Craigslist Real Estate Scams

I was reading 360Digest's post about real estate scams on Craigslist and I was slightly shocked out how creative criminals are becoming. This criminal took an MLS listed home and created a "For Rent" ad on Craigslist. He would reply readily with any prospective tenant and was very informative. When the tenant decided that they wanted to rent the place, he instructed them to send him a deposit via check.

Reading about this new case of fraud reminded me about all of the fraud on Ebay and how little by little Ebay began to see a decreasing number of auctions and traffic. Many people were fearful of Ebay altogether. Craigslist could see a similar trend as fraud becomes more apparent.

Which leads me to my next thought, I believe that our apartment search can be a place for prospective tenants to shop fraud free. My logic behind this is quite simple. In order to list a unit for rent you have to be a subscriber to our property management application, in which all but one account will require a credit card to pay for the subscription.

We will also require a verified checking account before a property manager can list a unit for two reasons. The first is because we will require an application fee for prospective tenants so that we can ensure quality leads for our property managers. The second is because we will be accepting online payments for security deposits and rent.

With these two levels of security, I am quite confident that we can offer a fraud free environment for people to find a place to rent.

HL23: One Impressive Apartment Building

The HL23 building is one of the most impressive structures I have ever seen. Designed by architect Neil Denari is eleven stories high and feature full floor residences. These residences go at a hefty price tag of $1,800 a square foot. All I can say is... wow!

See more pictures at Curbed.com.

Chris

Early Beta Signups Open

For those of you who have been anticipating a beta, we are opening for phase 1 of our beta on April 1st. For this phase, we are only accepting beta testers who are currently managing property.

If you are interested in our product, but are worried about having to take the time to enter your data, stop worrying. As long as you can give us your data in an excel document, access database, or comma delimited format we can upload your data into our system for you. Then all you have to do is update the data from within our interface to fill in any holes.

So when you are ready to join the stampede and improve your property management processes, please click the link below.

Join the Stampede & Improve Your Property Management Business

In the meantime, while we wait for the beta please take a moment and subscribe to StampedeBlog so you can be up to date with our progress. You can subscribe via email and every new post will be sent directly to your inbox, so please subscribe now.

What Economic Recession?

This chart was published front and center of the New York Times on Saturday, along with an article entitled "Seeing an End to the Good Times (Such as They Were)" by David Leonhardt. My reaction to this article and chart was quite simply, what recession?

It is quite clear that we are not in a recession...I mean during the recession of 2001 housing prices declined...didn't they? Interesting enough, housing prices across the country actually increased during the 2001 recession. So for the 2001 recession two of three of the economic indicators in the chart were showing negative numbers. Back then that was enough to scream recession.

Current day, housing prices are down, jobs are down, and the financial markets are down. Why is no one screaming? In my opinion, (and please recognize this is only an opinion and by no means am I an economic professional), is that this recession is far worse that the one in 2001. In fact this one may be so bad, that they are not talking about it publicly in fear that it will create a consumer confidence meltdown similar to what happened at the beginning of the great depression.

Continuing my opinion from what David said in his article, it seems as if we "faked" the recovery from the 2001 recession. In essence consumers used lines of credit to maintain their quality of living while inflation increased. With no raises in years, poor choices by mortgage lenders & brokers, consumer spending has effectively ceased and coporate profits decline. As the credit crunch continues, the dollar weakens, banks "secretly" collapse and the only thing preventing another great depression is consumer panic.

Once again, this post is highly opinionated. The best thing we as consumers can do is NOT PANIC. The economy has already begun to correct itself. Have we seen the bottom...I highly think we have not, but recovery has begun.

Inman.com's New Site Goes Live

Inman News.com, "is the leading source of independent real estate news, information, advice, research, opinion and commentary for industry professionals and consumers alike." They have been working hard to give the old site a new look and a basket of new features. They were successful and now the new design and platform is live.

As I visited the new site for the first time, I experienced quite a bit of lag, but this was to be expected per the sites owner Joel Burslem. He had posted an announcement on The Future of Real Estate Blog. Once the site loaded, I was extremely interested to see that it had its own community. The thought of having to maintain another profile frightened me at first, but after I calmed down I recognized good networking possibilities by utilizing the social network here.

From a technical perspective the site is very crisp, easy to use and read, and nicely designed. Using Drupal as a CMS engine I think was a great choice. Drupal has a great open source community behind it and is extremely scalable.

I look forward to seeing the new site evolve and see what new features they plan to implement in the future.