The dead are beating their lenders in recognizing the value of, and then protecting, their on-line lives – I mean assets. Does the tortoise beat the hare (again)? Even when the tortoise is dead? This perspective rings out in this: The Dead: on-line assets (accounts, sites and materials) are recognized as an important asset by… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Technology (including Green Buildings)
Subscribe to Technology (including Green Buildings) RSS FeedNominal Tech $$s in Your Company Budget? 4 Easy Steps on “How” to Better Use Tech Tools in Your Work
Posted in Technology (including Green Buildings)If, like most financial services companies, your department or work team only receives nominal support from your technology group, then my piece in the April issue of Law Practice Today should interest you: it lays out a fourfold strategy for better utilizing tech tools. With fewer people doing more (the new workplace mantra), access to tech tools… Continue Reading
“My iPad Works!” Join Me at the Dallas Belo Mansion – we’ll review my top 10 apps and more
Posted in Technology (including Green Buildings)Please come join us on Weds, April 25 at the 7:45a meeting of the Dallas Area Real Estate Discussion Group, at the Belo Mansion in downtown Dallas. I’ll “show” you “how” I use an iPad in my work, with a focus on the top 10 apps used by me - and we’ll cover much more. The focus is practical… Continue Reading
Using My iPad at Work: Apps that Work for Me (and a link to my iPad presentation)
Posted in Technology (including Green Buildings)Today I’ll share my 10+ favorite apps, and some tips and resources, on “how” I use my iPad as I work in commercial real estate finance. The sessions will be a short hour “break” for the leadership of the American College of Mortgage Attorneys. This group is sharp. So the session will be quick witted,… Continue Reading
Work Flow and Volume Tough to Manage? Here are some tips
Posted in Technology (including Green Buildings)We’re all looking for realistic and meaningful tips on “how” technology will improve our work lives, and our work product. If this is a challenge for you, or for others in your work group or department, then my article in the Law Practice Today webzine should help you. The American work place is summed up in these phrases: it’s… Continue Reading
Lease Reviews & Surveillance: “Green” Lease Provisions in “Green” Buildings
Posted in Good Times for Lenders, Technology (including Green Buildings)Back in December of ’10, I gave you a list of lease provisions that are crafted to address topics unique to “green” buildings. Here’s another version or update on the list: insurance provisions annual environmental performance report (access to space, access to the report, etc.) carbon credits (they belong to Landlord!) building operations (in compliance… Continue Reading
Using Your iPad at Work? Looking for Guidance? Try These 3 Books
Posted in Articles, Technology (including Green Buildings)In several weeks, I’ll be giving a presentation on using an iPad at work. The audience will be leadership and most active members of the American College of Mortgage Attorneys. (Yes, I’ll be buying Jake a dinner.) I’ll give a brief overview of “how ” to use the iPad, accessories, initial steps and then jump… Continue Reading
2012 MBA-CREF Convention Starts: Top Topics Span Good Times, Tough Times & Technology
Posted in Good Times for Lenders, Market Trends, Technology (including Green Buildings)Yesterday (Sunday) was the first day of the 2012 MBA-CREF Convention. The theme or tag-line is “Where Market Makers Meet.” The formal sessions start today, which cover content planned by the various councils comprising the MBA. Some times the “off the record” content is just as interesting as the planned presentations. (Or maybe they just… Continue Reading
MERS Update: NY Attorney General Sues Major Banks Claiming Improper Foreclosures Due to Use of MERS
Posted in Technology (including Green Buildings), Tough Times for LendersBased upon a series of wins by MERS in various courts, it looked like MERS would survive, and we’d avoid the need for a federal solution in suppport of the continued use of the MERS electronic registry, which is a fundamental component of securitized home loans (and some commercial loans). That was yesterday. Today, the New… Continue Reading
Meet Me at These Meetings? MBA-CREF convention or ABA LPM’s meeting?
Posted in Good Times for Lenders, Technology (including Green Buildings)If you’d like to step out of this web stuff and actually meet, I’ll be at both of these events in the next few days: the mid-year meeting of the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Ass’n (I’m the liaison to this section from the group of lawyers in the ABA who focus… Continue Reading
My Apology: When Understandable is NOT Excusable
Posted in Technology (including Green Buildings)Technology is all about fewer people doing more. Part of the "doing more" is dealing with too much information; and then in crafting and implementing personal habits and self-control to deal with it. The chief culprit is e-mail. Many of us receive 200+ e-mails a day – in our work e-mail. Separately, our personal e-mail… Continue Reading
“Good” News in CRE Finance in ’12? Not Really (& Real Uptick for CMBS Requires a 3-step)
Posted in Market Trends, Technology (including Green Buildings)Rick Jones at Crunched Credit has a thoughtful piece where he offers a hopeful picture for commercial real estate debt markets in 2012. I can’t go there. On several basic points he’s overly optimistic (his view in bold). My view is this: Unemployment (6-7%): for the next 3-4 years, the new normal is +8% –… Continue Reading
Foreclsoures Mimic Life: New Focus on Fees & Data (How They Met – Natur’lly)
Posted in Remedies, Technology (including Green Buildings)The importance of data and the public sector’s need for cash is a marriage of convenience, and necessity. It just will be. (Annie Oakley calls it “natur’lly.”) In the not so distant future, pairing the two will be assumed; and there will be a short diversion in special asset training programs, where the “wise” will… Continue Reading
More Trouble: Will Record Online Sale Numbers Transform Sticks & Bricks Retailing in 2012? I say “yes”
Posted in Market Trends, Technology (including Green Buildings), Training, Workout Issues2012 should be the year when online sales broadly impacts "how" retailers view and use their "physical" stores. This will impact both the owners AND the lenders. Record online sales point to the need (RIGHT NOW) to take a different approach in reviewing and approving retail leases – which for lenders with shopping center and… Continue Reading
Facebook’s Impact on Commercial Real Estate: Connected Apartment Community + Lender Remedies = Misery??
Posted in Market Trends, Technology (including Green Buildings)This is a wonderful time of the year. And maybe I simply need to move on, to stop beating the drum about lenders needing to come to the technology party, and to drop this thought: Social media tools, like Facebook, will make a foreclosing lender miserable, unless the lender understands the tools and thoughtfully takes… Continue Reading
Collection Plate: Is your smart phone a discovery treasure chest? Spyware by your phone provider?
Posted in Market Trends, Technology (including Green Buildings)The tech community is in an uproar with talk (really on-line chatter and twitter) about "Carrier IQ." The term is new to me, and until last week, the public was not aware of it either. It is a tool described on the maker’s home page (company webstie) as – Many in the tech community call… Continue Reading
MERS Update – Legal (MERS surges), Political (it’s stick), Transparency (kudos to MERS)
Posted in Market Trends, Technology (including Green Buildings)I’ve been following the MERS saga for several years now (prior postings for background). My bottom line: we need a Federal solution. This one-state-at-a-time approach is a painful process – and it will negatively impact the iquidity needed in our mortgage finance markets If you’re just now dropping in on this topic, MERS is an… Continue Reading
Thanksgiving Reflections: ACC Meeting brings 21 Good “Ideas” – but 1 is GREAT!
Posted in Good Times for Lenders, Technology (including Green Buildings), Tough Times for Lenders, TrainingThanksgiving week is a good time to take a breath, relax and reflect – which is what I offer up here: It also brings to end the industry meeting circuit for 2011. Fred Krebs has a nice posting on the Association of Corporate Counsel blog. As his takeaway from the ’11 annual meeting of ACC, his… Continue Reading
Using Technology In Your Work? Here are some tips
Posted in Technology (including Green Buildings)We know that e-mail will kill us all, and ultimately the “real” message is that technology is all about fewer people doing more. So, before we’re over run by technology, let’s look at some of the ways that we can use technology as we work on distressed assets. Here is a list of some of… Continue Reading
Your Vote Counts: Straw Poll on CREF Confidence – Significant Improvements in Liquidity & Distressed Debt . . . When?
Posted in Good Times for Lenders, Market Trends, Technology (including Green Buildings), Tough Times for LendersWhen do you predict liquidity will significantly increase for the CREF market? And when will distressed CREF loans become substantially resolved? At the end of 2010, many predicted that in 2011 liquidity would improve in the commercial real estate finance market (CREF), and that defaults and delinquencies would begin to subside. Indeed, several very well… Continue Reading
Technology: The Road Side Bomb for Commercial Real Estate Lenders?
Posted in Market Trends, Technology (including Green Buildings)This really is a powerful image – road side bomb for lenders? Yes. And as a son of a man who flew Air Force Special Ops during the Tet Offensive, I understand the image. (We thought he was lounging around, and safe and sound, on the base in Thailand.) Technology is being used in building… Continue Reading
Want to Improve Rents & Occupancy at Apartments & Student Housing? One word: Technology
Posted in Technology (including Green Buildings), Workout IssuesIn the movie The Graduate (1967), Ben learns that one word (“plastics”) is the pathway for a successful career. Today, for distressed investments or for quality apartments (including apartments pointed to students as tenants), the pathway to higher rents, occupancy and value is this one word – Technology. The technology attributes of a community can… Continue Reading
E-mail Deluge Makes Work Tough: Use These Tips from Seth Godin
Posted in Technology (including Green Buildings), TrainingOne lesson learned from technology is this: technology is all about fewer people doing more. Lesson #2 is this corollary: e-mail will kill us all. (It is killing me.) So, dealing with e-mail should be a top priority in your personal toolbox – Manage the Flow: it impacts and even controls our… Continue Reading
The iPad Tips the Scales: If Clients Won’t Push Lawyers to Use New Tech Tools, Is the iPad the Change Agent?
Posted in Technology (including Green Buildings), Training(For more on my “iPad at work” posts, use the phrase “iPad to work” in the search box on the right side of the page.) For the business community, the use and implementation of new technology tools is as old as the pen & quill. Yet most lawyers are still stuck in a pen & quill mentality. … Continue Reading