychiatrists - although I am not getting pedicures for relaxation, I am getting them because I have toe problems - but I definitely see the relaxation benefits. I have terrible skin issues. I've had various types of skin cancer, from basil cell to melanoma, and everything in between (I'd write them down but I don't know how to spell them all). They are not my problems. They are my health issues. Which is how this email started I think, before I started my rambling.

My cup is half full, not half empty.

I have my "monumental problems" but I also have intricate plans to deal with them. And there is also plan B, if plan A doesn't work; and then there is plan C, and plan D. Don't get me wrong, we all have our moments. That's allowed. That's normal. It's okay.

(That's why God created oatmeal raisin cookies).

So the $64,000 question is- How can you reach your goals, if you don't set them?

Just this past week, I changed all of my underwear to the next size smaller. Man did that feel good. Now changing my underwear size was not one of my specific written down goals, and I still haven't reached my ultimate long term goal, but I am making progress, reaching some short term goals, which helps every other aspect of my life run smoother, and helps me maintain my positive attitude, and just feels so good. Last week I reached my short term 3 month goal, (from the weight loss challenge), to get back into a size 38 pants, which I did.

That being said, RIGHT THIS MINUTE is the perfect time to sit down, with a pen (or at a computer) and set your goals for 2010.

These are the instructions I included in last year's 'it's time to set goals' email.

1. Set CLEAR, SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE GOALS: (Health, Wealth, Family, Social, Public Service).
2. WRITE THEM DOWN.
3. SET a REALISTIC DEADLINE. (12-month goal; 3-month goal; weekly goal; and daily goals). There are no unrealistic goals, only unrealistic deadlines.
4. Identify OBSTACLES. Make removing the obstacle a priority and work on it every day.
5. Determine what INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE, TECHNOLOGY, is NEEDED TO REACH YOUR GOALS. Come up with a plan to get it
6. Determine what PEOPLE, GROUPS, and ORGANIZATIONS are NEEDED to REACH THE GOAL.
7. MAKE A PLAN TO OBTAIN THE GOAL. Write down every conceivable detail that you can imagine.
8. DO SOMETHING ON THE PLAN EVERY DAY. Review it, read it out loud, write it and re-write it. Update it. EVERY DAY
9. VISUALIZE THE GOAL AS ALREADY ACHIEVED
10. FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!!!!

Now I recently heard that a highly effective method to set goals is to draw a picture of what you have in mind. Instead of saying, I want to lose weight you visualize yourself as being thinner. Draw a picture of yourself as thin. Additionally, you need to write down in a positive manner, I am so happy and pleased, that here it is, (date in the future), and I am now.........

And when setting goals think big. Shoot for the Stars. Don't let anyone tell you to be realistic or talk you out of setting high goals. The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. Michelangelo.

Tiger Woods visualizes his swing before he swings. He visualizes himself hitting the ball into the cup. He certainly doesn't visualize himself coming in third, or hitting into the Sand trap.

Setting Goals in a positive way, as an accomplished fact, is how we trick our subconscious mind into capitulation.

When we think to ourselves, I am starting tomorrow; the subconscious takes you at your word, and makes it so we don't start until tomorrow. Of course tomorrow never comes, it's always tomorrow. This is very important. Setting goals is a way of taking control of our own life, exercising control over our subconscious.

If it's to be, it's up to me.

Last year I shared my goals. I didn't reach all of my goals. I am still working on reaching my goals. But I did make a lot of progress towards them in many different directions and on several fronts. I also stopped along the way and adjusted my goals. Changed deadlines, and changed a lot of the short term goals.

But before I get into my specifics, I would like to say that I really had a great year, talking to all of you who might have dropped me a note, sent me an email telling me that you enjoy my writing, or gave me a call.

Thanks to everyone who called about a listing, or referred someone to me, or added people to the list.

Thank you to Eileen who told me that she was addicted to my emails, and Anthony who tells me that I am brilliant, and Eve who tells me that she loves my writing, and Richard who engages me intellectually, and my cousin, Larry, the rocket scientist from NASA who thought that I might be expressing an interest in science, and my crazy lawyer friend Robert who wishes he had my professional skills and acumen; and Bruno who tells me he reads my emails in the morning to find out what is going on in the industry; and my cousin, Stuart, who edits for me, and the people who commiserated with me about weight loss, and shared with me their hearing issues, and Ted who points out errors made by other brokers, and all the people who told me what a whippersnapper is, or how to find out myself, and thank you to all of the other people who sent me a note, which unfortunately got lost, when my laptop was stolen last month. Believe me, it is my pleasure.

Goals realized in 2009

I sold every listing that I got (both of them).

I get referrals every day (well not every day/maybe every week) from people who read my emails, and from the people they pass them along to.

I write the most successful email publication on Staten Island.

My goal for 2010

I am so happy and thankful, that here it is: January 1st, 2011, and I am at the peak of my health and fitness, fit and trim, weighing 130 pounds, wearing small and medium men's clothing. I write down everything that I eat, which is 5 or 6 meals a day, small, nutritious, healthy good food, good choices, drink a gallon of water too. I exercise 4 or 5 times per week, because I love to exercise, it makes me feel so good. I feel the fat and the stress just sweating out of my strong lean body. I wake up well-rested each morning, eat my breakfast, pack my lunch, go to the gym, go to work, I sell an average of one property per week, to nice people on my list, and their referrals, I send out emails to 5000 people on my list at a time. Life is very good, and I love my life.

.......................to be continued

Excess Baggage

2009-12-17T15:57:00.000-08:00

It’s just about the end of the year and I am so much lighter than I was going in, in so many ways, having lost a lot of excess baggage.

I am less burdened by the ownership of needless material things.

I had a storage facility room filled with junk that I hadn’t looked at in years.

I’m talking about stuff that used to be in an attic or a basement, moved with every move, without even being opened, until put into storage place after my last move about 4 or 5 years ago. Boxes and boxes of accumulated things, most of which would never be looked at again until I died, and then only to separate the stuff of monetary value and the stuff of no monetary value. But because of a bookkeeping error on my part, I don’t have to think about it anymore, because it was sold in an auction.

I had some photographs from when my father was a student at PS 30. Actually the class photo of first grade, taken in 1925. A friend of mine’s son was starting PS 30, so I gave it to him to give to his kid to give to the school. Perhaps they would appreciate it. He said to me “Oh so altruistic of you”. Months later I noticed that he didn’t give it to his kid, but kept it for himself, put it on his bookshelf. How un-altruistic of him.

The thing about collecting stuff is that it is only exciting before you actually have it. Anticipation is 99% of satisfaction. Once you have it, you don’t look at it, touch it, and think about it any more, it just becomes a collector of dust.
The most joy that I have ever had from material things has always been giving them away.

I had an old advertising picture of an Indian on a horse, beautiful old art work, from an early 1900’s advertisement for some insurance company. One of my friends/partners at the time had expressed that he really liked it so one day I gave it to him. Felt great.

So what do you do with old photographs anyway? My kids haven’t got a clue who all of the dead people in my boxes are anyway (I still have boxes and boxes of more stuff in my attic, I only lost the stuff in the storage place). Sometimes for fun I take a bunch that someone that is still alive might like, and give them to them. I had given a lot of photos to my cousin Bob Tamarin, an attorney here on Staten Island, and he told me who the people were. We sat and talked and laughed.

Want to have a lot of fun? Go to an older relative or friend of yours and ask them to take out their old photos and tell you who everyone is. Both of you will have a great time.

My father was a prolific photographer most of his life. I once had envelopes printed with a picture of a guy under the hood of the old fashioned cameras, with the legend from the camera of Richard Lasher for him to give away his photographs. Used to be you walked into any Judge’s chambers on Staten Island and there would be a wall of my fathers photographs hanging, pictures of the members of the legal community.

Couple of weeks ago I had to go to a funeral in Long Island. I wanted to stay connected, so I brought my lap top with me, the one I used to use to send out these emails. Well I left it in my car the night before we left, forgot to lock the door, and someone stole it. (They also took my gym bag, looked inside, saw that there was nothing in it that they wanted so they left it about 100 feet away, behind my pool. They also left my SIBOR bag that I had the laptop in, and the thing you rest your palms on when typing).

Meanwhile, I had never been to an Italian funeral before. The night before the burial, we all were in the room at the funeral parlor, with the casket, and a priest came, who didn’t know the lady who died (my wife’s Aunt Grace). I was volunteered into saying a few words because they know that I love to speak in public. For some people it’s their worst fear, worse then fear of death. Used to be mine too, until I started the LANDMAX INTERNATIONAL CORP., my land development company "helping the landowner realize the maximum value of his land". When we first started LANDMAX, in 1987, we introduced it to the brokers of Staten Island at a breakfast at the Richmond County Country Club. I had hired someone to be the spokesperson, but after a few questions I had to jump in. I never jumped out. I discovered that I loved public speaking. My partner, Jack, used to sell vacuum cleaners; so he taught me the "tricks of the trade" of public speaking, and I got really good at it. After a while I felt like I was doing standup. We did "dog and pony shows" up and down the North East Coast, promoting the company- Massachusetts, Vermont, New Jersey, upstate New York, Long Island, etc.

Anyway, so the priest said some prayers, and then I stood up in front, and began entertaining the troops, making them laugh and cry, and told all of my personal experiences with “Aunt Grace”. Someone else said a few words, made everyone feel morbid. And that was that for the night. Everyone left.

The next morning, (after hitting the local Starbucks), we came back to the funeral parlor, into the room. Everyone was there from the night before except for the priest. The funeral director read a prayer, and everyone left the room, except for a few of us. Then the funeral director took out his trusty old screw driver-like thing, and started to turn it like you would the knob on a jalousie window, and the body was slowly lowered in the casket. Took a while, was a very eerie feeling. Then he closed the bunting on top of her, closed the cover, and locked it up. Took out a name plate, removed the backing, and stuck it onto the outside of the casket.

Then the casket was put into the hearse, (actually it was a Cadillac. So if it's a Cadillac, can it still be a Hearse? What is a Hearse? Who was Hearse?). Then we all got into our cars, and we followed the funeral director and the casket in the Cadillac, onto the Southern State Parkway, until we were pretty far out in Long Island, when we got off in the direction of the cemetery.

Once at the cemetery, we had to wait in line for our turn. Once it was our turn, we pulled up to this gazebo thing, made out of brick and wood; sort of round, open on most sides, with a closet in the back. We pull up and get out of our cars, the casket is rolled into the center of the area and we sat down or stood up. The funeral director said a prayer, and then we left, left the casket there, got back into our cars, the next funeral took our place at the gazebo, and we drove back onto the Southern State Parkway, went to an Italian Restaurant and had an 7-course meal. (I’m not quite sure which one was the funeral- the night before, or the day of?)
Jewish funerals are not done like this. No wake, you go to the funeral parlor for the funeral. When the service is over, you go to the cemetery, put the casket in the ground, and then people shovel dirt on top to fill up the hole. Then you go back to someone’s house, everyone brings cake, or fruit baskets, your closest people send entire meals, and you eat there for 7 days.

So which is more civilized? 7 days of meals, or eat 7 days worth of food in one shot?

Jon Salmon had an extra computer around; so I loaded it up and thought that I would be back in business. Got myself one of those portable hard drives, called cruiser. I downloaded my email addresses from my home computer, brought it to the office, and downloaded it, and now I had all of my email addresses and I am back in business.
Then I decided that I would move all of my emails, including all of my Lasher’s List emails, to the office computer. Now I am a very organized person. I save all of my emails by category. Lasher’s List land; letters received, my kids, family, surveys, different clients, health and fitness, receipts, cool stuff, legal stuff, etc. Years of emails, totally organized.

Anyway, so I thought that I loaded them onto the Cruiser- the F drive, brought it to the office, tried to download it but nothing. But now I am getting these warnings that they can’t find certain files in the F drive, so I figure out how to delete the data file that had no data.

Then I’m at home again, and I’m trying to move the files, PST not comma separated values (does anyone know what I am talking about?) It asks me where to put them -- in the personal folders? I say 'yes'. (Who am I to argue with Microsoft?). Nothing. But now I have the error notice about it can’t find the personal file on the F drive so I go to delete it like I did the day before, and I deleted all of my emails. Gone. Lost. I looked in the deleted file, not there. I called my friend Jimmy at Stardate Computer Systems Inc who told me that they are gone forever. That there are no hidden secret files where these things go once deleted- they vanish.
So now I don’t know whether to be upset or feel relieved.

I no longer have the burden of worrying about my stored things, nor do I have to pay for their storage.

I no longer have my lap top, but I also no longer have the frustration of the old relic's breaking down and freezing all the time.

And I no longer have all the old emails. They are gone.

But most important, I am a lot lighter than I was at the beginning of the year because I won the weight loss challenge that I told you about three months ago.

Remember I told you that I saw an ad in the supermarket about a weight loss challenge? $35 bucks and the winner gets all.

It turns out that the weight loss challenge was being run by a nice older-than-me couple, Roslyn and Skip, who sell Herbalife. Herbalife is apparently the worlds largest weight loss health company, bigger than Slim Fast, and Optifast, and the others that are around. They claim that their products are the healthiest.
Anyway, a month or two into the diet, I had stopped losing weight. So I figured, let me try this stuff, it solves the age old dilemma called breakfast. Every diet in the world tells you that to lose weight you must eat breakfast. They even say its better to eat a donut then to eat nothing. It has to do with metabolism and all that stuff. But I’m never hungry in the morning, and I'm too lazy to make oatmeal.
So I buy a container of Herbalife, “cookies and cream”, which you are supposed to put in the blender and make a malted milk out of. But I’m lazy, so I just put my two scoops into my coffee mug- and you know what- it’s great and, more important, it’s easy.

The current thinking on weight loss is also that you eat 5 or 6 times per day, smaller meals every 3-4 hours. You can supplement the meals with “protein bars” which I was having a ball buying at the health food store and the supermarket. (Like so-called healthy candy bars!)

Turns out that Herbalife makes a protein bar that has less calories then the best ones on the market, tastes better, more protein, less junk, and is cheaper, so I buy them too. (My favorite is chocolate coconut- like a mounds bar).

So I start eating my breakfast everyday at 8am chock full of protein, my regular food which I make and put into Tupperware things (veggies, fruit, and protein), supplemented by the protein bars. At the end of the 12 weeks, December 6th, I had lost 23 pounds an average of 2 pounds per week, which is the absolute healthiest way to do it.

Pretty Cool.

I lost the largest percentage of weight, and the most weight, but we split the pot 3 ways (not my idea). (2nd place lost 5 pounds, and 3rd place lost 3). My clothes fit great, and on January 1st, I break out the next size down waist pants. Can't wait.

So I am lighter at the end of the year, then I was at the beginning, although I didn’t reach my goal, but now I will set new goals for next year, but that will be a separate email too.

I am going to start my own Weight Loss challenge. $35 bucks to join, winners split, or winner takes all, to be determined. We will start the 4th of January, Monday night, at 7pm, at my office, Salmon Real Estate, 1855 Victory Blvd. Please let me know if interested, and if a different time is better.
Happy holidays to everyone.

……………………………to be continued

The skinny on Global Warming

2009-12-15T18:40:00.000-08:00

Over the past week on the radio, I've been listening to reports on the Copenhagen meetings which are trying to deal with Global Warming. Also last week, the EPA said that Global Warming is harmful to your health.

So I thought to myself: Hey, it's time for another informative email, maybe explaining global warming to those of us who really don't know what is going on."

So here goes.

In 14 hundred and 92, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Columbus said that the earth (or the world) was round. He was right about that. And when he sailed the ocean it might have been blue.

When we look at maps, globes, photographs, of the topography of the earth, we see blue (for the water although in many places it is now black or green with muck), we see the white snow
-capped mountain ranges, we see the red desert dryness.

But this isn't the earth's boundary. Earth doesn't stop at the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and the top of the earth is not Victory Boulevard. The Earth is round, is situated inside a king-sized Ziploc bag, which is also round (without the zip). Now this Ziploc bag makes a seal around the Earth, and establishes Earth's outer boundary.. It holds in what's on our side of it, and holds out what's on the outside of it.
The space between the dirt that we call earth and the outer limits of the Ziploc bag, if you will, is filled in with what is sometimes called our atmosphere. (There are lots of other words like stratosphere, used to describe the various layers which cumulatively, for purposes of this discussion, we will call the atmosphere. I am not pretending that this is a scientific thesis).

Some stuff does break through, like meteors. If you have any trouble understanding or believing this concept think Space Ship Challenger, that evaporated or exploded or whatever while attempting to enter the earth's atmosphere, or pass through the outer circle or break through the Ziploc bag.

You know, we used to think that if we throw something into the ocean (this also applies to rivers, lakes, streams, pond's, etc.) that it will just disappear.

For centuries, industry thought that it would be okay to just dump their waste into the water- courses, because the oceans were so vast and all connected that the "pollution" or industrial waste products, or whatever you want to call them, would be diluted enough so that it wouldn't matter. It would just dissipate.
(I try to explain to my 16-year-old granddaughter that when you throw trash out of your car window, it is going to land somewhere and be ugly somewhere, but it is very difficult trying to explain anything to 16-year-olds!!!)

But now we know better. Now we know that the oceans and rivers do not dilute the toxins. Instead, we have polluted the oceans and rivers and water steams and ground water and drinking water. (Many industries know it but don't care, and continue to pollute the world!) (Washington lobbyists will have you believe that it's in our best interest to allow them to continue polluting the earth for it creates jobs).

Now the air outside is sort of the same as the ocean in terms of vastness, except the atmosphere (cumulatively) is bigger.
Same thing with the air. We think that the emissions from our car just go up in the air and are diluted in the air. That the bad stuff just dissipates.

WRONG: They do not just keep going up. They get trapped in the atmosphere (cumulatively) and hang out.

Now here is the problem.

We use a lot of electricity. Lots and lots.

Where does electricity come from?

Well, in places like in Pennsylvania there are mines where miners dig out coal from coal mines. The coal is eventually put into railroad cars and shipped to where they make the electricity. The amount of coal used is so much that the railroad shipments never end. It is non-stop railroad cars full of coal going to the power plants. 24/7.

Now what they do is they take the coal, and they burn it in huge ovens (like the furnaces or boilers where we make heat). These coal burners then heat water that makes steam that makes the turbines go up and down, creating the electricity that then flows through the electric wires on the telephone poles and underground in the cities creating the power we use to run our computers and television sets and coffee pots and lights, etc.

Now there is this never-ending fire cooking the coal. Next time you drive across the Goethals Bridge at night, notice the "smoke stacks" releasing that white smoke that doesn't dissipate into the air but gets trapped in the atmosphere. At the foot of the Goethals Bridge is a power station. By the way, ever notice the smell at the bottom of the bridge, or when you first get onto the NJ Turnpike?

Coal, and Oil (including gasoline) are what are known as fossil fuels.

So heat rises. So where does it go? Into the atmosphere.
So what's the problem?

The problem is that the Earth is a finite space- from the dirt to the top of the Ziploc bag. Granted it's a big Ziploc bag. Over the past million years or so, it remained fairly constant, since the ice age. There was some change in the climate, but it was slow.

Over the past 40 years, since the advent of the 2 cars in every garage life style, and now the industrialization of the Third World (China, India, Vietnam, etc.) what has happened is that the rates of changes are doubling every 10 years or so. And the rates of changes are increasing all of the time.

The temperature in the big Ziploc bag is rising, because we are creating so much heat from burning all of that coal and oil. As a result, the ice caps are melting, the icebergs are melting. In Alaska and Iceland and Denmark and Canada, there is land and water where there used to be ice. In El Alto, Bolivia, the glaciers melted, and they are now running out of water. A
World Bank report concluded last year that climate change would eliminate many glaciers in the Andes within 20 years, threatening the existence of nearly 100 million people.

The ice has to go somewhere, so it goes into the oceans. The water level of the oceans rises, so places like New Orleans and Venice, Italy, and the SSolomon Islands, Manhattan and Staten Island could disappear.

As the temperature of the ocean rises, many species have died off. Some of the species that died off were responsible for protecting the coral reefs, and some of them ate some of the pollution. Certain sea life are not able to reproduce as well. We are seeing the end of many species of fish and animals, however this is a natural phenomenon anyway, survival of the fittest. Or is it?

The problem with global warming is that the changes are occurring too rapidly, so that in the natural sequence of things, the next group of fish/animals/plant/vegetation don't have a chance to evolve naturally.

The changes are occurring faster and faster. The rate of melting of ice bergs keep doubling. This is the microcosm, the best example of the problem in a nutshell.

The world is getting smaller, and the world is also becoming more industrialized. More of the world is now asking for energy, as new parts of the world discover and are first getting electricity, and washing machines, toasters, and cars.

One of the issues in the global warming debate, is who is going to pay, and how much each of the countries is going to cut its consumption of energy: The industrialized countries like the US who have caused all of the problems in the first place and use so much energy? Or the newly industrialized countries that in the world right now, who are beginning to use so much energy (India and China).

My purpose of this email was not to place blame, or to criticize anyone group, because it isn't necessary.

My purpose is to help spread awareness of the issues.

What is necessary is an acknowledgment that it is a problem, and that it is occurring.

Imagine you were living in a tent, or a Ziploc Bag, and there is a heater burning logs or coal or gas, or whatever.

Eventually you would get too hot,. you would need to shut off the heater. Well the Earth is a huge bubble with a heater in it. And it is getting too hot. But we are not able to turn off the heater, because the world is begging for more energy, pump up the volume- turn up the heat. Our thirst for energy is insatiable.

So what is the answer?

......................to be continued

Lasher's List: The fire sale is going to end.

2009-11-05T13:56:00.000-08:00

Hey,
I know, it’s been a while.
I wrote a story about the time that I went fishing with Fidel Castro, in Havana. We decided not to run it. Too controversial.
I wrote a story about my experiences as a time and space traveler, but decided not to send it out. Too controversial.
I wrote a story about my psychic abilities and mind controlling experiences, but decided to pass on that one too. Too controversial.
I was going to write about the health care issues, but decided to let it play out a little longer first. I’ll take that one on next.
A few weeks back, when the weather first got cold, very cold, I stayed home one day to write.
The change of seasons is brutal to me, because my hearing doesn’t work properly when Mother Nature can’t make up her mind to be hot or cold. Actually my hearing is always the same, but during periods of change of barometric pressure, stress, and rapid fluctuations of hot and cold weather, I develop tinnitus, or ringing in the ear. Once it finally settles on cold, my hearing gets okay, the best that it gets altogether. In fact, this one day I had my best hearing day in years. I took all of the calls on my cell phone, and actually got to speak to people. Felt great.
But anyway, with cold weather, comes heat. We tried to turn on the furnace, and weren’t able to, so we decided that the best thing to do is to call someone. The best they could do was Monday (this was Friday). This is the best time of the year for plumbers. They are at their busiest as the beginning of the heating season. On the first cold days, they work around the clock. 24/7. Good for them. Wish Realtors® had busy seasons. We used to.
The good old days, Realtors® Rush Season: Super Bowl Sunday through Mother’s Day, Realtors® working round the clock to deliver houses for their clients.
Anyway, no heat that weekend, which happened to be the introduction to winter 2009, meant sleeping in sweatshirt, flannel shirt, sweat pants, and socks for three nights. Drinking lots of hot coffee to keep warm, people freezing at Yankee Stadium watching the Yankees beat the Angels. I watched the game, wrapped up in a blanket, and it felt just like I was at the stadium. I could see my breath when I exhaled, just like on TV.
So the guy comes Monday morning and can’t get it going, tries to add water and it comes out the bottom, and says, the furnace is cracked, you need a new boiler, it can’t hold water. “It cracked because I didn’t flush it out properly last winter,” he said “the new furnace would be $7,500, 200,000 mega something’s with all the bells and whistles, including removal of the old one”
Billed us $145 for the house call.
Now I know a couple of things about boilers. One of them was that my boiler has an automatic water feed, and does not have a low water shut off valve, to be flushed.
So I did what I tried to do earlier, I called Mike, the boiler expert.
Mike came over and analyzed the situation, said that the reason water came out was because the boiler was full. There were no cracks. The problem had to do with the pilot and some sensors. He took a wire brush and cleaned the pilot, replaced a sensor, and just like snap crackle and pop, we had heat, better than ever, and at a savings of over $7,000.
My wife asks does this only happen to us? At the beginning of cooling season last summer, one of our units wasn’t working properly. We called 1-800-AC person who said that our compressor was blown, shot, and kaput.
Once again I got Mike to come, he looked at it, and found that the fuse was blown, and replaced it.
I told her that it happens to everyone; just that not everyone gets a second opinion from someone that they know isn’t going to rip them off. Problem with Mike is getting him, because he is so good, he is always in demand and hard to get.
Today I stayed home all day because my wife had her car inspected and the mechanic held it for 6 hours to find things wrong. He wouldn’t inspect the car, but he found $500 worth of work that needed to be done, for which he charged $43.40.
What a world we live in, where you need second opinions on plumbers’, and mechanics for fear that they rip you off.
And don’t let me get started on Doctors.
Which somehow brings us to the subject of this story.
What’s happening in the real estate market?
(It really had nothing to do with the rest of the story, but I thought that it would be a nice transitional phrase
In the beginning, when I first started working on my list, after I had called my friend Randy at Merrill Lynch who told me that they didn’t own any real estate, after they had written down $6 Billion in bad real estate loans, before any of us knew what sub-prime mortgages and derivatives were, before I had a book with an official name of Lasher’s List, but after I had gone through every single listing in the MLS, all 3600 of them at the time, I had a pile of 35 properties, in no particular order, that were bank owned foreclosures- REO as we say in the trade. 35! (I never was able to find out if Randy was one of the traders at Merrill with the big bonuses- he was a “director” which is like partner).
I counted all of the active listings in my Lasher’s List of foreclosures’, short sales, estate sales, and fixer uppers binder, which by the way was just expanded from a 2 inch binder to a 2 ½ inch binder, and now contains (drum roll) 275 listings.
That’s right folks.
And what a job it is to maintain this list as current. If I fall behind a day, there is hell to pay. There are sometimes 200 items on the hot sheets in a day. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
Today I saw a new listing and the owners name was someone who I had been dealing with a couple of weeks prior, on a bunch of stuff. Always one to give the other person the benefit of the doubt, I sent the listing to them, to see if in fact it was his home, and he responded yes.
This also happened the week before with a different customer. He wouldn’t even acknowledge my email, but continues to demand information on listings.
So it has dawned on me that many of you don’t realize that I am a hard working, real estate broker, who sells real estate for a living. There are two brokers in every transaction- the one who lists it onto the MLS, and the one who sells it. Through my emails I hope to be a selling broker, but would also like to be a listing broker. Although I enjoy writing, and I hope that my comments are witty, and enjoyed, and while I realize that I am performing a service for all of the brokers on Staten Island and my readers, by disseminating so much information, on so many properties, there is no one paying me for my time. Some of you take my listings and go to other brokers. Some of you go to the listing brokers thinking that it helps get you a better deal.
Please consider me when thinking of selling. I think I am a marketing genius, well versed in selling properties, yet I remain humble. I haven’t had that many listings, but have sold all I have listed. I take a personal interest in my listings, and will be brutally honest with you about your property, if it is necessary. I could be sending out your listing to over 1500 people, many of whom send them to their friends and others.
As far as those two customers who listed with someone else, my broker Jon Salmon (always the salesman) said to leave them on the list, continue to send them stuff, and hope that at some point they will see the error in their ways, do the right thing, and if they should see something they like, call me.
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you!
Nuff said.
So what’s happening?
In the good times, the mortgage brokers and underwriters’ had their organizations where they partied, exchanged information and got paid vacations from the banks they work for.
In 1989/90 I was promoting a young company that I had started called the Landmax International Corp. Landmax was and is in the business of making land ready to be built on, because land that is ready to build on is worth more than land that isn’t. Helping landowners realize the maximum value of their property. (Since Landmax is no longer a new company, does it mean it is now an old or middle aged company?)
A friend of mine is a very famous Bankruptcy lawyer in Manhattan. He represented Bacharact in the Bloomingdales Bankruptcy, he represented the pilots on disability when one of the airlines filed.
Anyway my friend Harris brought me to the National Association of Bankruptcy Judges conference that was held in Boston in 1988 or 1989 as an exhibitor (vendor). So I set up my Landmax Display, created a special bankruptcy brochure for the event, and sat there while the judges and bankruptcy lawyers had their meeting.
Well at night, after the meetings, the Big 10 accounting firms threw parties for the assembled multitudes, with the most opulence that I had even seen in my life. Certainly the most extravagant parties I had ever attended. There were bankers and lawyers from all of the big institutions who were forecasting doom and gloom for the world and how good things would be for them, (followed shortly thereafter by bankruptcies, foreclosures, banks going under, the RTC, the first President Bush, the failures of all the banks, etc.). The late 80’s early 90’s were bad times for the country, especially real estate.
I remember breaking bread with a guy who was a big mucky muck at Manny Hanny (Manufacturers Hanover Trust) - remember them?
As a result of my exposure at the convention, I was flown all around the county for my opinions on several properties and portfolios in bankruptcy.
The REO trade organizations must be having incredible parties thrown by the servicing companies that are servicing all of the foreclosures now.
I was listening to a radio program about companies who try to recast loans for people to reduce the payments, and they had a whole discussion on the whys the wheres and the therefores, about it, and a discussion about how successful they were and the reasons for the successes and failures.
What was not discussed, and what is not being discussed anywhere else that I can see, is that notwithstanding Government initiatives, besides the programs of the major banks, (Chase, Citigroup, BofA,) who own their own mortgages and in whose own interest it was to make the loans performing instead of non-performing, and with the help of the Stimulus packages, is that the banks that are not going along with the programs, and whom are continuing the large numbers of foreclosures, are the dirty old derivatives.
Remember them?
The mortgages where no one owns the real estate.
Where there is no one who cares about cutting losses, because the government has stepped in to guarantee these toxic loans, so there is not pressure on anyone to do the right thing.
I believe that the real villain, the group that is not part of the solution, so therefore are the problem, continues to be the servicing companies.
You might want to go back and read one of my prior emails at my Blog at http://lasherslist.blogspot.com/ where I started that we should have known something was wrong when the banks became MERS (Mortgage Electronic Reporting Service).
Q. Whom do the servicing companies answer to?
A. Themselves.
If it makes the most sense for a bank like Chase, to reduce the principal amount on a mortgage, and/or lower an interest rate, to take all of the arrears and add it to the top, or even waive them, in the long run, that’s what they do, did and continue to do.
The servicing companies don’t think that way. They think how they can make more money. (Same story as the health insurance industry, but let’s leave that for another email).
When the bank or servicing company decides whether to do a short sale, or reduce a price, they act based upon information provided through BPO’s. Broker Price Opinions. They charge the customer $150 for this, and pay the broker who does it $50.
When the servicing company has determined that they are going to take possession of a house, they have companies that go in to break the locks, and drain the water. Their criterion for hiring these companies is price and results. The less that they are charged, the bigger their profit. Ergo the “mutts” that do the winterizing, instead of disconnecting the radiators, they hit them with a plumbers wrench to crack them. More to fix. It’s easier for them. Rather than nicely open a lock, they break the doors. We see this all of the time.
The servicing company doesn’t care, as long as it is collecting fees for “servicing the asset”
Same with the foreclosures.
The servicing companies get paid for participating in the foreclosures. Signing documents, meeting with lawyers, hiring the foreclosure lawyers, hiring the brokers, every step of the way, it is the servicing company that is making fees. They even get paid to go to lavish parties at REO conventions. And think about it, these are the same people who made the bad loans in the first place. Only in America.
So what is the incentive of these servicing giants to stop foreclosing?
THERE IS NONE!
If they make the loans performing, reduce principals, the people will be eventually able to refinance at the real banks, they will lose business.
Sure there are still waives of new foreclosures, sure there is record unemployment, but how is it that CHASE, CITIBANK, and the others, that are responsible for their own loans, are able to reduce their foreclosures dramatically, yet Deutche Bank as trustee of series of bonds #1-1000, dated June 2004, continue and increase their rates of foreclosures.
Because it’s good business.
Changes in the Marketplace
I started talking about the trade conventions earlier, (probably held at beautiful resorts in hot climates). The reason I spoke about them was that there are people out there who really want to dispose of the REO. Ultimately the bankers, the REO officers, have to answer to someone, and there are always those spreadsheets and monthly, quarterly and annual figures that must be presented and justified, and improved.
These people who are selling to the Banks and Servicing Organizations, have their resources that at this point are developing strategies to help sell the property. Think tanks, marketing research, and all that, their own branch of Madison Avenue except they aren’t selling Coca Cola and M&M’s.
One of the marketing techniques that I am noticing quite frequently is the lowering of prices dramatically.
For the past few years, when a REO is first put onto the market, it would remain at the same price until there was no longer any activity, and it didn’t sell. Then every month or two, the price was reduced $10,000, or so. It was so consistent that I was almost able to predict the reductions.
Recently, I noticed it with the HUD listings. Two of the houses that I have been following were lowered dramatically and one of them rose dramatically. I am talking about reductions of almost $100,000, or increases as large. I expect the one that they raised to be lowered at some point.
My guess is that HUD, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, and the servicing organizations too, all utilize the same technique.
I’m noticing some properties being listed, priced exactly right.
I’m noticing some properties being listed much too high, but being followed with huge reductions in price after 2 weeks.
Big price reductions definitely get my attention. I’m sure it gets others too.
I’m noticing a lot of the REO listings going to off Island brokers, and I’m noticing a lot of REO sales being made by Off Island brokers too. Staten Island is still the bargain basement of New York City. Houses cost fractions in Staten Island then they do elsewhere in the City. That is why we have such a high percentage of city workers living here, because to work for the City, you have to live in the City. Staten Island is the affordable borough. Add to that low crime and good schools and you wind up with a great standard of living, notwithstanding the commute. However, add to the equation, closeness to public transportation- i.e. bridge or ferry, then Stapleton and Concord, become hot areas, and those are the areas that I especially notice being sold off Island. Finally, I notice some population shifts in Stapleton, Concord, as well as the social changes, i.e. rock and roll shops, and you have what someday will be remembered as gentrification.
I’m noticing more people looking to buy. I’m not seeing more sales, but I am seeing more interest.
I think that a lot of people are looking. They know that there are good deals to be had, but are still nervous. Afraid to make the move.
So what should you do?
There will definitely be more good deals coming to the market in the weeks and months ahead.
While there is still record unemployment, although the indicators indicate that the recession is over or ending, it will take some time before prosperity kicks in. The stimulus programs are working, and in the process of trickling down.
Lowes broke ground on a second Staten Island store. That is a real positive economic indicator.
Macy’s has an ad on SILIVE.com today that they are hiring.
The tax credit for first time home buyers has been extended and expanded. To receive the $8,000 that does not have to be repair, provided you live in the house for three years, you must be in contract no later than April 30, 2010, and must close title within 60 days thereafter.
Additionally, if you have lived in your home for 5 years or more, and wish to buy up to an $800,000 home, you can receive a $6,500 tax credit.
I believe that there will be no more drastic price decreases. The world has more or less settled at where it is, because the worst is over. Not to say that prices won’t come down, especially the overpriced properties.
But I believe that the time has come, that when you see something that you like, that you think is a good deal for you, that it is time to act. We aren’t going to see that many more 2 family homes in good condition for around $200,000. We aren’t going to see semi’s and townhouses, that are priced $100,000 below the market that much longer.
The days of the disposal of the derivates are numbered.
There are only so many toxic loans left. The fire sale is going to end.
Don’t allow yourself to wind up in the never never land of shoulda

………………………….to be continued

I just love this time of the year

2009-09-13T19:33:00.000-07:00

Hey
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.
Fall is my favorite time of the year.
The apples are ready to be picked!. And even if you burnt the apple pie you made last time or there was too much sugar in the applesauce, you can start again, with this year’s fresh batch of apples.
School is back in session - the beginning of a new year. No matter what happened last year in school, you get to start all over again. Fresh.
I used to love it in New England at this time of the year, the universities looked so beautiful, everyone dressed in their new clothing; the College towns make the towns look brand new for the incoming freshmen.
The next couple of weeks are the high holy days in the Jewish religion, the end of the year and the beginning of the new year. It is the time to say that you are sorry for the mistakes you made this year, get the slate wiped clean, and start a whole new year again, fresh!
Today, I joined a small group, none of whom I ever met before, and enrolled in a 12 week weight loss competition. The winner gets a small cash prize, although everyone really wins. The comradery, working together towards a common goal. Sharing each others victories and triumphs, and helping each other through the failures and losses so that the next time they will also be triumphs and victories. Fresh beginnings.
It doesn’t matter that there have been diets in the past, and that some of them have failed. Wipe the slate clean and start again. Fresh.
I have been trying to lose weight for quite a while - spelled most of my life. I have had several great diets where I have lost lots of weight, and kept the weight off for years, only to gain it back and then some in time. It doesn’t matter.
I am going to do it again, even better than before, I am older, smarter. This is a new program, one that I’ve never done before, (a competition), and it is going to be the best one yet. But it’s a new program, and new start. Fresh beginning.
This could be an email about re-setting the goals for the year too. It’s always a good time to sit down and go over goals, update them, check to see how you are doing on the short term, medium and ultimate big goals. Remember the best way is to write them down; that way you can read and review them periodically (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.).
REMEMBER- FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!
And while taking this time to look inward, to review your goals, and your progress, it is also a good time to examine the steps that you are taking, and to look at what you thought would help you reach your goals. To look at the things in your life that aren’t working according to the plan, that aren’t helping you reach your goals and may even be hindering you.
This is a good time to examine the steps you thought would help you reach your goals. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t.
But now is a good time to make the changes that need to be made so you are moving forward towards your goals.
One of the changes I am making, is moving my Real Estate license to Salmon Real Estate (although still waiting for the paperwork at the Dept of State). I have known the Salmon’s my entire life. My parents’ last house on Staten Island, and Egon Salmon’s last house on Staten Island were next to each other in Todt Hill. Their properties touched each other, and so do our lives.
Jon has been editing the stories and articles that I send out as emails from the beginning, and Jon and Henry Salmon are two of the most supportive friends I have.
So lookout world, soon you will see the new and improved me, svelte and dapper, reaching for the stars, and setting the world on fire.
I just love this time of the year.
………………………to be continued

The Death of Another Kennedy

2009-09-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

Happy end of summer (or is it?)
The death of Ted Kennedy brings me back to the summer of 1968, when Bobby Kennedy (RFK) died.
It was the beginning of the summer of 1968, I was 17 years old, thin, I had completed my first year of college at St. Johns University and I was one of a handful of paid employees on the staff of RFK for President, 1968 New York. I was hired because of my experience in running the physical plant of city/wide state/wide political campaigns, and was hired to help run the Eugene Nickerson for U S Senate campaign (run the office, put out mailings, create, prepare, and distribute campaign literature, etc.)
I started working in big city political campaigns when I was 14, when I was on the staff of Screvane, Lehman, Moynihan, during the mayoral election of 1965, and was somewhat of a prodigy. Somewhere in a box are several articles written about me in New York Newspapers when I was a teenager.
I had gotten a call from Ken Auletta, whom I had worked with before in Howard Samuels campaigns, and asked if I would work for the campaign. He was the campaign manager.
I had previously worked for RFK. In 1966 I was employed by “Citizens for a New Constitution”. It was a voter referendum to have a constitutional convention for New York State. It passed, they had the convention, but the new constitution didn’t pass when it was voted on in 1967. I’ll never forget that RFK did the TV commercial to tell people to vote for the referendum. After he made the commercial, we had to go through all kinds of gymnastics to get his social security number, because theoretically he received payment for doing the commercial (the Kennedy’s were never union busters so he got paid scale). There are calls for a new constitution in New York currently, especially with the shenanigans over the leadership of the Senate this past session.
Gene Nickerson was the first democratic county executive in Nassau County. He was a good guy. Bobby Kennedy recognized his abilities and persuaded him to run for US Senate on his ticket. We were running against Joe Resnick, an upstate congressman with a lot of money, who hated Bobby Kennedy; and Paul O ‘Dwyer, who was a New York liberal, running with Eugene McCarthy. We were the favorites, because Kennedy was expected to win the New York primary by a landslide, and we were going to coast in on his coat tails.
Just before the California Primary, Joe Resnick took out a full page ad in the New York Times that said: Bobby Kennedy is a liar. We couldn’t wait for RFK to come in and kick his butt.
The Kennedy Presidential campaign headquarters were set up in a two story store front in mid Manhattan. There was a room where they had the Xerox machine, postage meter, mimeograph machines, etc. A work room. There was also a juke box in this room. But the juke box only had a couple of records on it. The song that kept playing was MacArthur Park. It gets to you after a while, the same long song.
We were located inside in one of the corners. Not a whole lot had occurred in the campaign up to that point, because we didn’t have any money, because the Kennedy money was being used to fight the various primaries around the country. We were busy planning for the day that the campaign was going to return to New York, and what we were going to do then.
That would be the day that RFK comes back to New York to campaign to win the New York Primary-
That was the day after the California primary.
The campaign was supposed to start on June 6, 1968.
We were meeting at 5 am, to start. We were going out on walking tours, rally’s, all over the state with Gene Nickerson along with RFK,
But early in the morning on June 6th, (or in the middle of the night- depends upon how you look at it), my father woke me up to tell me that RFK had been shot.
So on June 6th, 1968; instead of going to work, ready to run, ready to start our state wide senatorial campaign, I walked into a wake.
People were standing around crying, moping, understandably upset.
Well, we had a funeral to run.
First thing that we had to do was send out the invitations.
We are talking about the days before fax machines.
This was the days of the telex. The telex was a cylinder (round) machine that had a metal band around it which spun and sent the message to another telex machine somehow. 1960’s high tech.
We invited every congressman, senator, head of state, governor, mucky muck in the world (except for Joe Resnick, but he showed up anyway). Everyone had to get a telegram or a telex.
We cut the list into manageable sizes, and we delivered them to Western Union offices, and to friends of the campaign who had telex machines in their office.
RFK was laid out at St Patrick’s, and the line to see the coffin was never ending. But they made arrangements for a special time for us to jump the line and pay our last respects.
And then we had to make the arrangements for the train to Washington, the guest list, limo arrangements, seating arrangements, provide for food. All this stuff had to be done.
Can you imagine the arrangements that went into Ted Kennedy’s funeral where they had months to prepare? Longest funeral I’ve ever seen on TV. They even had to provide for umbrellas in case it rained, which it did- did you see all the umbrellas?
Gene Nickerson, the senatorial candidate without a presidential candidate, was still running. But no one wanted to do anything. No active campaigning for a while, don’t forget Martin Luther King had just been assassinated, and now Bobby. All campaigning came to a halt for all of the campaigns.
Except for me.
I didn’t take the train to Washington. I had a campaign to run. I was a professional.
I decided that we would put out a negative mailing about Joe Resnick. The press had noted that he wasn’t invited to the funeral and he showed up anyway.
First thing I did was order One Million Envelopes for the Kennedy campaign. I had them bring it to the shop where the Kennedy mailings were done, so that they would address them (I “borrowed” the Kennedy mailing list). (These were the days before computers also. Rolodex was everything. While everyone was grieving, I was rolodexing).
There was no one to confirm or deny my order, so they did it on my say so, although I had no authorization, just a lot of nerve. I was 17 years old. Besides I had all the right names, numbers, etc.
The campaign finance director owned an insurance company on Madison Avenue. They had three real commercial grade mimeograph machines/ printing presses. I was given access to the equipment, a couple employees, and sufficient supplies after 5pm, and we ran them over night, and printed the million copies of stuff that had to go into the envelopes.
After the funeral, we moved out of the Kennedy Headquarters, into the Doral Hotel on Park Avenue. (I wonder if it’s still there or still called the Doral.) Nickerson and his home staff were from Long Island so they needed a place to change clothes, and stay, etc. I took over their living room, and added an extra room or two to run the campaign from.
I set up a couple of rooms with long tables and showed people how to stuff envelopes (pre-folded the stuffing’s, put them in order, open up the backs of the envelopes- I was pretty good at this stuff).
I grabbed Nickerson, his wife, and his 4 daughters and had them stuff envelopes too. All the mucky mucks from Long Island got to stuff envelopes. And everyone had a great time. Took everyone’s mind off of the assassination.
I stopped people walking on Park Avenue, in front of the hotel, and asked them if they would help Kennedy, and come in and stuff envelopes.
Some of the people who worked in the hotel helped.
I was able to get some of the Kennedy people to help out.
We bought sandwiches’ from a deli on Park Avenue.
I borrowed the Kennedy postage meter. (It had just been loaded because the campaign was about to get started, and they never used it)
I would fill up big postage bags full of mail, and when we had 4 or 5 of them I would take them to the post office. I would go to different post offices because the postal workers often would leave bags around if there were too many. I remember coming back from a run to the post office around 2 or 3 am and parking in front thinking I’d be out again shortly, but I fell asleep. Luckily someone was up when the tow truck was about to take the car (rush hour).
But the mailing got out.
A job well done.
But, unfortunately we lost the primary the following Tuesday.
Thanks to my mailing, Paul O ‘Dwyer won the primary. (His people will say that my mailing had nothing to do with it, but call it literary license, as we get older, our stories get better). I suppose we should have said something in the mailing about voting for us. But we didn’t.
Jacob Javits and Richard Nixon won the general election.
Gene Nickerson went on to become a federal court judge, presiding over Abner Louima, and finding Chin Gigante fit to stand trial. He died in 2002.
Ken Auletta is now a distinguished award winning Journalist, who writes books about media, has written the media column in the New Yorker since 1982, and has written several best sellers. His 11th book, “Googled, the end of the world as we know it” is being published this fall.
After a very short stint with Hubert Humphrey (I quit during the Democratic National Convention), I wound up at Andrew Stein for Assembly but that’s another story for another email.
……….to be continued
NOTES:
After I finished writing this story, I put on my sneakers, and went outside, took out the lawn mower, checked the oil, added some gasoline, took out my hearing aid, and mowed the lawn. Even though I hadn’t done it in almost two months, it all came right back. It’s like riding a bike, once you get started it all comes back.

You know one of the nicest things about mowing the lawn for me is that I don’t have to hear. I put my hearing aid into this small jar with these little balls in it that absorb the moisture, and for a while, I am free, free of having to try to hear, and free of the anxiety of not hearing.

4th of July, Woodstock, Labor Day and Mowing the lawn .................. continued

2009-08-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

Well, when we last left off, I had given up on Sears; and I had decided to go to Home Depot. I went in, guy there pointed to a lawnmower, said it was the best deal in the store in my price range, all assembled, got me a dolly to push it out to the cash register and to load it into my car.
By now it was too late to mow the lawn, so I just took it out of the box, put in the oil, and gassed it up, started it up, mowed one diagonal row and back, shut it off and put it in the garage. (So what do you call the plastic gas can anyway, does anyone know? A gas can?)
Woke up nice and early the next day (well not that early), and mowed the lawn with my new lawn mower. Did a nice job, if I do say so myself, didn’t take that long, and I was able to get right into my day.
I was able to go to my doctor’s appointment. I mentioned in an earlier email that I had met a foot doctor (Podiatrist) at the SIEDC thing at the Hilton, right after I met the person who gave me the free haircut voucher for the Barber College on New Dorp Lane. I still carry my lap top in the Northfield Bank bag.
I have arthritis in my big toes. It’s a family trait. Big Brains, Bald heads, bad skin, bad hearing, and arthritic big toes.
Dr. Rouder told me that he could clean up my arthritic toes and I would then be able to walk and run pain free, so long as I get a physical, blood work, and a chest x-ray, then I can have surgery any Wednesday or Thursday morning.. He wanted to schedule it for the 2nd of July, but we were celebrating 5 years Cancer Free for Angela on the 4th, and I would have to mow the lawn.
A few days later, I had a meeting at the municipal building (City Hall). It was a beautiful day; so I parked at the ferry, “took the ocean voyage”, and walked up (north) to Nassau Street; and after the meeting at DOF, I walked down (south) on Broadway, back to the ferry. I enjoyed seeing all of the local advertisements at the Whitehall Station and on the ferry. Tired and hot, I sat outside and completed my New York Times crossword puzzle thinking not a bad ride if you don’t have to do it every day.
Not a bad walk. When I was a criminal defense attorney with the Legal Aid Society in Manhattan in the 70’s, I did it every day (except in the rain). Some days I even ran it.
But that’s before my arthritis set in, and let me tell you, after walking back and forth that day, any doubts that I had about having the surgery were gone. On this particular day I was lucky. I got off the ferry, caught the shuttle to the parking lot, got into my car, and just as I closed my door, all hell broke loose as it started to rain, torrential downpours (remember June was record rain).
Anyway, so I went and got my chest x-rayed, drew blood to be analyzed, and went to my PCP (primary care physician) who signed a paper that said that I am healthy enough to have my toes cut open.
So now it’s nearing the 4th of July and time for me to “mow the lawn” again. And mow the lawn I did, and I did a great job. I am getting so good at it, arthritic big toes and all.
On the 4th, I set up the place, went out and bought ice cubes, fruity wine, beer, soda, grilled the corn (and I don’t cover the corn in tin foil like we did when I was a kid- rip off the husks and right onto the grill- spray oleo on it), grilled the hot dogs, the hamburgers, sausages, & steak. I am actually a pretty organized cook, getting things done so people are always eating hot food, and bringing it out in stages.
But I didn’t buy enough ice the first time I went, so I went back to Pathmark and bought a couple more bags of ice cubes (they are still in the freezer in the garage refrigerator); and while I was there, I decided that since I was having surgery a few days later, I would buy some of those Pathmark store made square oatmeal raisin cookies.
Everyone commented on how nice the lawn looked, especially after drinking the beer and fruity wine and eating my cooking.
Fast forward to July 8th, Englewood NJ where a Staten Island surgeon performs his surgery- why not on Staten Island? Well that’s another story- a good story for Bob Cutrona to write about in his column in Business Trends perhaps.
Anyway, they knock me out (although not a general anesthesia), and they worked on my toe. Right foot first, because it wasn’t as bad. Cut open my toe, took out their trusty old buzz saw, and went bzzzz along one side of the toe, and then bzzzzz along the other side. Then he changed the blade in the saw, and put in a bigger one, and did it again, so that now there would be space between the two bones. Then he inserted a screw to set the toe back into place. Sewed it up, turned off the sleepy stuff, and I woke up.
I had a bagel and a glass of orange juice and went home spending the next few days with my foot elevated and iced.
That Sunday, we had an open house at our home, so we had to leave the house. I went to work, and sent out emails to y’all from my office computer.
When Angela got home she had a panic attack because the garage door was open, and she thought to herself that someone had stolen the lawn mower. Do you believe this?
He repeated this procedure on the big toe on the other foot on July 22nd. After the second surgery I decided to allow myself a final binge before I start my training for the marathon, now that my toes are going to be better. Pathmark Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. I also stopped taking my B5 Pantothenic Acid. After a month of cookies and no B5, I lost my hearing.
And then the grass began to grow.
A few weeks ago I was able to get one of the landscapers who was working a couple of blocks away to mow the lawn.
But the grass has started to grow again…
So the other day I get a text message from Stuart Garber, a lifelong friend, “Alan you should write about Woodstock this weekend.” Previously Stu had asked me to write a story about the fact that his family’s lumber yard is the last family owned lumber yard on Staten Island, after Farrell Lumber closed their doors. Started in the 50’s by Stu’s father and grandfather, on Greenleaf Avenue near the home port, they also now have a second store, Garber’s Do It Best Hardware at 4890 Amboy Road near the Outerbridge.
In August 1969, 40 years ago, (oh man 40 years – some of you weren’t even born yet), I was 18 years old, thin, my hair was getting long, I was about to enter my junior year at St. John’s University, which was still on Schermerhorn Street in downtown Brooklyn, before it moved to Staten Island. I worked full time on the staff of the Howard J Samuels for Governor Campaign. Howard never got the nomination, lost in the primary; the day after he lost, I was with him when Mayor John Lindsay called and asked him to start up Off Track Betting. Howard became Howie the Horse. Couple of years later I became assistant to the President of OTB (eventually I quit to build houses on Staten Island but that’s another story).
So there was a guy who worked in the campaign also named Howard, but this one was Howard Hirsch. He had curly hair and a curly mustache (maybe he had a perm). His claim to fame up until that moment was that he had started something called the Psychedelicatessen (psychedelic delicatessen) an early 60’s hip venue.
Howard Hirsch was asked by the guys running Woodstock to put on an art show to showcase work of some aspiring young hippie artists of the day.
An Aquarian Expedition-
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair.
Howard asked me to bring some friends to Woodstock to help him run the Art Fair.
So I brought my good friend Bobby Garber (that’s why Stuart texted me in the first place), and a few others; and you know, its 40 years later, and I just don’t remember. (I haven’t seen any of these people, except Stuart and Bobby Garber, in years).
We got free tickets, a place to stay, and free meals.
Friday morning I left for Woodstock from Kingston NY, where I had picked up one of our friends. The NY Thruway was still fine, but after we got off of the main highway and started on some of the secondary roads, we began to crawl in the Woodstock traffic.
Eventually, as we approached Bethel, I realized that it made sense to park the car. I pulled into a deli (general store?) and asked the owner if I could leave my car there, which started something, because the owner filled up his lot, side yard, and rear yard, in no time at all after I left. (I can’t remember what kind of a car I drove that day- I remember it was white).
So we started to walk, and caught a ride “on” someone else’s car (people were riding on the trunk and on the roof and on the hood. The communal spirit had begun.
We got to the hotel, which was actually like a 3 or 4 room Inn, and there was a room that was wall to wall mattresses- all next to each other. Not dormitory style, like a room of mattresses. Catch as catch can. No air conditioning.
Then we walked to the fair, to find the Art Show.
The hotel was in “town” (such as it was), and it was a schlep to “Yasgar’s Farm” where the concert (and art show) were being held. Plus there were a lot of people, (hundreds of thousands) so the walk was a journey.
I got to the Art Fair, and this was about the time that they were deciding to make it a free concert. The reason they made it a free concert was that people kept knocking down the fences. During my walk to the art fair I watched (and participated) in fences coming down.
Howard gave me staff passes for everyone (mine is framed on the wall in the kitchen). Remember this was 1969, things were mimeographed. The logo in black print on a green card (construction paper?) that said STAFF, my name, and ART.
It reminds me of the time that JFK came to Staten Island while he was running for President, in 1959. Well he didn’t really come to Staten Island, he took the ferry to Staten Island, where he addressed the crowd at the end of one of the ramps (the old pick up ramp). My father was a big Democrat in those days, but the local Staten Island Democratic Organization was run by the Irish. We went to someone’s office in St George so we could get close to JFK. That person (I can’t remember his name) took a blank card in clear plastic that you pin on your clothes (Hello my name is- w/o the hello my name is), and took out a green magic marker and wrote OFFICIAL on it. He said, we use green because they’re all Irish. It worked. I got right up to JFK on the platform, and did get to shake JFK’s hand. I always remembered while he was shaking 10 hands at a time, I had a whole hand to myself (hey I was 8 or 9 years old).
So back to the Art Show, we are putting up “fences” to hang the art on. As soon as we put up a fence, someone comes and knocks it down, and says- hey it’s a free concert. So up with the fences, down with the fences. Even with art work on them, the hippies insisted upon knocking them down.
There was a van or something parked not far from the art show, and they had an 8 track player in the van, but they only had one tape: Sly and the Family Stone. Sly and Family Stone would start and I thought- great the concert is starting. This happened several times over the next day or so until the concert actually did start.
Then it started to rain.
So much for the art show, we had to protect the art from the rain, so we put it away.
Since it was raining, the smart move was to go back to the hotel and get some sleep. It was hot and muggy in there, but I slept. I can sleep standing up, sleep is never a problem for me. But I remember a couple of my friends couldn’t sleep and wound up outside the hotel all night.
Saturday was the muddy day. It stopped raining. It got nice out.
I walked to the fair, and there was a truck (like a U-Haul) with cases and cases of #10 cans of juices (like the big spaghetti sauce cans), that they were selling for $1 a can. I bought a can.
10 feet away was a hippie, telling people to leave their unfinished cans with him so he could give them to others to take a sip. “Don’t buy from the capitalist pigs, drink for free, or buy and share.” I left the rest of the can with him.
Woodstock Nation.
So it is pretty calm- muddy, but calm.
I walked to the art fair, nothing happening there. Hung around with Howard and others. The van played Sly and the Family Stone, and every time it did, I thought the concert had starting.
I walked around. Saw the information booth. The medical tent. The freak outs. Saw the hog farm. They had this really neat vehicle. Like a little jeep, but small, like a four seater, jet ski size. Really neat.
Bobby Garber (unbeknownst to me) took his staff pass and went back stage. He and a couple of our other friends watched much of the concert from the stage.
All this past weekend on the History Channel they ran a Woodstock show, interviewing some of the people from then, now. I read it on my closed captioned TV.
They said that at the beginning of Woodstock, the press was reporting false information about Woodstock. They were reporting that there were fights, and illness, and chaos.
They also showed the pay phones at Woodstock. They said that so many people called home and told their parents how wonderful it was, who then called their local TV stations, that is how the real story got out that it was a love festival and not chaos.
Being a good son, I called my mother. I didn’t call my father. I didn't not call my father. Wow- what a revelation!!! sorry Zack and Jake.
On the TV, they also showed Woodstock memorabilia, but no staff passes. Wonder what mine is worth? Anyone interested? I’m taking offers. Not!
Back to the concert. All of a sudden I heard Richie Havens. And it wasn’t on the 8 track. The concert had started.
Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.
But I wasn’t dug in for music. I listened to Richie Havens set (6 songs), and started to walk around some more. Couldn’t find my friends. (There were hundreds of thousands of people there). (They were on the stage). Didn’t run into anyone else that I knew there either.
I listened to Santana do Soul Sacrifice, although I had never heard of Santana before, but thought that they were great.
There were a lot of announcements about don’t take this acid or that acid. I didn’t take any drugs at Woodstock.
Sometime later Saturday I met a girl who was with a bunch of people whose car was parked somewhat near the art show. And she had a bottle of Chianti. I can’t remember her name, or where she was from, and I never saw her again. I also didn’t really listen to any more of the concert, and really don’t remember anything else about the fair until it was time to leave.
So we all sort of ran into each other back at the hotel, and leaving Woodstock, we caught a ride on the back of someone’s car, to my car, and came home “the conquering heroes”.
Woodstock’s anniversary is now over, my hearing has returned, the ringing has stopped. (Was it stress? Was it lack of vitamins? Was it too much sugar? Who knows.
I have now decided that I am going to start to get into the best shape of my life. No more oatmeal raisin cookies from Pathmark.
But before I run the marathon, I first have to be able to get my sneakers on my feet. However, as soon as I do, the first thing on my agenda, before Labor Day weekend, is that I am going to mow the lawn.

The long road to the bottom of the market.

2009-08-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Those of you that receive my emails of foreclosures have been seeing notes on some of the properties saying things like “This price must be the bottom of the market,” or “this house is another sign of the bottom of the market.” (Those of you who don’t receive these emails, and would like to, please tell me. Those of you who would like to receive the cheapo cheapo listings, that I no longer send out, email me to be put on the cheapo cheapo list).

In preparation of writing this article, I gazed at my crystal ball, read tea leaves, threw tarot cards, and counted the bumps on my head, to find the answers. What did I find? I found Questions, like:

Which market are we looking at for the bottom? We have the stock market, we have the bond market, we have the gold market, we have the Real Estate market, and lots of other markets.

The Stock Market

The stock market reacts to all of the markets. Wall Street says that this recession and fall of the stock market is in response to the crash of the subprime mortgage market. My friends in the market tell me that the market still hasn’t dealt with the inflation, and unemployment, so the stock market has not hit bottom, and could even have another serious down spin, or crash. Of course that’s easy to say.

The Unemployment Factor

Many say that we haven’t peaked in unemployment as yet. That as unemployment grows, more people will lose their houses to foreclosures, and there will be more REO property on the market, less buyers due to unemployment, and on and on.

345,000 US jobs were lost in May 2009, and the unemployment rate jumped to 9.4%, its highest point in 25 years (1984- just before the wild 80’s took off?). Economists said that job losses are likely to continue to pile up through the rest of the year.

Yet the stock market took this as a good sign, because the pace of losses was lower than they anticipated, and that is was showing sustained signs of stabilizing (does stabilizing mean hitting bottom?).
But does the stock market really ever make sense?

There are lots of people selling books and emails, and courses that offer advice on how to buy and sell stocks, and play the market, based upon their formulas which always worked, always did better than the stock market. I just Googled “bottom of the market” and came across one of these guys, who shows how to tell the signs of the bottom of the market. This particular genius stated that after a crash; check the BKX index for a 10% rise…that will be the bottom. He also said when the economy reaches the front page of the NY Times, and every other major newspaper, that is when the market has hit mega bottom, and it is time to buy. He was wrong, the market continued to tank.

I never trusted the stock market. I never trusted the prices of stocks, IPO’s, stock tips, etc. If I got a stock tip, I know how far down the food chain I am, it can’t possibly be any good at that point. It was probably time to sell, by the time I got the tip. Especially after watching the films Wall Street and Pretty Woman. And what about Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and Nicholas Leeson,… companies manipulate stock prices for their own accounts, and to big Wall Street players. We all know that.

Over the past several years, prior to the crash of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, I sat on the side lines, and watched as the prices of real estate climbed, and the stock market went up, despite our financial losses and costs in running the war in Iraq. (Which at this point seems small). I never could understand why the prices of stocks kept going up, and why the prices of real estate kept going up. Made no sense then.

So why should the stock market make sense now? Has anything changed? Aren’t the big players, just buying up the bargains while they can? They have the money; they borrowed billions from the fed. They had to have done something with the money; they bought stock that they can manipulate later. And didn’t they clean house? Got rid of the older high paid employees? Trimmed the fat, as it were? But mark my words, when the time is right, when the money is flowing again, when their customers are in the mode called buy and spend, they will re-sell these companies and stocks at huge profits. Next time the stock market is on the rise.
Housing Market

Now the housing market is different than the stock market. The major difference is that housing is a necessity shelter. People have to have a place where they can go with a roof over their heads to protect them from the elements. I don’t have to explain the use and necessity of housing.

But in the housing market there are certain constants, and there are always new people entering the housing market, and people ready to make a move to their next house:

People graduate; get married; have babies; get new jobs; get promotions; hit the lottery and/or have other windfalls and inheritances; children grow, and leave the house (empty nesters- I wish).

So there is a constant flow of new people entering the housing market, but what happens during the bad market times (or whatever you want to call whatever it is), these people don’t enter the market.

Why aren’t they entering the market now?

People aren’t entering the market for the obvious reasons, like they are afraid, they want to wait until the bottom is hit, they are waiting for the buy of their life to come knocking on their door. No one wants to buy on the way down, when it could still go down further. When things start to go up however, “when the train is starting to leave the station” according to my friend Jon Salmon, that’s when everyone wants to buy!

While there are good reasons to buy now, and good reasons not to buy now, the result of these people not buying is being felt in the market. Today, there is a growing amount of pent up demand for housing. At some point, we will understand that we have passed the bottom, and that it is “okay” to buy real estate now. At that time, there will be a rush, which will bring the prices up, because of this pent up demand. (Look what happened with the stimulus package to buy a new car and trade in your clunker- all of the pent up demand hit the market and the program was overwhelmed- The amount provided to last for 3 months, was used up in 3 days).

History has this strange habit of repeating itself.

In the late 70’s and again in the early 80’s, our economy was in really bad shape. We had left Vietnam, in disgrace, and the Shah of Iran was overthrown and our embassy was held hostage for 444 days. Our cities were falling apart; New York was on the verge of bankruptcy. Money for mortgages disappeared. Interest rates were up to 16% for a home mortgage, if you could get one.

And the real estate industry, including new home construction, grinded to a halt.

So some of the builders and some of the bankers came up with an idea, where they could lower the interest on the mortgage for a short period (3 years or so), and make them affordable.

Woodbrook Condominiums had just opened its first phase, and they offered a deal where you could get a mortgage at Citibank where the interest rate for the first three years was 10.5%. The builder paid the bank three years interest on the difference in rates, and sales were phenomenal. (they were called negative amortization mortgages).Other builders got the idea, and the market began again, slowly. And then we ran out of inventory, the builders that had the jobs ready to go, became the biggest builders. (Does Mirador ring a bell?).

Perhaps what really kick started the real estate market was the influx of foreign money, in the mid 80’s, as the United States had become such a terrific bargain. Large buyers from Japan, Germany and other European countries went on a buying spree, stimulating the market, as these dollars trickled down. Of course they not only spent money on real estate, they also spent money buying companies, and stocks. Next came the wild days of the 80’s where people made so much money that opulence was the way of the day.

The buzz around was he who has the most toys at the end- wins. Michael Douglas’ movie Wall Street had a scene where he was preaching GREED to his shareholders.

The builders on Staten Island decided that the best way to go was to utilize existing zoning laws and build as many townhouses on a piece of land as was possible. Houses went from 20 feet wide to 12 feet wide. Townhouses’ were built attached on all sides including the rear so the only property would be the 8’ front yard. And the price of houses went through the roof. I remember wondering how a person making $40,000 is going to be able to buy a house that cost $180,000. The price of homes went up faster than the salaries.

But then in the late 80’s government got into the act and all of a sudden the market crashed, and all of the banks built on their houses of cards fell with them.

In New York City, government (city council) decided to change the zoning laws and created something called contextual zoning. This only affected houses in Staten Island and Queens. It meant that from then on, garages counted in the computations of FAR (Floor Area Ratio’s), and other changes that made absolutely no sense to us on Staten Island were enacted. The net effect was that houses would either be 1/3rd smaller, buyers would get less room (no more garages, lofts, splays, etc.) and builders would get less units or yield from their land.

At the same time, President Reagan changed the tax code and eliminated capital gains treatment in real estate. That meant that profit from real estate was taxed as ordinary income, instead of as capital gains, which is taxed at a lower rate.

Bye Bye foreign money, hello recession.

Bye Bye banks, hello RTC (Resolution Trust Corporation.)

And then there were lean years and slow markets, etc., but then a funny thing happened.

Instead of building townhouses, some builders started to build detached one and two family homes, and the people who were ready to move out of their “starter home” into their next home, started buying these homes. The new entry level buyers, with all of that pent up demand, started buying the resale’s from those I just mentioned, and again we ran out of inventory, and prices started to climb again.

Only this time, they were fueled by real easy credit, and the subprime mortgage business, which enabled anyone who could breath and had a driver’s license (or was it a library card) could get a mortgage and buy a house.

So what will happen this time?

Smart money is already buying up the bargains. How much longer do you really believe that you will be able to buy a two family house for under $200,000? C’mon. Maybe we haven’t hit bottom, but some of the merchandise has.

Is now the time to invest in Real Estate?

Yes

Here are some of the reasons why:

First: $8,000 Tax Incentive available at closing- does not get paid back. (Unless you don’t live in the house as your primary residence or violate the other terms). Expires November 30, 2009. (First time homebuyers- haven't owned a home in 3 years)

Second: 96.5% Financing FHA & SONYMA

Third: Lowest Rates in History, and below market programs available.

Fourth: Lowest prices in 20 years

Fifth: This is a buyer’s market- Huge Inventories. Sellers are nervous and are negotiable.

Sixth: High amount of foreclosures and short sales available. There are bargains galore in every area of town, even Million dollar short sales.

Seventh: Prices in the neighborhood that you are interested in are relatively stable- either they are holding their own, increasing, or the pace of decline is slowing.

Eighth: You plan on staying in this home for more than 5 years. That way regardless of the market at this point, it will have stabilized and you will ride out any downturn, and come out ahead in price.

Ninth: Your rent equals a mortgage payment.

Tenth: You can use the tax deduction against your income.

Eleventh: You’ve found the right house in the right area for you. The schools are great. You know that if the market were better, this house would have been sold already, or there would be more competition for it.

Twelfth: You’ve got equity in your house, and want to move to a smaller house (empty nester). Although you will not be getting as much for your sale, you will more than make up for it in your purchase.

Thirteenth: If you don't buy now, you will kick yourself for the rest of your life.

Fourteenth: There probably will never be another market like this one in our lifetimes.

There is a lot of competition for the bargains

While there are lots of good deals out there these days, there are also a lot of savvy real estate professionals in the marketplace that are buying up the good deals wherever they can. Here on Staten Island, because of the large numbers of foreclosures on the market, there are a whole new group of OFF Island Realtors® who have joined SIBOR, because they receive foreclosures (REO) from the banks. These off island realtors also have “off island customers” who have discovered Staten Island as a fantastic bargain basement -the best bang for the buck- (compared to the prices of real estate in Brooklyn and Queens, and are grabbing huge amounts of these great deals as they occur.)

So how will we know that we’ve hit the Bottom of the Market?

We will know for sure that we've hit the bottom of the market, well after we are on the way up. We will read about it in Newsweek and Time Magazine, we will see TV shows about it. More and more of the articles and stories we hear and read about will be talking about the bottom, and then they will be talking about the bottom as having passed the bottom. In other words, we won't know for sure officially that we are at the bottom, until we are well passed it.

So are we there yet?

Yes and No.

The June numbers are in, and new construction sales are up for the 4th month in a row, although still below last year's numbers.

New Building Permits are up for the 4th month in a row, which means that the Building Industry is confident that the worst is over.

I am getting more calls than ever before, and more inquiries and requests to be added to the email list to receive free foreclosure listings.

Some aspects have hit bottom, others haven’t. Some things will get worse, some things are getting better.

Some house prices have hit the bottom, others have a ways to go.

So what is the answer?

…………………to be continued

Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Mowing the Lawn

2009-07-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

This year was a very special mother’s day for my wife, Angela.
Angela was adopted.
Angela said that her entire life she felt like there was something missing and she always wanted to find her birth mother, even though she has a cousin who is also adopted who has a relationship with her birth mother, that isn't very good.
A couple of times when she was younger, she went to psychics who both told her that she was very close to her birth mother. She was living in Queens.
In 2003, Angela was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, and she became even more determined to find her Mom.
She registered on several black market adoption sites, and continually updated them through the years. Every time there was a new person who found adoptees on one of the talk shows, Angela would go to their web site and register.
Now somewhere along the line, Angela had gotten a copy of one of the adoption proceedings, which had the birth mother’s last name. We tried to find a Brooklyn phone book from 1960, but were unsuccessful.
Angela’s birth mother’s name was a somewhat common Italian name, and there are a couple of politicians including an assemblyman who had the same name. We reached out to a couple of local politicians to make the call, but no one wanted to get involved.
At some point, under the guise of trying to find medical history, I went to the Surrogate and asked him to call his counterpart in Brooklyn, where the adoption took place 40 some odd years ago, but of course he said no.
Well, Angela went through her chemo therapy, radiation therapy, surgery, more chemo, over the next couple of years, without finding her birth mother, but continued to update her information at all of the adoption sites…nothing ever happened.
Out of nowhere, Angela received an email from her birthmother’s sister whose other sister had Googled Angela’s birth mothers name, and came across one of Angela’s postings.
Very soon after the email, we met at a restaurant at Grand Central Station- (Angela, me, two aunts and her newly found younger brother).
At it happened, Angela’s birth mother had died several years ago- of lung cancer (isn’t that spooky?).
For most of her life, they lived 9 blocks away from each other.
They kept the same telephone number until 2006.
No relation to the Assemblyman, or the other two well known politicians.
Anyway, Angela’s life has now become fuller, more complete, and she is a much happier person. She has a brother that she kids around with, like you only can with a sibling, and a whole new family that she has become extremely close with including nieces, nephews, and aunts.
Speaking of Google, if you haven’t yet, you should “Google” your own name & significant others, names, long lost friends, enemies, etc. I ran my father’s name recently and found a photograph of him and his Air Corp. crew from World War II in front of their airplane, a photograph that I had never seen, nor knew that it even existed. (In World War II, the air corp was part of the army, later it became a separate branch of the armed services).
So this mother’s day I wanted to make it special for her.
I drove to Queens, and picked up my mother in law, Angela’s adoptive mother, to spend the weekend.
I cooked (on the grill), and I mowed the lawn.
Now I hadn’t mowed a lawn in perhaps 40 years. I’ve had landscapers all these years. And when I was a kid and mowed the lawn at my parents house, the lawn was 15 feet wide by 15 feet deep if it was that.
But this house has a lot 185 x 185 totally surrounded by grass, except for the driveway, and the house footprint itself. Do the math.
So I borrowed my next door neighbors mower (he does it every weekend, religiously, unless his kids are home from college, and then they do it), but his lawn looks like Yankee Stadium. When I started going straight across, my wife stopped me and pointed me in the right direction (diagonal).
It took me most of the day. Of course I stopped, drank several bottles of water, ate a Myoplex protein-energy bar, but mowed the entire property, all ¾ of an acre, not exactly straight lines, but definitely diagonally. (I can't walk in a straight line on a good day, because of my Meniers disease that I have spoken of, is also a balance disorder- vertigo and all that- you should see me try to do step aerobics).
Although I am a “tad” on the pleasantly plump side, I happen to be in great shape (round is a shape!)- I work out fairly regularly, I go on the cross trainer for 45-60 minutes at a time, several times a week, currently at level 11. I lift weights, do pushups and sit ups. But man, did I ache the next day. In fact when I woke up in the morning, I was totally disoriented, and it took me a couple days to get it back together.
But I did such a great job, my wife decided that we would skip the landscaper this summer and I would do it.
Lucky me.
So a few weeks later we had a day with no rain and I was volunteered into "mowing the lawn" again.
Remember we had record rain fall this year in June. It seems to me that this is the first week and weekend we've had that have felt like summer.
My neighbor was going out for the day so he gave me the mower & gas can and said "Have a Nice Day." Now this lawn mower was pretty old. The lever that you have to pull/turn/click into in order to make the wheels turn had broken off, so you had to have fingers of steel and be strong as an ox to make it catch. Next the bag that collected the mowed lawn was way dented beyond recognition. It still caught most of the grass, but it also makes a trail on the sides of the run, which on the one hand is nice, because it gives definition to the diagonals, but on the other hand makes for a sloppy job.
But, having run out of excuses, I started to mow the lawn again. Only problem this time, was that the lawn mower was smoking, and kept stalling out. I couldn't tell if was stalling because the bag was full of grass (don't forget it had been raining a lot, and it hadn't been mowed in a while, so it could very well have filled up the bag quickly); or if it was some sort of a mechanical issue (which is not my expertise).
So here I am, mowing, and emptying the bag into a paper "recycle mowed lawn bag."
I was able to complete the front and sides of the houses, and was about 1/3rd into the rear when it just pooped out on me, and I was pretty pooped out myself, so I put it in his garage, and took a shower. Actually I used up all his oil, went out and bought a quart and I used half of that, which was probably the reason it was running so hot and smoking. A little while later, his son came home and was mowing his lawn, and he said it was running great - told me I should finish mine, but I begged off for the day. (I probably fixed it so that it worked for him).
Which brings us to FATHERS DAY. Remember fathers' day? That’s the day where fathers get to sleep late, go fishing or go play golf, or do whatever they like to do.
Not moi. I got up on father's day and we got in the car and went to Sears to look at, you guessed it, LAWN MOWERS.
My wish came true, I was getting a brand new lawn mower for father's day. Yippee I Oh kayyea.
Oy Vey.
So off to Sears. Because of the rough terrain of our property we opted for larger wheels in the back than the front. Has to do with turning and working around tree roots, etc. We also wanted one with wheels that turned by themselves (self propelled), and must have a bag to collect the mowed lawn.
Now you can buy a lawn mower for thousands of dollars. Maybe you can. I can't.
We picked one out that they were "pushing" (i.e. on sale), the guy checked the store computer, and sure enough they had one in stock, we picked up a gasoline can (state of the art plastic gasoline can, really cool), and an extra quart of oil. Paid for it, drove around the back to pick it up.
Guess what- they didn't have it in stock. They have one in inventory, but they don't have one in the back of the store where you pick it up. They tried to explain it to me, but it was beyond my comprehension.
Now next to the cash register, where we paid there was a sign that stated Sears policy- If we do not have an advertised item in stock, we will give you a better one for the same price.
Didn't happen. I tried. I said- hey the sign says- but no matter what, they didn't want to hear it, no good, the manager will never go for it (I demanded that they go find the manager, but he was nowhere to be found, it was father's day, he was probably sleeping late or playing golf or gone fishing).
So back to the display, and there was the other just about the same grade lawn mower, self propelled, with a bag, in stock, in the box.
So back to the back of the store, and sure enough, in a box, but mostly assembled (just have to do a couple of little things).
Stopped at the gas station and filled up my new really cool plastic gasoline can (It's not really a can, its plastic, so what is it called?),
Put it all together, added the oil and gasoline, pulled the guaranteed to start every time cord and , vroom vroom, ready to mow the lawn.
So I make the first run, "diagonally" as far as I could go, turned it around, and this brand new, spiffy, bright red lawn mower just isn't working properly. I look at the wheels, and they won't remain level, so I try to adjust the back wheels so that they were on the same page. I can't get the lawn mower level on the driveway. So I take off my glasses so I can see up close (those of you over 50 will know what that meant), and I examine the wheels to see what is wrong.
Sure enough, I notice that the thingamajig that you adjust the wheel with on one of the sides is not stationary. I search some more and I discovered that there is a piece of metal sticking out of the gizmo that is supposed to be fitted into a hole in the thing to secure it in place. But on one side, it isn't there- it's been bent under the hole, instead of sticking straight out through the hole (whoever put it together in China or wherever it was built, cheated), but the point is, it didn't work.
So back in the car, back to Sears.
I can't find the guy who sold me the first two, and the person there is asking me if I drained the oil and gasoline.
Those of you who knew my father, probably remember him as an extremely loud person. He was known to be an extremely loud person. Many people liked him because he was so loud, many people didn't like him because he was so loud.
I am much louder.
#w&#%!!!! Expletive!!!! --deleted--
So while they were looking for my salesman, I went around the back for the third time today.
When I got there, they helped me take it out of the jeep, and took it back, and gave me a piece of paper to bring to the salespeople.
They mentioned that I was supposed to remove the fluids, but that it was "okay", they'd handle it.
(Damn right)
Back to the front, I found a nice lounge chair display to wait for my salesman. When he woke me up, very gently, he told me to stay there while he did the paperwork, and brought me back my money.
Home Depot, there I went
………………….to be continued

So how do you buy a foreclosure anyway?

2009-07-02T16:52:00.000-07:00

While foreclosures are plentiful, making up a huge chunk of the real estate market, the way that you buy them is not a whole lot different than the way that you purchase any other property.

Seeing the Inside of a Foreclosure

First of all, seeing foreclosures is easier than any other house. They are always vacant, generally they have been cleaned out of debris (although not always), and they usually have a lock box These lock boxes have combinations of either numbers or letters, which when set properly will release a key

There are three condo's in a building on the North shore that I have been trying to show for some time to my customer. And we just can't coordinate it. Friday we showed up, and the homeowner wasn't there. One homeowner says only after 4, and one says only before 2, and the third says wait until next Monday. Oy vey.

Foreclosures are Sold “As Is”

When you buy a foreclosure, the banks make no representations, other than good and clean title,. They don’t represent the roof is free from leaks, nor that the plumbing, heating, and electrical systems are working.

Sometimes, you can’t check things because the water has been shut off, and there is no electric on. But you can still see roof and basement leaks, and other structural items. They will allow you to bring in an engineer to make an inspection/evaluation, even after they have accepted your offer. A decent engineer can pretty much tell you the condition of everything, even without electric, gas or water. You know that the bank gave a mortgage to someone and at that time, these things worked. There aren’t that many moving parts in a furnace. You can still follow the path of damage to a unit. You know when the pipes broke, what the damage was. Leaks leave stains and odors.

Speaking of engineers and home inspections, Bill Coull, who was the first person on Staten Island to specifically do home inspections and reports died this week of cancer. I have to wonder how many people bought houses on Staten Island only after Bill said they were okay first. I knew Bill for 30 years, and I never heard a single negative thing ever said about him, or by him. He was a good guy, a good engineer/home inspector, and will surely be missed.

Making an Offer

In order to make an offer, you have to submit, in writing with proof, how you will pay for the property if your offer is accepted. If it is an offer of all cash, you must show proof that you have the cash (bank statements). If you plan on putting down a certain percentage, and getting a mortgage for the balance, then you must substantiate the cash part, and submit a “pre qual”, a letter from a lending institution that states that you have been “pre-qualified” for a loan in the amount of at least what you have put into your offer.

Now some banks/asset managers require that the Pre Qual be case specific- that it specifically mentions the property that you are making the offer on. Not a problem, as most mortgage brokers/bankers want your business and would gladly accommodate you with as many letters as you want. It’s easy since its all word processing anyway.

Some selling banks require that you get the “Pre Qual:” from them, regardless of whether you have a pre qual or not from another lender, they want you to go through them. (They want this to make sure that they aren’t wasting their time - or - to try to sell you a loan?)

Still other banks will make the financing attractive to purchasers of their inventory. Lenders like Wells Fargo, Countywide, Chase, etc. They have bitten the bullet, and decided to make the best of their situation by turning the non-performing loan into a new performing loan. These banks are in the loan business.

Finally, there are situations where there have been undocumented alterations which may render the property un-mortgageable in the conventional market. Often times in these cases the bank will offer the financing.

I had a customer who wanted a certain house, but there was an alteration that needed to be filed, so he couldn't get the 3% down below market first time homebuyer FHA deal he wanted, so he didn't buy the property, even though Wells Fargo agreed to loan 90%.

As you know from my prior emails, no one is quite sure who owns many of the loans that are merely “toxic assets”, Mortgage Based Securities’, that were the cause of the crash of the subprime mortgage industry, and the fall of wall street, etc. These mortgages were bundled in packages and sold to investors, and have ownership like Deutche Bank as trustee of series of bonds #200-212, of 2007, etc.). In these cases, there is no bank to offer financing, and the servicing company is not in the business of making new loans.

(If you are new to Lasher’s List, or just want to re-read some of my past articles including the explanation of the crash, why there are so many foreclosures on Staten Island, the role of organized crime, and all the rest., they are all posted at my blog, at http://lasherslist.blogspot.com/)

When you make an offer to buy a foreclosure, the bank generally responds in one of three ways:

1. If your offer is full asking price, all cash, and close in 30 days, they might say yes.
2. If your offer is for less, and your terms are reasonable and your financing checks out, they probably will counter at “give us your highest and best offer”
3. If your offer is too low, and the servicing agent is not having a good day, then they will not respond at all.

Even if your offer was not responded to, they do not take it personally, you can then make a new higher offer, and again one of the three above will occur.

Some banks respond quicker than others.

Sometimes a property hits the market that is in a desirable location, and lots of people see it and make offers. Sometimes the bank will tell everyone to come back with their highest and best offer, and take the best deal in their eyes.

We don't really know how they see the offers in their eyes - You would think that a stronger buyer all cash would beat out a 3% down deal for more money, but it doesn't. Sometimes higher price wins, sometimes all cash quick closing gets it. Probably depends upon the history of the particular property, how many times they've sold it, but the buyer wasn't able to get financing after a long drawn out process.

Those of you that receive all of my emails receive these BOM's which I identify as outstanding opportunities. If you do not receive all of my emails and would like to, just send me an email and I will move you to the appropriate list. (Some people only get occasional listings, but all of my news type emails and my pontifications).

Your offer is accepted/Contract signing

Now that your offer has been accepted, a contract is sent out to your lawyer, or some banks require the customer to sign an 8-18 page agreement that you are not able to make any changes to. Sign it, or you don’t get the house. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the addendum/agreement or the regular contract of sale by and between the lawyers. Sign it without making any changes, or you don’t get the house. This is just the way that it is.

One of my clients who is a well known substantial builder on Staten Island asked that the contract of sale be put into his building corporation, instead of his personal name. the bank said no, and put the property back on the market, while we prepared a new offer, for the same amount, same terms, in the name of the building corporation, and had to get a separate letter from the bank showing the funds in the name of the building corporation.

Some of the lawyers for the lenders are requiring certified funds or bank checks for the down payments. It used to be that the contract down payment clause said “subject to collection”

I think that it has to do with the fact that the bank is taking a hit, and it's a kind of like their way of getting some sort of Montezuma's revenge.

No biggie, small price to pay for the bargain that you are getting.

Financing a Foreclosure

Financing a foreclosure is no different from financing any other property.

If the buyer is going to occupy the house themselves as their primary residence, then all of the mortgages available for any other buyer is available for the foreclosure, depending upon the condition of the house. In order to get a 96.5% FHA or SONYMA, the house has to be in good shape, with everything working. But regardless of the percentage down, the house is going to have to appraise, and you still only can borrow the percentage in the particular mortgage you apply for (The loan to value of the property).

If the house is a wreck, then foreclosure or resale, the same financing is available generally. The difference is the conditions to obtain financing that the seller allows you. But if the house is a fixer upper with things not working, so that the house doesn’t qualify for FANYMA etc., then you have to go to a commercial lender to get the financing, although there are mortgage programs out there for fixer uppers- but generally calling for you to get architectural plans permits and approvals first.

My associate Don Adler and I just sold the Landmarked 1869 Bedell house in Tottenville to a young lawyer on Lasher’s List, Thomas Kocian and his wife. They plan on restoring it for their primary residence and an office for Tommy’s law practice. This house had gotten a lot of notoriety because the prior owner had painted the outside precipitating the Landmarks Preservation Commission to jump in and landmark the house. The house is/was a wreck. The selling bank required that the “prequal” acknowledge that the house was a Designated Landmark, that it could not be torn down, and that it was in a deplorable condition in order to make an offer. Kocian had a prequal from an international well known bank that he had been doing business with for years, but they refused to issue the specific prequal, as did several other lenders that Kocian tried. Victory State Bank stepped up to the plate, and made the deal happen. Victory loaned the money for the acquisition, and gave a commitment for the rehabilitation, and after the work is completed they will refinance. If you need financing, go see Richie Boyle, head of the Loan Department @ Victory State Bank 718-979-2000. (Tell him I sent you)

Sometimes the seller bank will not give you a mortgage contingency on a property, so what you have to do is either get a loan on your own home, or other property, or go to a commercial lender like Victory that will give financing on your own home as well as the foreclosure being purchased.

But regardless of what you do, it all boils down to Loan to Value (LTV). What percentage is the bank lending of the total purchase?

The Closing

The contracts of sale now have provisions that all of the funds have to be sent to the attorney for the lender and then they will send out the deed. In other words, at the closing the only ones there may be you and your attorney at the lenders office, unless you go to the Sellers lawyers’ office. Closings that are done via wire and fed ex, are similar to how closings are done in other parts of the country.

Another difference with a foreclosure closing and a regular closing is that the buyer usually pays the Real Property Transfer Tax (NYC 1%), and the NYS Transfer Tax .4%, in addition to all other expenses. Normally the seller pays these items. Now because the buyer is paying these items, they pay the tax on the tax too. (1.4% of the purchase price, and 1.4% of the tax- don’t ask me why, makes no sense to me, other than an opportunity for the taxing authorities to make an extra couple of bucks).

Is this negotiable- NO. It is written in Stone.

What is the rationale? When the bank foreclosed on the property, they received a deed from the referee appointed for the foreclosure. In order to record the deed, they had to pay the transfer tax (1% and .4%). Since they just paid it, they don’t want to pay it again, and since they can get away with it, they do. It is called Sour Grapes.

………to be continued

Lasher's List: Buying a Bank Owned Foreclosed property at a National Auction at the New York Hyatt

2009-06-12T09:17:00.000-07:00

Being in the foreclosure business, I found myself at the New York Hyatt on Sunday, at the REDC auction, with two separate clients. They had advertised 294 properties including 11 from Staten Island. On the day of the auction 108 properties were offered, including 6 properties on Staten Island. All of the Staten Island properties were currently listed as active in the Staten Island Multiple Listing Service (MLS).

The atmosphere was one of a circus, with 3 huge screens in front; but instead of clowns, they had men in tuxedos for entertainment. These were the “bid assisters”. Their stated purpose was to help the bidders understand what they were bidding, but the subliminal purpose was to get the bidders into the excitement of the auction so that they would bid over their heads and get caught up in the action.

They did this with sounds, and gyrations. When you bid, they would run and jump in front of you and try to pump you up by rounding their arms in large circles, with eye contact, with clapping and whooping, etc..

The auction started when a person claiming to be the president of the company stood in front of the rows of anxious bidders and talked about how auctions were the easiest way to buy real estate. If you were the successful bidder,and if the property were financeable, you would go to the back of the stage where one of the several banks in attendance would qualify you and get you a mortgage. Even if it were all cash, you would go to the side and sign a contract and give them the deposit ($2500 bank check) plus the difference in a personal check).

And then it begins.

There were three screens. On the left, a screen that had boxes of each of the item numbers in the auction (The Staten Island #’s were 311, 316d, 317, 319, 320, & 321). Once a property was sold and the buyer had signed the paperwork, submitted the check, and their credit checked out, the number changed to a green “CONTRACT”.

On the screen in the center was a photo of the property; and on the right hand side of it was the starting bid (which in many cases was $1,000), and what the property had been valued at once before. Can you imagine? These homes were in this auction because they either had phony appraisals to justify ridiculously high prices in the first place, but most certainly because they weren’t worth what was owed on them, and they were currently pushing the highest value they had ever had.

The final screen on the right showed the number of the item being auctioned at the time. This screen also contained a legend of either CASH or financeable.

And so it went. First a few properties from Newark, NJ; then East Orange, NJ; and then it jumped upstate to Newburgh, New York for a few; then back to New Jersey, and then to Connecticut.

Surprisingly there was bidding on every single property! All the while the auctioneer was doing what auctioneers do: speaking very fast, repeating the price he had, the price he was looking for, etc. (The auctioneer was so loud that I took off my hearing aid and was able to hear a lot of what he said). The auctioneer would also tell the audience how great a deal
they were getting because of the previoiusly appraised value.

Every once in a while a property that had already been bid on was returned to the auction and was re-auctioned; or, as it was put: “we were given a 2nd chance.” This was because either the original buyer didn’t realize what he had done, or he wasn’t credit worthy, or some other reason why the successful bidder did not sign a contract.

Finally, they got to the Staten Island properties. The first one on the agenda was a property at 45 Anjali Loop: a two-family semi in New Springville. The property had originally been listed for $399,000 on March 30, 2009, and reduced to $394,000 shortly thereafter. At the auction it was a hot item. It got high into the $300,000’s before the bidding ended. You could see that there were several people who came to the auction just for this one property, because a lot of people left when it was finished. They probably could have purchased it through the MLS for less.

Next up was a house that had been in the previous REDC auction held a couple of months ago: a two-family in a not-so-good part of Stapleton. 97 Osgood Avenue had been listed in the MLS originally in October of 2008 for $299,000; but over the months the asking price has been reduced to $168,000. The Staten Island Advance had reported that this property had been sold at the prior auction, but apparently that deal died. This property also was hotly contested and sold above the MLS asking price.

Another property that had a lot of action was a townhouse called Mariners Lane. I checked REDC; and in spite of its activity at the auction, they are listing it as "still active", ready for the next auction; so I guess that deal died too.

Meanwhile, the two properties that one of my customers was there to bid on sold for much higher than he was prepared to pay, and higher than the offers he had made through the MLS prior to the auction on both.

The final Staten Island Property, and one which I was very familiar with and with a customer to buy, was vacant land on Scribner Avenue. It was originally listed for $97,500, later reduced to $49,000. I had a customer whose offer had been accepted for $60,000; but during his "due diligence", he discovered that there was a commercial overlay on the property so that you might not be able to build a house; so my customer had walked away. My customer at the auction had asked the bank for a contingency of 45 days to determine by filing if he could build a house, but the bank said no. He went to the auction to try to buy the property for $20,000 or less. The property had formerly been a 4-family prior to the city’s demolition of it as an unsafe building, which had occurred within the past 2 years and which put the zoning issue into a gray area.

The opening bid was $1,000.

The screen stated that the property had previously been valued at $540,000. And the crowd went wild.

My guys went to $32,500. A couple of other people in the crowd kept bidding at the urging of the “bid assisters” who were egging them on, yelling, screaming, cheering, while the auctioneer was saying that the property is such a fantastic deal because it had been previously valued at $540,000 (he didn’t say, mind you, that it had been valued that highly with a 4-family on it).

The bidding ended at $65,000. I went up to the successful bidder and asked him whether he knew that there was a commercial overlay on the property. He had no idea what I was talking about. He asked me if I knew what the size of the property was and what could be built on it.

I recommended that he contact an architect before he did anything else.

Shortly thereafter I saw him again, after he had signed the contract, and given them his $2500 bank check and the rest of the 10% down payment by personal check. Again he asked me what he could build, and again I told him that he might be able to build a store with an apartment, but he should go to his architect.

Speed forward to Tuesday when I received a call from the successful bidder telling me that he lives in Queens and realizes he has no use for the vacant land on Staten Island. I suggested that he contact an attorney immediately (within 72 hours of the auction).

So what is the point of my story you may be asking yourself? The point is that buying at auction is probably not generally the smartest move. While it may be easy, as the president of the company says, but it might not be wise. I am not talking about the foreclosure auction at the County Clerk's office. I am talking about a situation like this, with professional hawkers.

What I have learned from this auction is that there were no real great bargains; no deals were made that you couldn’t have gotten from the MLS. Want to buy a foreclosure? Call me, its safer, and smarter.

………………………to be continued

Lsher's List: Goals revisited

2009-06-03T18:48:00.000-07:00

Hey

Well, here it is, June already. My how time flies. My New Years Eve e-mail was about setting goals for the new year. Long term goals, middle term goals, short term goals, etc.

So how has everyone been doing?

Well 97% of the people in the world, don’t even have goals. 99% of the people in the world haven’t written them down.

But regardless of where you stand or sit in the spectrum now, today, this minute, is the perfect time to take a moment for yourself, sit down, and think about what you’re doing, and to what aim you are doing it..

Upon reflection, most of us will probably realize that we’ve made some progress on some fronts, more progress on others, and no progress, even stepped backwards on the rest.

But, be not discouraged. Today is a brand new day. Whatever was done yesterday is exactly that- done.

One of great things about our government is that a new administration can take over, and make 180 degree turns, change things radically, and start fresh.

My favorite time of the year while I was in school in New England, was September, the beginning of the new school year, new classes, new professors, new clothing, a new beginning.

Well, I’ve decided that today I am going to bring you a new beginning, and I give it to you to start fresh, no matter what or where you may be. Yesterday is over, and it is now tomorrow.

And it’s a brand new day.

So what should we do?

Stop what you are doing (well obviously you’ve stopped what you are doing, when you started to read this email- duh). Take the phone off the hook, and turn off the ringer on your cell phone.

Relax.

Close your eyes.

Now think about what you would be doing, if you could be doing whatever it is that you wanted to do, or if you could have anything that you wanted- either material goods, relationships’, prestige, power, or whatever.

Or Pick an area in your life that is important to you, that you want to improve (Family/Marriage/Relationship; Work/Profession; Health/fitness, etc.)

Figure out what it is, the number one most important thing that you really want for yourself in this one area of your life.

Maybe it’s a new house, or maybe it’s a better relationship with your spouse. Maybe it’s a new career, or maybe it’s a new account. Maybe it’s a new figure for your body, or maybe it’s to run the marathon. Whatever it is, figure out what is your biggest “goal” for yourself.

Now for the hard part:

WRITE IT DOWN

My goal is to……………………….

Make it clear and specific, the clearer and more specific the better.

Now that you have written it down, you are in the top 1% of achievers in the world!!!!!!

Your goal is now attainable.

Now let’s fine tune it a little, like setting a deadline. And if you don’t reach your goal by the deadline, set another deadline. No one sets unreachable goals, only unreasonable deadlines. Figure out what else you need to do to reach your goals. Do them.

Remember, when setting your goals, think big. Don’t let anyone talk you out of setting high goals. Shoot for the stars. “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” Michelangelo

And remember the most important thing is that: Failure is not an option!

So how have I done? My mother used to say “Do as I say, not as I do”.

Reminds me of an old joke, Jewish mother says to her son-
“so, ask me how I am doing”
"How are you doing?
“Don’t ask”

These are the goals I had in the email that I sent out on 12/31/08 to you:

I am so happy now that I am the #1 Most Successful Real Estate Broker on Staten Island, measured by the amount of sales and listings. On my way.
I sell one house per week or 52 houses this year. On my way.
I get referrals every day from the people who read my emails, and from the people they pass them along to. Not every day, but getting much more frequent.
I write the most successful email publication on Staten Island, reaching over 5000 people who read it. I still stop at peoples office to get their email addresses, and am adding names all of the time.
I earn $1 Million Dollars. On my way.
In 2051, I will have lived a meaningful, healthy, enjoyable life for over 100 years. We’ll see in 2051.
I run the New York City Marathon I am scheduled for surgery on June 25th to correct the arthritis in my toes so that I can start running again.
I serve on several charitable and quasi-governmental boards. Not on any boards yet, but I did get involved in the March of Dimes.
I am wide awake and out of bed by 5:30 am every day, Oops, not doing well on this one
I eat my breakfast, first of my 5 or 6 meals for the day. I eat my 5 or 6 meals most days,
I am at the gym by 6:30, almost every day, beating various previous personal bests in my work out. I reached my short range goal of 25 pushups per workout by June 1st , and I reached it two weeks early, and am now working on form- today I was able to do 25 full range of motion in a row. I increased the cross trainer to level 10 (from level 9).
I wear a 38 regular suit. I lost 4 inches on my waste, and am down a shirt size. Unfortunately I regressed from Easter to Mothers day and found the oatmeal raisin square cookies at Pathmark again. But I am proud to say, that I read a book, “the end of over eating”, and am back on track. More on that book in a different email, but boy, did I learn a lot! (It’s all a plot. by the food industry).

How are you doing on yours?

Finally, it is important that you read your goals, say them out loud, every day. Keep them in the forefront of your mind.

Good luck.

…………………to be continued

Lasher's List: Scams and Scammers

2009-06-03T18:45:00.000-07:00

I just got out of my car, and I had this catchy tune in my ear that I just can’t seem to shake. Not a song. I don’t have the range of hearing that allows me to enjoy music on the radio. (To understand my hearing, try listening to the Beatles in perfect stereo with only one speaker turned on- I miss all of the lower and higher ranges of the song). But this is not another rant about my hearing.

No, I can't stop singing a “jingle” 1-800 Kars for Kids. 1-800 Kars for Kids, 1-800 Kars for Kids, donate your car today. Ever notice that the commercials are clearer, and louder, and easier to understand than the regular radio broadcasts? TV too.

Now when I am in my car, and I am able to hear the radio, I listen to either National Public Radio (NPR) (WNYC) which is commercial free, except for when they are asking for donations, or to 1010 WINS, where give your car to charity commercials run all day long.

So what’s that all about?

First of all, to be a not for profit corporation, you need to have a charitable purpose (raise money for charity), form a corporation (there are services like Blumberg’s, XL services, Gerald Weinberg, PC, where you give them 3 names, and a charitable purpose, and a few hundred dollars later, bingo- you have a tax free corporation. Now you have an accountant file with the IRS for whatever the current type of tax free corporation is, and you’re ready.

Now you go to an ad agency, come up with a catch tune, or copy, and make an ad. Then you go to the radio station, and buy commercial time. Now they have all kinds’ of deals. Radio is cheap. And not for profits get special rates.

Every car has two values: Wholesale and retail. There are books published every month that list these values (NADA, GALES) for every car with sub sections to add or deduct for added accessories, or high mileage, etc. They call these prices average wholesale or average retail or average loan given on any year and make automobile up to a certain age. When they get too old, then they don’t publish the values. However that doesn’t mean that a car that is over 5 or 6 years old (whatever it is) has no value, at that point the car dealers know from their own experience what the cars are worth.

Now besides price lists that are broken up by retail and wholesale, there are car dealers that are wholesalers and retailers.

The person in the car dealership, who sells you a new car, is a new car dealer. He pays you very low wholesale for your car, leaving room for him to make a profit when he sells your car to the wholesaler. Of course the wholesaler has to make a profit when he sells the car to the used car dealer who then resells the car for retail to the consumer for high retail.

Now in addition to reselling the cars as cars, there is another whole market for the so called “burdens” that the commercials talk about, cars that don’t run, bad body rot, etc, are dismantled, the parts resold, and anything left is sold as scrap metal.

Cars without titles, requires a form to be sent to the Motor Vehicles for a replacement Title. If you are in a hurry, for the cost of federal express, DMV will overnight you the title, so losing your title is no big deal.

Now they also offer vacations. This is easy. People have donated their time shares that they no longer want, so they have access to free vacations all over the place.

So what do they do with the cars?

They sell them.

Who are we dealing with?

Car dealers.

But what about the charity? Where do they come in?

They talk about high administrative costs of charities. There is a car dealer/wholesaler who is really running the show, who pays the charity so much a car, or charges the charity so much a car for services, so that the charity winds up with a couple of dollars per.

But if you take how much they spend on advertising, and how much they spend on the company that buys and sells the cars, I have to wonder about how much of the gross dollars that they raise actually go to charity. 1%?

Andrew Cuomo- where are you?

And speaking of advertising, there is an ad I hear on the radio where the guy says that he just bought 1 Million copies of a book, home remedies that the doctors don’t want you to know about- and he is going to send it to you for free- except for $4.50 shipping and handling.

What can this be all about?

Well, suppose it cost him between ten and twenty five cents a copy (a dime and a quarter). The real cost of mailing is another dollar. Now there is the answering service and the radio/tv time. So what can the profit be on $4.50? One Dollar? Sell all One Million, make a Million dollars?

Is this about putting together a mailing list to work or sell?

Or is this about collecting credit card numbers for future identify theft or credit card theft?

Andrew Cuomo- are you there?

And you know why they say “Money Back Guaranteed?” Because studies have shown that most people would never ask for their money back. (there are always some). But most people are too embarrassed. But the effect on the buying public is, wow this must be okay- they guarantee to give you back your money if you aren’t satisfied.

Several years ago on Staten Island there was a guy who was selling a tape of the month club deal. You would have a catalogue, or get mailings every month to buy new tapes, similar to the book of the month club. Except you were to buy several new cassette tapes every month. (This was before CD’s).

The first month you got 10 tapes for $9.99 and then you bought more tapes every month for five years. When you signed up, you got a free tape player.

Now what he did, was figured out the value of the tapes- 5 years of 3 tapes per month @ $9.99 per = $1798.20.

But in order to make this deal happen, the people had to finance the $1,798.20 over 5 years. But since you couldn’t secure tapes not purchased, he secured the tape deck. Basically he was selling an $80 tape deck for $1,798.20.

Most people that sign up for things like this, will buy some tapes, and then stop buying, but keep paying until it is paid in full. Most people will not ask for their full money back guaranteed (which of course this conman wasn’t offering). If you really purchased the tapes every month you got a good deal. But statistically, you only bought for a few months, and kept paying the entire amount. Greenberg then would sell all of the $1,729.20 loans to one of those well known finance companies at a 24% discount $1,366.32).

Now a lot of people started complaining when they tried to quit, and realized that they had bought 5 year contracts to buy tapes, and started law suits in civil court, but everything was legal, so that didn’t help the buyers. The Advance got wind, the former District Attorney Murphy started something, and he left town, with his money, never to be seen or heard from again.

And some people bought tapes every month, and some paid the bills, and those who didn’t got sued by the finance company.

Always remember that when a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t.

…………………..to be continued

UPDATES
MY HAIRCUT:
Well, on Monday after my haircut at the barber college, I went back to my regular place, First Impressions at 2047 Victory Blvd, next door to Schaefer’s, between my office and Starbucks on Victory Blvd., and Nicholas re-cut my head to straighten it out, and now I have to let it grow so he can cut it again, to fix it.

Hair

2009-05-01T10:54:00.001-07:00

Tuesday the SIEDC had an all day conference at the Hilton. There were many speakers, The Borough President, the Attorney General, the Mayor, and all of the other important people that you would expect to be there, and then some.

Anyway since I have trouble hearing, I skipped the speeches, and just walked around the trade show, picked up some free hi-lighters, sugar free mints, a yo yo, a fly swatter, and a whole lot of other stuff, but the best was a coupon for a free haircut at Paul Mitchell’s Partners on New Dorp Lane.

And man does that bring me back.

Haircuts, and Hair, were always big issues in my life.

Being a child of the 1950’s. (not withstanding Rebel without a Cause, and Marlon Brando’s The Wild One, and the beatniks’), the mode of the country, was to fit in, to conform.

People were buying cape cods, that all looked alike, row after row of the same.

And men got crew cuts (or flat tops).

But growing up, the cool people wore black leather jackets and had DA’s (hair that was pulled down in the front, like Kooky on 77 Sunset Strip). But my father wanted to conform (boy did he change in his old age), so he insisted that I have a crew cut. And what was worse was that he would take me to the barber college to get my haircut. I still remember being jabbed and cut with scissors and combs, by smelly little men who didn’t speak English, trying to become Barbers.

Other times we would go to the barber on Watchogue Road. My grandfather put into his lease that he had to give my grandfather a free hair cut once a week. But my grandfather was bald. So I guess what he did was shave the back of his neck. Because of that, he never raised the rent, so long as he got his free haircut once a week.

I remember my last haircut at the barber college. It was after Election Day 1965. I was working for Howard Samuels who ran for Lt. Governor, (later he became Howie the Horse and started OTB, I became assistant to the President of OTB, but that’s another story). Anyway I was 14 or just turned 15 (my birthday is in November). and we lost the election, I was sad, and my father took me to the Barber College for a haircut. I went from sad to miserable. I went back to school the next day and got laughed at for my ridiculous hair cut.

After that my haircuts were less frequent. I graduated high school, lost a bunch of weight, went to college, got a car, and let my hair grow. The late 60’s.

In August 1969 I was on the staff at the original Woodstock. It was called an Aquarian Expedition, the Woodstock, Music and Art Festival. I was on the staff of the art show. My hair was just beginning to get some decent length, but the week after Woodstock, my brother got married, so I had to get a haircut. My last haircut by a barber. (I have my Woodstock staff pass framed hanging in my kitchen).

After my brothers’ wedding, I stopped cutting my hair again. And then the war in Vietnam came home. May 4, 1970, I had been at a weekend long rock festival at SUNY New Paltz with a new old car that I had just gotten, an Austin Healy Sprite. On Monday, May 4th, 1970 I drove straight to school from New Paltz, and in those days I didn’t listen to the news, only Rock Music. I arrived at school and was confronted with the news that National Guardsmen had shot and killed 4 students at Kent State. I was pretty shaken up, being a hippie and all, so I went to see the dean, who was a good guy. I asked him about starting a strike in support of our brothers and sisters at Kent State, and he told me that I had to be an officer of a recognized student organization in order to start a strike, and have use of the mimeograph machine to make flyers. He also gave me a list of the Recognized Student Organizations- (I graduated from St John's University, Brooklyn Campus, which was a 12 story and a two story building in downtown Brooklyn on Schermerhorn Street and Boerum Place that are now condos. The year I graduated, 1971, it closed down and moved to Staten Island).

First I approached the Peace Organization. They wanted no part of a strike- “we’ll only get into trouble”. Anyway, I checked out the list, and to make a long story short, I became the Vice President of B-SASI (Black Students against Social Injustice), and started the strike by handing out flyers by the elevators, closed down the school, caught an outside agitator trying to cause trouble stealing sandwiches in the cafeteria (held him for the Police), bought and sold apples. One guy took out his guitar, and we sang folk songs. It was nice and peaceful.

Anyway, some of you might remember, President Johnson then closed down the universities, so that there would be a national cool down. That Saturday I was at school, (Remember this is a 12 story office building in down town Brooklyn) at a meeting discussing the proposed March on Washington , and who walks into the room, but my father who comes up to me and says

“Hey- how did the guys at the door know who I was? where you were? and by the way, here is your draft notice”!

Now my father and I hadn’t been getting along. He kept enlisting me into the National Guard, and I kept trying to fail the physicals. It got to the point where at least once a month I was at a National Guard physical.

The list to get into the National Guard during the Vietnam days of 1970 was impossible. My father was a very important person, who never asked anything of anyone for himself, waited until I was draft age and then must have called in all of his favors, but every month, another physical.

My son Jacob, inherited his fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers’ hair genes and brains, is a dean's list student at Penn State, and a film major. Jake shaves his head. My other son Zack, who is blessed with beautiful hair, also wears it short. Go figure. Anyway I once suggested to Jake that he make a film- "Daddy- what did you do during the war?"

You are in the middle of my war story.

But unbeknownst to my father, I went to the Christian Brothers against the war, on 18th Street, in Union Square, which was the heart of the anti-Vietnam War movement (the building). There they had a book, the surgeon general's report on issues that they don't want to deal with in combat (otherwise known as 4-F or 1-Y).

After writing all of the gory details, I decided to delete them and just tell you that after the army told me that they didn’t want me, I decided that it was time to clean up my act and get it together.

Which I did.

So, I went on one of the many great diets of my life, I burned the one pair of jeans, the blue work shirt, and the torn sweater, painted work boots, that I wore every day, and bought new clothes.

And then, I made an appointment to cut my hair at Paul Mitchell’s on St Marks Place, Greenwich Village.

Paul Mitchell was the original “unisex” hair place. You walk in and the music is blasting, and everyone there has a layer cut hair cut- like Rod Stewart, and everyone was dressed in high fashion of the day. On September 18, 1970, I got my haircut (and in those days there was quite a lot of it, and it was very long), It was also the day that Jimmy Hendrix died which has absolutely nothing to do with the story except that is how I know the date.

Well my hair was long from then until last year, when Randy Lee made me cut it.

Thank you Randy.

But anyway, today I went back to Paul Mitchell, now on New Dorp Lane, and it's a "Barber College"

I have come full circle.

………………to be continued

Solution to the Obesity Crisis .....continued

2009-04-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

In my last message, I explained how I came up with a new solution, but I didn’t tell you what the idea was.

The solution to the obesity crisis.

Very simply, Restaurants, Food preparers, McDonalds, General Mills; Proctor and Gamble; Kraft; Dunkin Hines, and Dunkin Donuts, and all of the rest of the people that package and sell foods, as well as the FDA, and the USDA, and everyone else involved in food and nutrition, need to once and for all determine what is a portion.

Ta Da

If you want to lose weight, you might decide to buy your food from Nutri System where they sell you single portions of pre-measured food. Simple. (Worked for Valerie Bertinelli, and Don Shula, and I suppose lots of others.

But why should I have to buy my food from Nutri system to get single portions? Why can’t I buy it anywhere I shop?

Governor Patterson was talking about taxing coke and potato chips. Mayor Mike made them post the calorie counts. They are on the right track.

My solution (or at least the first step) to solving our World Wide Obesity Crisis is:

(drum roll)

Create the “Universal Portion Size”.

And have it make sense.

My personal weight issues go back to the fact that I come from an Eastern European Jewish background where my mother, both grandmothers and great grandmothers always made me finish all of the food on my plate. Years later, after consulting with Dr. Stephen Gullo, the weight loss guru to the rich and famous, “nothing tastes as good as thin,” whose clientele include the nobility of Europe, and even Donald Trump himself- told me that my weight problem is that “I am a finisher.”

So when I go to the supermarket to buy ice cream, I have to figure out how many calories are in the entire container. Not per serving. Because my one serving is the whole thing.

But these days I’m not eating pints of ice cream, I buy these things called QB’s- all natural crispy treat filled with ice cream square little bit of ice cream. (Ice cream wrapped in Rice Krispies 180 calories. QB n. (cube-EE): An all natural cube shaped ice cream treat that satisfies the taste buds and makes you smile.

I also shop at Pathmark. (Whole Foods Market doesn’t sell Snapple (which is all artificial, but remember what Maude said- consistency is not a human trait) and although Whole Foods has a bakery, their cookies just don’t stand up to Pathmark Oatmeal Square Raisin baked in store, 18 to a package, no nutritional information is given). (Squares- and so are the QB’s- did you notice a pattern here?).

Anyway, while I am at Pathmark, generally late at night, I sometimes watch what people are putting into their shopping carts- and I often wonder if the average person knows anything about nutrition, about nutritional information, portion sizes. I watch to see if they read the nutritional information on the packages. I think about the lawsuit blaming McDonalds for the obesity problem because they sell Big Mac’s and supersized fries and coke, which people think are okay portion sizes.

If the government can come up with this Universal Portion Size- then McDonalds can make all their meals to fit it. Instead of supersizing, and making people think that a supersized Triple Big Mac, with supersized fries and a gallon of coke is a single portion.

Unfortunately, our government has different agendas, and sends out mixed messages, and does double ententes. Up until now, special interests has out weighed the common good. Such is the case with the United States Department of Agricultures (USDA) food pyramid which is a major cause of the obesity problem.

When the USDA published their food pyramid, they gave in to special interests, the farmers, and the people who bring us items such as bread and rolls, and said that a healthy person should eat 6-11 portions of bread per day. (3-5 servings of vegetables). (I went to the USDA.gov, and clicked on food pyramid, to get this chart). HELLO- Any body home? Look at this!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One of my healthy life style rules is when the waiter brings the bread basket to the table, is to tell the waiter to take it away. We don’t need 11 servings of bread per day. We don’t need any servings of bread per day. People are fat because they eat too much bread, pasta, and other grain products.

So today’s Solution is that the government gets their act together and fixes the food pyramid.

Then they can make the rule, set the portion size, and have everyone make their products by portion size.

Then I should be able to go to McDonalds and buy a single portion of food, which contains everything that I need nutritionally, and be the right size, amount of calories, contain the right blend of Protein, carbohydrates, fats and grains including green vegetables, and fruits, etc. Enough for one person to eat to sustain themselves for the next 3-4 hours, until they eat another portion.

I can always have the choice to purchase more than one, but let it be a universal portion.

What is so difficult about that?

How about being able to go into an Italian Restaurant and ordering a single portion of pasta with whatever sauce (gravy). A serving which is about the size of my fist.

Good luck.

How about airplane food? Is that the universal portion?

Now a big banana is 2 servings of fruit. I am not suggesting that we have to genetically engineer our fruits and vegetables to be the same sizes.

You can eat all of the green vegetables that you want, can’t you? (as long as they aren’t fried, breaded, or soaked in butter (fat), even though the food pyramid says only 3-5 servings of vegetables per day. Some of the starches are another story (potatoes, corn).

People who eat 5 portions of fruit per day, live longer. (8 grapes is a potion)

Now they are still going to have to sell items in bulk. Sell ice cream by the serving, and by the pint, quart, gallon, but in addition to listing the calories by the serving, also list the calories for the entire package. I mean really, who buys a bag of potato chips or m & m’s which might be “about 3.4 servings” to share anyway? I buy raisins and nuts and it says that there are about 13 servings in the bag. And each serving is about an ounce. But how do you measure an ounce?

And how about cookies? How many servings per individually wrapped cookies- 2.3?

Let’s at least make it easier, give us a fighting chance- and we’ll win the war on obesity.

I have a cousin who is a rocket scientist at NASA (no kidding, Larry Lasher. Larry also put together a family history tracing our family back a couple of hundred years to Russia- very interesting). Although we share a lot of genes, (hair, height, brains, longevity and general health), he got the yy and I got the xx on the weight gene, so we’ve never really had a conversation about reading nutritional information from packages.

But you shouldn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know how to eat healthy.

They, the powers that be, the government, the USDA, Michele Obama, the Board of Education, need to simplify the entire process for everyone, so that everyone, every single person in the world, can know what a single serving of food is, a single meal size, is.

Period. The End.

Another Solution

2009-03-27T07:09:00.001-07:00

Hi

The single most important thing that I try to do first every day is prepare my 4 or 5 meals for the day. I start with a big breakfast of oatmeal and a ½ of a banana. Then I cut up some fresh cauliflower; broccoli; fresh fruit; and about a fistful size of different chicken &/or turkey salads, and put them all into a Tupperware container (which I re-use), put them in my lunch box with a couple of Evian bottles of half frozen water (a/k/a ice).

I try to be ecological.

I lived in Amherst Massachusetts for 4 years in the early ‘70’s.. I was a “Nader’s Raider” (Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). Bill Cosby was at U Mass at the same time getting his EED, but that’s a story for a different email. I worked at the Amherst food co-op (100 families who bought their fruits and vegetables together each week); the natural food store called the equinox (where I used to make the trail mixes out of nuts and dried fruits); and I learned to recycle: (we used to separate the glass by color- brown glass, green glass, clear glass). Once you become environmentally conscious you tend to stay that way. These days I still recycle, but now I bring my empty bottles and cans to the processing place behind Pathmark, and give it to one of the people that pick up the bottles on the street for a living. It is one of the ways that I like to give charity. Silently and anonymously (until now I guess).

These days I shop at Whole Foods Market. I bring my own whole foods bag each time. My different bags say things on them like “I used to be a plastic water bottle.” At Whole Foods I buy my fresh fruits, vegetables, and salads for my lunch, (and chicken wings for dinner, but that’s another story).

In the movie Harold & Maude, (which I first saw while I was in Amherst) Maude (Ruth Gordon) is a 79 year old woman and Harold, a rich 17 year old kid share an obsession with death and funerals meet and have a little fling (If this sounds a bit strange, it is, but you should really see the movie if you never have). Anyway, at one point Maude turns Harold on to wine explaining that it has no nutritional value, but stating that “….consistency is not a human trait…”

On some days though, I am not in the mood to make oatmeal. Don’t know why, maybe the banana isn’t ripe enough. Or I just want to get out of the house quicker, whatever the reason.

On these days I go to Starbucks and get the Breakfast Spinach roasted tomato feta with egg Wrap (270 calories) and a triple tall 2% cappuccino w ½ a sweet and low, in my own mug (saves a tree); or sometimes I’ll go to Dunkin Donuts and get fluffy egg whites, peppers, onions, mushrooms and melted reduced–fat cheddar cheese served on a delicious multigrain flatbread (less than 300 calories) I don’t like Dunkin Donuts coffee, so I’ll still go to Starbucks and get a cappuccino or finish the coffee I brought from home; and sometimes I have a Myoplex protein shake, which I buy at the health food store, which is what weight lifters use (not that I will ever be confused with a weight lifter) - protein whey that tastes like an Oreo cookie.

The other day while I was at Whole Foods I saw this new product, a small purple plastic bottle, smaller than a tall coffee cup, called Sambazon Acai5- Antioxidant Superfood. I’ve been getting a lot of junk emails about Acai being this new super food, so I figured I’d try it, and I put it into my shopping basket.

The next day, on my way to work, in the car, I looked at the nutritional information and it said that it was 1.3 servings.

This was this little thing. 1.3 servings.

How can it be 1.3 servings?

I am a fairly educated person. I went to school for the first 25 years of my life I have a doctorates degree. I am into weight loss and nutrition. I always read the nutritional information when I buy things. The only explanation I can think of is that I quickly glanced at the calories (110) per serving, and assumed it was one serving.

Assume nothing: He who assumes makes an ass out of u and me.

But I had good cause to assume- I grabbed this tiny little bottle, in a health food supermarket, thinking, (stupid me) that this was one serving.

Okay, so I drank the whole thing. All 1.3 servings. No bells or alarms went off, and I didn’t feel all that guilty because I drank an extra .3 servings. Being in touch with my feelings I realized that I felt more anger than guilt. Why didn’t they just say that it was one serving and it had 143 calories? I probably would have bought it anyway, but then I wouldn’t have had a subject to write about today.

Because then it dawned on me- another solution !!!!!!!!

……………………… to be continued

Why does Staten Island have so many foreclosures and who owns the real estate anyway?

2009-03-17T14:29:00.000-07:00

This is a continuation of the first email that I wrote, last September, where I told the story about how I called an old friend at Merrill Lynch, after they had just written down $7.2 Billion in losses due to bad mortgages (and that was when a Billion Dollars was still a lot of money), and I asked him if I could help them with their Staten Island Real Estate, at which time he told me that Merrill Lunch didn’t own any real estate and that they only had bonds. I followed up with another email which discussed servicing companies that run the whole mortgage industry servicing the bonds from Wall Street. Later I spoke about organized crimes role with Straw Buyers. In November I wrote that the financial crisis was a ploy by Wall Street so they could trim off the fat, fire their older employees, and insure that they had money for end of the year bonuses. Anyway, this is the next installment of that series.

Today the big story is all about AIG’s bonuses, although we are still talking about Merrill Lynch’s. Can you imagine the unmitigated gall of these people?

So what did these geniuses do to earn these fantastic bonuses in the first place?

Well it all goes back to the mortgage business. As credit eased, everyone wanted a piece of the pie. Everyone was making money and the values of property kept going up so it was a win/win situation- even if people couldn’t pay their mortgages, they could refinance them. They even went so far as to create products that didn’t require re-payments. That’s old news.

Merrill Lynch decided to get into the mortgage business because they saw others making big profits, but they were pigs about it.

As a way to squeeze extra dollars in profit, for themselves, Wall Street created layers of the same thing. Wall Street has to grab not only the cream, but the fat, and grizzle, and then suck the bones dry.

They did this by coming up with a type of modern financial engineering known as derivatives. Derivatives are a combination of financial instruments that are used to limit risk (ha ha). An amalgam (a combination of two or more characteristics) of “collateralized debt obligations (CDO’s- pools of loans bundled for investors) and credit-default swaps. Their value is derived by the amount of the underlying asset.

What does all of this mean?

In order to reduce the risk of losing money, Morgan Stanley came up with these CDO’s bundling various obligations (stock, bonds, notes) of their prime customers (IBM, GE, GM, etc.,) along with riskier loans (junk bonds), unsecured loans, and including some insurance from AIG to secure the bonds against losses. Then they would put a value on this package, charge a fee for putting it together, maybe charge fees for “servicing the loans” and maybe earn a commission by re-selling the package to a different investor (foreign investors, foreign governments, city, state, and local government) or for the un-used portions of bond issues that they haven’t used yet, etc.

Originally when you bought a CDO, there could be hundreds or thousands of original notes, mortgages, stocks or bonds, included in the CDO.

Now Merrill Lynch figured out how they could do it electronically, via computer, and no longer have to deal with the physical paper of the documents. This begat electronic reporting services. This is why the owner of the mortgage on a house could be Deutche Banque as trustee of a series of bonds # 1-200, etc. etc.

But good old greed reared its ugly little head into the picture again.

Originally, these bundles, packages or “derivatives” were safe. After all we were dealing with real estate mortgages, stock certificates, corporate bonds, etc.

Merrill Lynch wanted to be the biggest player in mortgages. Bigger even than Lehman Brothers, and so they bought their own banks around the world, to be able to make more fees and commissions on originating the mortgages, servicing them, bundling them, and making their own derivatives. They were the biggest players in the game at the end.

And all was good for a while. The economy was good, the real estate market kept going up, and there were no losses, because even with bad credit you could refinance your loan, and take out the payments for another year or so. They were all performing, and since they were bonds, they weren’t even regulated. (Not to be political, but thank you Bill Clinton and George Bush).

But big surprise, Merrill Lynch got sloppy. They started bundling the loans together without regard for risk factors. Their risk profile at the end was non-existent.

There used to be a mortgage banker in Brooklyn that had the best deals. Only thing was that they closed all of their loans, in large amounts of mortgages together ($25 Million, $50 Million) whatever it was. (This always created problems to buyers and sellers who needed a closing, but the bank wasn’t ready, always just another day, just another piece of paper, where what they were doing was buying time to get them all together at once. This was so that they wouldn’t have to pay for warehousing (holding) the money. If they closed all of the loans and they always resold the package the same couple of days, then it was all profit.) Smart for them.

In order to sell this portfolio of mortgages, they had to comply to certain formulas. The vast majority was owner occupied 75-80% loan to value; a small percentage was even lower risk, and a small percentage was higher risk (5-10% down). These packages or bundles were packaged according to industry standards at the time. The percentage of risk was known and the prices for the bundles based upon risk factors.

The geniuses that were making the money for Merrill Lunch, and don’t forget, we are talking about making Billions of Dollars in profits here, these guys were getting multimillion dollar bonuses. To make the loans faster, and reap larger profits, they stopped doing too much due diligence, stopped risk management (translation - looked the other way), at the quality of the loans, or mortgages, or paper contained inside. If someone complained, they got fired, or told to shut up. But not too many people complained because they were all making so much money.

But then AIG stopped insuring the Merrill Lynch derivatives, because they were too risky, Merrill Lynch wrote down $7.2 Billion in losses, and that’s where my story began.

And where are these geniuses now? Huge paying jobs with hedge funds or other monetary funds, making fortunes by picking up the pieces, for huge fees, and selling them to other investors’, for huge fees. God Bless America!

So what happened to AIG?

Well the former Secretary of The Treasury, Henry Paulson, who was also the former head of Goldman Sachs, always had a rivalry with the head guy at Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld. So while the economy was melting down, he told Lehman that we weren’t going to bail them out, “get thyself sold.” Of course the arrogant former head of Lehman Brothers, who became the poster boy for Wall Street greed when he defended the $484 million he received in salary, bonuses and stock options when he terrified before Congress in October, before the fall of Lehman. waited until it was too late, and couldn't find a buyer for Lehman. Paulson said we weren’t going to bail out Lehman Bros, and we let it fail. And of course that was the mistake that almost brought down the entire world, and which is why AIG got bailed out so quickly. Perhaps if Lehman Brothers had been bailed out the melt down might not have happened? Who knows?

But Lehman Brothers did fall. Problem was, AIG, the huge insurance company, who was in the business of collecting fees, basically insured that the world wouldn’t end. Whenever Lehman Brothers did a bond issue, or some sort of other financial derivative or whatever, AIG got a piece for insuring that Lehman Brothers would be there. AIG sure sounds like a scam.

All of a sudden, “poof” no Lehman Brothers! AIG has to pay out Billions in claims, and we found out in today’s news, that besides paying themselves bonuses, they used the bailout money to pay: Goldman Sachs $12.9 Billion; Merrill Lynch $6.8 Billion; Bank of America $5.2 Billion, etc. These are the same people that we had to bail out because they had losses, but then they collected for their losses again, from more money that we paid out.

Life sure is good here in America except that when the US gets a fever, the rest of the world gets the flu!.

SNAFU means- Situation Normal- All Fouled Up- this was created during the battle of the bulge during WW II. It's sort of irrelevant to anything I’ve written, but I just found it out, and thought that it was interesting, and worth passing along. (there is another less politically correct meaning… Situation Normal – All F---d up).

Solutions

2009-03-08T16:18:00.000-07:00

You know it’s easy to find things that are wrong, and point them out, complain about them, bitch about them; get depressed about them.

It’s quite another to find things that are right, talk about them and think about them, but that doesn’t sell newspapers (remember when the Staten Island Advance used to run a column called good news? Didn’t last very long.

Today I am going to do something that is really unusual- I am going to suggest solutions, answers, ideas that might fix things that are wrong, or make things better.

First: Staten Island has this huge traffic and transportation problem. It is probably too late, and too costly, to build a subway system; there isn’t a whole lot of room for new highways, the cost of widening Victory Blvd. as proposed during the depression, is cost prohibitive.

I have a solution that is attainable, doable, and realistic. I propose that we build and create a few transportation hubs on Staten Island. The first one already exists, in St. George at the ferry, where trains, buses, taxi’s, cars, parking lots, and ferry boats all meet. Fine.

How about: Let’s create a few more strategically located transportation hubs, where we can also have all of these various modes of transportation to meet. Perhaps one at each bridge, as well as a couple of more where appropriate. Let some of the hubs be located along the perimeter of the Island, (you know we are an island, surrounded by water, yet water transportation is limited to the ferry and private boats) so that smaller boats/ferries can be included, and a train can be run to the location also. If it is on the north shore or west shore, where there are no trains, perhaps a mono rail system to fill in where there are no trains to connect the hubs, and no-where else (except perhaps parking lots)- similar to Newark airport and Disney world. Disney World has a transportation center where they all meet called the transportation center- duh.

Now after we have these hubs, then the city planners, or transportation experts, can figure out bus routes that make sense, to service the areas between the hubs, efficiently, both convenience wise & ecologically. Smaller bus’s (van’s) can service even smaller areas around the hubs. At night, they wouldn’t even need to have routes, they could act like taxis or we could have taxis for the last mile or so. I admit that its been a very long time since I road on a bus, but I remember when I was a kid, waiting for the 106 down Watchogue road, and it was this huge bus, and I would be the only passenger, or me and a few others. No reason why we need to burn gasoline or diesel fuel to power a huge bus at night- when smaller more efficient buses could work. (Change the size of bus’s right now). In addition to busses we can add boats, water taxi’s, monorails and other passenger trains that could be used to connect the hubs.

The concept is that we would have these transportation hubs, or centers, where when you want to get someplace, you figure out where you need to land (Ferry, one of the bridges) - to transfer to the next type of transportation which might be a boat, or a train to take you off the island, or to take you to the final leg of the trip, where you transfer to either a bus a van or a taxi or a car or walk.

There is a train that runs from Grand Central Terminal to Bayonne. There is no reason why that train cannot be extended to go over the Bayonne Bridge to the hub there.

There is also a train that ends in Elizabeth that could be extended somehow to the Goethals Bridge, or to a place near the water where a boat could run to the Goethals Bridge hub. Get the picture?

To go from point A to point B might require more than one means of transportation, so it won’t be the most convenient as such, but the most efficient, resulting in the least amount of pollution, traffic, etc. Ultimately the result would be mass transportation for Staten Island.

Think about it.

And speaking about Islands, How about let’s take a cruise around our island? Good idea for a charity that needs something different to do- we can look for hubs, or we can hire a band, and make it a dance, or hire a caterer and make it a dinner cruise or just go site seeing. Anyone with a boat who wants to take me - I’m game; pick a nice beautiful day and I’ll bring my camera (I inherited the camera bug gene from my father).

Second Idea for Today:

Amongst our problems these days include the fact that we are now having trouble hiring cops etc. or the better candidates are going elsewhere- entry level cops, and firemen (people), start off at first 5 years at ridiculously low salaries. Teachers are underpaid, as are all city and state workers. Incentives to do good work are nice talk, but rarely put into action. Plus we are talking about furloughs so that employees lose more pay. Our potentially best candidates’ are taking jobs elsewhere for much more money. And of course another one of our big problems was the collapse of the real estate market, and its effect on the rest of the economy.

How about: The SONYMA (State of New York Mortgage Agency) offers below market mortgages for people in certain areas, first time home buyers, and probably others. Fanny and Freddie make loans too.

I propose a bunch of different below market mortgages.

1. Cops, firemen, city workers etc., who are in their first 5 years of employment and making lower incomes. For these people, the mortgage qualification would be based upon their income to be paid in their 6th year of employment, but the payments (which should be taken from their pay) will be based upon their current income percentage of their take home). It could even be interest only, or negative amortization, and if they stay with the city/state job, then they don’t pay back the negative amortization. This should be for all employees, for their primary residences.
2. Cops, firemen, other uniformed services, teachers, etc., who wish to supplement their incomes by buying real estate- as either investment properties or fixer uppers, can qualify for a workers mortgage which will be a commercial loan but with a deal that they can afford- this means that they don’t have to lie and say they are going to live there, and they don’t have to put down 35-45% (which is what commercial loans are calling for these days). The lender will make a determination as to loan to value based upon what is going to be done to the premises (if a fixer upper), and based upon potential income if an income producer (two family). Now if they rent the property to one of the available programs that exist through the city/state/federal governments, then the rent will be paid directly from section 8 or whomever to SONYMA or whomever directly, and the balance put into the employees pay check. The interest payments will also be based upon ability to pay, and in the case of re-sales, SONYMA is a partner, and receives a percentage of the profits, after it receives back its principal.
3. Employee ownership and government programs for renting apartments will be coordinated.
4. Since mortgage payments are to be taken from the employees’ pay check, then even employees with bad credit can still apply for and qualify for the same good deals as everyone else.
5. Incentives for meritorious service, especially for teachers, could be loans for improvements/additions’ to homes, via low cost second mortgages, which could even include clauses where repayment may be waived partially or fully, or no interest etc., as rewards/incentives for extraordinary services.
6. Foreclosures are inevitable – (remember bad things can happen to good people too), can also be sold directly to the employees with favorable terms.

I think that this is enough for one sitting. If anyone has any ideas that they want to bounce around, or put out there, let me know.

Notes:
Thank you to all the people who told me what a whipper snapper is. One of them is: whip⋅per⋅snap⋅per –noun an unimportant but offensively presumptuous person, esp. a young one.

The weight group isn’t working. No one is coming anymore. So I am going to make arrangements for a dinner meeting, at a restaurant, that will be healthy, and taste good. If interested, let me know- I will require RSVP’s for the chef.

I received a number of emails regarding whether or not there really was a fire at the building department in 1938. Perry White a/k/a Jon Salmon (my editor) and I discussed the various theories prior to dissemination, and agreed that the fire is the commonly believed story, although often questioned. One of these days I will go to the advance and search their files. Perhaps the “fire” was just a “barbecue” by a few people involved and only involved a few folders. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many people still alive who were around then.

Reminds me of a joke: two old guys are talking: how’s business the first guy asks? Terrible says the second guy, we had a flood, but the insurance company paid me for all the inventory that I had in the basement that I couldn’t sell – Oh that’s terrible says the first guy…so tell me, how do you start a flood?

I hope someone takes me up on the boat ride.

…………………….to be continued

More than you ever needed to know about zoning

2009-03-05T18:28:00.001-08:00

Once upon a time, there were no building codes, no zoning laws. If you owned land and wanted to build something, you just built it.

Restrictive covenants were put in place to protect neighborhoods and/subdivisions. The most common restrictions on Staten Island are/were: no slaughter houses; no alcohol can be distilled (Prohibition Park, a/k/a Westerleigh), etc. Houses must be 10 feet back, or must cost at least $1,000 to build, etc.

Zoning Story # 1: In the middle ages in Florence, Italy, the Medici family (who were the richest family in Europe) built a tunnel above the buildings in Florence to connect their main residence (palace) in Florence, to the Petit palace, across the Arno River (so that they wouldn’t have to use the streets and mix with the riff raff), by also going over the Ponte Vecchio (which is the oldest and most famous of the six bridges in Florence). There were always shops on the bridges, and in the 15th century these shops on the Ponte Vecchio were greengrocers, butchers, fishmongers. But then perhaps because of their bad smell, and the rat problem caused, Ferdinando I, at the behest of the Great Catherine Medici, replaced them with the Goldsmiths. Smart zoning resulted in one of the finest places to buy Gold jewelry in the world (On and around the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy).

Wikipedia says that the first specific State statute was enacted in the 1860’s that prohibited all commercial activities along Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn.

As early as the 1870’s and 1880’s, New Yorkers began to protest the loss of light and air as tall residential buildings began to appear in Manhattan. In response, the state legislature enacted a series of height restrictions on residential buildings, culminating in the Tenement House Act of 1901, rules that required one window per room to insure air and light.

The whole world was shocked when 148 people died, trapped inside the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan on March 25, 1911 which brought reforms to sweat shops; factories; the labor movement; the growth of the importance of the ILGWU; and many attribute it to the creation of the fire code.

In 1916, New York City adopted the first zoning regulations to apply city-wide as a reaction to construction of The Equitable Building (which still stands at 120 Broadway).

During the depression, FDR put lots of people to work, which is what President Obama is trying to do now. Artists’ were hired to draw murals; photographers’ were hired to take photos’, ditch diggers’ were hired to dig ditches, unskilled laborers were hired to build roads, dams, bridges, buildings, etc.

Surveyors, engineers “map makers” were also hired. Parcels of land on Staten Island, (and every where else) were cut up into blocks and lots, 20x100 lots, and drawn onto “filed maps” which were filed at the County Clerks Office. Much of the land was just woods on Staten Island, but now had paper streets with blocks and lots on maps

An example of no zoning is the 3 or 4 bungalows on a single tax lot remaining to this day in some of the beach areas.

Many deeds, especially older deeds still contain descriptions based upon the filed map. Lots # whatever on the map of Keiber Farm, section 2………… although these days the banks require new surveys at every closing, thus new metes and bounds descriptions are prepared.

Prior to the filed maps, descriptions of properties were more basic- ……….to the “row of trees” or the magnolia tree separating the property belonging to Brown and formerly belonging to green; or to the fork in the road, or the edge of the creak, or to the post in the road, etc.

I recently sold a property where the description has as one of its courses- ……and thence 112 feet to the spike in the fence…….. Problem is that the fence and the spike are long gone.

In 1938, there was a fire in the Staten Island building department. Some said that it was arson, to cover up irregularities being investigated involving several lawyers, developers, builders, politicians, where supposedly a couple of guys took the fall, one of whom was rewarded with a big job. The fire wiped out the Certificate of Occupancies records, and that is why on Staten Island, houses built prior to 1938 do not require a Certificate of Occupancy (although many buildings built prior to 1938 do).

Pre-1938 multiple dwellings are quite the headache for the lawyers representing buyers these days and off Island banker’s who don’t understand. Sometimes banks will not lend on them because there is no C of O, although you can get a letter of no objection from the DOB, but even that is insufficient to some lenders. (These are the loans made by local banks that don’t sell their mortgages, like Northfield Savings- to owner occupiers. Are there any other lenders left? (United Brethrens?) that lend Staten Island and don’t sell the loans?).

(When I write these questions, they aren’t meant to be rhetorical, I am really asking- if any one knows, please let me know. I still don’t know what a whipper snapper is- does any one know? Someone who snaps whips?).

Anyway, in the late 50’s, after the post war building boom, we realized that we needed a comprehensive zoning rule for the city. The 1961 Zoning Resolution was a product of its time, created primarily to regulate the high rises in Manhattan, but also to coordinate use and bulk regulations, parking requirements, and emphasized the creation of open space.

For Staten Island, the 1961 zoning dramatically reduced achievable residential densities, by creating and attaching zoning classifications. Now we were regulated with minimum requirements: minimum lot sizes, rear yards, front yards, side yards, height limitations, and zoning districts where you could have attached housing; high rise housing; mid rise housing; commercial uses, etc. Prior to 1961, you could build anything you want, wherever you wanted subject to Covenants, Restrictions, and light and air requirements.

Under the zoning laws, there are minimum lot size requirements for various zones. An R1 lot requires a minimum of 100 feet width; R2 - 40 feet R 3 a– 25 feet; R 3x - 35 feet. Now if you have a lot that has existed separately owned from any other lot next to it, since prior to 1961, then you can still build on it as a pre 1961 zoning law lot.

Staten Island had a couple of rapid growth spurts.

Lots of homes were built after WW2, continuing into the late 50’s, and early 60’s. Lots of Cape’s, then ranches, then the match boxes. How the old Staten Islanders hated them, and complained about them- all of the match box houses being built that all looked alike.

(And now the politicians scream when a builder wants to knock down an old cape, to prevent the construction of new houses.)

Then the bridge opened in 1964.

A lot of people bought land on the South Shore thinking that they were going to make a killing, but there were no sewers. And they sat with their land, many people lost their land, (stopped paying taxes and let the city take the land back) and nothing really happened again until the boom of the mid 70’s (before Carter), and then the boom of the 80’s, and then the boom of the 90’s.

It was very advantageous for land developers to be active in politics in the 50’s and 60’s. A politician might be able to get a small sewer project approved dragging a sewer along another several blocks, or piping some brooks a few blocks. Knowing where these projects were being laid out, you could then buy the land nearby and make a killing. In the 50’s a sewered 40 x 100 in Westerleigh sold for $200. (And maybe you could pick it up for back taxes, or buy the tax lien).

And then came the zoning panic of the early 2000’s. All of a sudden, the politicians got on their soap boxes and tried to make up for all of the years of not doing anything to try to make sense out of the zoning laws. Blocks and blocks, entire communities were rezoned to a lesser density. Of course the knee jerk response was an over reaction, and consequently the new zoning laws are cranking out these skinny houses on 25’ lots, with 0 or 2’ side yards.

So after a lot of noise, and rezoning of Staten Island, construction has come to a halt, partly because the new zoning law doesn’t make sense.

The skinny houses on 25’ lots- some of which are built on stilts to access parking- does this make more sense then semi’s or townhouses?

Sure- parking rules are important but it would be nice if they made sense.

How about this one- no more two family homes in Westerleigh?

But how about a bonus to a builder (to be enjoyed by the eventual home owner) who builds 3 or more houses, and changes them so that they don’t all look alike- with extra floor area? No way.

So we spent all of this time reducing our zoning density, fighting the builders, jumping up and down on soap boxes, and this is what I’ve discovered.

Commercial districts- overlays. This means that although there is residential zoning, if there is a commercial overlay, then you can’t built residential units on the first floor, has to be commercial.

But Forest Avenue, in its busiest commercial spot, -is residentially zoned.

Recently I was attempting to sell the March of Dimes Building on Forest Avenue, to someone who wanted to use it as a law office- but guess what- can’t. Many of the law offices and real estate offices along Forest Avenue are grandfathered in as pre-zoning law commercial usage, or are illegal and ignored.

Why don’t the politicians and the planners look at Forest Avenue, Victory Blvd, Hylan Blvd, etc., and realize that these are commercial shopping areas, and rezone them accordingly?

I was trying to create a Medical building on Victory Blvd, in a building that had always been a medical office since it was built in the 50’s, across the street from a dozen medical offices on Doctor’s row on Victory Blvd. from Clove Road to PS 29. Doctors’ offices are legal in most zones on Staten Island, but the zoning was changed recently along this strip, so that you can’t open a new doctor’s office there, or expand an existing one.
I could understand making it 100 feet back from Victory Blvd. My guess is that they were trying to prevent Royal Oak Road from becoming doctors’ offices, fine- but Victory Blvd?

There must be some real good city planners out there who are out of work these days. Perhaps the next public works stimulus programs hires these people to try to really make sense out of the zoning laws, without regard to the politics of it all.

…………………………to be continued

The secret to surviving today's world: Drink a lot of water

2009-02-23T16:19:00.000-08:00

Due to the economic turmoil, uncertainty, tumult, crisis, recession, depression, obsession, it should not surprise you that many people are having a hard time.

The Financial industry from traders to messengers; the Real Estate Industry (Realtors, Builders, Suppliers & Trades), are all feeling it, and so are the people with whom they do business, and so are the people that they do business with, and on and on and forward and so forth, and the entire world is now in a tail spin.

So how are people dealing with it?

When I am not feeling quite right, I find the best thing to do is to try to get into my daily routine as closely and quickly as possible. (Up at 6am, make breakfast, make lists for the day, drive grand-daughter to school, gym, appointments or office, etc.). In the movie "Oh God," God (George Burns), appears in John Denver’s house, who starts freaking out because God just materialized in his bathroom, and he says he doesn't know what to do, so God tells him to “shave.” When you are lost and confused, do something normal. Same concept.

Getting into your routine is a lot like drinking a lot of water every day. When you drink it, the water has to go through your body, that’s a rule, which turns on all of the process’s involved in digestion, circulation, etc. Not only that, water keeps all the other junk moving too, so there is little chance that stuff will get stuck in your inners. But that’s another story, suffice it to say that it is important to shave, drink water and get into your normal routine.

But really, what I do to get rid of my stress is go to the gym. There I will do some aerobics by going on one of the machines (treadmill, lifecycle, cross trainer, stair master, etc.), and then some weight routines. While I am on the machine, I work on Sudoku Puzzles. Same theory as drinking a lot of water. On the machines, I am exercising my mind and my body. Working up a sweat, and solving puzzles. The whole body is moving, the brain is in action, functioning at its higher levels, and the mind and body are working together in high gear – (By the way- the word Yoga means union of body and mind). So while sweating, thinking, and moving and a grooving, the problem or whatever is dragging down your head comes to the forefront, but only now, it is always much clearer. Instead of being stuck “oh no, whoa is me”- or even worse- “poor me”, your internal A team (or Y team) is able to give you your best shot, and maybe come up with a solution and solve it? Definitely put it into perspective- and help to get you unstuck, and on with your day. (Same probably holds for anything athletic- but try to do something that you do well, or that you enjoy so that you get a sense of satisfaction).

Now there are other things that some people do:

My favorite is Pathmark fresh baked oatmeal raisin cookies (baked in squares like chunky- (remember- open wide for chunky?). They have to be the square ones. Sometimes they make them round, but they aren’t as good. Before you buy them though, you have to squeeze the clear plastic package to make sure that they are still soft. Anyway, you buy a package of these (or two or mix it up with chocolate chips), and eat them. It doesn’t help in getting rid of any of the problems, but they give you a sense of fullness that I can’t seem to find any place else. I’ve been let down by lots of people, lots of time, but never been let down by a good (fresh) box of cookies. (Be sure to drink a lot of water).

Now when I was a young whippersnapper (what the hell is a whippersnapper anyway?), and I found myself in a funk, I would go out and buy a new new shirt. I no longer do that. Firstly because I ran out of money, but the wisdom of my age has taught me that anticipation is 90% of satisfaction, and that once I bought the thing, the thrill was gone. I’ve learned that things really don’t make you happy. (I often get more joy from giving things away, then owning them)- but to those of you who are out there buying shoes or whatever to find some relief I say cest le vie.

There is nothing good that can be said about drugs. Whatever great feeling there may be initially, doesn’t last, and is rarely duplicated. The damage done to your mind and body is not worth it.

Same with alcohol. Lots of people drink to escape. Hey, once in a while, when you don’t to drive, okay. If you can handle one or two and stop, more power to you. (and its fattening).

Of course everyone knows that the biggest problem with alcohol and drugs is that they become bigger problems then whatever you are trying to drown out.

Now some people go for massages. The masseuse finds the places that are blocking the flow of the stuff of life (sometimes called prana) through the passageways throughout your body. (Same concept as drinking water).

Some people find relief in punching holes in walls. Others knock their heads against the wall. Still others like to kick things. Breaking things: (dishes?) or throwing things is another cool way to chill out.

Yelling is a very popular stress reliever. Work your blood up to a boil till you have a heart attack- that will solve your other problems. (When my granddaughter Skylar was about 2 years old, (before she was really talking), I took her out to the garage, and we had a screaming contest. I would yell, and she would yell, and we did long ones and short ones, and high lows, and had a great ole time. (Primal therapy?).

Speaking of little kids, a fantastic de-stressor is getting down on the floor and playing with a toddler. Pick them up, throw them in the air, play silly toddler games. Make faces, stick out your tongue as far as it will go; go to their level. That will bring your problems into perspective for you.

Speaking of being silly, be silly. Get dirty. Jump in the mud, roll in the mud, buy body paint and paint yourself or someone else, go play paint war.

How about singing in the rain?

Nothing can clear your head like diving into an ice cold pool from a diving board, when you are dry.

MAKE A LIST: Things you like about yourself. List of lists that you need to make. What you would do if you hit the lottery. Everything that you have to do. Your GOALS.

Go out disco dancing. Wear tight black clothes. Get sexy, dance and get sweaty.

Go to see someone less fortunate. “I was sad because I had no shoes, until I saw a man who had no feet”

But these days, my absolute favorite, best secret formula for feeling great is writing these emails.

Thanks for listening.

All about Lists

2009-02-09T03:47:00.000-08:00

My mother always said that if you need something done, ask busy people to do it.

How true.

Well I am now a busy person once again, and the busier I get, the more that I get done, and the more that I get asked to do.

I am able to do many things efficiently because I make lists, and work from them. I get an idea, I write it down. I make an appointment, I write it down. I'm driving in my car and have a brainstorm- I pull over, and write it down.

I use Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. This program has my various email programs; a calendar, task list, and reminders. There are tons of other features that I don't know how to use too, especially that allow for communicating with co-workers and/or colleagues, etc. I print it out every day and take it with me everywhere that I go. I add things to it; I cross things off when I complete them. I make notes to myself.

All my appointments are listed by date and time. I list items that I want to get done, places I need to go to file, or pick something up, or see someone, or calls that need to be made, either by time, or listed as an all day event. The calendar prints out for 7 days, so I always know what I have to do, what I need to prepare for, and I can make new appointments intelligently. I list things I need at the supermarket, drug store, dry cleaners, etc.

At night when I get home, I update the list on my computer: add in all of the notes that I made during the day, including off of the napkins and backs of business cards, cross off the completed items, and re-date the items that I didn't get to, and prioritize. (My biggest weight problem is that I come home from work, generally between 8 and 9pm, sit at my computer and work on my list for the following day. Then I go downstairs and overeat dinner. I am using the excuse that I am waiting for the weight loss group to begin before I correct this destructive behavior- which by the way the organizational first meeting will be held Thursday 2/12/09, 7:00pm; @ Our Island Real Estate, 2008 Victory Blvd.- all are welcome).

My father used to say that he was busy as a one armed paper hanger. My entire life I thought that he meant a broken coat hanger. Unfortunately my father was very disorganized. He would write down telephone numbers on envelopes, then lose the envelopes, then spend the day looking for it, and get nothing else done. My dad was many wonderful things, God rest his soul, but a list maker was not one of them!

Another column on my list is called tasks: Here I store lists of items that I need, (home fax #; access codes and passwords including the New Jersey MLS which I belong; new ideas that I am working on like the Weight Loss Support Group; people who I want to stop by and talk to; repairs and improvements for my house; longer term items from my goals list, etc. The program also provides for automatic reminders, so I have programmed every Tuesday and Friday to remind me to buy a mega millions lotto ticket (you can't win it, if you're not in it) I buy 1 ticket at a time- I realized that buying two tickets doesn't cut your odds in half- it becomes 2 in 10 million not 1 in five million..

And I have added more items to my plate. Being somewhat frustrated by my limitations in only writing emails, I have taken on writing a newspaper Island Real Estate News. In the latest edition, I wrote several articles about the bailout, short sales, etc. Chris Reno, broker at Our Island Real Estate, seeing that I have become a busy beaver, asked me to take on some of the distribution, and sales of advertisements. The newspaper will be coming out every other month, I have already begun writing new and interesting articles about interesting topics primarily Staten Island related I’m sure that you won’t be disappointed, and will look forward to each new issue. Consequently, I am still looking for a few more places where I can leave 100 copies on a stand for distribution (All of the locations will be published in the newspaper). I also have 16 1/4 page ads to sell @ $250 each (trying to cover costs). We currently distribute 50,000 copies, including rush hour at the ferry. You can also pick one up at: Queen Anne Car Wash, 101 Jewett Avenue; The Shoe Hospital 515 Bement Avenue; Sam Gregorio’s Florist 814 Forest Avenue, DMAS Insurance 1132 Forest Ave; Manor Tailoring 432 Manor Road; Family Health Foods @ 1789 Victory Blvd; A&S Deli 1720 Richmond Avenue; Dairy Palace 2210 Victory Blvd; Garber Building Supply 98 Greenfield Ave in Rosebank; all of which are on my list. ( If you can’t find one and would like a copy, let me know and I will get you one).

James Port, who is on Lasher's List and reads these emails, has asked me start a Real Estate Forum on SIChat.com, which he operates, as of I am not already busy enough. I have made an entry on my task list called SIChat, by which I remind myself every time I look at the list, generally of what I have to do, and where I will write down ideas as I get them. I didn't ask if James is a list person.

Anyway, it's really easy to start. Take out a pad and pencil, and start writing down everything that you have to do in every area of your life. It's amazing how easy it is and what you come up with. Don't worry about form, just make a big laundry list of everything that you have to do. I guarantee that by doing this, just writing it all down, you will feel a lot better. What it does is put limits on anxiety about what has to be done, now you know since you've written it down. If you don’t want to do any more than that, then work with that list and cross off the items when they are completed. The feeling is amazing. Randy Lee, Esq., another busy list person, who probably does more things than most people can even imagine doing, suggests that you start by numbering the 3 most important items, and you work on the first one, to the exclusion of everything else until it is completed, and then on to the next item.

The most important thing about lists is that on those occasions when you are totally in a daze, when you can't focus because you have become brain dead, all you have to do is to look at your list, and just begin to work.

………………..to be continued

PLEASE NOTE:
Alberta Brescia Regional Vice President of the American Cancer Society, Staten Island is looking for landlords of multifamily dwellings to sign pledges to maintain smoke free premises. Please call Alberta at 718.987.8872, and/or pass this on.

Real Estate Taxes

2009-02-04T16:33:00.000-08:00

Well, here we go again, it’s that time of the year again, (no not super bowl Sunday) it’s “Real Property Tax Protest” Time.

By now you should have received the 2009-2010 Notice of Assessment for your properties, from the Department of Finance (DOF) (or you can get them online at NYC.gov). This is the notification by the city of what your property is going to be assessed at in the 2009-2010 tax year which begins on July 1, 2009.

We all know that we pay a lot of money in real estate taxes, and next year we are going to pay more than ever. The tax rate just sky rocketed to over 16% and money is tight, so it is time that you think about; learn about; and maybe even do something about; your real estate taxes; how your actual tax is calculated. (Don’t call me; this is not an advertisement, nor am I looking for tax protests business).

Staten Island, like the rest of the city, state & probably country is divided up into Blocks, which are further divided up into Lots.

(Block #1, Lot #1, is #153 Bay Street, St. George, (Staten Island’s most northerly address?). #70 Saterlee Street, in Tottenville, which is owned by the NYC Parks and Recreation, is Block 7966 Lot 75 (southernmost point?). I guarantee that your Staten Island properties are numbered between these two Block Numbers).

The blocks are divided and assigned to individual tax assessors. Every time there is a sale of property, and a new deed is recorded, a form is filled out and filed, called the NYC RPT, which contains all of the information regarding the transfer, (price, date of sale, etc). This information is given to the assessor who will evaluate it to reflect the price which was just paid. The assessor may also determine that some of the same houses in the area need to be updated based upon this one sale, or if there are several sales and the assessor notices that the property values have risen in the area. Theoretically, it is the tax assessors’ job to review every property for the following tax year. In reality, computer models are used for the most part.

The assessments are sent out the middle of January every year.

The tax rate used to be set in June, and on occasion, the rate wasn’t set until after July 1st, in which case you couldn’t pay your taxes early which created all kinds of havoc to title companies and banks). (In order to save a $400 rebate program, our tax rate almost doubled to over 16%). The assessor determines the value of the property; the Mayor and the City Council determine the tax rate

But anyway, if you don’t agree with the assessment, you have the right to object, or “protest”. This is done by filing certain forms that are available online, or at the tax department office at 350 St. Marks Place, first floor (although the assessors’ office is on the 4th floor the forms are on the first). There are different forms depending upon the different “Classes” of property.

Class 1: 1-3 family houses and units in condominiums less than 3 stories.
Class 2: All other residential properties.
Class 3: Utility-company owned property.
Class 4: All other property (commercial, apartment houses, offices buildings’, stores, vacant land, etc.).

RPI&E- In order to protest any property assessed higher than $40,000, (other than Class 1, and except vacant land, or if you just bought or built the property) you will have had to file the RPI&E (Real Property Income and Expenses form) by September 2nd, 2008. This form must be filed. If you don't file the RPI&E, you can’t protest this year. There is no such requirement for Class 1 properties.

For Class 1 properties, you must file on or before March 16th, for Class 2, 3, or 4 properties you must file on or before March 2nd. THERE ARE FEW ABSOLUTES IN LIFE, BUT THIS IS ONE OF THEM. IF YOU MISS THE DEADLINE YOU ARE OUT OF LUCK FOR THE CURRENT YEAR. NO EXCEPTIONS, PERIOD, END OF STORY! Once the protests are timely filed, the tax commission may offer you a reduction, or just schedule a hearing. At the hearing you must submit proof (sales) to the hearing officer, who is an auditor trained in real estate assessment. Used to be that the tax commissioner heard all of the protests, were political guys, and you could schmooze with them, and get reductions. Those days are gone. You can mention things that they don’t know about, like the brook running through the property, or the uranium buried in the rear yard, but you have to have proof. The worst argument you can make is that everyone else on the block has a lower assessment. They don't care. They want to know why YOUR property is valued too high.

Keep in mind that the only thing you can protest is the assessed value, not the market value listed. The assessed value does not usually fall in line directly with the market value. In fact, it may reflect a lower market value.

The criterion is to establish the value of the property as of January 5th, 2009. Second of all, to show that properties are lower, these days, you would have to show sales, or perhaps if you know about them, contracts of sale, may be acceptable with the proper documentation. You can establish that there were properties in contract of sale on January 5th, for less money, that may have closed by the time of the hearing.

After the hearing, you may be offered a reduction. If you accept it, then you have to agree to withdraw your protest. If you do not agree, then your protest may continue. Generally what is done however, is you protest again the following year. If you have filed an appeal on Class 2, 3, or 4 properties, if you agree to the settlement the second year, the hearing officer will probably require that you withdraw the year before protest/appeal.

Since he stopped being the tax commissioner, I’ve been using Jay Goldberg, Esq. (212) 344-1048) to handle my commercial protests, because his practice is primarily limited to tax protests, writs of certiorari, and litigating real estate taxes, and he knows what he’s doing. (his office is in Manhattan, but he lives on Staten Island, so he will meet you here. (By the way, he gets paid by taking a percentage of the savings). There probably are others, but I don’t know who they are.

Egon Salmon was tax commissioner for awhile in the late 1980's and early 1990's. His son Jon Salmon handled protests for a number of years after his father resigned as commissioner, but became tired of the mountains of paperwork required. He says at heart he's a salesman, not a paper pusher. He no longer does them, nor does he want to do them again (I already asked him).

Tony Gaeta, the late Borough President started in the tax assessor’s office, before he became the assistant to Congressman Murphy. Ray Vomero, who died this past week, was the head tax assessor before becoming a real estate appraiser. May they both rest in peace.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to interject much humor into this email because there isn’t anything funny about it. But I would like to leave you all with something that I saw on the wall of my granddaughter’s guidance counselor’s office, which has absolutely nothing to do with tax protests:

Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles
It empties today of its strength

So whats the deal with foreclosure lists anyway?

2009-01-25T15:48:00.000-08:00

This week I received an email from a client requesting information on several homes that are listed on one of the foreclosure services (foreclosure.com; AOL’s list, etc.)

So I checked the MLS, and found out that all of the houses that my client asked about were already either sold, accepted, or in contract.

But it started me thinking about these services, and what are they really about?

Well, we know what they are all about- making money- by selling lists.

Basically they sell you lists of every foreclosure in the works, by geographical area, but what does that mean? In Staten Island, you would be buying a list of every house where a “notice of pendency of legal action” - lis pendence - has been filed and served against a homeowner who has defaulted in the terms of their mortgage.

For additional money, you can also get the list of dates of the foreclosure sales, or auctions, which take place in the County Court House in a hallway on the first floor. Used to be that the foreclosure auctions were advertised and held on the front steps of the County Court House, 18 Richmond Terrace, St. George, but when homeless people became an issue, they locked all the doors leading to Richmond Terrace, Boro Hall too, the auctions were moved inside, and now the hallway is “Room 18”.

Anyway, some services sell you how to make money by buying foreclosure kits, which generally means approaching someone whose house is in foreclosure and trying to make a great deal for yourself.

Can you imagine? Hi, I’m Alan lasher, and I see that you are about to lose your house, how about I’ll get into the act, and figure out how I can make some money from your misfortune?

Not for me, I don’t have that kind of stomach (although a stomach I do have but that’s another story).

But there are unscrupulous people out there who do prey on people in trouble. Shame on them. But this is not an email about that. Maybe I’ll write about the different foreclosure scams at a later date.

If you’re like me, you’ve always wondered how these list companies get their lists. Well today is your lucky day, I am going to tell you.

And this isn’t just about foreclosures lists it’s also about the people who “report” your credit activity and scores.

So where and how do they get the lists (the data)?

Some towns are online, so the information is gathered by computer geeks online.

Staten Island is not online, although we probably will be soon.

In order to file a law suit of any kind, including the filing of the lis pendence, you have to buy an index number. Every case, every foreclosure has its own distinctive index number.

Once upon a time, there was a set of books exclusively used to list the “lis pendence” at the County Clerks office.

The notice of pendency of an action was used not only to notify the homeowner, but also to notify everyone else in the world, that there was an action pending. “To put people on notice that there is a pending action against the property,” So the lis pendence is filed against the Block and Lot of the property.

Then of course there were also the index number books, that run consecutively, by number. A person that wanted to know about all of the new “foreclosures” could just go to the index book and copy the foreclosures, and/or lis pendence.

They no longer use books. Now they use computers.

Our Richmond County Clerk’s office has two sets of computers. One has the land block and lots on it, and another has the law suits on it. In Richmond County, even though a foreclosure is listed by Block and Lot, because it is an action against the land, the lis pendence, and the law suit, do not appear on the land block and lot computers. It only appears on the litigation computers. Makes no sense to me, but no one asks me.

Anyway, the way it works is that someone has to go to the county clerks office and copy the information.

Years ago, one of the title searchers (the people who search the titles in the county clerks office) was a woman named Rosalie. But Rosalie had another gig. Once a week, Rosalie went to the Civil Court, and copied all of the information (names, addresses’ of the parties including lawyers, amount sued for, etc.), in every new case, including small claims court. What Rosalie used to do is then sell the information, $1 per case, to the credit reporting company (or to a company that sold data to the credit reporting companies).

The way it worked was that they only report the information on the summons, when the case is started. They never bothered going back to find out what happened in the case, and that is why sometimes peoples credit gets screwed up without it being their fault. (We’ve all heard stories about blemish’s on credit reports because of people being sued in frivolous law suits). This has given rise to the credit repair industry, that helps people correct (or repair) the misinformation or incomplete information.

I wonder if they still only pay $1.

But anyway, the point of this story really is that if you’re interested in buying a foreclosure, you don’t need to subscribe to property shark or foreclosure.com; save your money, I’ll give you latest information for free since you are going to use me to buy the property.

Even when we give to charity, we get screwed

2009-01-22T18:47:00.000-08:00

Thursday’s advance had a story about the city buying foreclosures. Since I sell foreclosures I was very interested.
• City using federal $$ to buy foreclosed homes
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The city will embark on a $24 million emergency program to salvage foreclosed homes, including on Staten Island, where the mortgage meltdown has had a particularly profound impact

Well it turns out, according to the article, that a "not for profit" is buying the foreclosures, Restored Homes, and they bought two properties on Staten Island.

82 Blackford Avenue was first listed on the MLS on March 17, 2008, as a two-family detached, on a nice block in Port Richmond, for $234,900. The house was a real good price and it was accepted on March 20th, just three days later.

However, a few months later on July 22nd, the house was back on the market, and the price was lowered to $219,900. When it came back on the market, I showed it right away. The house was being used as a one family, but had two sets of utilities. Upstairs had a finished attic in addition to the two bedrooms, so it would have been good as a rental. But, you go down the basement, and someone had poured concrete, so much concrete that you could not stand up. The two boilers were in “wells” because they didn’t pour the concrete into them. Not having a full basement is not terrible, means that no one can live down there, and it can only be used for some storage. No biggie. But it was turning off all of my customers. This is when I realized that although foreclosures are sexy as a concept, the units themselves, the really good deals, aren’t. In fact a lot of the houses are just plain ugly.

But anyway, by August 6th, there was another acceptance.

But on October 6th, the house was back on the market, and the price was now lowered to $174,900.

So on October 6th, I sent out a Lasher’s List showing this house as time to buy, great deal, yada yada yada. By October 6th, I am an old pro at this, and I know when its “time for the vultures” - the customers with a lot of money, who make the all cash offers, who wait until the house has been on the market for a while, been accepted a couple of times had deals that keep dying, and know that there is a problem., and know that the bank is ready to make a deal.

So true to form, on October 7th, I submit an offer for one of my customers, a low ball offer, at $87,500, all cash, close in two weeks, as is.

A few days later when I call to find out about the offer, the broker tells me that there is a question about whether it is a legal one or two, but my offer is a little light, try to get my customer up a little, low 100's should do it.

Then on October 15th, before we resubmit our next offer, the status of the property changed to “HOLD”, and somehow the property had become a one family.

So it turns out that the reason for the hold was that the bank sold it themselves to the NFP, i.e. the City, with federal funds, (our tax dollars), and as usual, once again, we overpaid.

Moral of the story- use me to buy your foreclosures and you will get a better price.
Moral of the story 2- so that the banks don't get stuck with bad real estate, the government will buy them, and pay full asking price. Reminds me of an old Woody Allen Joke- the only sin in my family growing up was paying retail.

Good Night Irene.

……………………..to be continued

You cannot buy one gallon of gasoline and pay with exact change

2009-01-11T18:43:00.000-08:00

If you’re like me, you’ve always wondered why gasoline costs are an extra .009 cents per gallon.

Well now that I have people who enjoy reading my pontifications, I set out to find out the answer, and share it with you, because I know you are dying to know too.

So I put on my journalist hat (actually it’s a newsboy cap - a newsy) and I drove to my gas station where I generally buy my gas and lotto tickets to try and find out. Unfortunately, what I learned was that the guy didn’t speak enough English for us to discuss it intelligently. (I should have known, since I have to point my thumb up to fill up the tank.) While I thought we were friends, I guess between my poor hearing, his accent, and his limited amount of English, we really only communicate as well as I do with my 15 year old grand daughter).

Anyway, so I went inside to talk to the owner, but what I found out is that no one really knew who the owner is. (Uh oh- here we go again, just like banks and foreclosures).

BUT I was able to get the number of the supplier. So I called up the company that brings the gasoline to the station, and asked them why they charged an extra .9 cents per gallon. They hung up on me (again, just like banks and foreclosures).

I decided that the only way to go was to go ask one of the Big Oil Companies themselves. After a lot of work, I received an email from Chevron who explained that they don’t set the price, but the independent dealers themselves do.

So much for the horse’s mouth.

What I was able to find out was that it seems that in the 1920’s, some marketing genius discovered that people are more likely to buy something that ends in a 9 then in a 0. $1.29 9/10ths per gallon seems so much cheaper than $1.30, especially when the sign is seen from a distance. (Don’t we list houses at $299,000 rather than $300,000? and don’t cars cost $19,999 not $20,000).

So what does it all mean?

I went to the web site for the Energy Information Administration,
and I found out that in October 2008, we processed crude oil into 55.800,000 gallons of gasoline every day. Thus: 55,800,000 x 365 days in a year x .009 cents = $783,303,000.00. So the oil companies make an extra three quarters of a billion dollars a year by charging that extra 9/10ths of a penny per gallon.

Of course these days, ¾ of a Billion Dollars doesn’t sound like a lot of money, like it used to. When I was a kid, a Million dollars was a lot of money, and it was all about becoming a Millionaire. There was a show called the millionaire where the star gave away $1 Million dollars every week to a complete stranger, tax free, but they could never tell anyone where they got the money from. Today they toss around 100’s of Billions of Dollars’ like its nothing. Former Illinois Senator Everet Dirkson once said, when talking about the nations budget “…a billion here and a billion there…. pretty soon your talking about a lot of money.”

More and more I am hearing a new word in news reports- Trillion- I wonder how long before we have our first Trillionaire? (Wow- my spell check program doesn’t recognize trillionaire as a word, it has red-lined it as a mistake, but offers no suggestions for its correct spelling).

Anyway, speaking of gasoline, last summer, before I started Lasher’s List, I went to see David Rampulla, from ferry ads, another marketing genius. This was when gasoline was at $4.00 per gallon, and climbing. He offered me a bet that day that gas would go down to below $1.50 a gallon (although he really meant 1.49 9/10ths). I didn’t believe him, said that the price of gas would never come down below $3.00 but certainly, $2.50, so I agreed to the bet. (By the way, while I was there, he recommended that I offer my services to companies and offices on Staten Island, where I can come in and motivate and pump up the people. Anyone interested in hiring me?). Over the next months, we all know what happened to the price of gas. Where I buy my gas it went as low as $1.32 9/10ths per gallon before it started going up again last week. If you think you need advertising help, you might consider using David; I think he has a crystal ball. (David, I know I owe you the dollar I won’t charge you for the plug).

…………………………………to be continued

Weight Loss Thing

2009-01-01T18:27:00.000-08:00

On New Year's Day, the New York Times ran an article which stated that the only way to keep New Year’s Resolutions to lose weight, is to have some sort of a group support network with you. It said otherwise you are doomed to failure by valentine's day.

I am inviting you to join me in a a joint weight loss thing. We can figure out what it is, and what we will do, and how we will do it, as we go along.

The idea is to put it out there, make a statement out loud, that in 2009, regardless of whatever else is going on in the world, I am going to be successful in reaching my personal weight loss and healthy life style goals.

Regardless of how much money you make or have, or however good or bad business may be, you still have to eat. I am proposing a healthy distraction for everyone where the byproduct will be that the members look and feel younger, healthier, and better about themselves, and maybe pick up some good habits, and a friend or two along the way.

In the 80's, people used to say that the person with the most toys wins. Today’s mantra is that what it's really all about is how you feel and look, as you get older.

We can get together periodically (weekly, bi weekly, monthly). We can weigh in or not.

We can talk, email, compare notes, share tips, commiserate on victories and failures.

We can be there for each other.

We can raise money for charity.

It will be good for business.

We will all feel better about ourselves for our efforts.

We can go to fancy restaurants, or not so fancy restaurants, and learn to eat good tasting low calorie meals.

We can have a finite ending date (next New Years (?)) for a final weighing or weigh in.

I can publish totals – which can be done openly, anonymously and/or collectively- or not. (No one will ever be embarrassed in any way, shape or form).

Maybe the local press will write about us.

Maybe a television reality show producer will pick up on the news story and make us into a reality show.

Maybe the show will be so successful that it generates a best seller weight loss book, and we get to appear on Oprah and Regis.

Maybe the book will be so successful that they do a movie, and we make enough money to retire on.

Or maybe we'll just lose some weight and fell better about ourselves, and have a good time while we are at it.

No one ever needs to be embarrassed in any way, shape or form.

What have you got to lose?

..........................to be continued

Setting and Reaching Goals

2009-01-01T11:26:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year

It’s that most important time of the year. The gift buying part of the season is over; most of us spent time with our families, some of us went skiing, some went to the ocean. Now it’s time for the important stuff.

It’s time to set our goals for the New Year 2009.

Volumes have been written on the importance of goal setting. Zig Ziglar says that only 3% of the people actually take the time to write down their goals, and that not having goals is like shooting a target with a blindfold on. How can you possibly hit a target that you cannot see?

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice sees the Cheshire cat in the tree and asks him which road should she take. The Cheshire cat asks Alice where she wants to go. Alice says- it doesn’t matter, so the Cheshire Cat says that it doesn’t matter which road she takes. If you don’t know where you want to go, you’re probably not going to end up anywhere, (or worse- crisis responsive- dealing with today’s loudest).

There is so much more to say about why goals are important. The dynamics of the sub-conscious mind - writing down goals as a method of programming. But in this case, I will go with less is better. You can write to me for more information, read a book, or wait until the next installment. In the meantime,

Setting and Reaching Goals:

1. Set Clear, Specific, Measurable Goals: Decide exactly what you want in every area of your life (Health, Wealth, Family, Social, Public Service), as tight and specific as you can make it. Clarity is the #1 reason for success; fuzziness is the #1 reason for failure.
2. WRITE THEM DOWN: Take out separate piece of paper for each goal, write down the specific goal, and every idea that you can come up with to reaching that goal.
3. SET A REALISTIC DEADLINE. Write down your ultimate long-term goal; and shorter goals and deadlines along the way: 12 month goal; 3 month goal; weekly goal; and daily goals (habits you want to develop). There are no unrealistic goals, only unrealistic deadlines.
4. Identify OBSTACLES blocking you from reaching your goal. Identify the #1 obstacle. Write it down. Make a plan to removing the obstacle. Make removing the obstacle a priority and work on it every day.
5. Determine what information, knowledge, technology, is needed to reach your goals. Write it down. Figure out what is the one skill, knowledge, or technology that you need to reach your goal. Write it down. Come up with a plan to get that information, technology or knowledge. Write it down.
6. Determine what people, groups, and organizations are needed to reach the goal. Write down every person whose assistance could help or hurt towards reaching the goal. Come up with a plan to reach out to that person, join the organization, take steps every day.
7. Make a plan to obtain the goal. Create a business plan with every conceivable detail that you can imagine, even if it seems silly. Organize it by priority, and then by sequence.
8. Take action on the plan. DO SOMETHING on the plan every day. Review the plan every day, read it out loud, write it and re-write it. Edit it. Update it.
9. Visualize the goal as already achieved, as often as possible. The clearer that you visualize the goal, and with the more detail, and the longer that you can hold on to the thought, the sooner it becomes a reality.
10. FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!!!! Take failure off of the table. You are going to be successful, and that is all that there is to it. It might take longer than you hoped, but if you feel stuck, just go back to this form, and rethink wherever you are. But I will repeat it here, FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!!!!

To give you an idea, here are some of my goals, with varying amounts of detail as an example.

I am so happy now that I am the #1 Most Successful Real Estate Broker on Staten Island, measured by the amount of sales and listings.
I sell one house per week or 52 houses this year.
I get referrals every day from the people who read my emails, and from the people they pass them along to.
I write the most successful email publication on Staten Island, reaching over 5000 people all who read it.
I earn $1 Million Dollars.
In 2051, I will have lived a meaningful, healthy, enjoyable life for over 100 years.
I run the New York City Marathon.
I serve on several charitable and quasi-governmental boards.
I am wide awake and out of bed by 5:30 am every day, when I eat my breakfast, first of my 5 or 6 meals for the day. I am at the gym by 6:30, almost every day, beating various previous personal bests in my work out.
I wear a 38 regular suit.

And remember, when setting your goals, think big. Don’t let anyone talk you out of setting high goals. Shoot for the stars. “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” Michelangelo

So what's the deal with all those email addresses?

2008-12-15T17:36:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, it isn’t easy sending out these emails.

First of course, I have to write them. That’s the easy part. Figuring out what I am going to write about, that’s the hard part. I spend the better part of the week, kicking around ideas, (or hoping that I get an idea) and usually write it on Saturday/Sunday. Once in a while I’ll have the idea set for the following week, like I was going to write about Short Sales today, having written about foreclosures last week, but I’m not in the mood. There is plenty of time after New Years to talk about how to survive these times that are affecting each and every one of us. I have a couple of really nice topics that I’m toying with for next week already.

But anyway, once it’s written, then I have to think about it, let is stew. Go out for a while, do something else, play spider solitaire, eat a meal, drink some Perrier. Then I read it again, then out loud, constantly editing, adding stuff, deleting stuff, until I’m past okay and am happy with what I’ve written.

Then I send it out to a couple of people for their grammatical, spelling, typographical, and editorial assistance and comments. One is my cousin Stuart, in California, and the other is my friend Jon Salmon. Thank you both. They take it very seriously, and are very strict about not letting me say something that could get me into trouble (content wise).

Now we’re back to the hard part again. Sending them out.

When I first started, I thought that I could just send them all out at once. Like an email.

Boy was I wrong.

Doesn’t work like that, at all.

At that time I had about 700 email addresses on my Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 program, so after I wrote my first email, - I clicked on all the names, and it didn’t go through. I got back notices that the emails didn’t reach the intended recipients with a bunch of different error codes that I had no idea what it meant.

I called my computer friend Al Russo, (Paper Solve) and he explained to me that the free services (Gmail, Verizon, AOL, etc.) limit the amount of emails that you can send out at one time.

So I tried sending them from AlanLasher@OurIslandRealEstate.com, a pay account, but that was even worse than the g-mail account. After consulting with our technical guy, and the domains tech support, I discovered that the Our Island Real Estate domain only allows 10 emails to be sent at a time. No wonder it took 9 hours to send out the emails.

So then I took my list and created “distribution lists” on my Outlook account, and kept them under about 50. I organized my list according to various categories, Builders, Trades, CPA’s, Health Care Providers, Bankers, Insurance Brokers, Architects’ & Engineers; my REO customers, etc. (Some of the categories are so large that I had to make multiples, like Lawyers A-G; H-M; N-R; S-Z)

Finally, I thought that I was home, but no, after a few emails, I received emails back, that some of the emails didn’t reach their intended recipients because I had exceeded the daily limit (500 emails per day). I didn’t know that I was limited to 500 emails per day, but I know that now.

I tried going to some of the online mail services, Constant Contact is one that you might hear advertising. Not a bad deal, it doesn’t cost much, they get the emails out, but…………..

I can’t just forward the email listings that I currently send out the way that they are, I have to make them fit into neat little packages that they have set up (templates).

Creating a bunch of email addresses seemed to be the answer. AlanLasherRealty@gmail.com; ALasherRealty@gmail.com; ADLasherRealty@gmail.com; LashersList@gmail.com; AlanLashersList@gmail.com; AlanDLashersList@gmail.com, etc. (pretty clever I say). That’s fine. Each email address can handle 500 emails per day. I have a sheet that I use that contains all of the distribution lists (categories), and I know that I can send just about half the list using one email, and the other half using the second email, (although the list is growing every day, I am up to almost 1200 names), but I don’t send every person every email. Realtors don’t get my foreclosure listings (after all does Macy’s tell Gimbel’s? Does anyone remember Gimbel’s?). (I live in a big old house near where Mr. Gimbel had his big old house, but I guess it wasn’t old when he lived in it).

Everything is fine, but sometimes I send the email’s out too quickly, and guess what- my account gets knocked off the air for 24 hours (can’t send), and I receive error messages, and the emails don’t go through.

Gmail tells me that they work very hard to fight spam. This not only includes spam coming into Gmail, but also spam being sent out from Gmail. Apparently they have filters that look for spam. One of the ways that they do it is looking for large mailings where the recipients are sent to cc/bcc recipients. (Other things that trip the spam filters are links to other sites and the word VIAGRA). So I’ve learned that I cannot send out the next batch, until a few minutes after the prior batch went through.

I called Leore, my graphics guy from the Bar Newsletter days, and it just so happens that he is also in the business of sending out multiple emails to people. He has proposed that I send him the listing, with the wording that I want, etc., and he’ll turn it into a package that can be sent out en masse…..for a fee.

So that’s where it stands right now.

Some of you must be saying, thank you spam control filters, and others are thinking, call Leore, get it going, so you can send us more emails every day.

Which are you?

…………………………to be continued

So what's the deal with foreclosures anyway?

2008-12-07T11:47:00.000-08:00

Back again.

Before I start to write about foreclosures, let’s understand that there are foreclosures in the foreclosure process, pre-foreclosures (which might involve short sales); active foreclosures: pending legal actions in the courts; post judgment foreclosures awaiting auctions and/or closings, etc. I will write about these another time.

Today I am going to write about the foreclosures where the legal process has been completed. Whoever owns the real estate, owns the real estate but since we really don’t know who really owns the real estate, suffice it to say that the homeowner is no longer the owner.

To get started, I went through every listing in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), listing by listing (all 3000 of them) and printed out the listing’s that were: “bank owned” “REO” “corporate owned” or said “as is buyer to pay Transfer Taxes and Doc Stamps”. When I was finished, (about a year and a half ago) there were about 30 foreclosed properties for sale on Staten Island, in my loose leaf binder.

Today I went through all of the listings in my now much larger loose leaf binder (which by the way, I update as often as several times per day, to get the latest new listings, price changes, acceptances, sales, back on market, etc.), but instead of taking 5 days like the first time, it only took about an hour.

As of today (December 7, 2008) there are 123 active listings for bank owned real estate on the MLS of Staten Island. They consists of:

Condo’s: 9
1 families: 44 detached; 15 semi attached; 15 townhouses;
2 families: 27 detached; 7 semi-attached; 5 townhouses;
3 families: 1 detached

28: $ 79,900- $199,900.
50: $200,000- $299,900
27: $300,000- $399,900
18: $400,000- $725,000

The $79,000 is a detached one family in New Brighton- St. George; and the $725,000 is a detached one family in Pleasant Plaines.

The properties are located all over Staten Island, from St. George to Tottenville, and in most communities in between, but not all.

The bulk of the higher priced units, are on the South Shore, while the bulk of the homes under $300,000 are located on the North Shore and the beach areas (Midland, South, & New Dorp Beach).

No surprises here.

The real question is: are foreclosures good deals?

If you think because you have a lot of cash, and your offer is in cash, no mortgage contingency, close in two days, the bank is going to stop everything and embrace you, you are mistaken, especially if you low ball. The bank representatives’ have said to me- “everyone says that they are going to close in two days. “ Not to say that it doesn’t happen, sometimes these offers are accepted, especially after a couple of deals fall apart over financing.

The properties are being managed, (serviced) by servicing companies. (Remember- no one knows for sure who owns the property). These former mortgage underwriters, are now working in REO departments around the country selling making decisions on properties values based upon “BPO’s” (Broker Price Opinions- which are $50 “drive bys” which they bill the homeowner, and/or the bond owner $100 for). There is no accountability to the owners of the properties. There is only the pressure, as in all businesses to meet some sort of quota. (Even Judges have to “dispose of” a certain amount of cases every period or face the music).

So the question remains: can you get a good deal on a foreclosure?

I send out listings of foreclosures almost every day. This week I sent one out that stated that the particular listing was just about to hit the 6 month mark, and there had never been an acceptance on it. Perhaps this is one that you should look at immediately. (If you would like to receive every listing that I send, please email me).

A client of mine made an offer on a property in Port Richmond, six months ago, for $240,000, which was listed at $265,000 at the time, down from $299,900. I explained that this customer could only pay $240,000, that it was going to be her primary residence, etc. The bank stuck to $245,000. Two weeks later, I was informed that the person who rejected my $240,000 offer is no longer with there, and would my customer like the house for $240,000 (or less). My customer found something else in the meantime. Today the house is listed at $199,900.

Timing is very important to get a good deal. You never know when you submit an offer, whether the quarter is nearly up, whether the REO person just got hammered for not selling enough properties, or whatever other factors are involved.

So once again, can you get a good deal on a foreclosure?

Once the foreclosure is over, and possession obtained, the first thing the servicing company has to do is to get their “sure up and clean up people” in. This crew will drain the water from the pipes, shut the water in the street, and remove the water meter. They will remove the furniture, garbage, etc. Unfortunately many of these contractors that they use, cheat. Rather than gain access by opening up the doors properly, (ala Bobs Locksmith e.g.) and try to avoid damage, they just snap off the locks, usually damaging the front doors, especially metal doors. It is very common to walk into a foreclosure where the front door lock has been flung to the other side of the room. I’ve seen many dented doors. I’ve gone into numerous houses where there were radiators which were broken because someone smacked the corner with a big pipe wrench so that they could drain the system quicker- with no regard to the damage that it causes- ruining radiators, floors, carpets, paint jobs, etc.

Sometimes the servicing company will send in a crew to paint, scrape the floors, fix the plumbing, fix the cabinets, and install new carpeting. Especially in better neighborhoods.

And sometimes by the time even they get into the house, the pipes have already broken, and there is a tremendous amount of water damage, hardwood floors warped beyond recognition, mold. Sometimes the servicing companies are so grossed out that they won’t even remove the carpeting, and I’ve seen mushrooms growing out of carpeting.

And sometimes the house will get listed too cheap, and there will be numerous offers on the first day, often above the asking price. In this case, they either raise the price, or tell everyone that made an offer to submit their highest and best offer, and then the “pro’s” at the servicing company will make a decision. But what they don’t do, is tell everyone interested what the bidding is, so you can intelligently make your offer, creating an auction.

I have been in situations where my customer may have offered all cash, no mortgage contingency, submitted proof of the funds in a bank account, and they go with the person offering more money with 3% down payment. Very often in those situations the house comes back on the market. Sometimes they weigh the likelihood of the buyers being able to obtain financing against a lower all cash offer. But not every time.

Sooooooooo are foreclosures good deals?

Many foreclosures were properties that were the subject of fraudulent straw sales, like I described in one of my prior emails, and may have been abused due to lack of ownership supervision. Many foreclosures have been abandoned, taken over by squatters. Some foreclosures come on the market in beautiful perfect shape.

Yesterday I sent out a listing where only a temporary C of O was issued when the house was built, and it expired in 2000. The house has violations because it had been abandoned, and someone broke in, pulled cabinets off of the wall, and left the place open; and a violation for occupying without a property C of O. While I have not seen that particular house, I have been in many foreclosures that are total disasters, and require a lot of work. But just because a building is in serious disrepair, has zoning problems and/or violations, does not guarantee that you are going to get a good deal. But it could.

Last week I sent out a listing where the building was occupied by tenants in both apartments in a two family, and the sale was subject to their tenancy and their problems. I sent it out Attn: Low Ballers- Someone went to the property spoke to the tenants, and then offered full asking price- and they feel that they got a good deal.

So I guess the answer to the question is: Yes there are good deals to be made. If you are looking for a certain type of property, and one comes on the market that happens to be a foreclosure, you can make yourself a good deal. Although they aren’t giving anything away, and steals are few and far between, in order to get one, you have to act quickly and decisively, and/or be patient. But most importantly, a good deal is one where you feel you got a good deal.

……………………………………to be continued

What ever became of the numbers game?

2008-11-30T12:46:00.000-08:00

Hello again

Did you ever wonder about what became of the old numbers game?

Used to be that there were a bunch of characters who had regular routes, like the milk man. Except these guys were selling something more important than milk: Hope- and it only cost a dollar.

I had a friend who was a numbers guy, Richie. He worked some of the auto body shops, and junk yards in Mariners Harbor and Port Richmond. His biggest stop was Proctor and Gamble (P&G). I wonder how many people reading this even know that P&G used to be on Staten Island. That’s why its called Port Ivory- (Ivory Snow). When you were a kid, you took a tour with your class and at the end, they gave you broken pieces of soap, stuff they couldn’t sell, to take home. Lots of people on Staten Island got rich working for P&G, buying stock options, and dividend reinvestments.

Wednesday, my uncle Jason, who is now 81, paid us a visit, from Florida (Thursday with his kids, Friday with hers). While he was here we looked at old photographs, and amongst them were me at various stages of my life: Me fat, Me thin, Me with long hair, Me skinny, me obese, etc.

Anyway, in 1980, I had gone on one of the great diets of my life, Essex Weight Loss Center on Hylan Blvd (which was an early form of Optifast, but in cherry, and orange flavors instead of vanilla and chocolate) where I lost about 60 pounds. Fran Reali was the receptionist (skinny little thing that she was).

When I completed my weight loss, and was svelte, I went out and bought myself a brand new 1981 Red Corvette. My first new car. I was so proud. The day I got it I saw Richie at a meeting that we used to attend together. He asked me for the dealers number that came with the car (the paper thing that hangs on the rear view mirror), so I gave it to him, and then he told me to give him $5. Which I did.

Apparently what I did was box the number of my car (played all of the different combinations of the 3 numbers).

Anyway, the next time I saw Richie, he gave me $250- I won $250 (I really don’t know how they figured out how much I had won, but hey). I had only played the numbers that one time, and I won. I am the only person that I ever heard of that only played the numbers once, and won. I beat the system, and the organization that ran it.

So what every happened to the numbers?

Proctor & Gamble closed their Staten Island operation and moved to the South West.

The Lottery finally woke up and started creating new games, to compete with the Numbers. A more reliable payer, but doesn’t extend credit. The mob downsized their operation, to its present form, whatever that is.

And Richie bought a building and opened a deli, and continued selling hopes and dreams; with ham and cheese.

…………………to be continued

So who is Alan Lasher and why is he sending me all of these emails?

2008-11-23T17:56:00.000-08:00

Hello again.

This is the email where I talk about myself.

I am Alan Lasher. I am a 4th generation Staten Islander, Licensed Real Estate Broker in New York and New Jersey, in the same building where my family operated the Meiers Corners Department Store.

I come from a very civic minded family. My mother, Audrey Lasher, was a Staten Island Advance Woman of Achievement; and the Deputy Commissioner of the NYC Dept of Ports and Terminals.

My father, Richard Lasher, was one of the founders of the Mid Island Little League, and the South Shore Swim Club, but his favorite cause was the Richmond County Bar Association which he single-handedly ran for decades.

My parents were recently written up in the Memories column of the Sunday Staten Island Advance-

Remembering ...

When my father had a stroke in 1987, I continued to “ghost write" the Bar Association Newsletter under his name for 8 years, and for another 8 years after he died using my own byline. I am especially proud of the issue that I wrote right after September 11, 2001.

http://www.richmondcountybar.org/newsletter/pdf/fall2001.pdf

I miss writing, and that’s why I came up with Lasher's List.

Anyway, I have been in the Real Estate Business for the past 30 years, having developed numerous parcels of vacant land; built new homes and renovated many buildings, and received numerous building awards, and accolades

I don't accept NO as an answer when I think the answer should be something else. I don't accept that you can't do something, when I think that you should be able to. I have taken on numerous projects, and obtained approvals, after everyone else had given up after hitting stone walls.

Many say that I single handedly turned Westerleigh around when I rehabilitated the stores 264-286 Watchogue Road in 1985 & 1986. It took years to get the project started because the architects and contractors said to forget about it, or I was told to just tear it down and start over again.
After the rehabilitation of 264-286 Watchogue Road virtually every house in a two block radius was renovated. Channel 5 called it non-governmental urban renewal.

Meanwhile at the end of the 80’s/early 90’s, some of you may remember there was a real estate crash. So many banks failed that the government started the RTC (Resolution Trust Corp) to handle to sale of the assets of the banks that went under, and the properties being foreclosed. Staten Island lost two local banks: Westerleigh Savings & Loan, and Community National Bank. The price of homes fell dramatically for the first time in anyone’s memory. The short sale was developed to help people who owed more than their houses were worth.

The price of real estate fell everywhere- except Westerleigh- where the price of homes remained steady, or rose.

Anyway, that’s about enough of me.

So here is a little tidbit:

100 years ago or so when people gave directions through Westerleigh, there was a huge Oak Tree that was the landmark. Directions would be to Watch for the Oak Tree- over time Watch Oak became Watchogue Road.*

So stay tuned for more interesting useful and useless information to entertain, educate, and inform.

Please feel free to send in any questions about anything that you may have, if I don’t know the answer I will find it out, especially about Real Estate.

Thanks for listening, see you next time.

……………………..to be continued

So what happens now?

2008-11-12T13:18:00.000-08:00

It seems that every day's headlines are just chock full of crisis: the Dow and the S & P are dropping because investors are worried about the crisis, and the foreign exchanges and the global markets are on a roller coaster ride; unemployment; the interest rates; number of foreclosures; the MTA; GM, FORD & Chrysler; Monthly and quarterly profit reports; executive salaries and bonus’s and golden parachutes; and on and on with more and more Doom and Gloom. The naysayers are saying that this is just the beginning and that the hard times haven’t even begun yet.

And maybe they are right.

Happy Thanksgiving.

And then there are the blamers, finger pointers, fault finders, name callers, and of course the media. They are really going to have a field day once the Congressional hearings; Attorney General Investigations; and Indictments begin. More important to find someone to blame than to find a solution.

The economic crisis-- the chaos and turmoil -- has affected each and every one of us. Some of us are having trouble paying our mortgages...or have stopped paying our mortgages. Some of us can’t pay our credit cards; and, to add insult to injury, the banks have cut our credit limits that we worked so hard to get even though we are current and never late, (and they have raised the interest rate to boot!). (And we are going to bail out American Express). A friend of mine who owns a restaurant told me that the pharmaceutical reps have lost their expense accounts, so the free lunches for doctors have ended at the hospitals, and his restaurant has lost 10% of its business from this alone.

But today is my birthday; and notwithstanding the headlines, I am having a really great day, and so I decided that I want to share with you my thoughts on: What happens now?

First and foremost:

Life will go on!

People are still going to get married and divorced.

New people are going to be born, and old people (and some not old enough) are going to die.

The Yankees and the Mets are going to bring us baseball from new stadiums next season.

The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

Some of us will lose our jobs, and our homes, our businesses will lose some customers. Some of our tenants and clients and customers won't be able to pay their bills.

All of us will adapt and do what we have to do.

And Life will go on.

We are all in this together, and I am here for every one of you.

And Lasher’s List is going to be the glue to help hold it all together.

I hereby launch, Lasher’s List, on this my 58th birthday (I know you were all dying to know), as a place that you can count on to get a periodic fix, at no charge, of truth, entertainment, fun...and useful and useless information.

I’ll tell you about me.

You are going to be educated, and entertained by my vast knowledge, investigative skills and extensive research on all sorts of issues affecting Staten Island. I am going to find out what is really going on with some of the places that we drive by every day and some of the so-called "big deals" we’ve heard about. I’ll tell you about recent sales and what things rent for and what things cost to fix.

I have created a blog at Google where I will post this today. It contains all of the emails that I have already sent (not the listings showing properties). With this blog I shall be able to answer your questions; and, if I don't know the answer, I promise to find the answer! Just click on the blog's address below, and you'll get there! (In a future email I will describe the trials and tribulations of sending out multiple emails at one time, and why you probably didn’t get this email today. I will share this information with you as I discover it, and together we will all become more blog savvy)

http://lasherslist.blogspot.com/

But anyway, we and our world have entered into hard times. Many of you may remember the early 90’s, some of you may remember the late 70’s, and maybe a few of you the 30’s. But, together, we are going to witness and participate in this round, and I am going to point out the opportunities that arise, and how to take advantage of them, and how and why not to brood and cry.

Some people see problems in opportunities, and some people see opportunities in problems*. The general theme and tone of this “blog” will be to find the opportunities within the problems, and to have a good time doing it.

So welcome aboard, and remember, if you know anyone who would like to be receiving these, please send me their email address, so they can be added to Lasher's List.

……………………to be continued

*I saw this the other day, it grabbed my attention, but I can’t remember where I saw it and to whom to give credit. When I find out who said it, I will post it on my Blog

What is this financial crisis about anyway?

2008-11-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

So when the real estate market was good, people bought houses, got mortgages, and closed.
The mortgage brokers got paid. The banks got paid.
Wall Street came up with Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS’s), and made a killing. They even had their own mortgage banks to make the loans.
The bonds were sold to foreigners and foreign governments, and Wall Street made a lot of money selling the loans/bonds.
Now here is where I get confused! People started defaulting on these subprime mortgages, and the value of the bonds went down. Wall Street wrote down their lost value (in some cases by billions of dollars), which was a tax savings used to offset their billions made in profit. Easy!
What do we care if foreign investors lose money? When the bonds were purchased they were paid for in cash. Even if Wall Street invested their own money, along with their clients’ money and the bonds lost value, they were paid for. So what’s the problem?
When Junk Bonds went bad, some people sold them at discounted prices; and the big guys bought them and eventually made home runs. No one expected the government to step in.
With the dot coms, the stock prices jumped through the roof, until reality set in and we realized that some of these companies weren’t making profits and wouldn’t for years, if ever. All of a sudden the price of the dot com stocks crashed. No one expected the government to step in.
So why did we have to bail out Wall Street?
Maybe Wall Street realized that they had "screwed up", and that they were worried about scandals, and losses, and indictments, so they needed to create a smoke screen to hide behind? Could it be that the billions of shares of stock traded every day are merely stock manipulations to generate commissions, and/or to create a crisis according to a secret agenda?
The Treasury Secretary and former managing partner of Goldman Sachs (who I’m sure owns hundreds of millions of dollars worth of their stock and/or partnerships) said, “Let's buy the "toxic bonds" so poor Wall Street doesn't have a problem.” The Bush Administration, who had already given away the store to the very rich, was consistent- anything to help the very rich, because then it would trickle down to everyone else. Yeah, right!
Or could it be that they were worried about their end-of-the-year bonuses? Thanks to the perceived crisis due to stock manipulation, Wall Street was able to fire thousands of employees and cut overhead, so that the billions of dollars in savings could be used where it's most needed - as end-of-the- year bonuses.
…………………to be continued

Organized Crime's role in the Financial Melt Down

2008-10-15T14:37:00.000-07:00

Not to be outdone by Wall Street, Organized Crime positioned themselves to get a piece of the sub-prime mortgage action too.

When the easy money loans started, the idea was good. Poor people were going to be able to buy a home- The American Dream realized. Unfortunately greed has a nasty way of rearing its ugly little head into even the most well intentioned plans.

At the beginning of the real estate boom, you had to have stellar credit (High700 FICO scores) to be able to get 100% financing. (Close on a 80% first mortgage, and a 20% equity loan, from the same bank, simultaneously).

As the boom heated up, the Global Economy roared, (especially the Asian markets), and Cash rich foreign investors, turned to Wall Street to find them safe havens to park their money. Wall Street created the Market Backed Securities (MBS's). As the demand (and profits) grew, the criteria to obtain the mortgages loosened, as Wall Street opened their doors wide to encourage real estate borrowing. Programs were created including 100%-120% loan to value financing; Negative amortization loans (you pay part of the interest and what you don't pay gets added to the principal); Interest only loans. No documentation loans. No income No credit loans. No closing costs loans; or you could finance them. The higher the points and interest rates, the more you could borrow. (Remember this is a story about greed). It got to the point that all you had to do to get a mortgage on real estate was have a photo id and breathe.

But seriously, and this is very serious, fueled by the upward real estate market, the ease of borrowing, Wall Streets' greed, willing participants, Organized Crime of several different ethnic persuasions, and national origins, seized upon the opportunity to get into the game and they created a cottage industry for themselves.

Organized Crime began manufacturing “Straw Buyers”.

People with no jobs, no credit histories, no visible means of support, were turned into documented upstanding, taxpaying, credit worthy home buyers and borrowers.

The process of creating "straws" was really quite simple.

The first step was to deposit money into a bank account in the "straws" name. Banks don't care where the money comes from, just that it exists, and is verifiable with 3-6 months bank statements.

Next step was to get a job for the straw. Rather than create jobs, they created Straw Companies- companies that had telephone numbers and addresses that could be verified. It could be an office or a storefront anywhere with a lot of phone numbers and a lot of signs in front. Once the Straw Companies are "in business" it was easy to verify employment.

Now they had to find some real estate. This was easy. Find a builder with units that weren’t selling. Buy in depressed areas. Buy the last couple of units in a job, buy the houses that had problems, doesn’t get the sun, gets too much sun, the one that gets all of the noise from the highway. Pay the builders full asking price, maybe more (maybe less). You get the picture. The builder or the broker are only too happy to sell the units. So happy in fact that they will enter into a contract where the buyer is allowed to re-sell to a third party (The Straw), at higher prices, no or small down payments, etc.

Next they had to hire the right mortgage broker/bank. The mortgage broker is responsible for verifying the employment, the contract deposit (which previously had been deposited into an account in the straws name), the tax returns, current living expenses, etc, and has to find the loan. It is the mortgage broker that hires the appraiser that is going to bring the loan in at the right price.

Mortgage brokers/banks guarantee loans that they sell to the Banks. If the loan defaults during this period, the mortgage broker has to buy back the loan, or make those payments. This period is usually a year.

When I look at the foreclosure files at the Richmond County Clerk's Office, it is hard not to notice that the dates of the commencement of the action, and the dates of the actual signing of the mortgage are not that far apart. It's just incredible that in so many foreclosures- No payments were ever made.

American Home was a Mortgage Bank which is the same as a broker basically except that they have a warehouse line which allows them to close now place the loan later. They were forced to buy back a couple of million in bad paper (defaulted within a year) and then their lines were frozen forcing them to go out of business. (Not so innocent victims).

The appraiser had to bring the house in for much more than its asking price. Appraisers were happy because they were working regularly. The realtor, the builder and the lawyer had to not ask too many questions. Finally there is the buyer -the "straw".

I’ve often wondered what the Straw Man gets. Live in the house without making payments until the post foreclosure ejectment action for possession? Think that there was word of mouth advertising in certain neighborhoods- “Live free for a year in a new house, just sign the papers"

Last year, when the “Sub-Prime Mortgage Market” started to crash, the media’s hype was to blame it on the interest rates going up on the adjustable mortgages. And that probably did affect some of the people. And of course there are/were too many people who were living way over their heads, and constantly refinancing in an upward market, using their equity to carry the monkey.

But I have never heard a report that attributed any blame for the crash of the real estate markets like Florida, Texas, Nevada, nor a little closer in areas like Mariners Harbor and Port Richmond to fraud and/or Organized Crime.

Certainly neither SIBOR, The Staten Island Advance, nor the Richmond County Clerk's Office, kept track of straw loans. But it is interesting to wonder how big a role Organized Crime played in the crash of the sub-prime mortgage market? and if that is why Staten Island have one of the highest per capita rates of foreclosures in the Country?

(I have no actual firsthand knowledge of any transaction, nor of any participant (knowingly or not) in any such fraudulent or illegal transaction or scheme).

………..to be continued

Why does Staten Island Have so many foreclosures? .........continued

2008-10-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

We probably should have known that there was something wrong, when our mortgage payments went to MERS.

MERS stands for Mortgage Electronic Recording Systems. (Others include ASC American Servicing Company, Litton, etc.). These aren’t banks. These are the companies that service the loans: (bill for the payments; pay the insurance and taxes, etc.). They are also the parties that send the files to the lawyers and are sometimes plaintiffs in foreclosures. But they don’t own the mortgage.

Once upon a time, we worked hard, we deposited our money in our local “Banks”, and when it came time to buy a house, our bank gave us the mortgage. Northfield Bank is still like that, but Richmond County no longer gives residential loans. Others that still make mortgages, but have very strict guide lines are Emigrant, Astoria, and Ridgewood. Locally we have the United Brethrens. These institutions tend to loan their own money (depositors' money) and are very careful and generally don’t run into any problems (although they have an occasional foreclosure because bad things do happen to good people!).

These days, most people wind up going to a mortgage broker, or one of the big lenders (Countrywide, Wells Fargo, etc.). People get mortgages based upon: Credit scores; percent of money put down, (Loan to Value- LTV); and income to Debt Ratio (DTI). Mortgage Brokers and bankers fit their customers into neat little packages based upon the available programs at the time. SONYME, FHA, Fannie & Freddie set criteria from which they lend. But not all borrowers can qualify or “conform” to the guidelines.

For those borrowers, Wall Street developed various products. Since we were in a real estate boom and people tend to respect their home as an asset, Wall Street seized upon the opportunity and got into the mortgage business. Lehman Brothers used their own companies, Aurora and FNBA, to make loans that did not meet the stricter criteria of Fanny and Freddie, and FHA, etc.

Once bundled into a large enough block of mortgages, Wall Street sold these MBS’s, (Mortgage Backed Securities) to AIG, Merrill Lynch, Mutual Funds, and Pension Funds. The United States has the most stable government and economy in the world, so foreigners like to invest here because it is safe: foreigners like The People's Republic of China and the newly rich entrepreneurs in India. So that’s who owns the MBS’s, (although pretty soon it is going to be the US Treasury and the US Tax Payer!). But you do not see any foreclosures where the plaintiff is any of these names.

When mortgage loans are sold, they are “assigned”; and the assignments have to be recorded to be enforceable. Public Records (County Clerk’s Office) may list MERS or one of the other servicers as the record Mortgagee, although they are not the owner of the mortgage.

Many foreclosures are commenced while the real owner of the mortgage, the Plaintiff in the foreclosure, is not the record owner. A Federal Judge in one state decided that if the Plaintiff is not the actual mortgagee, the foreclosure could not continue. Another Judge in another state found that the real owner has to sign the foreclosure papers for them to be enforceable. Of course the problem often is that not even the servicing company knows who the real owner is.

Most of the Staten Island’s judges allow the “servicing companies” and/or Mortgagees that are not of record to maintain foreclosures ; and allow foreclosures to proceed although the real owner of the mortgage isn’t the plaintiff in the action, or the assignments weren't recorded at the commencement of the action, (or not even prepared or signed).

While selling blocks of mortgages is nothing new, they used to be sold in groups where the majority were conforming loans (75-80% LTV), although there were always banks that specialized in less than stellar loans and bad credit. BANKS. It used to be that the Banks made money either by loaning the money and making the interest, or by servicing the loans (making a percentage of the amount collected). Used to be, but that’s not what happened here. More on whom the banks loaned money to in a future email.

So Wall Street told their investors that these MBS’s were just like municipal bonds, only not tax-free. The Port Authority is going to sell bonds to build a new Goethals Bridge. If there is a default, will the bond holders have the right to foreclose the mortgage on the Bridge? I think not. Is this not the same thing?

A customer of mine called me the other day and asked me about a property that was boarded up and had a Marshall’s notice on the door. I went to the County Clerk’s office and reviewed the foreclosure file. The referee’s deed put title into: “Deutche Bank National Trust Company, as trustee for Fremont Home Loan Trust 2006-1”. The house has since been listed on the MLS, and the name of the owner is listed as Premier Asset Services (PAS).

So who owns the Real estate?

………………..to be continued

Why Staten Island has so many foreclosures

2008-09-28T14:28:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I have been sending out foreclosures these past months, and it just occurred to me that many people do not understand why there are so many foreclosures’ on Staten Island; and many more people don’t understand why the country, if not the world, is in such a deep financial crisis. Over a series of short emails, I will try to explain, the best that I can, what happened, and what is going on, and what it all means to us on Staten Island. Feel free to call or email with any questions, and/or comments, that you may have.

I first got involved with foreclosures at the beginning of the crash, a couple of years ago, when Merrill Lynch announced its first $4 Billion write-down. I thought that $4 Billion Dollars was a lot of real estate, and they would need help in getting rid of all of the properties after being foreclosures. Friends and clients were always asking me if I knew of any good foreclosures, as I have been buying and selling bank-owned real estate my entire career from Richmond County and Staten Island Savings Bank before they went public, and other Staten Island Banks that are no longer in existence. My grandfather bought properties from the banks on Staten Island during the Great Depression, always allowing the former owner to remain in the home paying rent ($6 month in those days!).

So I called an old neighbor of mine who was a big trader at Merrill Lynch, whom I used to shovel snow with in the winter years ago. After an exchange of pleasantries, I asked him what Merrill Lynch was doing with all of this real estate that they were foreclosing and just wrote down, and would he put me in the direction of the person/people handling it?

That is when he hit me with the shocker-

“We don’t own any real estate, we only own bonds”.

“Then who owns the real estate?” I asked; and he said he didn’t know. "We just own Bonds."

Whoa.

Knowing this is the first step to understanding our present financial crisis.

………………to be continued