jonwashburn: April 2008

The basic premise is that individuals purchase solar panels that are part of a remote solar panel array. (Solar panels that are a part of an array located in a desert generate more power than rooftop panels, and are more efficient as they are installed and managed in bulk.)

The dinner napkin math is as follows:

An 8'x4' solar panel as a part of an array costs approx. $800

It takes about 5 of these panels to power an average house: $4,000

The panels are good for 25 year.  Assuming maintenance, upkeep, and land costs are another 50%: $2,000

So $6,000 will power a home for 25 years. That breaks down to $20/mo per house; I know that is much less than I currently pay in utilities!

There are two problems with this scenario:

1. Most people are not in the position to shell out $6k upfront for 25 years of power.

2. Even if they were in that position there is no mechanism to trade the offsite solar panel power for grid power.

The solutions as I see it:

1.Create a "Power Backed Security". Individuals will guarantee the Solar Panel Purchase loans, and in addition to the personal guarantees the power output from the solar panels will act as additional security.  So if someone defaults on their "Solar Panel Mortgage" they lose the rights to the power generated. Organizations could group these Power Backed Securities together and sell them on the investment markets. Similarly to Mortgage Backed Securities.

2. Create a system that matches up individuals with the solar panels they own. Have the solar panel power output connect to your SSN or something. Wherever you live, the power credits will follow you.  If the solar panel owner has a surplus then they can sell their power credits automatically through the power utility.

We have had a few concerned inquiries from our members about a statement made in an RISMedia article authored by Isreal Rothman, CEO of Social Media Systems, titled "Utilizing Free Content Distribution for Advertising Purposes".

The article states that "Thousands of Realtors are blogging on ActiveRain - not knowing that the links they build there are not valid links and will not help placement: the “rel=no follow” tag is automatically inserted, creating placement to some extent for ActiveRain, but not for the Realtors’ individual websites.

This statement is incorrect; We do not place No Follow tags in the body of our member's blog posts. The links placed in those blog posts are seen by Google and given credit by Google as standard links.  We do however place No Follow tags in the comments area of a post to discourage link spammers.

We have responded directly to Isreal with this information and asked him to fix this error but he has been unwilling to make the correction. 

Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, was quoted in a Wall St. Journal article today as saying that "Redfin represented buyers on 65 short-sale offers in the first quarter of 2008 but only expects to close two or three sales". As a result of this inefficient unsuccessful unfruitful closing history on short sales Redfin has enacted a Short Sales representation policy and in Glenn's blog post today, he asks the real estate community for feedback on this policy.

Here is an overview of Redfin's policy:

"What Types of Short Sales Does Redfin Support?
In many cases, Redfin will not be able to represent clients in a short sale. We’ve had plenty of clients, frustrated after months of waiting for bank approval, abandon their offers. For a short sale to have a realistic possibility of bank approval, the seller must meet several criteria, which we now insist on; this is the list that we’d like some feedback from other brokers about:

• Only one bank has to approve the sale: .
• The bank has confirmed receipt of the preliminary paperwork: the seller has stopped paying his mortgage, received a notice of default and sent the bank’s loss mitigation department the following:
  • a hardship letter and financial statements documenting the seller’s inability to pay his mortgage;
  • a preliminary net sheet showing what the proceeds of a sale could be after taxes and fees; and
  • a comparative market analysis (CMA) or an appraisal that establishes the home is being sold for a reasonable price.
• There are no liens on the property:
• The listing agent has experience or training in short sales:"

Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

- Vince Lombardi -                     

At times over the past few weeks ActiveRain has been slow and even sometimes unresponsive.  I want everyone to know that we know about the problems and take them very seriously. Our members invest themselves to create content with the hopes that it will eventually reach their customers or other industry professionals. It is our calling and responsibility to ensure that we maintain the platform so that when your customers and colleagues try to find you, they can.

We are very dedicated to fixing our site stability problems and have invested significant resources towards this goal. The root cause of the problem has been the significant consumer traffic increases that we have been experiencing on a month over month basis; we are now seeing over 1.5 million visits to ActiveRain each month! We initially built this community on a shoestring budget so at times during our initial growth we had to take shortcuts just to make things work.  We are paying for those shortcuts now, but the good news is that we now have the funding to build the infrastructure correctly, and we have made significant progress on that front over the past 5 months.  

I see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Below is a list of our current initiatives. They make up what we believe to be the final tasks to bringing ActiveRain to the robust professional level where it needs to be:

1. We are in the process of upgrading the hardware on all of our
servers, which should substantially improve performance.  At the same
time we are also doubling the number of web servers.

2. We've contracted with another firm to provide 24 hour a day
maintenance and support for our systems.  They will be able to react
to any issues that come up much faster, and will also be working with
us to make sure the system as a whole is stable.

3. We've moved some of our development resources from new projects to
fixing a few issues that have been identified.

My heartfelt thanks go to all of you for engaging your peers and your clients through ActiveRain. The near future holds some great opportunities and with your involvement we will move the real estate world forward. 

I attended one of Dustin's seminars while he was still at his previous job and loved it! Dusting talks a mile a minute and talks for hours straight; only taking breaks to drink water. I learned a lot from his seminar about blogging and Web 2.0 and it is my job to already know that stuff.

He has another seminar happening on Thursday. I just learned that it was almost sold out so if you are in the Southern California area this week and can free up your schedule on Thursday go to his site and sign up now.

Introducing the Real Estate Blog Index! This is the inaugural index, so my list is incomplete and I am eagerly hoping for submission of blogs to add to my list.

The Rules:

1. Blog must be about real estate.
2. The URL must be ranked individually on Alexa and Compete. (For instance a blog address of sethgodin.typepad.com would not be allowed because the typepad.com domain is the site that is being ranked. This applies to all inside ActiveRain blogs as well; sorry.)
3. The blog must drive the majority of traffic to the domain name. (For instance although Bloodhoundrealty.com is a real estate brokerage, it is my opinion that the Bloodhound blog drives a majority of the sites traffic.)