Friday, February 5th, 2010
Let’s talk about apartment locators versus apartment magazine publications. Are Apartment Locators really Free? The Answer is Yes Apartment locators in Texas are a Free Service. Apartment Locators get paid by by aparmtent communities out of their advertising budgets. It is much easier and more efficient for an apartment community to pay a Real Estate agent to bring them people than it is for them to use other advertising mediums etc.
Many apartment communties use paid advertisers such as the Apartment Guide, Apartments.com, etc as well. However the problem with these types of publications are plenty. For one these types of magazines are paid per subscription. Therefore will NOT speak with you about your Apartment search, cannot advise you professionally as to what you may want to look out for or what questions to ask the leasing agent when inquiring about their property. They simply want you to pick up their magazine and look at their out of date pricing info and go to as many apartment communities as possible and tell them that their magazine is what brought you in. Then the apartment guide or whoever’s sales people go into the office when it is time for them to renew and ask what percentage of their monthly traffic was there because of their magazine. Then at that point the publication’s sales people get the apartment communities to resubscribe with ease based on the percentage number of traffic created by their book.
The problem for the consumer with these types of publications is that A. The pricing info is usually months behind and inaccurate. B. They have no mention of any types of specials and in some cases void out more valuable specials that the apartment community may be offering hence why they offer typically a $300 rebate to their users. C. There is no advantage to a consumer to use one of these books to search for an apartment then just going out to look at them and driving around stopping at apartment communities without one. To find the right apartment you need detailed info on pricing and availability. These two factors in leasing change frequently.
Typically I will try and contact properties for a client as close to their move in date as possible in order to maintain the integrity of the info I get. As pricing and avaiability are subject to change at any time. But don’t get me wrong using an apartment locator can be the best experience of your life or the worst experience of your life. The biggest problems that clients have mentioned to me lately about their previous apartment locator experiences are as follows; I have had several; clients tell me lately that they have gone out with apartment locators who have tried to push $1200 apartments on them when they ask for $1000 options..?? This boggles my mind. I have no idea why anyone would do that other than trying to boost their own commisions. If someone starts showing you units outside your pricrange it should be clear at that point that there is a problem. Another problem that runs rampid with apartment locators in this city is the fact that there are so incredibly many of them and the fact that a large percentage of them are just people who were failing at life and decided to get their Real Estate Licenses. Many of these people have no intentions of doing this as a career and absolutely no idea what they are doing but are rather supplementing their time between classes as they go to school. Then effectivley the consumer ends up with a complete moron and usually ends up picking an apartment that is far from what their best option may have been.
When soliciting an apartment locator ask them how long they have been in the business or better yet ask them to estimate how many people they have leased in their time doing this. Anyone with less than 2 yrs experience simply is not going to be as efficient as one of us old timers. I have been in the business for a little over 8 years and have leased thousands of people. Another thing to look out for when choosing an apartment locator is the fact that 90% of the local firms are small mom and pop shops do not even have a searchable database in order to review your options. My company plugs your criteria into a database containing the most accurate pricing info in the city, and all of your options come up. Then I narrow those down to the most fitting and begin to contact them. Just because they are in your area, pricerange and you like them does not mean they have an apartment available for your timeframe. You have to call them.
Another problem with these small apartment locating companies is that many of them have a numbered amount of places that they can work with. This business is a contract based business. If you do not retain a Broker’s agreement with these properties in order to ensure payment then you have no reason to work with them. If that happens then for the consumer their options are limited to only places that pay their crappy apartment locating firm. Effectively they will only show you options out of the 40% of places that pay them and that may cut out alot of other places that would have been your options, immediatley. I know it’s not fair. But that’s the real deal. Our company works with 90% of the available properties for rent in the Austin Metro plex area. The other percentage would cover complete crap and/or private owner listings, rooms for rent etc. Apartment locators are not miracle workers although I have performed a few for some tough clients, and we do not set the market. We have nothing to do with pricing availability etc. We simply have the tools to analyze the market and hopefully the knowledge to find you the best place possible. If you would like more info on apartment options in the Austin Texas area or just more info in general regarding the leasing process or how apartment locators work then let us know we’d love to help you out.
Tags: Apartment, Free, Locating, Lowdown, Magazine, Publications, Real
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Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
In Today’s throwaway society, there is absolutely no need to go out and purchase mulch material for your garden, unless it is for the particular aesthetic appearance, “The Look”, sake of the mulch material.
Were you aware that there are a number of mulching materials that you can obtain from around your own community that are free, and some of which can even be even delivered to you for nothing as well.
Impossible you might say. Well I mulch my gardens fairly heavily, and I never pay a cent for the mulch material. As a matter of fact, most of the mulch is willingly delivered to my home for nothing. As the former owners are only too glad to see the back of it, as it would cost them money, time and effort to find other ways of getting rid of it.
I also combine these outside sources of mulch with my own compost, weeds and other organic matter mixed through to achieve a great result in my garden, and so all that it costs me is time and effort.
So what am I talking about? While some of the below list is delivered free, other items I pick up myself, depending on time, circumstances, importance etc.
Grass Clippings from other people in the area or from lawn-mowing contractors.
Wood shavings from local wood turners and carvers, ( Do not use shavings from treated timber).
Small amounts of solid fill from friends who are excavating. This is to assist in raising garden beds, in my heavy clay soil.
Light prunings from shrubs which is shredded by me or put whole into garden
Heavier sticks and logs, which are turned into trellis, garden stakes, garden edges, seats, frames, log planters etc. while they slowly decay.
Newspaper, cardboard, non-rubber carpet underlay, and even carpet and carpet squares. Which is put under other mulch to prevent grass and weed regrowth
Animal manures sometimes mixed with straw from places like Racetracks and Showgrounds, Pony Clubs, Stables etc. I contact them well beforehand to see if any is available.
To this I also add my own weeds, throwing away some which can still be a potential problem, or burying them below the bottom most layer of mulch material to stop them regrowing.
Another item I add is any old potting mix from deceased plants or when repotting plants.
Being a fairly lazy gardener, I throw the material around a bit at a time, as they are available, and let nature mix them for me. On a couple of occasions I have received a bit too much wood shavings so these became path material between some of the garden beds, with a heavy underlay of newspapers. People even tell me that it looks and feels good underfoot.
Never put a large amount of fresh animal manure on any garden, as it will burn any plant around it. Be extremely sparing or let it age first for a few months before applying it to the garden.
I have been living in my new house for about fifteen months, and the mulch layer in all my gardens (there were no gardens originally), is about 10 cm or 4 inches deep. None of which I have paid for and little that I have had to even pick up for myself.
People are even starting to comment on how fast the plants in my gardens are growing in the local heavy black clay soils, and they are surprised when I tell them that I have never bothered to fertilise the plants. The reason for this is that the earliest laid mulch material, is now broken down into plant nutrients and is now feeding my plants as a plant nutrient soup aided by the soil life which has suddenly started appearing in my gardens.
Another benefit that has started to appear in the last few months is the arrival of insect eating wildlife into my garden. Predatory insects and birds are now visiting my gardens on a regular basis, where I saw none this time last year. Bees and butterflies are also starting to visit many of the plants, which have come into flower for the first time this year.
So what can you do to start locating your own supplies of free mulch material, well here are a number of suggestions.
Put a little sign near your gate, something along the lines of ‘Organic mulch required’, or ‘Lawn clipping wanted’. There are sure to be a number of local people who are currently throwing theirs away in your community or even local area. Never mulch solely with grass clippings as they form an impenetrable layer that air and water cannot get through. Always mix it with other things to stop it ‘thatching’, just like a roof over the soil.
See if you can get into contact with local people who are into woodturning and carving, or even local sawmills. And come to some arrangement about unpreserved wood shavings.
Check the local phonebook for local showgrounds/racetracks/stables etc, to find out if any have stable or manure waste to give away, for people willing to pick them up
In other words, start talking around the place that you are after mulch materials and they will soon start coming to you.
The only caution with using other peoples waste material is the chance that you might also import other peoples pests and weeds. I have rarely found it a problem because of heavy mulch on mulch routines. But it is possible.
One point being that when you first start applying mulch to your garden you may see some nitrogen deficiencies occur in some plants. This is because the organisms that are breaking down the mulch material are using up all the available resources of it during the initial breakdown. Once you have gotten past this time the old composted material provide more than enough nitrogen for future processes.
Another thing to be careful of is not to bury or mulch up against the stems of wanted plants, as it may cause further problems for your plants in rot problems around the collar of the stems.
So get out there and talk around the community, find the contacts, believe it or not they will be as grateful as you to solve their particular problems of waste reduction. As well as that, you may start making some new friendships out of the deal; I know I have.
Tags: Feed, Free, Gardens, Mulch
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