Realty World Northern California & Nevada

This year’s Inman Real Estate Connect in San Francisco had numerous mentions pertaining to the iPhone and I have to admit, I am one of recent participants to the iPhone phenomena. Although AT&T has not published official numbers, the general consensus is that at least 500,000 iPhone 3G units were sold in the United States.

I am the first to admit that I am astounded by the iPhone’s sexy appearance and super slick interface. However, have you tried surfing the web while on the road (with someone else driving, of course!)?

A good friend of mine and I were on a road trip together this weekend and as such, we found ourselves in search for the typical road trip items: where the nearest gas station was to us, a list of nearby restaurants for us to select from, directions to our hotel, and we could not forget, directions to the nearest Jamba Juice.

I am sad to say that I was not overly impressed as to the speed or reliability of the iPhone Safari browser. I found myself waiting for pages to load without success, having to re-attempt the search numerous times. Additionally, when the pages were loading, on a few occasions, the browser simply crashed and closed out unexpectedly. I hear rumors that there will be an update which may possibly resolve some of these issues.

In the end, I booted up my laptop which has an onboard Verizon EV-DO Rev A broadband card. In a matter of a few moments, we found what we were looking for. Instead of a poor review on the iPhone web browser, I will leave you with a positive thought in that I am eagerly awaiting a much needed update.

Answer: Besides the obvious, the timing couldn’t be better to buy either one of them.

It’s kind of funny… a friend of mine just bought a boat and was commenting on how he was thinking about buying an RV to tow it. I thought to myself, “Why would you ever want to buy an RV right now with gas prices being what they are?” He went on to say that due to the high cost of fuel, the prices on RV’s have come down over 40% and you can get these amazing RV’s for little money. If you think about it, an RV that costs $60,000 to buy “normally” would be around $36,000 at 40% off… and even with the current hike in gas prices, it would take years to spend the $24,000 savings! Eventually, gas prices will come back down or our dollar will be worth more, so in the long run you win.

This same theory can be applied to real estate. People keep waiting to buy because they think the market will keep dropping. That may be true, but history proves that real estate always recovers from downturns. In addition, if you tell the customer to look at how much money they are wasting each month by paying rent and not taking the tax write-off from the mortgage, it might help move them closer to buying. Have them look at it this way: if the average monthly rent is $1,500.00, that means they are just throwing away $18,000 a year!!!

What happened to you yesterday? I truly don’t know; however I can tell you this much… it was your choice that either made it a great day, mediocre day, or a down right miserable day!

With each day of our lives, we are bombarded by so much. Whether great, good, or terrible, it is my belief factor that tells me that it is how the situation is approached by the individual that will determine where we will be in life.

I witness all the time the calamity that is going on around me. Some of it is sad, much of it is confusing, and some of it comes across as the grandest part of life. Once again the question comes up, what makes one situation different from the other?

In todays society we are witnessing the control that outside influences have on us as individuals, as couples, or as a family. Never before has so many choices been so easily accessible to us with immediate gratification if we so choose through the technology of a fast paced, ‘desiring everything now’ driven society.

The direction for life lies within the choices we make each day. Take the time to understand what you truly want, as you can either be successful in life, or more importantly significant!