Christian Russell's (christianrussell) Blog

OK, 5 days…5 simple ideas on how to boost your real estate income. Most of these can be transposed to work for nearly any business, especially any service business. But since I work in majority with real estate professionals…here you go. All comments and suggestions, rebuttals and refutations are...

Just a quick question…in tough economic times, governments often resort to price controls. Nixon did this of course. They cap prices on things like bread and such. During times of massive inflation, as we are in today, governments have been known to cap the rent you can charge to tenants as well....

As you know I talk with a lot of investors, brokers and others involved with business and real estate. It’s no news there’s a recession. I’m writing a quick post right now because I’m motivated to challenge people to look a little deeper into WHY we’re in a downturn. First, downturns are normal. ...

Look, failure is part of life! Yeah, like you haven’t heard that one before, right? Yet look around, and you’ll see we avoid it like the plague. We’re not in a the kind of market where playing it safe is going to keep you safe. I’ll go one step further…fear of failure just may be what causes your...

This is a follow up to my last post... Will buying now make you a millionaire? Have we seen "the bottom"? I don't pretend to know exactly what will happen in the next 5 years. There was a rally on the dollar and downward pressure on gold as recently as Obama's last talk on his new "stimulus" deal...

I would encourage all Realtors to not be waiting for the market to "come back around". Cuz it's not gonna. The boom we just experienced was the *problem*...this recession is the cure. We need this. We've been coasting on artificially low rates, easy money and bad lending practices. That's not nor...

Why is success so scary? This question has been coming up a lot lately for me. Why do we tend to quit right before we win? Why do we think small? Mere complacency can be a factor. Sometimes it’s the reason altogether. But there are other self-sabotaging elements that can cause this. A colleague o...

Many of the people in my network are Realtors, as am I. So this blog is naturally going to be at least 50% real estate-related. That said, I think what’s happening in real estate to be a good benchmark and applicable to many other industries. We’re going through a time of grandiose, wide-sweeping...

For all my bitching, you may think I hate being here or find there to be no opportunity…all gloom and doom. That couldn’t be further than the truth. America is replete with opportunity! Our wealth is gone, and we’re moving into unfamiliar territory, territory which few of us are prepared to navig...

I just want to be clear. This is not a real estate blog. I write about real estate here for the simple reason that I’m in the business. Many of my friends and acquaintances are in real estate. This leads me to mention it often. One of the reasons I love the real estate business is because it touc...