Clearing out tenant helped sell colonial
KATHLEEN LYNN
Date: 12-24-2006, Sunday
Section: REAL ESTATE
Edtion: All Editions
Column: THE REAL DEAL
The listing: Three-bedroom, 1.5-bath prewar colonial
Location: Englewood
Listed by: Ronald Rollieson of English Realty, Englewood
Taxes: $9,298
On the market: 49 weeks
Asking price: $525,000
The game plan: Rollieson listed the house on the multiple listing service, held open houses, and advertised it in newspapers and on the Internet. The house is on an oversized lot and had been extensively renovated, with new heating and electrical systems, a new master bedroom and a renovated kitchen with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. But a tenant was living in the house, which made it difficult to show.
The result: The seller cut the asking price several times, finally bringing it to $469,900. After the tenant moved out, the newly clutter-free house was much more appealing, Rollieson said. Another agent brought in the buyer, who negotiated the selling price to $450,000.
Illustrations/Photos: PHOTO - Uncaptioned
Keywords: ENGLEWOOD, REAL ESTATE
Byline: Steve Alexander; Staff Writer
The hottest personal computer this year might be last year's model. With consumers reluctant to upgrade to ever-faster PCs, this might be the holiday season of the computer accessory.
Similarly, experts foresee slow sales of the new business-oriented tablet PCs that recognize handwriting and sell for $1,700 to $3,300. But buyers will find plenty of lower-priced gadgets that plug into their current PCs, such as digital camcorders, portable hard drives, MP3 players and wireless phone/organizers.
Those accessories are expected to help drive an increase in sales of consumer electronics this season, with the help of some new features on previous years' star sellers such as DVD players and video-game consoles.
Some of the attached gadgets, such as portable hard disk drives, will work fine with old PCs, while others, such as digital camcorders, will be a bit slow because the PCs lack fast FireWire connections.
A FireWire connection speeds data from gadget to PC and back as much as 33 times faster than the more widely used Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection, which is an important plus if you've got an hourlong home movie to transfer.
Some gadgets that use only FireWire connections, such as Apple's iPod MP3 player that holds about 4,000 songs, will force consumers to upgrade their old PCs or buy new ones. Check what kind of PC connecting ports you have before buying accessories.
At the same time, PC makers are trying to tap into the consumers' taste for multimedia by adding consumer electronics functions to computers. New high-end PCs equipped with the Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system will be able to receive and record TV broadcasts on the PC's hard drive in addition to providing standard computing features.
Other firms are trying to get in on the multimedia PC push. Using "virtual speaker" technology from Dolby Laboratories of San Francisco, California-based InterVideo is selling a $50 software product called WinDVD 4, which turns a two-speaker PC into a simulated surround-sound system. The goal is to improve the sound when playing music disks and computer game soundtracks.
There's also been a lot of innovation in digital camcorders, which can help consumers at least pretend they can make and edit their own movies. As a result, consumers are replacing old analog camcorders with new digital ones because the picture quality is about twice as good, said Tom Edwards, an analyst with consumer electronics sales tracking firm NPD Techworld in Port Washington, N.Y. It probably doesn't hurt that some of the new digital camcorders are so small that they fit neatly in one hand and can be carried in a coat pocket.
Instant gratification
But that's only half of the digital camcorder story. The other half is about instant gratification for those who want to share their films or create a director's cut: You can hook your camcorder to your computer and turn your movies into digital computer files, then burn the movies on to a CD or a DVD disk and mail them to Grandma.
Or, using programs such as Sony's Screenblast Movie Studio ($69), you can edit your movies on your PC to reduce three hours of vacation film movies to 10minutes of highlights.
Gadgets that don't plug into your PC might plug into your TV. A new handheld karaoke sing-along machine - Karaoke TV Star, from IVL Technologies ($80) - connects to a TV, which displays song lyrics and plays back the digitally processed tones of your voice.
The karaoke unit uses a digital signal-processing chip to raise or lower the pitch of your voice so it's in tune with the background music, and to add vocal enhancements such as electronic distortion or gender-shifting that turns men with bass voices into soprano divas.
Also available to plug into your TV are videogame consoles from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft have launched online gaming services.
Microsoft's Xbox Live Starter Kit lets you play games online through your TV for $50 a year, plus the cost of buying the game. But because the service is only for gamers who have high-speed Internet connections, Xbox Live delivers higher-quality game play than a dial-up service.
Yet, the broadband requirement can be inconvenient, since many consumers will be forced to drag a TV and the Xbox from the living room to a computer room where the broadband modem is located.
Sony's PlayStation 2 online gaming works for dial-up and high-speed connections, and for the moment remains free once you buy the online-enabled game disk.
For game players not enamored with online play, the gaming industry is offering more "mature rated" games such as "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" for PlayStation 2, a controversial hit that sold 1.4 million copies in its first three days on retail store shelves.
M-rated games are aimed at the growing number of adult game players. In "Vice City" you live out a life typically seen only in the movies: Petty street criminals assault pedestrians, intimidate jurors, commit carjackings and regularly shoot it out with the police.
Going wireless
If all that makes you want to call a congressman, do so with your wireless phone. After all, long-distance is free and the wireless phone companies need customers after a slowdown in sales to traditional customers forced them to reach out to teens and upscale business travelers. As a result, wireless phones are more feature-laden than ever: Some are a pocket organizer, e-mail port, game machine, and music player all wrapped in one.
Teenagers tend to like wireless phones with games, color screens and customizable colored plastic outer shells. Business people might like Sprint's Handspring Treo 300, an e-mail and Web-friendly phone with the Palm handheld organizer operating system. It has a full keyboard so tiny that it fits under the screen.
For business travelers who need more computing power, the Audiovox Thera Pocket PC/Phone from Verizon Wireless is a handheld computer that uses a version of the Windows operating system and is wirelessly linked to the Net. It can run familiar business programs such as Word and Excel while playing streaming music from a Web site.
But while such products are fashionably new, Edwards of NPD says the biggest seller this holiday season will be the now-familiar DVD player. That's hardly news, since DVD players are a well-known consumer electronics success story that have become commodity items, sometimes selling for less than $100.
New technology
What will drive DVD sales, Edwards says, is technology that enhances the recording and playback experience. DVD players are beginning to use technology from personal video recorders (PVRs), such as TiVo, that feature the ability to search for TV programs, automatic recording anytime, and playback functions that simplify skipping ads.
As DVD player sales rise, sales of high-definition digital TVs should increase as consumers seek better TV pictures.
Edwards says he expects consumer electronics sales to increase 3 to 4 percent this holiday season, even though consumers are supposed to be nervous about the economy and PC sales are expected to be flat. The reason: Consumer electronics sales do not tend to dip when the monthly Consumer Confidence Index does.
"Most of consumer electronics sales are based on perceived need," Edwards said. "We need to be entertained."
- Steve Alexander is at alex@startribune.com.
1) Audiovox Thera Pocket PC/Phone, Verizon Wireless, $600
2) HDD 20 GB USB Portable Hard Drive, Iomega, $200
3) Elura MC camcorder, Canon, $1,000
4) Handspring Treo 300, Sprint, $500
5) Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Rockstar Games, $50
6) Xbox Live Starter Kit, Microsoft, $50
7) TravelMate C100 Tablet PC, Acer, $1,870
8) iPod 20 gigabyte MP3 player for Windows, Apple Computer, $500
Business Editors
BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 10, 2001
FleetBoston Financial announced today that it will release second quarter 2001 earnings prior to the market opening on Wednesday, July 18, 2001. Copies of the release will be available within the investor relations section of http:\\www.fleet.com.
Following the release at 9:00 a.m. eastern daylight time, Eugene M. McQuade, Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer of FleetBoston, will host a conference call to discuss the earnings results and business trends. Interested parties may access the conference call by calling 888-373-3590 (domestic) or 415-228-4668 (international) with a passcode of "Fleet ". Media and individuals will be in a listen only mode. Participants are asked to call in a few minutes prior to the call in order to register for the event.
Internet access to the call is also available (listen only) by going to the Investor Relations section of http:\\www.fleet.com. A replay of the call will be available through July 20, 2001 - 5:00 p.m. by calling 888-568-0673 (domestic) or 402-530-7731 (international) with no passcode or by going to the fleet.com website.
FleetBoston Financial is the seventh-largest financial holding company in the United States. A diversified financial services company with assets exceeding $200 billion, Fleet offers a comprehensive array of innovative financial solutions to 20 million customers in more than 20 countries and territories. Among the company's key lines of business are: retail banking, with nearly 1,700 branches and more than 3,800 ATMs in the Northeast; commercial banking, including capital markets/investment banking and commercial finance; investment services, including discount brokerage; and full-service banking through more than 250 offices in Latin America. FleetBoston Financial is headquartered in Boston and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: FBF) and the Boston Stock Exchange (BSE: FBF).
Aug. 15--Memphis-based Challenger Corp. has established a relationship with a Boston company, eResidency.com, to provide steady growth in demand for Challenger's continuing medical education products.
Challenger Corp. has about 1,400 hours of approved continuing medical education courses, which chief executive officer Robert E. Sweeney said makes the company "the world's leading provider of electronic clinical medical content for CME."
EResidency.com offers an Internet-based program, called the Residency Management System, that automates and streamlines the administration of academic residency programs.
In this relationship, Challenger educational software will be sold at a discount through the eResidency.com portal to medical residents at U.S. and Canadian medical universities and hospitals.
"It has the potential to be quite promising financially," Sweeney said. "From our point of view, it's more important strategically, in that we are acquiring all of those doctors. When they come out into private practice, guess who they're going to use for continuing medical education? Challenger. They're familiar with it. They're comfortable with it."
The American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Emergency Physicians have approved Challenger software for continuing medical education. This approval ensures the material itself is correct and adequate safeguards are in place to ensure the training is effective.
This factor and the sheer volume of training available has helped Challenger become the largest single provider of continuing medical education for the HealthStream health care education Web site, said Rob Laird, HealthStream vice president and general counsel, from the company's headquarters in Nashville.
"The founder, Dr. Dan Jones, put together a pretty comprehensive body of work," Laird said. "When we started, there really wasn't a lot of electronic content out there. They were really an early pioneer in the provision of continuing medical education via electronic means."
Jones, an emergency room physician, started the company in 1991 in Eads, Tenn. He still serves on the Challenger Corp. board of directors.
Sweeney said the company operated unprofitably for several years but recently started making a net income. In 1998, David Beard, a Memphis-area investor who spent 12 years as a contract programmer, pumped more capital into the company, which Sweeney said helped double revenues.
"They were brought to my attention by my accountant a couple of years ago," Beard said. "The company has a whole raft of interesting products, and I was looking for something interesting to get into." Challenger Corp. has been distributing its training materials on compact disc, readonly memory, but it now has a Web site, MyChallenger.com, which is being tested. Sweeney said his company hopes to launch this site by the end of 2000.
The company employs 10 people and has about 100 contributing authors -- physicians who Sweeney said write the material more for the recognition than for the nominal payment.
To see more of The Commercial Appeal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.gomemphis.com
(c) 2000, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
