Ed Icionsub

We’ve been helping my daughter and her boyfriend out with bills since her boyfriend isn’t working but I am starting to get concerned as to why he has been out of work for so long. He is a nice enough young man, polite and clean, although I’m not really thrilled with the long hair. His last job was working in a warehouse down in Chattanooga, doing fulfillment for a medical supply company. He quit that job almost a year ago when he started dating our daughter, with the thought that he would move up here and should find a new job relatively easily. But that is not proving to be the case.

I have helped him put together a resume and showed him how to search for product fulfillment jobs posted on the local jobs boards. There are always a dozen or so openings posted, all over town. I really thought that he would be able to get a job within 6 – 8 weeks.

I ran an order fulfillment department back in the 1980′s and I know a lot of things have changed since then. For one thing, we can use bar codes and computer printed manifests for shipping. That saves a lot of time and avoids errors from bad handwriting on shipping labels. Even packaging has changed a lot since then, and running a warehouse is much easier, with conveyors, rollers and motorized forklifts to help workers find the inventory items and get them pulled for packing.

We knew pretty quickly that the economy was in serious trouble and the financial indicators were everywhere if you knew where to look for them. One tactic that some of our brokers tried to use involved expanding the properties they were willing to list to include businesses, not just land and its improvements.

I was very much against the brokers getting into selling businesses. There is a unique segment of our industry that specializes in business brokerage and there are very good reasons why it is considered a specialty. For one thing, there is an incredible amount of time spent by the broker on valuing the business and preparing an extensive marketing package. To prepare the marketing package requires a lot of paperwork gathering and analysis, and a lot of research.

The amount of data that is collected for any type of business sale is staggering and it is confidential data that must be safeguarded while parts are being made available to potential buyers. A good solution for storing and managing this data is using an online resource, such as the professional VDR solution for IPO process.

Because financing has been so difficult to obtain from American banks and investment companies, some of our buyers are turning to foreign banks and investors. The problem with dealing with banks in China or the Mid-East is that many of the legal documents must be translated for the foreign banks to review, analyze and present to their loan committees. For those kinds of deals, we can use the Merrill Brink translation services and have a high level of confidence that the data maintains its integrity.

I’ve worked with a technical translation services provider before and it can be very difficult or it can be very easy. I think the first time you try to do an international deal it will be difficult. But once you learn the process and get a deal done, the next ones are much easier.

Tags: banks, broker, data, financing

One of the best parts of our monthly commercial real estate brokers meetings comes at the very end of the meeting. Usually we start with a short mixer as people arrive. Then we are invited to take our seats at the dining tables and we are served lunch. About halfway through eating the lunch, when it is easier to get people’s attention without the distraction of servers dashing about the room, asking to pass the butter or the salt, and the exchanging of pleasantries with your tablemates, a speaker begins the program.

The talks and presentations continue as we finish our lunch and then right before we adjourn, the President invites the attendees to take turns standing and declaring any wants – such as looking for a particular type of property – or any haves – such as a listing just signed since the last monthly meeting.

The announcement of haves and wants is a great advantage to people with hot properties or anxious buyers. This is when we hear about deals that are underway or have just been signed. We hear about the deals before they hit the internet and we also have the ear of the brokers involved. Access to this type of information is invaluable and there is no better way to get an edge on the competition then eating lunch with and rubbing shoulders with the dealmakers.

Have a good friend who is an actor and he lives in Philadelphia, which is why I titled this post “Always Sunny. . .” like the hilarious TV show. Keith loves that show and has actually hung out with the cast and is in a couple of scenes as an extra.

I would not think there is that much work for actors in Philadelphia. But actually, it is not far from NYC and is a lot cheaper to live in Philly than to live in New Jersey or New York. So when he gets work in NYC he gets a short term apartment in New Jersey. New Jersey is actually nice once you get away from NYC and the banks of the Hudson River. In fact, most of New Jersey has nothing to do with New York City.

My favorite spot in New Jersey is Atlantic City. Most people probably think of Atlantic City as a min-Las Vegas, but i think of it as the beach and the boardwalk. I spent many summer weekends on the beaches of the Jersey Shore, swimming is the surf and walking for miles up and down the boardwalk and the beach looking for seashells. And I promise you, my summers at the beach were nothing at all like the TV series, Jersey Shore.

Keith’s parents live in rural New Jersey, about an hour east of Philadelphia and that is too far for him to commute to NYC for acting jobs. They have a small dairy farm and we were out there visiting his family over the holidays. I flew into Philadelphia and Keith picked me up at the airport. Then we drove out to his family’s farm in Jersey. That was a nice drive – nothing but open fields and a lot of cows. It was nothing like the opening scenes in “The Sopranos” when Tony is driving from his home in New Jersey across the river into the city.

I’ve know Keith and his family since college and they are like a second family to me. I’ve been to their farm several times and they always make me feel like I am one of the family and very welcome. On this visit, we hung out with Keith’s dad a lot, while his mom was busy shopping and baking – getting ready for Christmas.

Keith’s dad was telling us about Arosa Energy, a company that helps homeowners, farmers and businesses with New Jersey solar power. He says that there are a lot of ways to be able to afford switching to solar power or adding solar power to your property. Now there are federal tax credits and rebates from the state, which really help with the initial cost of installation.

His dad is planning to work with Arosa Energy to add solar panels to the dairy barn and the farmhouse. He was told that there will be so much energy generated from that many solar panels that he can actually sell the excess energy to the electrical utility provider company. I think that New Jersey solar energy is going to prove to be a great investment for his dad and the farm. We might end up back at the farm in April to help with the solar panel installation. I wouldn’t mind going back to help – I think I would learn so much from working on it – and it would be great to spend time with Keith and his folks, too.

Tags: airport, Atlantic City, beach, energy, farm, installation, Jersey Shore, property, solar, utility

Seriously wish one of the candidates for President would promise to get rid of the IRS. I would vote for that man regardless of his position on other subjects. I absolutely hate doing taxes and yet I firmly believe that every citizen should be able to complete their forms on there own and file them without fear of an audit or questioning by the IRS because they could not understand the complicated tax forms and tax law.

Thankfully, we citizens do have the ability to get help with our taxes. There are people who are trained and licensed to help us prepare taxes, and they have to stand behind their work. If someone other than the taxpayer prepares the tax forms, that person has to sign the form along with the taxpayer. If you were smart and hired an enrolled agent to help you prepare your taxes, the enrolled agent can appear before the IRS if you get audited, and they can even negotiate with the IRS on your behalf.

Becoming an enrolled agent requires formal training, which is available online now. You have a variety of courses that you have to take, such as the enrolled agent ethics course and about 50 hours of study on a list of required courses.

A lot of people like to file their taxes as soon as they receive their W-2s in the mail, around the end of January. These are usually the people who are expecting a refund. However, a lot of other people wait until the first or second week of April to even look at a tax form and try to figure out whether they will get a refund or have to pay in. I know that I need to get busy organizing my home filing system and get the receipts sorted so that when my W-2 comes in the mail I can do a rough estimate and find out if I need to start saving up to pay in, or if I can expect some money back for a change.

Tags: agent, estimate, mail, negotiate, trained