Madonna's secret weapon: personal trainer Tracy Anderson
By NICOLE CARTER DAILY NEWS FEATURES WRITER
Monday, March 24th 2008, 4:23 PM
Let's face it - we all can't afford a personal trainer to get in shape. But what if you could use the same methods as super-fit Madonna or lanky lean Gwyneth Paltrow's trainer without the hefty price tag? Well, the good news is you can!
Meet fitness guru Tracy Anderson. The former dancer-turned-celebrity-trainer recently revealed her tips to the Daily Mail on how she sculpts her A-list clients into gorgeously-toned powerhouses. So gear up and follow these simple tips to the body of your dreams.
Before you begin, keep in mind Anderson's cornerstone principle: variety. Whatever your routine, keep it as varied as possible, as Anderson believes a stale repetitive routine can actually limit muscle building and toning. If you are constantly working on the same muscles, you will only build in those areas.
1. With a half hour of your favorite songs on your iPod, hit the treadmill running with one song, skipping with another, and sprinting with another. Keep at it for the entire 30 minutes.
2. Now on to toning. For each of the below, start with 10 repetitions and work up to 100. (Yes, 100. No one said it would be easy to look like a movie star!)
-Arm raise: Standing with feet shoulder-width apart, lift arms together into a V above your head holding 3 lb weights. Then lower your arms to your sides and back up again-- without stopping-- elbows and wrists bent a little.
-Single arm overhead pulse: Using the same 3 lb weights, lift one arm above your head, elbow bent, and then straighten your arm. Repeat this pulsing motion and alternate both sides of your body.
-Ballet Grand Plies: With straight posture, stand with your heels together, toes a little apart. Bend your knees and go as low as you can, then return standing straight up.
-Abdominal Crunches: With your legs out in front of you, lie on your back with your arms next to your side. Lift your body up until your feel a crunch in your abs, then releasing yourself back down. Be sure to use your stomach here, keeping your legs straight at all times.
-Piking: While laying flat, keep your arms at your side lift your legs up to a 90 degree angle, then lower gently, but immediately raising again-- don't stop! Keep the rest of your body flat on the ground.
3. For those of you who want an even more intense workout, Anderson advocates the fun and intense cardio plus toning workout, namely dance aerobics. Also the subject of her new DVD, "Dance Aerobics" focuses on losing inches by burning fat, but also toning muscles in a fun way. If you are a member at a gym, apply the same methods used in her DVD by simply combining a resistance class with a dance-cardio class.
4. So you want to build muscle but not look like the Terminator? Anderson suggests working accessory muscles first, avoiding bulking up the large groups. Also, never work out with weights heavier than 3 lbs.
5. Everyday is a good day to workout. Anderson believes 6 days a week, 30 minutes per workout are the perfect numbers. This is how Madge manages her body, and she expects nothing less from you!
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Article...
Here is an article you may find interesting from yesterday's LA Times:
Signs of a bottom? Home sales jump, but prices slip
Signs of a bottom? Home sales jump, but prices slip
New Repo Listings
Here are some new Repo Listings that I found locally for your perusal....
If one or two spark your interest, please feel free to call me on them...
A few of them will sell quickly!! One of them won't...can you guess which one won't?
It's because it's PRICED TOO HIGH!!
Thank You,
Todd
909.908.7376
http://www.mrmlsmatrix.com/DAE.asp?ID=22171395-223002982-51
If one or two spark your interest, please feel free to call me on them...
A few of them will sell quickly!! One of them won't...can you guess which one won't?
It's because it's PRICED TOO HIGH!!
Thank You,
Todd
909.908.7376
http://www.mrmlsmatrix.com/DAE.asp?ID=22171395-223002982-51
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Potential Buyers Take Repo Tours
Prior to Press Time..... ;)~
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, March 23, 2008
By Steve ChawkinsLos Angeles Times
Prospective buyers visit a home on the Repo Buyers Bus Tour in Traverse City, Mich., which shows properties in foreclosure.
NYT / GARY L. HOWEBill Ayers and Michelle Baker took the Repo Buyers Bus Tour looking for their first home.
NYT / GARY L. HOWE
-->Sherry White, center, a real estate agent, speaks to prospective homebuyers on the Repo Buyers Bus Tour.
NYT / GARY L. HOWE
-->
STOCKTON, Calif. — In this city that traces its roots to California’s Gold Rush, real estate agent Cesar Dias believes there are fortunes still to be made.
That’s why he leads the weekly Repo Home Tour, filling two 18-seat buses with prospective buyers eager to view foreclosed houses that can be snapped up at — what he says — are bargain prices.
Dias, a Stockton native, said that when he started the free tour in September, some residents criticized it as a tasteless marketing gimmick. But as headlines announce record foreclosures and weeds sprout in the yards of abandoned homes, their tune has changed.
“We’re bringing in homeowners to get the grass green again,” he said.
As the brightly colored buses recently rolled through a subdivision dotted with “For sale” signs, a couple who were stringing up Christmas lights waved. The bargain-hunters aboard waved back. Dias, who said his business was booming, offered a friendly beep.
“At this point, I wish the foreclosures would dry up. We could use an end to the free-fall,” Dias said, adding that the rate-freeze plan President Bush recently announced would help, even if it reached only a fraction of struggling homeowners.
Dias’ home tour is just one more high-profile sign of the mortgage crisis that has hit the Stockton area particularly hard. RealtyTrac, a real estate data firm, has pegged Stockton as the U.S. city with the highest rate of foreclosure filings, edging out even such troubled metropolitan areas as Detroit.
Other experts question the significance of such conclusions, pointing out that the company counts delinquency notices for late payments as well as actual foreclosures. Even so, nobody doubts that Stockton and the rest of California’s Central Valley have been severely jolted. By October, foreclosures in Stockton’s San Joaquin County were more than eight times last year’s levels, outpacing the state’s increase by 41 percent, according to DataQuick, a La Jolla-based information service.
At the waterfront Stockton Arena on Dec. 1, about 500 anxious residents lined up at a foreclosure workshop to see loan counselors from government agencies and nonprofits. Clutching bank documents, they wanted to know how to short-circuit the foreclosures they saw looming, how to negotiate for freezes in their adjustable interest rates, how to buy some time.
Some recounted loan officers having urged them to inflate their incomes to qualify for bigger loans. Others said they had snagged 100-percent loans but had unwittingly agreed to double-digit interest rates and pre-payment penalties as high as $10,000.
Pete Ponce de Leon, a 50-year-old machinist, said he and his wife were barely keeping up with their monthly mortgage payments, which shot up from $1,700 a year ago to $2,500 now. He said he cashed in two IRAs, sold his tools, sold a truck and was bracing for another rate increase this month. Along the way, he lost his job, and his lender refused to cut him a break.
“Why don’t they just screw us all at once instead of a little at a time?” said Ponce de Leon, who has found another job and hopes to renegotiate his mortgage.
Like homes almost everywhere else in California, the Ponce de Leons’ lost value and their interest rate kept going up.
As more homes entered foreclosure, more neighborhoods were riddled with problem properties — some in disrepair because of their owners’ financial problems, a few boarded up to deter squatters.
Median home prices in the county tumbled from a high of $425,000 in July 2006 to $319,000 in October. Last summer, San Joaquin County officials sent out crews to dump chemicals and larvae-eating fish into the stagnant water of abandoned swimming pools, where mosquitoes were breeding.
“The mortgage crisis was, in a way, becoming a public health crisis,” said U.S. Democratic Rep. Dennis Cardoza, who, co-sponsored the foreclosure workshop. “It’s one more symptom of a sick situation.”
In some ways, the Stockton area’s mortgage crisis has played out much like that in Southern California’s “Inland Empire.” In both places, commuters from big metropolitan areas were finding homes they could afford — if barely — in vast, recently built tracts that could be more than a two-hour drive from their jobs. And in both, speculators — an estimated 40 percent of the homebuyers in Stockton — were buying houses to flip them quickly at a profit.
Little wonder: Although San Joaquin County home prices in recent years soared from the 2000 median of $133,000, they still drew thousands of people squeezed out of the San Francisco Bay Area, where a median-priced home now goes for more than $810,000, according to the California Association of Realtors.
And Stockton, the county hub, was improving. Home to a busy inland port that once was a jumping-off point for gold miners, the city started to revitalize its tired downtown with a new ballpark, the $65-million arena, spruced-up hotels and other amenities.
Monaliza Botello, a 25-year-old nurse, said she was surprised when her father, who brings in $4,500 a month, last year secured a loan requiring a $4,000 monthly payment.
The idea was that Monaliza’s father would own the new $495,000 four-bedroom for a year or two, at which point she and her husband, Isaac, could afford to buy it from him with a refinanced loan. But the three of them, who were all living there, fell behind in their payments, and Monaliza lost her dream home.
As home prices plunged, Botello’s cousin around the corner also went into foreclosure, as did her godmother — a real estate agent nearby. “Everyone was going, ‘We can’t refi? How can we afford this?’ ” she said. “Everyone was just shocked.”
Occupied by Monaliza’s family for just seven months, the Botello home in Lathrop, just south of Stockton, is on the market for $300,000. After the foreclosure, the Botellos lived in a rental home for a few months — until it too was repossessed by a lender.
For the Repo Home Tour’s Cesar Dias, such stories are tragic but predictable.
His three-hour tour rambled from stately, tree-shaded bungalows close to downtown to sprawling subdivisions on land that just a few years ago was growing corn and alfalfa. The group visited a sprinkling of new homes and eight foreclosures, ranging from a century-old fixer-upper (listed at $129,900) to a tri-level, five-bedroom tract home ($339,000).
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, March 23, 2008
By Steve ChawkinsLos Angeles Times
Prospective buyers visit a home on the Repo Buyers Bus Tour in Traverse City, Mich., which shows properties in foreclosure.
NYT / GARY L. HOWEBill Ayers and Michelle Baker took the Repo Buyers Bus Tour looking for their first home.
NYT / GARY L. HOWE
-->Sherry White, center, a real estate agent, speaks to prospective homebuyers on the Repo Buyers Bus Tour.
NYT / GARY L. HOWE
-->
STOCKTON, Calif. — In this city that traces its roots to California’s Gold Rush, real estate agent Cesar Dias believes there are fortunes still to be made.
That’s why he leads the weekly Repo Home Tour, filling two 18-seat buses with prospective buyers eager to view foreclosed houses that can be snapped up at — what he says — are bargain prices.
Dias, a Stockton native, said that when he started the free tour in September, some residents criticized it as a tasteless marketing gimmick. But as headlines announce record foreclosures and weeds sprout in the yards of abandoned homes, their tune has changed.
“We’re bringing in homeowners to get the grass green again,” he said.
As the brightly colored buses recently rolled through a subdivision dotted with “For sale” signs, a couple who were stringing up Christmas lights waved. The bargain-hunters aboard waved back. Dias, who said his business was booming, offered a friendly beep.
“At this point, I wish the foreclosures would dry up. We could use an end to the free-fall,” Dias said, adding that the rate-freeze plan President Bush recently announced would help, even if it reached only a fraction of struggling homeowners.
Dias’ home tour is just one more high-profile sign of the mortgage crisis that has hit the Stockton area particularly hard. RealtyTrac, a real estate data firm, has pegged Stockton as the U.S. city with the highest rate of foreclosure filings, edging out even such troubled metropolitan areas as Detroit.
Other experts question the significance of such conclusions, pointing out that the company counts delinquency notices for late payments as well as actual foreclosures. Even so, nobody doubts that Stockton and the rest of California’s Central Valley have been severely jolted. By October, foreclosures in Stockton’s San Joaquin County were more than eight times last year’s levels, outpacing the state’s increase by 41 percent, according to DataQuick, a La Jolla-based information service.
At the waterfront Stockton Arena on Dec. 1, about 500 anxious residents lined up at a foreclosure workshop to see loan counselors from government agencies and nonprofits. Clutching bank documents, they wanted to know how to short-circuit the foreclosures they saw looming, how to negotiate for freezes in their adjustable interest rates, how to buy some time.
Some recounted loan officers having urged them to inflate their incomes to qualify for bigger loans. Others said they had snagged 100-percent loans but had unwittingly agreed to double-digit interest rates and pre-payment penalties as high as $10,000.
Pete Ponce de Leon, a 50-year-old machinist, said he and his wife were barely keeping up with their monthly mortgage payments, which shot up from $1,700 a year ago to $2,500 now. He said he cashed in two IRAs, sold his tools, sold a truck and was bracing for another rate increase this month. Along the way, he lost his job, and his lender refused to cut him a break.
“Why don’t they just screw us all at once instead of a little at a time?” said Ponce de Leon, who has found another job and hopes to renegotiate his mortgage.
Like homes almost everywhere else in California, the Ponce de Leons’ lost value and their interest rate kept going up.
As more homes entered foreclosure, more neighborhoods were riddled with problem properties — some in disrepair because of their owners’ financial problems, a few boarded up to deter squatters.
Median home prices in the county tumbled from a high of $425,000 in July 2006 to $319,000 in October. Last summer, San Joaquin County officials sent out crews to dump chemicals and larvae-eating fish into the stagnant water of abandoned swimming pools, where mosquitoes were breeding.
“The mortgage crisis was, in a way, becoming a public health crisis,” said U.S. Democratic Rep. Dennis Cardoza, who, co-sponsored the foreclosure workshop. “It’s one more symptom of a sick situation.”
In some ways, the Stockton area’s mortgage crisis has played out much like that in Southern California’s “Inland Empire.” In both places, commuters from big metropolitan areas were finding homes they could afford — if barely — in vast, recently built tracts that could be more than a two-hour drive from their jobs. And in both, speculators — an estimated 40 percent of the homebuyers in Stockton — were buying houses to flip them quickly at a profit.
Little wonder: Although San Joaquin County home prices in recent years soared from the 2000 median of $133,000, they still drew thousands of people squeezed out of the San Francisco Bay Area, where a median-priced home now goes for more than $810,000, according to the California Association of Realtors.
And Stockton, the county hub, was improving. Home to a busy inland port that once was a jumping-off point for gold miners, the city started to revitalize its tired downtown with a new ballpark, the $65-million arena, spruced-up hotels and other amenities.
Monaliza Botello, a 25-year-old nurse, said she was surprised when her father, who brings in $4,500 a month, last year secured a loan requiring a $4,000 monthly payment.
The idea was that Monaliza’s father would own the new $495,000 four-bedroom for a year or two, at which point she and her husband, Isaac, could afford to buy it from him with a refinanced loan. But the three of them, who were all living there, fell behind in their payments, and Monaliza lost her dream home.
As home prices plunged, Botello’s cousin around the corner also went into foreclosure, as did her godmother — a real estate agent nearby. “Everyone was going, ‘We can’t refi? How can we afford this?’ ” she said. “Everyone was just shocked.”
Occupied by Monaliza’s family for just seven months, the Botello home in Lathrop, just south of Stockton, is on the market for $300,000. After the foreclosure, the Botellos lived in a rental home for a few months — until it too was repossessed by a lender.
For the Repo Home Tour’s Cesar Dias, such stories are tragic but predictable.
His three-hour tour rambled from stately, tree-shaded bungalows close to downtown to sprawling subdivisions on land that just a few years ago was growing corn and alfalfa. The group visited a sprinkling of new homes and eight foreclosures, ranging from a century-old fixer-upper (listed at $129,900) to a tri-level, five-bedroom tract home ($339,000).
World Clock....
WORLD CLOCK Note the numbers of oil pumped. Goes faster than any of the others. CONNECTING THE TECHNICAL WORLD" Check out the world clock----Never seen anything like it. It is amazing. Click here: World Clock
THANX STEF!!
THANX STEF!!
Happy Easter ~ A week in Production!!
It's been an incredible week for me....Thanks Ray for the pic, btw!!
I was able to update my website:
Also, got a new broadcast on my YouTube Channel:
Also, got my "For Sale" Signs with my new telephone number: 909.908.7376
and....got some great ideas for my new pens which will be ordered very soon....
Oh, and SOLD A HOME IN COLTON, CA!! WOOHOO!! CONGRATULATIONS BRIAN!!
Well, I hope that your Easter is fun-filled, happy and relaxing....it's going to be Sunny and how lucky we are to live here.
Take Care and Be in Touch....
Your Real Estate Professional,
Todd Picconi
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Fast Facts
Calif. median home price - January 08: $430,370(Source: C.A.R.)
Calif. highest median home price by C.A.R. region January 08: Santa Barbara So. Coast $1,135,000 (Source: C.A.R.)
Calif. lowest median home price by C.A.R. region January 08: High Desert $234,310 (Source: C.A.R.)
Calif. First-time Buyer Affordability Index - Third Quarter 07: 33 percent (Source: C.A.R.)
Mortgage rates - week ending 02/28:
30-yr. fixed: 6.24%; Fees/points: 0.5%
15-yr. fixed: 5.72%; Fees/points: 0.5%
1-yr. adjustable: 5.11%; Fees/points: 0.7%
(Source: Freddie Mac)
**Taken from the California Association of Realtors Bulletin, dated March 5, 2008.
Calif. highest median home price by C.A.R. region January 08: Santa Barbara So. Coast $1,135,000 (Source: C.A.R.)
Calif. lowest median home price by C.A.R. region January 08: High Desert $234,310 (Source: C.A.R.)
Calif. First-time Buyer Affordability Index - Third Quarter 07: 33 percent (Source: C.A.R.)
Mortgage rates - week ending 02/28:
30-yr. fixed: 6.24%; Fees/points: 0.5%
15-yr. fixed: 5.72%; Fees/points: 0.5%
1-yr. adjustable: 5.11%; Fees/points: 0.7%
(Source: Freddie Mac)
**Taken from the California Association of Realtors Bulletin, dated March 5, 2008.
New Home Construction Down 62 Percent
New home construction starts in California fell 62 percent in January as homebuilders continued to cope with slow sales and the ongoing credit crisis, according to the latest data from the California Building Industry Association (CBIA).
Builders pulled just 2,608 permits for single-family homes statewide in January, a 28 percent decline from the previous month.CBIA Chief Economist Alan Nevin said the drop in new residential projects breaking ground coupled with the ongoing push to move existing inventories, carry the potential to produce a "severe shortage" of new housing once the real estate market rebounds.
"We have rarely had a situation where interest rates are low and the California economy is stable and yet there appears to be hesitancy among potential homebuyers to make the critical purchase decision," Nevin said. "We do know, however, that within the near-term future, the market will decide, often en masse, to begin the home-buying process, but this time there will be a severe shortage of new product."
**Taken from the California Association of Realtors Bulletin, dated March 5, 2008.
Builders pulled just 2,608 permits for single-family homes statewide in January, a 28 percent decline from the previous month.CBIA Chief Economist Alan Nevin said the drop in new residential projects breaking ground coupled with the ongoing push to move existing inventories, carry the potential to produce a "severe shortage" of new housing once the real estate market rebounds.
"We have rarely had a situation where interest rates are low and the California economy is stable and yet there appears to be hesitancy among potential homebuyers to make the critical purchase decision," Nevin said. "We do know, however, that within the near-term future, the market will decide, often en masse, to begin the home-buying process, but this time there will be a severe shortage of new product."
**Taken from the California Association of Realtors Bulletin, dated March 5, 2008.
Fannie and Freddie Agree to New Set of Loan Standards
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), have agreed to form an independent organization to launch and monitor a new set of loan appraisal standards in an effort to reduce the risk of fraud, among other issues.
The "New Home Valuation Protection Code" establishes new requirements governing appraisal selection, solicitation, compensation, conflicts of interest, and corporate independence, among other reforms. These requirements include prohibiting mortgage brokers from selecting their own appraisers, and prohibiting lenders from using "in-house" appraisers and using appraisal management companies they either own or control.
The agreement also calls for the creation of the "Independent Valuation Protection Institute," which would serve to implement and monitor the "New Home Valuation Code." The Institute will be funded by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and operate as a consumer contact center for complaints from both borrowers and appraisers alike.
To read comments about the new agreement by Freddie Mac Executive Vice President Robert E. Bostrom, go directly to http://www.freddiemac.com/news.
**Taken from the California Association of Realtors Bulletin, dated March 5, 2008.
The "New Home Valuation Protection Code" establishes new requirements governing appraisal selection, solicitation, compensation, conflicts of interest, and corporate independence, among other reforms. These requirements include prohibiting mortgage brokers from selecting their own appraisers, and prohibiting lenders from using "in-house" appraisers and using appraisal management companies they either own or control.
The agreement also calls for the creation of the "Independent Valuation Protection Institute," which would serve to implement and monitor the "New Home Valuation Code." The Institute will be funded by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and operate as a consumer contact center for complaints from both borrowers and appraisers alike.
To read comments about the new agreement by Freddie Mac Executive Vice President Robert E. Bostrom, go directly to http://www.freddiemac.com/news.
**Taken from the California Association of Realtors Bulletin, dated March 5, 2008.
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