Senior housing is booming, baby
In the third quarter of 2011 alone, 39 senior housing deals worth $5.5 billion were completed, primarily by real estate investment trusts that specialize in housing for the elderly. That figure includes independent-living and...
The ultimate question: Would your customers recommend you?
Peter Fader: Can you tell us what NPS stands for? Those three letters are on everyone's mind these days, and a lot of businesses are being run by them.
Rob Markey: NPS originally stood for...
When nothing works
As Bertie examined my elbow, I reminded him of everything I had done to try to fix my problem. When it began to hurt, I used ibuprofen. When that didn't work, we tried two...
Through the eyes of the imagineers
Kimberly Scott, founder of Capture the Market, a real estate video production studio in Dallas, Texas, is hesitant to agree with such a trivialization. She might argue that when forging a tech-based business in...
Your use of pronouns reveals your personality
The research: In the 1990s, James Pennebaker helped develop a computer program that counted and categorized words in texts, differentiating content words, which convey meaning, from function words. After analyzing 400,000 texts—including essays by...
Using social networks to improve operations
Then telephone surveys began to supplement mystery shopping. Today, digital technologies are supplanting both, with online customer surveys providing an exponentially greater number of performance snapshots per day.
A well-managed loop that links customer experience...
Federal Housing Authority poised to re-sink the economy
Whatever measure of truth there may have been in that cliche, the reality is that by refusing to accept the real estate correction as the healthful and decades-overdue solution it is, America's leaders have...
And the winners are…
The 466-unit first phase of Columbia Parc at the Bayou District in New Orleans, La., winner of both the Community of the Year and Best Affordable Community awards, was honored by a visit from...
A house becoming more divided
Consider foreclosure-ravaged Detroit. In the historic Green Acres district, a haven for hipsters, a pristine, three-bedroom brick Tudor recently sold for $6,000—about what a buyer would have paid during the Great Depression.
Yet just 15...
Afraid to move
Consider these signs of the times:
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index registered 47.1 in August for the category titled "work satisfaction"—the lowest it has been since the measurement was introduced in January 2008. The number means...
Archstone owners decide to sell their stakes
Unable to reach a consensus with Lehman on a plan to sell the entire company, the two banks are now trying to sell their stakes, which total 53 percent, according to people familiar with...
Cheap, the new chic
By the time she started her YesIAmCheap.com blog in January 2009 as a way to make herself more accountable for her spending, her business had failed and she was $105,665.31 in debt. Today, the...
Demand for apartments rises all over, despite economy
Vacancy rates are shrinking all over, in tight markets such as Minneapolis and loose ones like Phoenix.
It's an unusual situation. Job creation typically drives apartment demand. But this time the tenant top-up is largely...
Enchant your employees
If you can enchant your employees, they will work harder, longer, and smarter for you - and, ideally, you for them too. Here are the ten best ways to enchant your employees.
Provide a MAP....
Fair or unbalanced: decoding the Buffet Rule debate
In the current round, Washington is wrangling over President Barack Obama's call for a "Buffett Rule" to make sure the wealthy pay a "fair share" of taxes—a percentage of income at least as large...
