Office (Printer) Abuse On The Rise

You no doubt have one lurking in your office right now. This very minute. It's just sitting there, waiting to ruin your day.

Waiting to ruin your deal.

Oh sure, everything is fine now. It's perfectly capable now, when you don't need it. But just try and use it when it's a matter of life and death and see how far you get.

Don't get angry. Remain calm. I should warn you, hitting it only makes it stronger.

And may God have mercy on your soul if you are out of cyan.

Is there any one piece of machinery that has caused more suffering than the office printer? Their revolutionary roots trace back to 1440, but with the amount of errors, paper jams, and just plain idiocy rampant in today's modern printers, you'd think they were designed by Steve Guttenberg and not Johannes Gutenberg.

As the Wall Street Journal discusses today, workplace abuse against printers is on the rise. Normally, abuse would not be tolerated, but the victims in this case had it coming.

But don't fear, dear agent. We at DotLoop have a solution for you. One that does not require Q0061z print cartridges or misaligned paper or the need to wait while the printer warms up.

Of course, I'm talking about paperless transactions, the office printer's only true nemesis. So take heart, fellow office workers, and know that your days of ink-stained neckties and blouses is over.

So stop letting your office printer ream you and get your negotiations done digitally.

You can leave your bat at home.

There Goes The Neighborhood

Last week, The Atlantic's "Future of The City" Conference in Washington, D.C. ended, as I mentioned Friday.

Today, I read up on Christopher Leinberger's ideas on the future of the American neighborhood. He argued that walkability and rail transportation in condensed, urban neighborhoods are what will replace our expansive exurbs that we've been building the last sixty or so odd years.

While his idea of creating privately-funded versus publicly-funded rail is up for debate, I tend to agree with his basic assessment that exurban neighborhoods just won't make the cut in the coming decades. Every time I have to drive out to the suburbs, I am keenly aware of and often surprised about just how much gas and time I spent getting there.

As DotLoop is well aware, efficiency is important. This holds true not only for the business world, but for land development, too. After all, a sewage line that serves thirty people in an exurban neighborhood costs just as much as a sewage line that serves three-thousand people in a well-planned urban core. In the coming decades, as our population ages and energy costs rise, we will have to adjust not only our zoning laws, but our lifestyles as well.

I for one am eager to embrace more walkable, liveable and personable American neighborhoods.

Let the change begin.

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho

It takes me twenty to thirty minutes to get to work from my home, depending on traffic. That's about eighteen to twenty-seven minutes too long for me.

Like most of you, I hate commuting. So very, very much. I wasn't too surprised then, when I read a report this past spring that found commuting to be the one daily activity most injurious to happiness.

Seems about right.

It was refreshing, then, to hear HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan discuss this exact issue this week during The Atlantic's "Future of The City" Conference in Washington, D.C..

As reported by Infrastructurist, Donovan discussed how many of our pressing issues - obesity, foreign oil dependency, and air pollution, for example - all are symptoms of one problem: "the fundamental mismatch between where we live and where we work."

I am so glad that someone else can see how silly we all are for living our such a Metropolistic existence. Whenever I see a new office building being constructed, I think, "Why?" Most office jobs are done on a computer and most people have a computer at home. With such technology, getting into a car and driving thirty miles to work every day seems as anachronistic as sending an e-mail via carrier pigeon.

Of course, as real estate agents, commuting is a part of your every day lives; indeed, agents can spend more time driving to clients than working with them. Luckily, with DotLoop, you can save your gas and keep your car in park. You don't even have to waste money on ink.

Which, of course, is a good thing. After all, as Secretary Donovan said, the price of commuting has risen by about 1000% over the past few decades.

Why be stuck in traffic anymore than you have to?

It's a Trap!

This morning, I received an e-mail from one of my bosses; he sent me a link to an interesting article on avoiding the "Busy Trap". After reading it, I was wondering if he was trying to tell me something.

Either way, it made for good reading, and had some very useful advice.

We're all busy, especially in these recent economic times, and especially real estate agents. Home sales are down now that the tax credit has expired, and everyone needs an extra few hours in the day to get their jobs done.

Unfortunately, the earth's rotation is not going to change anytime soon, and with this week's daylight peak on Monday (the summer solstice), we're back to a downward spiral on daylight until December. So, since we're all still stuck with 24 hours in our day, you'll need to find your productivity elsewhere.

Luckily for real estate agents, there are solutions. With DotLoop, you can save hours of time by creating online, interactive forms and send them to your clients with a click of a button. With all that saved time and energy, you should be able to avoid the "Busy Trap".

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to take this phone call.

Real Estate Deals Go Digital

DotLoop was mentioned in The Lane Report this week on kybiz.com. Read what they have to say about digital documents:
Real Estate Deals Go Digital

Home Closings Made Easy

Last night, DotLoop CEO Austin Allison appeared on FOX Business Network's "America's Nightly Scoreboard" on the Small Business Spotlight segment.

FOX Trot

DotLoop will be lighting up your living rooms this evening, with our second appearance this year on the FOX Business Channel.

Says CEO Austin Allison,"It's refreshing to come back to New York and check in with our friends at FOX Business. We are still finding opportunities - every day - to help the broker and the professional real estate agent simplify their lives."

Look for DotLoop on "America's Nightly Scoreboard," hosted by David Asman tonight between 7 and 8 (our segment will be around 7:40PM).

Disguise Phone

Stuck waiting on someone the other day, I started fidgeting with my phone. I have a "dumb" phone; what the industry calls a "candy bar" phone. It's a bare-minimum, calling and texting machine.

It doesn't even have a camera.

What it does have, much to my surprise, is a pixelated pinball game. I spent a few minutes playing it while waiting for my friend to arrive.

I never knew I had this feature. Later this weekend, I unearthed more hidden features on my phone. I can easily convert Celsius to Fahrenheit with my Conversion Application (ooh! I have "Apps"!) and I have a budget manager. Who knew?

As it turns out, not many. It seems I'm not alone in discovering hidden gems on my phone. As the Wall Street Journal reports today, small businesses have a lot more choices today with their phone plans, but, just like trying to decide which of the 400 brands of toothpaste is right for you, the choices can be daunting.

With cell phones having more processing power than yesteryear's supercomputers, I'm not surprised that so many applications and hidden features can be tucked into such a small device. I wonder what else is lurking in my phone.

Maybe I have a camera on it after all.

How about you? What hidden features have you found on your phone?

Put It In Neutral

Who owns the Internet? Is the Internet a public utility? Should only a few companies have the ability to filter the Internet to end users?

These are some of the questions surrounding the effort to re-regulate the Internet by the FCC. Yesterday, the cause for net neutrality got a boost when the FCC voted to begin the process of re-regulating the Internet, which would potentially reverse the 2002 decision to deregulate the Internet, which since then left it up to the broadband providers to gate-keep the web itself. This re-regulation would not regulate the content of the Internet, but rather, would ensure that all users have equal access to the Internet and that providers could not discriminate and slow down or cut off a user.

The problem, of course, is that there are only a few major providers. Ever wonder why you only have two, maybe three options for broadband in your neighborhood? Ever wonder why the three prices are almost exactly the same, regardless of which provider you choose? Some call that collusion.

The phone and cable companies, of course, are loathing the decision. But others are applauding this change, such as Google and Dish Network.

And rightfully so.

After all, anytime the communications oligarchy (AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast) are sweating bullets, it's probably a good thing.

The Internet is too important to be controlled by a few parties without any regulation. The door has been opened to revisit re-regulation, which is good, as the public deserves a say in how the Internet is handled. After all, we've all seen the effects of little or no regulation, when companies promise to regulate themselves.

Honey, I Shrunk The House

As the economy shrinks, so do the houses.

As reported this week, the average home size has officially shrank to 2,438 square feet, which, if you ask me, is still a huge house.

It makes perfect sense, though. We've had decades of increasing house sizes that, for the most part, followed an expanding economy. Now that the tables have turned, it seems more people are embracing this new frugality. Small is the new black. Cash is the new king. And bling is about as socially acceptable as driving a Hummer.

I suspect that house sizes will continue to shrink until we get back to equilibrium between how much house we need and how much house we have.

The new status symbol is a free life, not a McMansion. This can only be a good thing.

Spare Change

It's trite, but true: the only constant is change.

Or lack thereof.

Take parking meters, for instance. As NPR reported yesterday, drivers in Washington, D.C. will soon be able to pay for their parking without having to hunt for quarters or break a dollar. The district's pilot program, which allows customers to pay for their parking meters with their cell phones, will be rolled out city-wide by October. The reasoning: most people have their cell phones with them, but not a roll of quarters.

It certainly makes sense. A lot of cities have already rolled out such programs; some even allow parking to be paid with their credit card. It looks like Cool Hand Luke will have to find something else to do.

As the world changes from the analog to the digital, the "paperless economy" will become more and more prevalent.

DotLoop, of course, understands this; indeed, we are on the leading-edge of creating seamless, efficient, and paperless real estate transactions.

Change is inevitable.

Change is good.

Even if it isn't needed to park.

Pony 'Express'

So, what do you do when your client is in another time zone?

If you're like Bill Michul, you'd utilize DotLoop to get the job done. Yesterday, first-time DotLoop user Bill Michul sold a horse farm in Lexington, Kentucky without the need to track down his client for their signature.

Which is good, because his client is in the Mediterranean.

As Bill explained,"Here in Lexington, we have a lot of farm owners who live out of town, or even out of country. Using DotLoop to get the offer completed was great. I'll be using it all the time."

Using his horse sense, Bill simply sent the client the offer in one click.

"It was returned back to me in no time. I couldn't believe how easy and quick it was."

So, next time you need to get a deal done across town, across the state, or even across the pond, you don't don't have to hold your horses. With DotLoop, your documents can be sent and signed in no time, without horsing around with faxes or overnight mail.

Energy Irony: It's a Gas!

Here's what I find odd: The picture to the left was taken in the 1970s. I'm not a car buff, so it's hard to say which oil crisis this picture is from - the one in 1973 or the one in 1979.

Either way, somehow, us crazy Americans turned the two energy crises in the 1970s into the suburb and exurb crazes of the 1980s and beyond.

How did this turn into this?

It's been nearly forty years since Americans had to wait in long, winding lines to fill up their cars and it's been more than forty days since the Gulf of Mexico has been free of oil.

Of course, the current oil spill and real estate are closely linked; and not just because beachfront properties are now being affected. Every exurb and suburb that has been created since the 1950s is linked to this spill. The more we built out and created cookie-cutter neighborhoods that required more and more roads and cars, the more oil we needed to drill for. Every time a local community dismantled a streetcar or took away bus routes, we needed to drill a bit deeper to keep pace with our "lifestyles".

Luckily, more and more people are seeing the benefits of creating mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods designed for humans and not cars. Neighborhoods where people not only live, but work and shop as well. Only time will tell if we can find newer energy resources.

Ironically enough, this oil spill may just be the emergency we need to finally ween ourselves off of oil.

The Cache in the Rye

This week, DotLoop will be headed to the 2010 RISMedia Real Estate Leadership Conference. This year's conference will be a summit on real estate social media and mobile strategies for agents and brokers alike.

If you are in Rye, New York between June 9-10, please join us at Booth 133 to see the future of real estate transactions for yourself. We look forward to seeing you there!

Pulp (Non) Fiction

Here at DotLoop, we talk an awful lot about creating a paperless solution for the real estate industry.

But why?

For anyone who's involved in real estate transactions, that answer is all too obvious. The average real estate negotiation uses 100 sheets of paper. And that's when things go smoothly (ie, no short sales or HUD purchases).

Okay...so what?

I used to ask so what as well; after all, paper is from trees, which, last I checked, tend to grow back. Isn't paper a renewable resource?

Yes and no. True, paper is made from tree pulp, but it's more than just minced bark. In her new book The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard uses a whole section to discuss paper (don't worry; she also discusses the irony of writing a book that talks about how environmentally damaging paper is - the book uses unbleached, recycled paper and soy ink).

Here are some facts:

• The US consumes some 80 million tons of paper each year.
• For every ton of virgin office or copier paper, two to three tons of trees are cut down.
• The typical office worker uses some ten thousand sheets of paper every year.
• Almost three-quarters (71%) of all paper comes from forests, not tree-farms or recycled pulp.
• Almost 40% of all municipal trash in the US is paper.

As you can see, there's more than meets the eye when it comes to paper. This list is just the tip of the iceberg, too, and does not account for the bleaching, the chemicals, or the actual production of the paper (not to mention the shipping).

There's no papering-over the facts: using paper is environmentally (and economically) costly. Of course, creating online negotiations using DotLoop keeps the paper where it should be: in the trees.

Is a PC No Longer PC?

In California this week, the All Things Digital D8 Conference has been in full swing, with the red chairs on stage seating everyone from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to Avatar director James Cameron with their takes on the present and future of technology and digital media.

On Tuesday, Steve Jobs went so far as to say that the era of the PC is over and that new mobile devices are taking over, much like small cars took over trucks. "PCs are going to be like trucks," Jobs said. "They are still going to be around." The difference, he continued, is that only "one out of x people will need them."

As The Wall Street Journal reports today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer countered, saying yesterday that "I think people are going to be using PCs in greater and greater numbers for many years to come."

Of course, in an era where cell phones have more computing power than the most advanced computer from a decade ago, who's to say what a personal computer is and isn't? It may not be PC to call your cell phone a PC, but isn't that what it is - just a smaller personal computer?

Who knows - maybe ten years from now, the implanted microchips in our skulls will be considered "personal" computers, too.

How Sweet The Sound

Here's where I get confused: the banks were given taxpayer money to buoy the hardships of September 2008, but none of that grace has trickled back down to the average citizen. Most banks have paid back their TARP loans and they're back to doing what they do best: earning money.

But not lending money. Weird, huh?

As is probably evident on your street, foreclosures are up; in fact, the first three months of this year we had a record number foreclosed homes.

Yesterday, the government announced yet another program to help mend the busted housing bubble: the Making Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program. Really? We need yet another program to implement common sense?

Color me confused, but this all seems silly. Banks are repossessing homes that they don’t want (because they can’t resell them) and people are being forced out of the homes that they do want. In the midst of all of this, neighborhoods are becoming scarred with abandoned homes full of busted plumbing, over-grown lawns, and prime-for-the taking copper wiring. This is bringing down the value of homes whose owners have only done the right thing, and it’s causing everyone to financially freak out.

Is it me, or is this a bit backwards?

How about we institute a Making Banks Reciprocate the Grace They Were Given Back in 2008 to Underwater Homeowners (MBRG) program? Here’s how this common sense program would work: banks would go through their backlogs of cruddy loans and restructure some of the payments. After all, I might not be able to pay you my $2100 a month mortgage, but I can afford to give you $1200 a month. Last time I checked, $1200 was more than $0.

It's a win-win: families get to stay in their homes and banks get to keep the checks.

Yup, this will take time and effort on the banks’ part. And, it may just cost them to only earn $14 billion this year and not the $14.2 billion they were expecting. In this economy, we all have to sacrifice a little.

What’s that, you say? It’s not their responsibility? You’re absolutely right - it’s not their responsibility to restructure payments anymore than it was the taxpayers’ responsibility to bail them out 18 months ago.

Grace is a two-way street.