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April 28th, 2008
The first time I received a LinkedIn invitation, I felt a little honored.
Then I received a couple more, then a few more and a few more.
I’ve ended up ignoring most generally out of laziness not because I didn’t want to accept. I did accept several.
Then I got an invitation from someone I really didn’t want to be LinkedIn with. That got me wondering ‘what is proper LinkedIn etiquette?’
I called Rebecca Kopf of PR Etc. for her opinion. Afterall, public relations professionals are the ultimate networkers.
Kopf said she generally accepts all invitations from professionals she knows. After all, it gives her access to an ever expanding network of people to contact and work with.
Lately, she said she’s been receiving more invitations from people she doesn’t know. That’s a bit trickier.
“If I accept, I’m giving them access to everyone in my network and you have to be very careful with that,” Kopf said.
Kopf did not have an opinion about accepting an invitation from someone you know but don’t really want to Link with because that just hasn’t happened to her.
So really I didn’t find an answer to my original question until I started thinking more about what we do at the newspaper. We make lots and lots of calls to people who have (a) never heard of us or (b) don’t really want to talk to us. We expect them to talk or call us back because we are journalists.
Well, if I’m going to expect that of others, then I at least can take the time to LinkIn. So go ahead and send me your invitations. I’m sorry if I missed it before.
March 18th, 2008
In February, Melissa Westphal reported that Heartland Community Church was buying back its old location at 601 N. Perryville Road because its new home, the old Colonial Village Mall, couldn’t accomodate its rapidly growing membership.
Heartland sold the Perryville Road building to the area’s largest car dealer, Anderson Automotive Group of Rockford, last year for $4.1 million. Anderson officials said the building was not for an auto dealership, but more of an investment property.
When contacted, Mark Bankord, the church’s directional leader, would not disclose the purchase price but called it a “fair deal.”
Few deals stay secret forever, though, and according to the Winnebago County Recorder’s Office, which recorded the sale Feb. 28, Heartland paid $5 million to get the property back. For Anderson Automotive it was a very fair deal. A $900,000 profit in less than a year is good in any business.
March 18th, 2008
In 2007, for the first time ever, more shopping was done outside of the city of Rockford in the Rock River Valley.
The Illinois Department of Revenue released its year-end statistics this week and it showed a tough year for Rockford retailers. The amount of retail sales tax revenue being returned to the city was $24.7 million, down 1.9 percent from 2006.
In contrast, the amount of retail sales going to regional municipalities increased from $24.4 million in 2006 to $25 million in 2007.
Of course, this was inevitable. Cities such as Belvidere, Poplar Grove and Roscoe are among the fastest growing in northern Illinois and retailers are building where the people are going. Illinois 173 is among the fastest growing retail corridors in the state and 2007 saw the opening of a lifestyle center at CherryVale Mall.
March 3rd, 2008
Working on some banking data Sunday night and I noticed something I failed to report in 2007 — the amount of money deposited at area banks declined last year.
It wasn’t a huge drop, falling from $7.98 billion as of June 30, 2006, to $7.8 billion on June 30, 2007. Still, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. it was the first time since 1996 that the amount of money deposited in Boone, Ogle, Stephenson and Winnebago county banks declined from the year before.
What does this mean? I’m not entirely sure, but if you look at bank deposits for the decade, it appears as if a lot of people benefitted from the high flying housing market of 2003 through 2006.
In 2002, there was $6.24 billion sitting in local banks. That amount increased by 9.7 percent in 2003, 1.5 percent in 2004, 6.8 percent in 2005 and then 7.6 percent in 2006. A lot of families were able to sock some money away and it appears as if they had to give some of it back in 2007. Still, in an economy where consumer debt and family expenses continue to rise faster than wages, any give back is painful.
Rhonda Torossian
Remember her? She was the Rockford loan officer sentenced to federal prison for her part in a five-person mortgage scam ring from 2001 to 2003. The group admitted to falsifying Social Security numbers and creating fraudulent employment verifications, bank checks and credit letters so families could receive mortgage loans insured by the Federal Housing Authority.
Torossian was sentenced in late December to 20 months in federal prison and fined nearly $500,000 for her role. A Realtor in the scheme also received a 20-month sentence while three accomplices received probation and were ordered to pay restitution.
I was going through some public records tonight and she popped up twice.
* In January, the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation yanked her loan origination license for “not informing the Department of a financially related conviction.”
* And in February, Torossian filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, meaning the taxpayers who footed the bill for the more than 20 foreclosures out of 32 FHA loans Torossian fraudently secured are unlikely to get any of it back.
February 28th, 2008
When the Rockford Area Association of Realtors releases its monthly home sales statistics, the Register Star as long as I’ve been here focuses first on the number of homes sold and then second on the average price.
Dr. Lawerence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, was at Cliffbreakers last week to speak at a Rockford Chamber of Commerce event. Afterward, I asked him how we should measure the housing market.
He said we’ve been doing it backwards. He said the most residents don’t care how many houses sold, they only care about the prices because they want to know what to expect if and when they put their home on the market.
Yun said, and it makes sense, that the only people that care how many homes are selling are the ones whose livelihood depend on the transactions.
That is a wider group than you would think.
* Certainly, it includes area Realtors and employees of title companies.
* It also includes home builders and the workers who build them.
* It even includes people who work at building and supply retail stores and furniture stores because most homeowners spend the majority of the money right after they buy their house and right before they put it on the market.
Still, from now on I’ll follow Yun’s advice and focus first on the average price and then second on the number of houses changing hands.
February 5th, 2008
High-flying Internet retail information firm FatWallet.com’s move from Machesney Park to Rockton opened up the building on Illinois 251 in front of the nearly vacant Machesney Park Mall for a different kind of computer company.
Mike Broski, President of Entre Computer Solutions, notified customers by email that Entre is moving from its East State Street building just off the Alpine Road intersection into the former FatWallet location. The move should be completed by Feb. 28.
“This space features many amenities not found in our current location,” Broski said in the email. “We will have state of the art training facilities as well as the most modern of inventory control areas.”
Entre Computer Solutions sells and services computer software and systems as well as training. The company won the Rockford Chamber of Commerce Small Business Award in 1998.
February 5th, 2008
RE/MAX Accord, one of two RE/MAX real estate franchises in Rockford moved into a larger office at 7062 Walston St. at the beginning of the year.
RE/MAX Accord’s new space has 12 private suites for agents who want to base their offices there. The company now has four agents.
The Rockford location is the second office for RE/MAX Accord, which also has an office Bloomingdale, a western Chicago suburb.Franchise owners, Debbie Maxvold and Terry White, expanded into Rockford because it is the marketer of homes built by Hallmark Homes, a Rocfkord-based builder with active subdivisions in Loves Park, Rockford and Roscoe.
RE/MAX Property Source is the larger of the two Rockford RE/MAX franchises with 33 agents, according to the Rockford Area Association of Realtors. All together, the 10 RE/MAX franchises in the Rock River Valley have 94 agents.
January 31st, 2008
High-flying Internet retail information company FatWallet.com’s move from Machesney Park to Rockton opened up a location on Illinois 251 in front of the nearly vacant Machesney Park Mall for a different type of computer firm.
Entre Computer Solutions is moving from its 4501 E. State St. location into the 8900 N. Second St. building.
Mike Broski, owner of Entre, notified customers of the move in an email. The company is a former Rockford Chamber of Commerce Small Business Award winner. It sells and provides training for computer hardware and software.
“This space features many amenities not found in our current location,” Broski wrote in the email. “We will have state of the art training facilities as well as the most modern of inventory control areas. Also, we will have a spacious Lunch N’ Learn area for the many informational seminars that we hold.”
January 24th, 2008
The Rockford Area Association of Realtors released its annual mountain of statistics on real estate in the Rock River Valley.
There are oodles of numbers to look at and it gives me some easy things to put on here. The one that jumped out at me the most was how few homes sold — percentage wise.
In 2007, out of the 10,140 houses and condominiums put on the market just 39.6 sold and 2.8 percent were pending sales when the clock struck midnight on New Years. The combined total of 42.5 percent homes and condos either selling or having pending sales was almost 10 percentage points worse than the previous low over the past 10 years.
In 1998, real estate agents sold 47 percent and had 5 percent pending sales on the 7,610 residential properties put on the market. In 2003 the market was at its most efficient with 57 percent of 8,540 residential properties selling by the end of the year and another 7 percent were pending sales.
Of course, another striking number to look at is how many more homes and condos are going up for sale. In 2007, 33 percent more properties went on the market than back in 1998. The population of the area as a whole only has increased about 10 percent in that same time. That’s not enough buyers. A bubble was ready to burst and it happened in 2007.
January 18th, 2008
You can write about things but it’s way more instructive to actually go through things.
I finally had my challenge to my 2007 tax assessment by the Winnebago County Board of Review.
The Rockford Township Assessor’s office wanted to raise the fair market value of our home in Loves Park from about $116,500 to more than $130,000.
I challenged the assessment, pointing out since the beginning of 2005 only two homes in my neighborhood — not on the riverfront — had sold for more than $112,500 and none for as high as $130,000.
I was shocked when my challenge was denied. So I decided to take it directly to the board of review. My contention there was going to be my house had been raised from $102,500 to $116,500 in 2006 and to raise it again in 2007 — a year sale price increases were flat across the county and down in several parts — was excessive. I was seeking to raise it to $124,000.
Well, the first thing I learned is that the county was considering sales from 2004 through 2006. They were going back farther than I looked and not considering anything from 2007 because they are assessing your house’s value on Jan. 1, 2007. That threw me.
When I had my hearing I was encouraged to come to the final review to see how they make decisions. So I showed up and didn’t learn much since they denied my arguments almost without comment. So that was a loss.
At the same time, though, they did take up my application for a reassessment because of last year’s August flood. That also was granted rather quickly. So in 2008, I’ll be paying taxes on a discounted fair market value of about $108,000. The lower value takes into account we couldn’t use half of our house for five months.
Now, it may have been a waste of time if not for one little nugget. They strenuously argued a case where a house originally was assessed with a fair market value of $400,000. After being challenged, it was dropped to $339,000. The home owner took his case to the board of review because he wanted it lowered to $300,000 and he had paid an assessor to value his house and the private assessment valued the house at $300,000.
One of the members of the board of review argued that the house already had been lowered and didn’t want to lower it further. In the end, though, they dropped it to $300,000 because if the homeowner challenged the assessment to the state the county was unlikely to win because an independent assessment, as long as it’s a reputable assessor, carries tremendous weight.
That’s good news for me in 2009. We refinanced our house in December and had to have the house assessed. The assessment came in at $128,000. So when my notice comes around in late 2008 for what my assessment will be in 2009, I’ll be challenging to have it lowered to $128,000.
So this story is to be continued.
Follow up note. I’m still looking for feedback on real estate. If anyone — who does not work at the Register Star — reads this and emails me, I’ll take you out to eat on me at one of our fine downtown restaurants.
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