Issue# 2706
- WEALTHY: Have you undervalued your property?
(Julie Broad)
- HEALTHY: What’s to blame for excess disease?
(Jon Benson)
- WISE: Balzac on happiness
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- A new kind of Academy Award (Marci Shimoff)
- Solutions for common punctuation problems
(Don Hauptman)
- It’s Fun to Know… about the connection between education and Internet use
- Add “lambaste” to your vocabulary
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How to Value Residential Real Estate
By Julie Broad
When my husband and I decided to part ways with one of our real estate investing partners, we had to come up with a way to split the equity in the two units we owned. Since one of the units was bigger, we had to determine how much more that unit was worth.
Our partner volunteered to do the math, and we agreed to accept his number. He did it by adding up the total value of all the condo sales in the building over the previous 12 months, and then dividing that by the total square footage of those units. He then took the average price per square foot and multiplied it by the size of our unit.
It’s a logical approach, but not really the best way to value a condo. We believe it led him to overvalue the property by $20,000 – and put more money in our pockets than he should have. Here’s why:
- In condo buildings, there is usually a premium of $10,000 – $20,000 per floor. The higher you go, the more valuable the units are. Many of the units in his calculation were on higher floors than ours.
- Prices in the neighborhood were down about 10 to 12 percent from 12 months previously. He was including properties that had sold when the market was still pretty hot.
- Some units had two parking spaces, which usually adds $5,000 – $10,000 to a unit’s value. Our unit had only one.
To value a condo more accurately:
- First, look at the market. Has there been a shift up or down in prices for the area around the property? Use recent comparables, and try to make adjustments for any overall trends.
- Try to determine what the approximate floor premium is. To do this, find similarly sized units, facing the same direction on different floors. For our unit, we looked at the sales records in the building over the previous 5 years, and determined that the floor premium was roughly $15,000.
- Look at similar properties and ask yourself, “Why did they sell for what they did?” To assess factors that may have impacted value, we looked at such things as the direction a unit faced, its proximity to an elevator, the number of parking spots it had, and the motivation of the seller. (Was it the builder selling off one of the last units? Foreclosure? Someone flipping the unit without moving in? A regular realtor-listed sale?)
To ensure that you aren’t leaving money on the table in any condo deal, use as many comparables as you can. This will make a big difference in terms of valuing the property – as it did for us.
[Ed. Note: For more insider strategies for getting started as a real estate investor, sign up for real estate expert Julie Broad's free monthly newsletter. Get your free report for making money with real estate here.
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“We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.”
- Honore de Balzac
And the Award Goes to…
By Marci Shimoff
Does the idea of standing in front of a mirror and appreciating your positive qualities feel uncomfortable and stupid? It did to me – which was a sign that I really needed to try it.
I learned this mirror exercise in 1990, when I took a weeklong course on self-esteem from my mentor, Jack Canfield. Jack assigned the exercise as homework every night, saying, “Make sure you do this behind a closed door so nobody walks by and thinks you’re crazy.”
Each night, my roommate and I took turns going into the bathroom, shutting the door, and whispering sweet nothings to our reflections: “You’re kind.” “You’re loyal.” “You have a loving heart.”
The first night, I felt like a California New Age woo-woo nutcase. And soon I experienced a rush of sadness. I was an expert at criticizing myself – but why was it so hard to say nice things?
With practice, it gradually became easier to come up with reasons to love myself: “You’re smart.” “You go out of your way to help others.” And so on. But the real power of this exercise came when I learned to express appreciation for myself for no reason – to look myself in the eye and simply love who I was, unconditionally.
If you’re like most people, consciously recognizing the positive about yourself may feel conceited. After all, we’re raised not to “toot our own horn.” So we end up not giving ourselves credit or acknowledgment – or, worse, beating ourselves up. That shuts down our hearts, contracts our energy, and decreases our happiness levels.
While doing the research for my book Happy for No Reason, I interviewed scores of scientists, as well as 100 unconditionally happy people. (I call them the Happy 100.) One of the things I discovered is that truly happy people have a compassionate, encouraging, and validating attitude toward themselves. This isn’t arrogance or self-centeredness. It’s an appreciation and acceptance of who they are.
Learning to see the positive about yourself starts by changing your brain’s habit of focusing on your negative experiences and, instead, inclining your mind toward joy.
So today, begin registering your happy experiences more deeply – consciously looking for them. You can make it into a game. Have the intention to notice everything good that happens to you. Anything you see, feel, taste, hear, or smell that brings you joy. A “win,” a breakthrough, an “Aha!” moment, or an expression of your creativity. The list goes on and on.
This intention triggers the reticular activating system (RAS), a group of cells at the base of your brain stem responsible for sorting through the massive amounts of incoming information and bringing anything important to your attention. Have you ever bought a car and then suddenly started noticing the same make of car everywhere? It’s the RAS at work. Now you can use it to be happier. When you decide to look for the positive, your RAS makes sure that’s what you see.
Adelle, one of the Happy 100, told me about a unique method she has for registering the positive. As she goes about her day, she gives away awards in her mind: the best-behaved dog, the most colorful landscape design at a fast-food drive-through, the most courteous driver. This keeps her alert to the beauty and positivity that is all around her. Charmed by the idea, I tried it myself. I liked it so much, I’ve been giving out these “Happiness Oscars,” as I call them, ever since.
Once you notice something positive, take a moment to savor it consciously. Take in the good experience deeply and feel it. Make it more than just a mental observation. If possible, spend about 30 seconds soaking up the happiness you feel. If you want to accelerate your progress, take time every day to write down a few of your wins, breakthroughs, and things you appreciate about others – and about yourself.
You’ll know you’ve mastered this when you can give yourself an Academy Award for outstanding achievement in true happiness!
[Ed. Note: Marci Shimoff is the author of the New York Times bestseller Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy From the Inside Out, which offers a revolutionary approach to experiencing deep and lasting happiness. The woman's face of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and a featured teacher in The Secret, Marci is an authority on success, happiness, and the law of attraction. To order Happy for No Reason, newly released in paperback, and receive free bonus gifts, go to www.happyfornoreason.com/mybook.
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Pointing Fingers
By Jon Benson
In their book The China Study, T. Colin Campbell and Thomas Campbell want to point a finger at animal protein as the primary cause of disease, specifically heart disease and cancer.
The actual study doesn’t exactly support this conclusion, but hey…
Others want to blame our polluted soil. This argument has more merit. Our soil is definitely not in great shape, all the more reason to consume true organic vegetables.
Still others want to blame a lack of exercise. Valid point, but there’s more to the story.
Here’s my take on the matter:
1. All fingers ultimately point to you.
2. It’s always a combination of factors that cause disease and ill health, never just one.
3. A balanced approach to diet and exercise is absolutely essential.
I believe in balance that includes eating (gasp!) pizza. Burgers. Ice cream. Balance that includes protein and starch and carbohydrates, and still allows for ample fat loss – in fact, much faster than restrictive diet plans can achieve. And balance that has you working out harder on some days, not so hard on others.
Doesn’t this seem more reasonable than the vegan alternative of eating nothing but plants? Dozens of civilizations have proven a fully plant-based diet as THE answer to good health to be completely false. The Masai are just one of them. They consume huge amounts of meat and fat and have hardly a trace of heart disease or cancer. (Granted, they walk a lot. Hint, hint.)
As I said, it’s all about balance.
[Ed. Note: Fitness expert Jon Benson just released his in-home fitness plan, The 7 Minute Muscle Body System. It requires only bands, a rubber ball, and your bodyweight to tone your body and help you burn fat. Try it for yourself right here.
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The Language Perfectionist: Punctuation Pointers, Part 1
By Don Hauptman
Judging by the errors I encounter, punctuation confuses many people. But once you know a few rules, it’s easy to get it right. The following advice will help you avoid the most common mistakes.
- With the comma, the most frequent error is that of omission: Fred picked up a case of beer then drove to the golf course. To indicate a pause, a comma should follow beer.
Tip: Read your draft aloud. Wherever you pause naturally, a comma is probably needed.
A more controversial question is whether to use the “serial comma,” the final one in a series. Which is correct? (a) You obtain health benefits from apples, pears and oranges. Or (b) You obtain health benefits from apples, pears, and oranges.
Neither is wrong. It’s simply a matter of style. You may use either with impunity, so long as you are consistent within a document. But I favor the serial comma. It looks better. And it can prevent ambiguity, as this amusing example demonstrates: Indicate your name, address, sex and housing requirements.
- The semicolon may be the most misunderstood punctuation mark. It’s used to divide phrases within a sentence, each of which could be a complete sentence: Please excuse the delay; I had a deadline. The only other, and far less common, use for the semicolon is where a lengthy series of phrases contains internal commas. To preclude confusion, semicolons separate each phrase.
- The colon is an introductory device. He spent his vacation reading his three favorite authors: Dickens, Proust, and Grisham. A good rule of thumb is to use a colon only if the words “that is” would make sense in its place.
Next week, we’ll conclude this discussion with explanations of five other prickly punctuation marks.
Meanwhile, here’s some recommended reading – and a caution. You’ve probably heard about Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the bestselling punctuation guide. The book is funny and entertaining, but critics have lambasted it. One problem is that its American publisher didn’t bother to revise the text for domestic consumption. Thus, some of its advice applies to British but not U.S. English. A superior reference work is Comma Sense, by Richard Lederer and John Shore.
[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book recently published by AWAI that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.]
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It’s Fun to Know: The Connection Between Education and Internet Use
About 60 percent of U.S. households have Internet access, up from just 18 percent in 1997. And new Census Bureau data shows that education may play a role in that statistic. Here’s how it breaks down:
- College grads: 84 percent have Internet access at home.
- Homeowners or renters with some college education: 69 percent are online.
- High school grads: 50 percent are online.
- High school dropouts: Only 24 percent are connected to the Web.
(Source: ClickZ)
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Word to the Wise: Lambaste
To “lambaste” (lam-BASTE) – from the Old Norse – is to reprimand or berate harshly; to censure.
Example (as used by Don Hauptman today): “The book is funny and entertaining, but critics have lambasted it.”
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