Franchise co. leader says 'extreme service' is key for real estate agents

Throughout a visit to Northern California in April, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate LLC President and CEO Sherry Chris exhausted day surveillance a Sonoma-area real estate agent and visiting open houses.

She was particularly frightened by one open house in which the listing agent had set up a cappuccino bar for visitors.

"It expectant agents to stay just about and talk a bit," she said, adding that such information can be key for a relationship-based business.

"Providing that tremendous service -- going above and away from needs to happen at the business level and the agent-to-agent level," said Chris, who has built up the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate permit network to about 200 offices and 7,000 sales associates, with operations in 21 states, since its official launch under the Realogy Corp. sunshade in 2008.

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Realtors gather supplies, organize blood drive for Joplin tornado victims

Neighboring realtors are collecting necessities for those left without homes after a twister leveled Sunday about a third of Joplin, Mo., counting one hospital and two schools.

Bonnie Baker, landlord of Real Estate Essentials in Broken Arrow, is setting out for the twister-turned town at 4 p.m. Tuesday with three trucks of provisions. She's also set a blood make with the American Red Cross from 8 a.m. to noon June 2.

Baker, who owns Oklahoma's only real estate deliver store, said she's using her associations with about 4,000 realtors in the Tulsa area to help accumulate donations. Joplin officials have said the tornado - the fourth deadliest since the National Weather Service started together with in 1950 - has killed at least 89 people.

Baker said the exhausted real estate market inspired her to help. She and extra realtors are collecting toiletries, water bottles, pre-packaged snacks, blankets, shoes and diapers.

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Nicaragua court postpones hearing for American real estate agent accused of money laundering

A Nicaraguan court has again delayed a hearing for American Jason Puracal, who is accused of laundering money for prearranged crime.

The 33-year-old man from Washington State has been locked up since November 11, 2010.

Attorney Fabbrith Gomez, who is representing Puracal, said Saturday that the investigation has been rearrange for June 15 — the third time it has been delayed. Nicaragua’s prosecutor’s office has yet to at hand proof against Puracal, Gomez said.

The Illinois native graduated from the University of Washington and served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Nicaragua in 2002. He is accused of laundering money through his Re/Max worldwide real estate franchise in San Juan del Sur on Nicaragua’s west coast.

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A Look at Wells Fargo's Commercial Real Estate Loan Business Read more: http://community.nasdaq.com/News/2011-05/a-look-at-wells-fargos-commercial-real-estate-loan-business.aspx?storyid=76349#ixzz1MgA3DQcd

Commercial Real Estate Loans Business at a Glance

The commercial real estate loan collection of Wells Fargo includes real estate advance loans and real estate construction loans. Wells Fargo earns revenues on CRE loans in the form of notice on exceptional loans balances as well as charge and fees on loan originations and late payments.

Wells Fargo's commercial real estate (CRE) portfolio is highly diversified into a range of product categories. By means of product type, the largest segments of the range are office buildings and industrial/warehouse, which correspond to 23% and 11% of the portfolio respectively.

Average Outstanding Balance on CRE Loans

Average exceptional balance on CRE loans jumped by 34% to $137 billion in 2009, in the face of a decline in insist for CRE loans in the U.S., as Wells Fargo's acquired Wachovia. In 2010, average outstanding balance on CRE loans decreased to $130 billion as demand for CRE loans remained weak.

Going forward, we wait for the outstanding balance to remain stable in 2011 and then augment for the remainder of our forecast era alongside development in the broader U.S. economy.

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10 Things You Didn't Know About Donald Trump

1. Donald J. Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, N.Y., one of five children to Fred Trump, a real estate developer, and Mary Macleod Trump, who had immigrated to the United States from Scotland.

2. Trump, who his father called "a pretty rough associate when he was small," attended a military school.

3. He attends Fordham University before relocate to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He graduated in 1968.

4. For five years, Trump worked for his father, who owned concerning $250 million (in today's dollars) worth of apartment building house complexes in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. He then entered the Manhattan real estate market himself, scoring his first major belongings deal in 1974.

5. He connubial Ivana Zelnickova, a former Olympic skier and reproduction, in 1977. The couple had three children and split up in 1990.

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Winter Park bank's failure a sign of trouble still ahead?

In spite of signs of revival in the U.S. economy, the recent failure of another large, close by based bank in Central Florida is a suggestion the state's community banks are still reel from the real estate slump and depression, experts said Monday.

Winter Park-based First National Bank of Central Florida, closed late Friday by regulators, had struggled for just about three years with sour real estate loans and shrinking resources. Chief Executive Officer Susma Patel, family members and other investor lost millions of dollars in the banks give way.

First National's six branches reopened Monday as part of Florida Community Bank, a unit of Miami-based Premier American Bank, an acquisition-minded institution owned by financier John Kanas and other private-equity investors based in New York. The South Florida bank, in adding up to obtaining First National's branches and customers' deposits, signed a loss-sharing conformity with federal regulator cover $270 million of First National's concerned loan portfolio.

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Who owns our brave new world

With no end to lessening prices in the American real estate market, the new turn to the worse in the sovereign thanks of the periphery of the Euro zone, the deep nuclear wearing away of the Japanese and the Chinese price rises spiral fears, the world financial system must be far away from a even growth path, although timid.

The outstanding thing is, however, that around all Atlantic leaders do not refer to the fact that the annihilation, brought about by the last credit melt down in the West, was so gigantic that not even the free printing of new money can bring back growth rates such as during the 2003 – 2007 period, because it was exactly this five year zenith of a credit driven growth boom, which proved that the new global financially viable architecture cannot be support without a social “war” in the major western economies.

It was tens of trillions that the American banks and others lost in the US real estate market, a pattern frequent in Spain, Britain and Ireland, with Greece being an example of an evenly outsized, unlawful, largely corrupted and humiliating financing of the Athens government. Those facts are the basic individuality of the western world’s economic structural design.

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