1.  Ever since 1031 Exchange Coordinators decided to change up our CMS, there has been talk of wiping clean all of the posts from this blog and start afresh on our new site’s blog. As those talks have been circulating, the motivation to write has been absolutely sucked from me. Wish I had it in me, but it’s all been sucked out.

2. Right around the time these discussions began I hit a spate of huge projects to complete. With no desire to post or follow much of the blogging world I have come to love, I threw myself into the projects and have gotten some fairly decent results.

As an aside, I don’t think I ever realized just how much time blogging took in my life. Not that it was really time poorly spent by any stretch of the imagination, but time spent nonetheless.

3. About three weeks ago my wife Melanie, 2 year old son Payton, and I went on Fulll-Time Baby Alert. Melanie was due just two days ago, March 12, but our doctor was not liking how our son-to-be was growing. Over the last 4 weeks we had weekly non-stress tests to check the baby’s movement as well as weekly ultrasounds checking Melanie’s amniotic fluid levels. the doctor worried that there wasn’t enough fluid, which could lead to the umbilical cord getting pinched and not give the proper nutrients to our son. We were shocked to find that everything we did – every activity, every car ride, every planned future activity, simply everything – was done with the thought that the baby may need to be induced at a moment’s notice. We were stressed to the max to get everything we possibly could before the baby was born and total space cadets as to things around us.

When we did another non-stress test last Tuesday afternoon, March 4th, the doctor, decided to induce Melanie right away. Gratefully, Carson Alan Hallberg was born without complications on Tuesday, March 4th at 8:33pm. He weighed in at 6 lbs., 7 oz. and 18″ long. He ad Melanie have been thriving since the labor and birth. His parents, on the other hand, are struggling to get enough sleep and to give him and his big brother enough attention.

So, while each of my individual reasons for not posting may amount to good reasons to be so late with a post, together they make sense to me. Look for continued posts until a final decision is made as to whether to transfer over my posts on this blog to our new site.

I knew you all were wondering and waiting with baited breath ever since I solicited opinions on Friday’s Link it up! for your likes and dislikes of the different plans we were looking at. I had a say in the matter somewhat, but I think what got our consultant and owner to agree on most was the low cost for a great service that just came out with a new version not long ago. Also, Drupal just revamped Fast Company‘s site and blogs, which speaks volumes about the company.

So, in the next weeks we will be transferring over everything from our old site to the new one as well as this blog to our new blog, which will be hosted in conjunction with the website. As such, I may be a little more incommunicado, but still checking on things often.

Any tips and tricks you may have found with using Drupal would be appreciated.

So, do we stay with WordPress or go with Typepad, Drupal, Joomla, etc.? Who do you use? Why do you like them? What back-end CRM are you using and how well do your CMS and CRM co-exist?

Here at 1031 Exchange Coordinators things stay the same for the most part. Of course more flowers come in the office from the various hubbies of our staff. Beyond that, we have yet to experience anything drastic. I’ll let you know of anything special by the end of the day.

You may be interested in giving clients or other realtors a real estate themed eCard. Check it out at Real Estate eCards.

They are: 

1. Do you have a current Fidelity Bond?
2. Do you have a current Errors and Omissions Liability Policy?
3. What is you investment policy?
4. Where do you keep trust funds?

I’ll let you look at our answers for the sake of brevity in this post.

With the Qualified Intermediaries (QI) holding your client’s money for up to 6 months in their trust account, you have to make sure you can trust your QI. In the last year or two there have been a spate of QIs that have skipped town with their clients’ monies and now the clients can’t get it back because they never checked for the QI’s E&O Policy or Fidelity Bond. You gotta check them people or you may be liable!!!

Oh yeah, I also liked Jeff Corbett‘s Microblogging bit (if you couldn’t tell from my last post).

With the lobbying of Dave Brown, an Iowa-based Qualified Intermediary, and Max Hansen of Montana, Senate Bill 2242 proponent Democratic Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, also from Montana, has indicated that he now opposes the provision. So, it will likely be pulled from the final version.

What does this mean for REALTORS and Escrow companies?

As I see it, there are two ways to look at this issue, both of which benefit REALTORS, Escrow companies, and the real estate market on the whole. First, if the Farm Bill went through, then farmers wouldn’t be able to exchange out of their farms upon retirement and buy other properties. That would obviously hurt their realtor’s wallet. The second way to look at the issue is that if the Farm Bill were to go through, then this would be the first legislative step towards eliminating 1031 exchanges overall. With the fears people already have about 1031 exchanges because of the yay-hoos that skipped town with peoples’ 1031 money, passage of this bill would be tough to overcome the downward spiral of you and your clients buying and selling properties tax-deferred. From “scary stuff” last night, now we can breath a little easier.