Over the last 5 years, we have seen our economy on a great roller coaster ride from great highs to a new low and a recession. No part of the economy has been immune to the effect. The financial community has seen its share of the troubles from: the collapse of several large investment banks & community banks, the evaporation of the Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBS) market and increased regulation of the banking system.
The combination of these factors has lead to a shortage of capital to finance new and existing projects. Clifton E. Rodgers, Senior Vice President of Real Estate Roundtable in Washington, D.C. recently stated that borrowing has dropped during 2009 to levels not seen since 1952 and commercial real estate values dropped in the United States from $6.7 trillion in June to $4.7 trillion in November.
With many of the challenges behind us many people have been asking; how do I acquire financing for my project? What are the banks looking for? What are the secrets to acquiring a loan?
The answer to all these questions is very simple: back to the basics and plenty of information.
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If you have recently upgraded to Windows 7, you are probably a little overwhelmed with all the new options. For “power users” of Windows XP it can be a little frustrating, since most of the older settings are no longer where they used to be.
“GodMode” to the rescue!
There is a hidden feature in Windows 7 called “GodMode”. It displays almost all user-adjustable settings and control panels in one place. But you won’t find it on any of your menus. Here’s how to activate it:
- Create a new folder on your C: drive
- Rename the folder to: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
- The new folder will now rename itself “GodMode” and the icon will resemble a control panel. Double-click the folder, and you have access to over 250 settings and options all in one place – very cool!
If you’re like most commercial brokers, you are probably engaged in a constant battle to keep your e-mail in-box under control. Perhaps the source of your frustration is your corporate I.T. department and their frequent demands to trim your storage space usage.
There is a simple, free, and incredibly useful way to solve these issues, and it’s called MailStore.
MailStore enables you to back-up all your email messages from multiple applications and accounts into one secure and persistent archive, then you can delete them from your mail program. It works with Outlook, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey – even Gmail and Yahoo. It also backs up all your attachments, and you can restore any message back to your in-box with one click. Searching MailStore is much faster than searching Outlook, and it even allows you to burn archive CD-ROMs and DVD disks. You will never lose important emails again!
MailStore Home is free for personal use. They also have a server-based version that is designed to back up entire company mail systems starting at $299.
I’ve been depending on MailStore for about 2 years, and couldn’t imagine working without it. Now my e-mail box stays clean, and I know that I can instantly find anything I need, read it in MailStore, and restore it to my in-box immediately if necessary.
Welcome to the “new” incarnation of TheCommercialBroker!
For many years, TheCommercialBroker.com has been the most popular web site for commercial real estate technology information, reviews and tips. I had an epiphany recently, and decided to totally re-design the site. In the age of Twitter and Facebook, when people are accustomed to fast, succinct updates, I decided it would be more useful to turn this into a blog. The reasons are many, but mostly I think it is better to have more frequent timely updates rather than to focus on longer articles as we have in the past. I hope you will be happy with the results.
I will be posting some of our most popular legacy articles shortly, and then we will press on with new stuff.
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Over the last 5 years, we have seen our economy on a great roller coaster ride from great highs to a new low and a recession. No part of the economy has been immune to the effect. The financial community has seen its share of the troubles from: the collapse of several large investment banks & community banks, the evaporation of the Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBS) market and increased regulation of the banking system.
