How will new realtor commission rules affect the homebuying process?
Posted On October 1, 2024
There are new rules for realtors’ commissions when you’re looking to buy a house. How will they affect you? Our guest in a recent episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston” had the answer. Alabama Gulf Coast realtor Angelo DePaola, the Coastal Connection, has done a lot of work researching how the new rule will affect realtors and homebuyers. Once upon a time, if you wanted to buy a house you went to the realtor who listed that house – the seller’s agent. But in order to ensure that the best interests of the buyer were represented, buyer’s agents became… Read More
Categories: Blog, Real Estate, What's Working with Cam Marston
Meeting a need for the growing logistics industry in Mobile
Posted On July 12, 2023
With a busy port, plentiful transportation routes and a positive business climate, logistics is a growing sector in Mobile. Philip Burton has a solution to meet its needs. Burton, our guest in the latest episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston,” is a commercial developer who saw the vast potential for growth in logistics in the area and started the South Alabama Logistics Park. It’s a place where shipments that come into the busy Port of Mobile can be unpacked from their containers and stored before moving on to their ultimate destinations by truck, rail or air. “We saw an… Read More
Categories: Blog, Real Estate, What's Working with Cam Marston
If you want to succeed in sales, relationships aren’t just a buzzword
Posted On March 28, 2023
What’s the secret to sales? You’ve probably heard enough people say “relationships” by now that it sounds cliché. But a relationship isn’t just providing service to your customers, and it doesn’t stop with the sale. Angelo DePaola, The Coastal Connection, says it goes beyond that. “I know everybody talks about relationships, but relationships run both ways and they last over a long period as time,” he said. “When people ask me what I do, I’m in the relationship business and we leverage that into real estate sales.” DePaola, a realtor based in Orange Beach, was our guest in the latest… Read More
Categories: Blog, Podcast, Real Estate, What's Working with Cam Marston
Revolutionizing the home renovation industry may be AnotherStory
Posted On February 15, 2023
“Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” It’s a phrase commonly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson and, while his exact words were a little different, the point holds: Everybody’s looking for the next big thing – if it works. The world may be soon beating a path to Ben Strout’s door in Birmingham. Strout, an architect and contractor, doesn’t build mouse traps. He and his company, AnotherStory, renovate houses, and they’ve found a better way to do it. “AnotherStory is really an answer to an age-old question that people didn’t even know… Read More
Categories: Blog, Entrepreneurship, Podcast, Real Estate, What's Working with Cam Marston
Harnessing the power of an inter-generational workplace
Posted On September 21, 2022
I have long been an advocate of Baby Boomer and Generation X CEOs and managers not only listening to their millennial employees, but learning from them and giving them an active role in the decision-making process. The unique perspectives and skills of millennials are valuable in today’s workplace and can help a business ensure it is reaching the younger segments of the marketplace in the most effective ways. In the latest episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston,” I spoke with someone who has taken that mindset a step further. Tanya Hart Little met Allison Johnston Frizzo while serving as… Read More
Categories: Baby Boomers, Blog, Entrepreneurship, Generation Y / Millennials, Generations, Podcast, Real Estate, What's Working with Cam Marston, Workplace
How Dr. David Bronner rebuilt Alabama’s retirement system, and its image
Posted On July 14, 2022
Dr. David Bronner wasn’t the first choice to lead the Retirement Systems of Alabama when the job was last open back in 1973. He wasn’t the second or third choice. He wasn’t even the 100th choice. But he was the right choice. Bronner, who grew up in Minnesota before coming to Alabama for law school, ended up running the state’s retirement system because neither of the two most powerful men in the state at that time – Gov. George Wallace and Paul Hubbert, then head of the Alabama Education Association – knew who he was. And therefore, after about 160… Read More
Categories: Advertising, Blog, Financial Services, Podcast, Real Estate, Succession Planning, What's Working with Cam Marston
One way to survive lean times: Keeping your operation lean
Posted On February 26, 2019
When the housing market crashed in 2008, Mobile builder Rogers & Willard found themselves in the same situation as pretty much every other construction company in America. After the crash, the company limped through 2009 on only a third of the revenue it had enjoyed in 2008. Times were lean. But fortunately for Rogers & Willard, “lean” is something with which it was already familiar. Our guest in a recent episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston,” Rogers & Willard president Mike Rogers says the company survived those tough years by keeping its operation lean as a matter of principle,… Read More
Categories: Entrepreneurship, Real Estate, Recession Economy, What's Working with Cam Marston, Work
The fall of the golf course community and rise of the … agrihood?
Posted On January 30, 2019
The good news for the real estate market is that millennial home-buying has slowly been trending upward since 2017. If you live in a golf course community and was hoping that’d help your property values, however, the news maybe isn’t so good. According to the Wall Street Journal, millennials are shunning such communities because they “are not interested in golf,” leaving property values along the fairways sliding. That’s got older generations who bought up such properties as their own little slice of paradise trying to blast their way out of the bunker in some areas of the country. So if… Read More
Categories: Blog, Generation Y / Millennials, Home Ownership, Real Estate
How Long Does Your Generation Shop for Homes?
Posted On October 11, 2016
(Special Blog today comes courtesy of Zillow who researches generational trends on their users and homebuyers across the market place.) By Jennifer Riner Every generation offers specific trends, habits and lifestyles that sets them apart from their predecessors. Much like Generation X differs from their Baby Boomer elders, Generation Y thinks outside of the box when it comes to finding their perfect homes. A recent Zillow survey conducted by Ipsos of 2,010 American adults revealed how home and mortgage shopping trends differ across age groups. Regardless of generation, the average American spends 26 hours finding their perfect place and just… Read More
Categories: Financial Services, Generations, Real Estate
Top Cities for Millennials to Live Alone
Posted On September 7, 2016
(Today’s blog courtesy of Zillow.com. Thanks to Zillow for reaching out and offering this info. Good stuff.) By Jennifer Riner Less than 9 percent of Millennials live solo these days – a portion of the population that’s been in decline for the past few years. Because of unaffordable rents and rising home prices, a vast number of young people opt to live with family or friends to cut housing costs that might otherwise send them into the red zone. Between 2000 and 2013, the percentage of 23- to 34-year-olds living with family increased 46 percent. The no. 1 place… Read More
Categories: Generation Y / Millennials, Home Ownership, Real Estate