Archive for November, 2006

The Do-It-Yourself Sales Letter Makeover

Thursday, November 23rd, 2006

What’s there in Charleston SC MLS that fascinates us? Would you like to share our opinion?

Let these facts enter in your mind so that you could experience the difference. To grasp the core ofreal estate , explore it thoroughly.

For years, my most popular business service has been taking
sales letters that aren’t getting results and remaking them
so that inquiries and orders pour in. At the risk of
starving this cash cow, I’m going to reveal the mental
checklist I use that accounts for a high percentage of the
improvements I introduce. Ask this set of questions about
your sales letter before you finalize it, and you’ll be able
to swell a trickle of response into a steady stream of
profit.

* Do you let the reader know in the first paragraph why
you’re writing, and provide a reason to read on? Your
recipient digs into the letter with the question, “What’s in
this for me?” An opening like “We are pleased to announce,”
for instance, usually provokes a “So What?” Instead, put
yourself in the shoes of your reader, formulate your main
point from that perspective and try leading off with it:
“Until September 22, 1998 you have the chance to become one
of only 2,346 people in the universe to own mineral-rich
real estate on Asteroid A-17.”

You can also satisfy this imperative with a provocative,
topic-specific headline in big type above the date and
salutation of the letter. For instance, I once headed a
three-page letter about a publicity consulting program,
“Finally, Fame and Fortune are Within Your Reach!”

Okay. Since you have reached this far, it means you are very interested in Charleston SC MLS and real estate. Your unusual interest would get a surprise in the sections that follow.

* Do you provide a clear and compelling offer, or a specific
action that you are asking the reader to take? An offer
means something like, “For only $29.95 you can have
unlimited use of our health club for one month, along with a
one-hour private session with one of our certified fitness
trainers.” At the very least, explicitly tell readers what
action you would like them to take now, such as “Please
return the enclosed prepaid postcard to let us know about
your future landscaping needs.”

Okey-doke. You may feel contented to examine the subsequent paragraphs. Your further inquisitiveness in this ballyhoo would be an added leverage for you.

* Do you explicitly describe the strong points of your
offering? I found this copy in a car dealer’s letter weak
and vague: “Check our prices. They’re probably better than
you think. We guarantee they’re competitive.” I recommended
changing that to “We’ll match any competitor’s price for an
oil and filter change for your car.” In my first look at a
sales letter, I usually circle murky words and phrases all
over the place and write, “What do you mean by this?” “And
by this?” “And this?” Replace each generic, wishy-washy
expression with more precise wording.

Okey-doke. Since you have reached this far, it means you are actually interested in Charleston SC MLS and real estate. Your additional enthusiasm in this article would be an added leverage for you.

* Have you taken into account the fact that the reader may
be receiving many competing offers and enumerated the
principal advantages of your product or service? When a
business-opportunity dealer wrote, “I learned the pitfalls
of mail order the hard way. I bought many, many worthless
programs,” I urged him to reveal the dollar amount he’d
wasted before finding the program that enabled him to turn a
profit for the first time, and to elaborate on what made
those programs worthless. Use this formula if you have
difficulty putting your advantages into words: “Unlike other
XXXs, we…” For instance, “Unlike larger law firms, at BB&G
you deal consistently with the partners, knowledgeable
experts who always return phone calls within 48 hours.”

* Have you addressed and disarmed the most common fear,
misgiving or concern prospects might have about buying from
you? There’s always a natural uncertainty about buying from
a stranger. Guarantees help, as do testimonials from
satisfied customers and lists of large organizations that
you’ve served. These don’t always have to appear in the
letter itself, as in: “If this sounds too good to be true,
I’ll happily supply you with the names and telephone numbers
of dealers in your state who have secured their future with
our plan.”

* Do you use a “P.S.” to provide a compelling reason for the
reader to act now? Studies show that a postscript gets read
more often than any other portion of a letter. Word your
“P.S.” so that it makes sense if it’s read first, and
include an incentive for acting fast, as in, “Remember, we
have only thirty-one of these slightly damaged, fully
functional metronomes left at 80 percent off, so place your
order today!”

For additional do’s and don’ts, collect and study especially
impressive or awful letters that come in your mail. My
“sample sales letter” file measures almost three inches
thick!

About the Author

Marcia Yudkin rewrites Web sites and
postal sales letters so that they generate results. For her
manual of before-and-after sales letter makeovers, “Turn Any
Sales Letter Into an Irresistible Concoction,” see
http://www.yudkin.com/scourse.htm .

So, how was your experience of understanding contemporary things regarding Charleston SC MLS? We always search and form material on real estate and append them to our website.

So, how was your experience reading this article? Do come back here again for an update on Charleston SC MLS and real estate.

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Home Loans And Home Finance Products - Bank Of America

Monday, November 20th, 2006

Only a handful of folks have the endurance to glance over it till the end. This affirms the truth that individuals who glance over it till the end are the ones who really create an uproar for it.

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Madeline Hill; Senior Community Pioneer

Saturday, November 18th, 2006

What is there in Charleston South Carolina that attracts us? What is our philosophy related to Charleston South Carolina?

Let these contents enter in your mind so that you could sense the difference. We would like you to study the excerpt and get an understanding of real estate.

Madeline Hill may be unique among senior community developers. She created her multi-million dollar city, an upscale, yet affordable group of single-family homes, condo s and apartments — not so she could become a rich and powerful CEO, but so she could hand the whole thing over, debt-free, to the home-owner s association.

It was a vision thing. Hill got the idea when she was a high-level bureaucrat with state senior services and saw her friends getting old, needing help and having no place to go but assisted living centers, adult foster care and nursing homes in the big town 15 miles away.

Why couldn t this aging group of friends live near each other for support, have services brought to them (rather than being shipped around to various facilities as their need for care deepened) and, above all, keep and use their hard-won equity to maintain their own home — a much simpler, single-level, maintenance-free home that works for older people?

What decided me was when my neighbor fell and it became apparent she couldn t stay in her home, said Hill. She asked me to help her move to an apartment 12 miles away. She cried in the car and said, I bet you won t come visit me. She said she would never again see her friends, the library, the parks, the friendly cashier at the market and all the things that spell community and make life worth living.

Through the 1970s, the vision took hold helping older people to live independent lives, with dignity and surrounded by friends, family and community. Especially women, who, at that time, hadn t had access to credit and the knowledge of how to handle money.

What is your opinion about the adequacy of this article?

It aided particular persons who were searching for Charleston South Carolina. Some of the persons didn’t find it worthwhile.

As a specialist who is searching for Charleston South Carolina, only you can fairly figure out if this benefits. To evaluate if the article holds some importance for you, you may comprehend it till the concluding word.

I took a seminar called Do You Have What It Takes To Be an Entrepreneur. It was oriented toward women and it opened my eyes that I could do things and be assertive that women could be leaders, make decisions and that it was ok for women to talk about money and power and be comfortable in that realm.

But Hill herself knew almost nothing about money and to prove it, she and her husband Hunter had just lost $40,000 by handing it over to a broker who put it in limited partnerships, which had no inherent value but were supposed to be good tax shelters, Hill said.

It wiped us out and was embarrassing, too. I decided I was never going to put faith in something I didn t understand. I started reading about real estate. The concept came: I knew my town Ashland — the city council and planning commission and the local economy. The was something I could see and feel and learn the opposite of sending money to New York City.

Hill went to the library (this was before the internet) and checked out books on how to make a million in real estate. She also read two life-changing books Phyllis Chesler s Women, Money and Power and David Schwartz s 1959 classic, The Magic of Thinking Big.

Schwartz showed me that, with about the same effort, you can do something to help one person or a whole lot of people. About the same time, a guy came (to her state jobsite) and gave a lecture on the positive nature of change. In doing the processes and games, I realized all the others resented and resisted change and I was the only one who loved it. I knew I had to get out of there.

All right. Further parts of the article could be a treat to the expert. Your nose for news would get a treat in the statements that follow.

Hanging onto her job in the meanwhile for cash flow and borrowing power, Hill in 1985 bought her first rental for $19,000. She could choose tenants, check the their credit and divert savings from jobs into something that was growing. (The Rogue Valley was then beginning an enormous surge of immigration, mostly from California, and appreciation in housing prices that s still going on.)

The investment was hands-on and labor intensive. With help from her retired parents, Hill learned how to hang sheetrock and insulation, lay carpets and paint rooms. She liked it. It was real and tangible, with results you could see and feel a sense of accomplishment about.

She joined the local rental owners association, learning from peers and her realtor how to analyze a property with an eye to something that would grow. She told her real estate agent to watch for the next good property. It was a duplex for $72,000 on a nice street in rapidly appreciating Ashland. Hill in 1987 took the big leap refinancing her own home for the down, but getting lower interest so her own payment remained the same.

The magic of investment was beginning to work. She fixed up the duplex (now appraising at $270,000 a gain of over $12,000 a year) refinanced it to lower interest twice, while pulling out $25,000 each time to land two more rentals, since fixed up and sold at profit.

But it wasn t all about the money. Hill was an old-fashioned liberal and feminist, whose values were shaped in the sixties and seventies. Her work was always somehow grounded in the improvement of society, an ethic instilled in her by old-fashioned, hard-working Norwegian parents who lived with and cared for their aged parents and a disabled aunt.

My mom drove a school bus for disabled children and my best friend had cerebral palsy and was in a wheel chair. I got to deeply value disabled people as who they really are inside. As a child welfare worker, my first job out of college, I began trying to move handicapped children out of hospitals and to advocate for them being part of society, she said.

Hill s life mission shaped itself around getting people out of institutional settings and into the mainstream. As a social worker in the 1970s, she did just that with veterans, then, through the 1980s, as regional manager for State Senior Services, got to see the hopelessness of nursing home residents and started doing something to phase them out.

She pioneered the federally-funded Oregon Model for Long-Term Care moving seniors to community-based settings, such as adult foster care and assisted living facilities. The model was the centerpiece for a White House Conference on Aging and was adopted by dozens of other states.

By now, Hill was one of Oregon s leading gerontologists, serving on state councils on aging, the city senior program, human services advisory commissions even a board bringing top entertainment acts to nursing homes. She d created radio and tv shows on women and the aged and been the first woman to run for mayor of Ashland. She had clout, credibility and could get things done.

In 1989, Hill was getting ready for the big leap into building a senior community. Two things pushed her over the line. A seminar on the power of change at her state jobsite ( I realized in the processes and games that I was the only one there who loved change and risk ) and the offering of the perfect 16-acre piece of rural property with smashing views, just on the outskirts of Ashland.

Hill s vision of her senior community was now in place. It would — in keeping with her philosophy of maximum freedom and choice for seniors — be a community with no big buy-in fee, where you own a condo or single-family home and keep all your equity, to pass on to your children.

It would be a community of active, mentally alive older people who didn t care for rocking chairs. As it turned out, 80 percent have college degrees. It would be aging in place, meaning if you became more feeble, you would move into assisted living, but still staying in the same community, near your spouse and friends.

All homes would be single-level, step-free, fall-resistant dwellings and if they were on a second story it would be accessed by elevator. Homes would be senior-friendly throughout plugins elevated, bathrooms with turnaround space, dishwasher up high, faucets with big handles, lots of windows and lights so you have no dark corners.

It would have a central clubhouse and dining hall, where you go (or have meals delivered to you) as you please, paying only for what you use. No three-meals-a-day, one-size-fits-all institutional drill.

Politically, the community would be a liberated zone Hill would buy and sell the homes and condos, but Mountain Meadows would be governed by elected members of the homeowners association.

Now, all Hill needed was money. She sold a historic home she d bought the year before, making $50,000 and using the little known ( People hate reading federal tax regulations, but I was a bureaucrat and was used to it. ) tax-deferred exchange, which basically lets you skip the income tax on the earnings all your life.

The bare land was $125,000. She d been reading a book called How to Develop Property With No Money and gleaned the notion of offering the $50,000 down and the rest in six years. If she defaulted, the seller could keep the 50k.

Very well. Now that you have read till this point, we guarantee that along with this you will have something exciting. Your additional interest in this piece of literature would be an added advantage for you.

My realtor laughed and said I was nuts. No one would accept an offer like that. I went to the seller with my resume and references and told her my vision. She said yes. We were off. It was a huge step. I was absolutely terrified.

Hill, by then a licensed realtor, knew real estate and she knew city politics. But she didn t know land development or building. She needed a partner. She took on Larry Medinger, a former city planning commission member who d built several successful subdivisions. The partnership, a 50-50 deal, worked and Medinger drew architectural style from Craftsman homes a tradition comforting to seniors — in his hometown in Nebraska.

Money came from local friends who wanted to invest in something positive and nearby, Hill said, and from her savings and income selling real estate (and her husband s job). A local bank provided the first construction loan for single-family homes, with all proceeds rolled back into the next homes, as well as development of common spaces walks, parks, ponds, garden and, eventually the large clubhouse and spa.

There was nothing like Mountain Meadows in Oregon, she said. We had to look outside for expertise about how to do this. We went to the National Council on Senior Housing Convention and spent the day with architects brainstorming about how to lay out the community.

We chose the architect with the best ideas and site design (Mithune Partners, Seattle). We went on to assemble a great team — the best lawyers, accountants, surveyors, engineers and landscape architects. We wanted quality in everything and it came back to us tenfold.

The community has picked up a slew of awards, including Best Small Active Adult Retirement Community in America (from the National Council on Seniors Housing), 100 Best Master-Planned Communities (from Where to Retire Magazine), Best Senior Housing Gold Nugget Grand Award (from Pacific Coast Builders Conference) and Community Development Award (from Jackson County Citizens League).

The community 65 free-standing homes and 160 condos, all housing 225 people has one more building to go, probably rental apartments for seniors who don t want the hassle of owning property or are checking out the town for possible later purchase.

Turning the place over to the residents? It seemed like the right thing to do, said Hill. It has lowered the monthly fees (maintenance, meals, fitness center, etc.) by $150 and it s created a self-sustaining community. They adjust fees to meet their needs, not mine. And they make their own decisions without some corporation dictating to them.

Now Madeline, a resident of Mountain Meadows, just makes her living selling the remaining condos. She won t realize her profit until the last few are sold.

I thought is would be kind of small when we started but it ended up costing much more, taking much longer and being much bigger than I ever dreamed. If I had it to do over again I d get partners with money. We ve had to spend so much on financing, the profit could turn out to be small. But the values that was the primary thing to me, and we ve been able to stick by the values.

About the Author

Freelance writer living in Ashland Ore.

The closing word of this material, would let you comprehend the importance of it. The nitty-gritty can be unveiled only if you comprehend it till the hindmost word.

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