Sketch has been a rising start as the go-to UI design application. I’ve used the app for a few years now, and I love it. Over the years, many...
The post 19 Great Sketch Plugins for Better Work Flow appeared first on Onextrapixel.
A new season and another chance for me to make some foolish predictions. Spring Training has worn out its welcome once again and we are ready for the 2017 edition of Major League Baseball. The Cubs were able to get the monkey off their backs last year and will now look to avoid another 108 year old championship drought. Do they make it a repeat or will a new team reign supreme? Let’s take a look at my thoughts for the new season.
AMERICAN LEAGUE
EAST
CENTRAL
WEST
NATIONAL LEAGUE
EAST
CENTRAL
WEST
*Denotes Wild Card teams
PLAYOFFS
Wild Card Games:
Seattle Mariners over Toronto Blue Jays
NY Mets over Colorado Rockies
Division Series:
Cleveland Indians over Seattle Mariners
Boston Red Sox over Houston Astros
Chicago Cubs over NY Mets
LA Dodgers over Washington Nationals
ALCS / NLCS:
Cleveland Indians over Boston Red Sox
LA Dodgers over Chicago Cubs
World Series:
LA Dodgers over Cleveland Indians
There you have it folks. No need to play the season. Corey Seager and Clayton Kershaw lead the Dodgers on a playoff run to break the hearts of Indians fans for the second year in a row. I think the Cubs have the better team right now but I think the Dodgers make the right trade or two during the season to put them over the top.
AL MVP
NL MVP
AL Cy Young
NL Cy Young
AL Rookie of the Year
NL Rookie of the Year
AL Bold Predictions
NL Bold Predictions
Ron Howard’s Hollywood career pretty much covers it all. You may know him from his early acting days - most notably his roles on “Happy Days” and “The Andy Griffith Show” - or his more recent success as an Oscar-winning director of popular films including “A Beautiful Mind” and “The Da Vinci Code.”
Howard is now debuting his Upper West Side apartment, listed at $12.5 million.
The 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath unit features private elevator access, heated floors and a natural wood-burning fireplace. The master bathroom sports stunning tilework - and even offers views of Central Park - from the bathtub.
Photos by Rob Lowell
What the kitchen lacks in city views, it makes up for in appliances with a 48-inch Viking stove, a wine fridge, two Sub-Zero refrigerators and two dishwashers. The former maid’s room off the kitchen has been converted into a laundry room and provides an additional peek onto the park.
The giant library/office boasts built-in wooden bookshelves, but we’re guessing the prominently featured Emmy doesn’t come with the sale.
The home is in the famed Eldorado building on Central Park West, which has housed other celebrities over the years, from Bruce Willis to Alec Baldwin. The art deco-style high-rise, built in 1930, has its own fitness center and mini basketball court, and it’s so close to the Central Park tennis courts that you can nearly lob a ball over the net from your front door.
The listing is held by Robin Kencel, Lyn Stevens and Ann Cutbille Lenane of Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
It’s about Revestor.
First, let’s get the obvious out of the way.
The headline is misleading; they are not exploiting a blindspot.
Revestor is a B2B play, targeted at real estate investors.
Zillow and AirBnB are consumer brands.
B2B and B2C are two very different beasts.
The reality is Zillow could literally wipe Revestor’s business out in one day (they have all the data & better algorithms), though I’m not sure why they’d want to. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Zillow Group make a play in the investing space down the line, serving real estate investors with a specialized offering will always be a small opportunity compared to the consumer opportunity they are chasing — serving as the defacto marketplace of services when buying, selling, or remodeling.
When evaluating businesses — I’m always curious about a businesses moat. What is defensible about this model? What couldn’t be cloned in a few weeks/months by someone with more money?
What do you see as the keys to establishing a competitive advantage in the changing real estate market?
Bill Lyons: The riches are in the niches. Everyone has their niche, and Revestor’s niche is that 25% of the business is investors. We make money by connecting realtors with investors. I have my eye on all the trends right now. I own three companies inside the real estate space, and I’m on the advisory board of a startup. Griffin Funding, a mortgage lender that operates in multiple states; Lyons Realty, a San Diego based boutique real estate firm; and Revestor, a digital platform that provides data to help find and evaluate investment properties. As an advisor, I’m working with a startup called Approved, which is a digital mortgage platform. I just acquired a new technology that we will use for all the companies in the portfolio. It is a total game-changer when it comes to providing hot leads to Realtors. It is the same technology that politicians used recently to win in their districts. We will soon be offering it up to all our realtor partners. They will be able to simply upload their list of physical addresses inside their ‘farm area ‘ and we will match it to the IP addresses in their farm. We then help them run ads on all the computers in their farm. The new product is called ‘Sniper Farming’ and we are super excited to begin offering it to our customers.
Investors buy and sell properties constantly. I’m not convinced there is much money to be made connecting investors with real estate agents — since most investors probably know no fewer than 10 agents.
As for the “sniper farming”, where are they eyeballs coming from? Targeting IP addresses can be done, sure, but is useless if you can’t attract the individual people who have those IP addresses. Doesn’t the concept seem a little creepy? Couldn’t Google do this more efficiently, given their massive massive reach?
Maybe I’m missing something here? What do you think of Revestor?
The post Revestor and Defensibility appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.
I listened to Greg’s recent podcast with Kevin Greene at CoreLogic about Trestle. Even after writing about it, I had a few questions about Trestle. Instead of wonder, I decided to reach out to Kevin and see if he’d be willing to answer a few questions.
He obliged. Without further ado…
How is interest in Trestle’s offering playing out between brokerages, technology providers, and multiple listing organizations?
Great! For each one it is solving different pain points. For a Broker it is being able to have easy access to multiple MLS they are a part of in one easy to use feed. For a Technology Provider it is the same as an Broker being able to get that aggregated feed, but also being able to manage the contracts and fees associated with the MLS and having visibility into the process. For an MLS it will help them be able to manage the workflow of data requests, easily help them with billing and contract management as well as delivering a RESO compliant feed all while using their own existing contracts or our default agreement.
What’s proving to be the driving adoption factor among clients who have come onboard?
The first phase we have focused on the MLS getting their data feeds enabled and initially it is to be able to provide a RESO compliant feed. However, the Technology Providers have been very excited about having access to a unified feed or one call for an API.
Please provide further details on your pricing model. For instance, how much would it cost a brokerage covering Washington, Oregon, and California? What about a technology provider covering all of Florida and Georgia?
Hard for me to answer without knowing how many MLS’s that Broker or MLS or Technology Provider are receiving data. But let’s use the example of a Broker is in CRMLS, they wouldn’t pay anything. If they joined Sandicor, they still wouldn’t pay anything. However, when they joined MLSListings (their 3rd data feed, they would begin paying $75 a data feed going forward). For a Technology Provider they would pay $75 per data feed. So for the above scenario they would pay $75 each for CRMLS, Sandicor and MLSListings for a total of $225.
It seems compliance/data abuse in the elephant in the room. Please make the case why you feel technology is really the problem. How will a unified feed ease the compliance/approval issues many brokers and technology vendors are facing today?
Moving to an API will help should help ease the process for approval for a Broker or TP. Trestle is designed to help streamline the process as well.
If a broker/vendor needs to cover one MLS that’s not in the system — it negates the entire purpose of not having to standardize feeds. How does Trestle approach a situation where you don’t cover an MLS a client needs?
Well we hope that Broker or Technology provider will let them know they would prefer a Trestle data feed!
What’s next for the Trestle platform?
This is only the beginning! We will soon be adding CoreLogic data products like off market property data, AVM’s, flood zones, school data and more! We will also be providing a syndication platform for MLS and Brokers to use. We are only just getting started.
The post Trestle – A Q&A with Kevin Greene appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.
Post by Growing The Home Garden - Vegetables, Herbs, and Plant Propagation Tips for Home Gardeners
This week I began testing a new (to me at least) gardening technique! Using black plastic tarps in the garden to kill off the weed growth underneath. The concept is simple and is something that I read about in The Market Gardener by Jean Martin Fortier (Amazon Aff. Link). I…
The post Black Plastic Tarps in the Garden appeared first on Growing The Home Garden.
The post Do Millennials Need Their Own Portal? appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.
This home’s story began with Philip Johnson, a famous architect who was known for his iconic glass houses and his work in modern and post-modern architecture.
In 1960, Johnson was commissioned to design one of his impressive glass houses in Dallas - the only one he ever built in the city.
The end result was 10210 Straight Ln, now on the market for $27.5 million. The 5-bed, 8-bath home, which has been remodeled twice, sits on a beautifully manicured seven-acre lot.
Photos by Charles Smith, AIA.
If the architecture looks unusual for a home, that’s because the structure wasn’t originally meant to be a residence.
“This home's design, with the arches, was actually intended for [New York City’s] Lincoln Center,” shares listing agent Faisal Halum of Briggs Freeman of Sotheby’s International Realty. “Due to limitations in the right technology, it couldn't be accomplished at the time.”
Guests who enter the foyer are greeted by double staircases set against the backdrop of a breathtaking two-story glass wall. Further inside the quirky home, you’ll find a formal dining room with an arched canopy, and a kitchen comprised almost entirely of stainless steel.
The 11,387-square-foot masterpiece also boasts a media house, a modernist cabana, a pool and a tennis court.
Related:
Housing has become less affordable for all renters since 2011 as rent appreciation greatly outpaced income growth. But for renters living in predominately black or Hispanic neighborhoods, the situation is decidedly worse.
New data shows that, on average, residents of predominantly white neighborhoods spend 30.7 percent of their income on rent, in line with the generally accepted standard of 30 percent. Renters living in predominately black neighborhoods spend 43.7 percent of their income on rent, and renters in largely Hispanic communities spend 48.1 percent.
For renters in minority communities, devoting such a large share of income to rent limits their ability to save for a down payment, which would allow them to transition their costly rent to more affordable mortgage payments.
And when rents are unaffordable, renters begin making sacrifices like forgoing necessary medical or dental care and contributions to retirement accounts.
In markets where rents overall are high for all residents, minority neighborhoods are hit even harder than white communities. In Los Angeles, renters in white communities spend 50 percent of their income on rent - well above the recommended 30 percent, but still far less than renters in black or Hispanic neighborhoods, who pay a premium of 63.7 percent and 63 percent, respectively.
In expensive San Francisco, rent in largely black communities requires the greatest share of the median income (74.8 percent), followed by rents in primarily Hispanic communities (62.5 percent) and then, after a sizable gap, rents in predominantly white communities (48.8 percent).
Boston follows a similar trend, with residents in black communities paying 71.2 percent of the median income, followed by 59.5 percent in Hispanic communities and 34.8 percent in white communities.
"This research sheds light on another example of inequality in the housing market," said Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Svenja Gudell. "Renters in African-American or Hispanic neighborhoods find themselves in a catch-22 situation: While owning a home is a great way to build wealth, you need to save up some cash to be able to buy. If you're spending close to half of your income on rent, saving for that down payment is going to be incredibly difficult."
These differences shift for homeowners, with mortgage payments requiring the greatest share of income from owners in Hispanic neighborhoods, at 22.8 percent. Homeowners in white communities allocate more of their incomes to their mortgage payments (15.2 percent) than owners in primarily black communities (13.6 percent).
Still, transitioning from renting to owning remains a challenge for minorities, not only because they have less income left over to save for a down payment, but also because race impacts minorities' ability to get approved for a mortgage. Home values in predominantly black communities also tend to be much lower than home values in predominantly white communities, contributing to this difference.
Related:
Dropbox revolutionized the way we share, transfer, and store our valuable files when it first launched the cloud storage service back in 2007. Today, the software giant is worth...
The post 8 Best Dropbox Alternatives For Storing Your Files In The Cloud appeared first on Onextrapixel.
Introducing Ashbury + Oak by Polygon – Choose from three and four bedroom townhomes in Langley’s Willoughby neighbourhood. This family community offers everything you need with retail shopping, restaurants, recreation centres nearby.
The post Ashbury and Oak – Polygon appeared first on Vancouver New Condos.
UPDATE: Donald Trump's childhood home in New York City has changed hands for the third time in as many months. The newly established Trump Birth House LLC purchased the 5-bedroom Tudor-style home in Queens for $2.14 million, according to The New York Times.
ORIGINAL POST 1/23/17: The real estate investor who bought Donald Trump’s childhood home in Queens last month has resold it in an auction.
The Tudor home in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood was built in 1940 by Trump’s father, a local real estate developer and landlord. It’s where the president spent his early childhood.
The 5-bedroom, 4.5-bath home measures 2,500 square feet and has a finished basement with a full bathroom. There’s also a bonus room for guests, and a summer kitchen.
The home features a living room with a fireplace, a formal dining room and an enclosed back porch, along with the charm of arched doorways and hardwood floors.
It was first listed last summer for $1.65 million, but it took a couple of price cuts before Paramount Realty USA planned an auction for the evening of one of Trump and Hillary Clinton’s debates. That auction was postponed. Then, real estate investor Michael Davis bought the home for $1.39 million.
Davis, in turn, auctioned the home last week. The winning bidder and bid amount will not be disclosed, according to Misha Haghani, a principal at Paramount Realty USA.
Photos courtesy of Paramount Realty USA.
Related:
