How to Enter a Room and Network Like a Pro
*I came across a great article I’d like to share with everyone…*
So, we’re assuming you’re on time and you know why you’re there and you know exactly what you want from the people in the room and you’ve Googled them and found out where they went to school and that according to LinkedIn they made a couple of questionable professional moves in the early ’90s and at least two of them tweet. What we’re interested in is that pregnant series of moments that lasts for around a minute and is ostensibly about introductions and handshakes and the offering of beverages and, if you’re lucky, a Danish or something, but is really about the beginning of potentially important relationships.
The main problem with entering an unfamiliar meeting room is that it’s like leaving a bar when it’s still light outside. Things seem a little too bright, a little overwhelming, a little disconcerting. Yet no matter how thrown off you feel, the guiding principle is: It’s your room. For the next, oh, 30 seconds to a minute, you’re in charge. Even if it’s their room, you’re in charge. Even if your earnings are a 10th of the salary of that guy you’re about to shake hands with, you’re in charge. You’re not the only one determining the mood of the room, but you have to take responsibility for it.
Consider a lesson from the forest. “Pretend everyone’s a bear in the woods,” says Robbie Pickard, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based comedian who spends his career entering rooms full of people he needs to impress. “If you look scared, the bear is going to attack you.” Which we always thought involved yelling and waving your arms and stomping the earth and throwing a Coleman lantern. But what he’s saying is, offer no apologies or expressions of trepidation or false humility. Protect yourself with confidence. Confidence makes you look comfortable.
It should seem like there’s no other place in the world you’d rather be.
1. WHEN people introduce themselves, say their names back to them or take a mental note. But try to keep their names in your head. Saying a person’s name back to them 20 or 30 minutes after you’ve met them suggests graciousness and respect, and it will endear you to them.
2. DO NOT give out businesscards before the meeting begins. Because it makes you look like a blackjack dealer.
3. LOOK everyone in the eye for, like, a millisecond longer than is comfortable.
4. Don’t carry yourself in a way that could be described as “jaunty.”
5. IF there are fewer than six other people in the room, shake everyone’s hand. If there are six or more, shake approximately five hands, and then nod amiably to the rest. The shaking of hands can get out of hand.
6. At no time say, “Let’s do this!”
7. NO fist bumps.
8. DON’T talk about anything that isn’t pleasant, such as how much traffic you were just in or how hot it is or how you have a cold.
At this moment, more than any other moment in the meeting, you’re your own agent. You’re saying, “I’d like you to meet myself.” (Note: Do not under any circumstances actually say, “I’d like you to meet myself.”)
Bill Clinton is a useful example. The man knows how to enter a room. He might not know how to leave, but he knows how to enter. Two out of the two former press secretaries we called for help with this column (we figured they might know something about the subject of entering meetings, since they’ve seen people enter the most important rooms in the world) mentioned Clinton as the best room-enterer they’ve ever seen. Which is pretty easy to do when you’re the president of the United States, but still, there are lessons in his approach.
“When Bill Clinton entered a room, he owned the room from the second he walked in,” says Dee Dee Myers, Clinton’s first press secretary and now a managing director at The Glover Park Group, a D.C. communications firm. “Because he was curious, he wanted to talk to people and would totally engage them. And pretty soon all the energy in the room was running in one direction.”
Marlin Fitzwater, press secretary for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, says, “Bill Clinton was probably the best I’ve ever seen. He walked in and demanded the attention of everyone. The lessons of Clinton are: Don’t be aimless, don’t be casual, don’t be flippant. Let your audience know they’re important and that you’re there because you have a message to give them.”
So, it’s an act, yes. But it’s not entirely an act. The act is supported by an important psychological underpinning: actual curiosity. “You have to be curious,” says Thomas Huseby, managing partner at Seattle VC firm SeaPoint Ventures. “Most entrepreneurs are thinking about what they want to teach or what they want to convey, and everybody would much rather talk to someone who is curious. It’s amazing what that attitude does.”
That’s how to enter a room. With curiosity. But not necessarily about the business at hand. Meetings at Esquire often start off with questions about the view from our conference roomon the 21st floor of the Hearst Corporation tower in Midtown Manhattan. If the person we’re meeting with asks anything at all about the city, we take them over to the window and give them a quick tour: the Empire State Building, the exact location in the Hudson where Captain Sully landed the plane, that statue of Ronald McDonald that somehow ended up on the roof of a four-floor walk-up on Eighth Avenue, how New Jersey looks vaguely bucolic if you squint. It’s a rich, interesting conversation.
Who wouldn’t want to be in a room with you now? You’re amiable and confident and pleased with the way things are going. You’re ready to talk and to listen. You haven’t given them any reason why they couldn’t see themselves giving you a lot of money or offering you a contract or partnering with you in some way. You’re someone they could see themselves doing business with, is what we’re trying to say.
All that, and you haven’t even sat down yet.
Have a question for the Esquire Guy about how to comport yourself at work, on the road or maybe in a bar? (or even at work in a bar on the road?). Ask it atAskesquire@entrepreneur.com.
Housing Reality TV Refocuses on Foreclosure Makeovers
House-flipping reality TV shows that took advantage of a booming housing market soared in popularity a few years ago. But now these shows are getting a new dose of reality by taking on foreclosures.
Foreclosures, which have skyrocketed across the country, will become the new focus on many real estate reality TV shows slated for later this summer and fall, airing on several TV networks.
Here’s a rundown of some of the shows:
“Flip Men”: Spike TV will premier a show in September about two hosts in Salt Lake City who attend auctions for foreclosed homes and try to make money in the foreclosure market.
A&E Television Network: The network plans to have a new show about flipping homes, some of which are in foreclosure, in the Houston area.
DIY Network: The network has a show in development about flipping foreclosed houses that is slated for 2012.
“Flipping Out:” The Bravo show, which is in its fifth season, will start tackling more foreclosure topics with host Jeff Lewis, a house flipper turned designer, working with lenders to try to buy a foreclosed home.
Lewis says he expects “more and more” reality shows to debut about foreclosed homes. “People want to watch programs that reflect the current reality, not a fantasy,” Lewis told The Wall Street Journal.
Source: “TV Home Shows Flip Scripts,” The Wall Street Journal (July 25, 2011)
Read more: A Foreclosure Gets a Dramatic Makeover
Short sale fraud plagues the housing market
By Les Christie July 14, 2011: 4:26 PM ET
Later that same day, the new owner — an investment group owned by another real estate agent — resold the home to a buyer who had been lined up before the short sale transaction went through. The final sale price: $132,500, netting the seller a cool $30,000 — a profit that should have gone to Regions.
In this latest twist on short sale fraud, scammers have found a way to rip off mortgage lenders by tens of thousands of dollars — sometimes in a matter of hours.
The scam artists, usually real estate agents, will secure a legitimate bid on a home, one where the borrower owes far more on the mortgage than the home is worth. Then they arrange for an accomplice investor to make a lower offer on the home.
Foreclosures for sale: Big supply, low prices
The agent then presents the lower bid to the lender and asks them to forgive any remaining balance owed — without disclosing that there was a higher bid made on the home. Once the short sale is approved, the scammer then sells the home to the higher bidder, often on the same day.
“These same-day resales are on average nearly $50,000 greater than the lender agreed upon short-sale price,” said Tim Grace, senior vice president of product management and analytics at CoreLogic (CLGX), a financial analytics company based in Santa Ana, Calif.
Such transactions are expected to cost lenders more than $375 million this year, up more than 20% from last year, according to CoreLogic
Most of the time, pulling off one of these scams involves a real estate agent and an investor acting as a “straw buyer.” Sometimes, the owner of the home is involved as well, but not often, said Robert Hagberg, an investigator for the mortgage giant Freddie Mac (FMCC, Fortune 500).
“In most instances, the sellers are apathetic; they’ve, basically, already lost their homes,” he said. With nothing to gain or lose, they allow agents to handle the entire deal.
To get the banks to approve low bids, appraisals or broker price opinions are manipulated. Home prices have plummeted in many housing markets and the house may be worth far less than what the seller paid.
Sometimes, said Hagberg, fraudsters bribe appraisers or brokers to get the prices they want but they can employ sneakier methods as well. One method: Misstating the home’s location so it’s compared with much cheaper places.
One case in California last year involved an expensive Malibu property that the agent said was in Riverside, Calif.
“It didn’t cause any alarm bells to go off at the bank,” said Grace. “The short sale went through at $200,000, which was a fifth of its value. It was turned around for $1 million.”
Sometimes an agent will point out every defect in the home to get appraisers to reduce their values, according to Hagberg. In Wisconsin, an agent left the windows open during spring rains and flooded the basement. He told the appraiser the plumbing burst and would need expensive repairs. All it really needed was a pump.
“When the flippers say there’s something wrong with the electricity, the plumbing or the roof, the appraiser can’t tell whether they’re being deceived or not,” said Hagberg.
Five years ago, when the housing market was thriving, lenders rarely heard of a short sale fraud. But as the housing market crumbled and beleaguered homeowners increasingly turned to short sales to get out of their underwater mortgages, the frauds increased as well.
Now, 13% of all existing homes sales are short sales, according to the National Association of Realtors. And last year, frauds associated with short sales comprised half of all fraud investigations for mortgage companies like Freddie Mac (FMCC, Fortune 500), according to Hagberg.
The impact of short sale fraud goes well beyond the direct losses to banks. These frauds have become so common, it has become more difficult for legitimate short-sale transactions to go through.
That hurts sellers because it forces more of them into foreclosure. It hurts banks by adding to their costs and it can make all the parties more cautious.
The frauds “defeat why we do short sales in the first place,” said Hagberg.
In the Bridgeport, Conn. scam, two real estate agents were arrested. It was just one of four similar frauds that were listed in their indictment, which netted them a total of more than $180,000. They pled guilty and are awaiting sentence.
They may be out of business but with home prices off about a third from their peak nationwide and down 50% or more in many post-bubble communities, there are opportunities for other short-sale fraud artists to take their place. 
1 Million Foreclosures Delayed Until 2012
|
Daily Real Estate News | July 14, 2011 |
 Share1 Million Foreclosures Delayed Until 2012 While the delays could give home owners more time to catch up on their payments and try to avoid foreclosure, housing experts warn this means the looming shadow inventory of distressed properties likely will continue to plague the real estate market even longer. “The best-case scenario is we don’t get back to normal levels of foreclosure activity until 2015, which means the housing market recovery gets delayed by at least a year,” says Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac. Foreclosure Notices Drop, Threat Still Looms About 1.2 million homes received a foreclosure-related notice in the first six months of this year — in other words, one in every 111 U.S. households, RealtyTrac reports. Nevada continues to face the most foreclosures; one in every 21 households in that state received a foreclosure notice in the first half of the year. The foreclosure process continues to lengthen too. From April and June, homes took 318 days on average to go from the first stage of foreclosure to ultimately where it was repossessed by the lender— that’s up from 298 days in the first three months of the year. (In New York, the foreclosure process took the longest at an average of 966 days or 2.6 years; Texas boasted the shortest at 92 days.) Source: “Delays in Bank Processing Push Likely U.S. Foreclosures Until 2012, Stalling Recovery,”Associated Press (July 14, 2011) |
Obama Announces More Aid for the Unemployed
|
Daily Real Estate News | July 7, 2011 |
ShareObama Announces More Aid for the Unemployed For unemployed home owners with a Federal Housing Administration loan, the forbearance period will be extended from four months to 12 months. The Obama administration also said it will remove hurdles to make it easier for unemployed borrowers to qualify for FHA’s Special Forbearance Program. “The current unemployment forbearance programs have mandatory periods that are inadequate for the majority of unemployed borrowers,” U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said in a statement. “Today, 60 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more than three months and 45 percent have been out of work for more than six. Providing the option for a year of forbearance will give struggling home owners a substantially greater chance of finding employment before they lose their home.” The administration also announced that it will extend the minimum forbearance period in the Making Home Affordable Program from three months to 12 months for eligible unemployed home owners, when possible under regulator and investor guidelines. Forbearance will also be available to borrowers who are seriously delinquent. All FHA-approved mortgage servicers are required to participate in FHA’s Loss Mitigation Program, which includes the Special Forbearance program. Obama: More Needs to be Done to Handle Housing Crisis The announcement of more aid for unemployed home owners comes shortly after a Twitter town hall meeting Wednesday where President Obama said one of his administration’s biggest mistakes in its handling of the economy has been its response to the housing crisis and “not doing enough” to help home owners. “The continuing decline in the housing market is something that hasn’t bottomed out as quickly as we expected, and so that’s continued to be a big drag on the economy,” Obama said during the town hall forum. “We’ve had to revamp our housing program several times to try to help people stay in their homes and try to start lifting home values up.” Source: “Obama Administration Offers Additional Mortgage Relief to Unemployed Home Owners,” HUD (July 7, 2011) and “At Twitter Town Hall, Obama Concedes ‘Not Enough’ Done to Address Housing Crisis,” Washington Post (July 7, 2011) and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (July 7. 2011) |
Big Banks Easing Terms on Loans Deemed as Risks
By DAVID STREITFELD
Published: July 2, 201
As millions of Americans struggle in foreclosure with little hope of relief, big banks are going to borrowers who are not even in default and cutting their debt or easing the mortgage terms, sometimes with no questions asked.
John Van Beekum for The New York Times
Last year, JPMorgan Chase cut in half what Rula Giosmas owed on her condominium in Miami.
Two of the nation’s biggest lenders,JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, are quietly modifying loansfor tens of thousands of borrowers who have not asked for help but whom the banks deem to be at special risk.
Rula Giosmas is one of the beneficiaries. Last year she received a letter from Chase saying it was cutting in half the amount she owed on her condominium.
Ms. Giosmas, who lives in Miami, was not in default on her $300,000 loan. She did not understand why she would receive this gift — although she wasted no time in taking it.
Banks are proactively overhauling loans for borrowers like Ms. Giosmas who have so-called pay option adjustable rate mortgages, which were popular in the wild late stages of the housing boom but which banks now view as potentially troublesome.
Before Chase shaved $150,000 off her mortgage, Ms. Giosmas owed much more on her place than it was worth. It was a fate she shared with a quarter of all homeowners with mortgages across the nation. Being underwater, as it is called, can prevent these owners from moving and taking new jobs, and places the households at greater risk of foreclosure.
“It’s a huge problem,” said the economist Sam Khater. “Reducing negative equity would spark a housing recovery.”
While many homeowners desperately need help to keep their homes and cannot get it, the borrowers getting unsolicited relief from Chase sometimes suspect a trick. Cutting loan balances, even for loans in default, is supposedly so rare that Federal Reserve economistswrote in a paper in March that “we could find no evidence that any lender was actually reducing principal” on mortgages.
“I used to say every day, ‘Why doesn’t anyone get rewarded for doing the right thing and paying their bills on time?’ ” said Ms. Giosmas, who is an acupuncturist and real estate investor. “And I got rewarded.”
Option ARM loans like Ms. Giosmas’s gave borrowers the option of skipping the principal payment and some of the interest payment for an introductory period of several years. The unpaid balances would be added to the body of the loan.
Bank of America and Chase inherited their portfolios of option ARMs when they bought troubled lenders during the housing crash.
Chase, which declined to comment on its program, got $50 billion in option ARM loans when it bought Washington Mutual in 2008. The lender, which said last fall that it had dealt with 22,000 option ARM loans with an unpaid principal balance of $8 billion, still has $33 billion of them in its portfolio.
Bank of America acquired a portfolio of 550,000 option ARMs from its purchase of Countrywide Financial in 2008. The lender said more than 200,000 had been converted to more stable mortgages.
Dan B. Frahm, a spokesman for Bank of America, said it was using every technique short of principal reduction to remake its loans, including waiving prepayment penalties, refinancing, lowering the interest rate, postponing some of the balance and extending the term.
“By proactively contacting pay option ARM customers and discussing other products with better options for long-term, affordable payments, we hope to prevent customers from reaching a point where they struggle to make their payments,” Mr. Frahm said.
Chase, Bank of America and the other big lenders are negotiating with the Obama administration and the nation’s attorneys general over foreclosures. Debt forgiveness and the moral hazard question of who deserves to be helped are among the most contentious issues.
The banks say cutting mortgage balances would be unfair to borrowers who remain current as well as impractical because so many loans are securitized into pools owned by investors. Bank of America’s chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, told the attorneys general in April that cutting principal for current borrowers would send the wrong message to all those who have struggled to pay their bills. His counterpart at Chase, Jamie Dimon, bluntly said it was “off the table.”
Having an option ARM loan, however, apparently qualifies the borrower for special help. The loans, with their low initial payments and “teaser” interest rates, were immediately popular with buyers who could not afford or did not want to pay the soaring prices on houses. The problem was, eventually the rate would reset or the loan balance would have to be paid in full. “Nightmare Mortgages” they were called in a 2006 BusinessWeek cover piece.
Option ARMs were never quite as bad as predicted, partly because the crisis pushed down interest rates so far that the resets were relatively mild. Many owners did default on them, but others, like Ms. Giosmas, were quite happy to pay less for years than they would have under a conventional loan. She used option ARMs on her investment properties too.
“They saved me,” she said. “Why would I want to pay a lot more every month? I’d rather have it in my pocket.”
The concern the banks are showing for those who might get in trouble contrasts sharply with their efforts toward those already foreclosed. Bank of America and Chase were penalized last month by regulators for doing a poor job modifying mortgages in default.
Adam J. Levitin, a Georgetown University law professor, said these little-publicized programs were more evidence that the banks were behaving in contradictory and often maddening ways.
“Loan modifications that should be happening aren’t, while loan modifications that shouldn’t be happening are,” he said. “Homeowners of any sort, whether current or in default, would rightly be confused and angry by this.”
The homeowners getting new loans, however, are quite pleased. In effect, the banks are paying the debt these owners accrued as the housing market plunged.
Ms. Giosmas bought her two-bedroom, two-bath apartment north of downtown Miami for $359,000 in early 2006, according to real estate records. She made a large down payment, but because each month she paid less than was necessary to pay off the loan, her debt swelled to about $300,000.
Meanwhile, the value of the apartment nosedived. By the time Ms. Giosmas got the letter from Chase, the condominium was worth less than half what she paid. “I would not have defaulted,” she said. “But they don’t know that.”
The letter, which Ms. Giosmas remembers as brief and “totally vague,” said Chase was cutting her principal by $150,000 while raising her interest rate to about 5 percent. Her payments would stay roughly the same.
A few months ago, Ms. Giosmas sold the place for $170,000, making a small profit. Having a loan that her lender considered toxic, she said, “turned out to be a blessing in disguise.”
A version of this article appeared in print on July 3, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Big Banks Easing Terms on Loans Deemed as Risks
Alternative financing for second homes
Buyers find relief in tax-deferred exchange, IRA
By Tom Kelly
Inman News™
Many second-home owners — especially those in the full-time vacation rental business — are looking to purchase another property but are facing stringent financing guidelines. The same challenges, even with historically low interest rates, are plaguing first-time investors seeking to get started.
HomeAway, the online vacation rentals company, recently hosted a second-home owners’ summit featuring sessions on marketing, scheduling, screening and property management, also offered sessions on alternative financing. The company is an online vacation rental site that hosts an inventory of about 520,000 vacation rentals in 120 countries.
Christine Karpinski, the author of “How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner and Profit From Your Vacation Home Dream,” hosted several sessions and offered financing observations:
- Yes, it’s cheaper to borrow … but it’s also much tougher. The easy-money days are over. In fact, you probably already know that loans are not easy to get in the post-housing-crisis economy. If you plan to take out a mortgage on that vacation home you want, be prepared to put more money down — 20-30 percent is the going rate for investment properties.
- Homeowners associations and building associations are under the microscope. Lenders are scrutinizing these associations more closely than ever. When members were unable to pay their monthly dues during the throes of the housing crisis, many homeowners associations went in the red. Lenders are conscious of these problems and don’t want to lend money for a building or property where there is no money to take care of it.
- Expect appraisers to be more stringent than they once were. This is actually a bittersweet thing for the buyer because it means the appraisal amount will be more accurate (i.e., not inflated) than it might have been years ago.
Conference attendees were encouraged to consider alternative methods for financing, including reverse mortgages, individual retirement accounts, tax-deferred exchanges from commercial properties, and seller financing.
A reverse mortgage historically has enabled senior homeowners to convert part of the equity in their homes into tax-free funds without having to sell the home, give up title, or take on a new monthly mortgage payment. However, funds may be used for any reason.
Reverse mortgages are available to individuals 62 or older who own their home. The maximum amount of funds received is based on age, current interest rates and a current home appraisal. Funds obtained from the reverse mortgage are considered tax-free.
The rules for purchasing real estate with an individual retirement account (IRA) are specific and differ greatly from those that govern conventional rentals and second homes. For example, you cannot buy a second home with an IRA and use it partly for personal use, even though you might rent it to unrelated persons the rest of the year.
And an IRA cannot purchase a real estate asset and then have a “disqualified” person (family member) use it while it is in the IRA. The purchase must be for an investment property and no personal use — until retirement. Then, the individual can move in to the property and pay tax as if taking a disbursement from a conventional account.
A tax-deferred exchange (commonly known as IRS Section 1031 Exchange) is really an arm’s-length sale and purchase. The transaction proceeds just as a sale for you, your real estate agent and parties associated with the deal. However, provided you closely follow the exchange rules, the IRS will “sanction” the transaction and allow you to characterize it as an exchange rather than as a sale. Thus, you are permitted to defer paying the capital gains tax.
An exchange occurs when you trade real property that is other than your home or second residence for other “like kind” real property that you have held for trade, business or investment purposes. The like-kind definition is very broad. You can dispose of and acquire any interest in real property other than a home or a second residence. For example, you can trade raw land for income property, a rental house for a multiplex, or a rental house for a retail property.
Tom Kelly’s book “Cashing In on a Second Home in Central America: How to Buy, Rent and Profit in the World’s Bargain Zone” was written with Mitch Creekmore, senior vice president of Stewart International, and Jeff Hornberger, the National Association of REALTORS®’ international market development manager. The book is available in retail stores, on Amazon.com and on tomkelly.com.
| Contact Tom Kelly: | |||
 Email |
 Letter to the Editor |
||
