April saw sales of New Homes surge to a 13-month high, up 4.1% from March and 11.8% ahead of last year. Inventories have recently made substantial gains, and the median price is down 8.2% from a year ago.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reports new-home purchase applications rose year-over-year for the third straight month. They note: “the broader housing market is leaning more on new construction to boost for-sale inventory.”

Meanwhile, signed contracts on existing homes were flat in April, although three of the four major U.S. regions saw monthly gains. Only the Northeast’s numbers decreased, pulling down the national average.

“When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.” ~ Erma Bombeck

Summer is here… take a look at this collection of tweets from parents during the summer…

* If you’re wondering how awesome my summer break is going, my kid just found a harmonica.

* If you think Twitter has tons of people craving attention & validation, allow me to introduce you to kids doing tricks in a swimming pool.

* I hate when I’ve been at home with my kids for 2 months for summer break and it’s actually only been 2 weeks.

* My kids are trying to start a fire in the basement by rubbing legos together, so if anyone wants to hang out, I’m free for the summer.

* July: My boys-When do we go back to school? Me-Not sure, end of August maybe?
Aug: Boys-When do we go back? Me-Exactly 21 days 3 hrs & 6 mins.

* 5-year-old: We never do anything fun.

Me: I just took you out for ice cream.

5-year-old: We never do anything fun twice in a row.

* By 10 a.m. on the first day of summer break, my son said he was bored. The chore list I am about to make will wrap around the Earth 3 times.

* I’m sending my kids to a free summer camp program called GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY.

* After a long, hard winter, my kids like to take advantage of the beautiful summer weather by playing computer games in the basement all day.

* When I think I can’t take it anymore I just remind myself that it’s only 1,692 hours till school starts again.

* 7 year old: I got duck poop on my hand
Me: Ok, don’t touch anything until we get home, then look in back seat to see that 7 year old is already eating crackers.

* Asking for prayers for a 5-year-old at our local playground. His mother is being really unfair and also packed the wrong brand of pretzels.

* It’s summer & I can’t get the neighbors’ kids out of my house, so I told them a black widow is hiding & I haven’t seen them since Saturday.

* We Polled 100 Moms to Find Their Top 5 Favorite Hiding Spots:
5. Psych Ward
4. Internet
3. Inside Own Head
2. Costa Rica
1. Bathroom

* Instructor: Welcome to our Summer with Kids Preparedness class. Our first lesson is how to apply sunscreen. Everyone grab an angry raccoon.

* Summer is when my kids are home making up for all the barely eaten school lunches I packed the last 10 months.

* If you’re looking for ideas, a family bike ride is another fun way to sit and listen to your kids complain for an hour.

* Yesterday was the last day of school. The kids have already completed the 56 activities I had planned to keep them busy the entire summer.

* There is no way your kid can prove you weren’t watching their underwater somersault in the shallow end.

* School’s out but I didn’t tell the kids. Right now they are waiting for the bus. Should buy me a few hours.

* My kids said they wanted to try something new this summer so I showed them how to vacuum & do laundry.

Have a great summer!

Cindy Glynn
Coldwell Banker American Home
479-586-6262
agentcindyg@gmail.com

Monday Morning Coffee 6.5.23

The spring housing market is heating up. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported purchase mortgage applications rose 5% compared to the week before. Even refinancing applications spiked 10% from the prior week.

This is happening even as the National Association of Realtors reports that almost seven out of ten metros saw home prices rise the first three months of the year after roughly half a year of moderate price declines.

A new Zillow study supports this, reporting home values climbed 1% from March to April, as buyer demand for limited inventory is re-igniting the sellers’ market. Higher rents are also bringing more buyers onto the scene.

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

By most accounts, Paul O’Neill’s first speech as the new CEO of Alcoa was a complete failure.

The speech was given in a hotel ballroom not far from Wall Street, and it was meant for the investors and analysts who did business just a few blocks away. The last few years the aluminum manufacturing giant had performed poorly. Investors were nervous, and many had arrived at the hotel expecting the usual grand turnaround vision of how this new leader was going reduce overhead, improve profits and, most importantly to them, raise the stock price.

But that’s not what happened.

“I want to talk to you about worker safety,” O’Neill began.

Almost immediately the attitudes in the room transformed. The energy disappeared. The room was silent.

“Every year, numerous Alcoa workers are injured so badly that they miss a day of work,” O’Neill continued. “I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America. I intend to go for zero injuries.”

When his initial remarks had finished, most of the audience was still stunned and confused. A few veteran investors and business journalists tried to get the meeting back toward a normal CEO-to-Wall Street address. They raised their hands and asked questions about capital ratios and inventory levels. O’Neill wasn’t willing to entertain any of it.

“I’m not certain you heard me. If you want to understand how Alcoa is doing, you need to look at our workplace safety figures.”

When the meeting was over, the confused attendees cleared out of the room quickly. Within minutes, investors were calling colleagues and clients with sell orders. Journalists were drafting their articles on how the new Alcoa CEO had lost his mind. But as it turned out, O’Neill’s mind was still very much intact—and it was focused not only on the right metrics.

But also, the right fight.

If you took a quick look at Alcoa by the numbers, its safety record was really one of the few things it was doing right. Alcoa had the best safety record in the aluminum industry. At the same time, its financial record was suffering. Alcoa was founded nearly 100 years before O’Neill took the reins, and it enjoyed a virtual monopoly on aluminum production in the United States for the first half of that. But anti-trust regulations, stiffer competition, and an over-supply in the marketplace led to a financial crunch for the giant.

O’Neill’s strategy was based on the belief that Alcoa and all its employees needed a deeper focus on process. They needed to make the production process more efficient (and likely at a lower cost). But O’Neill also realized that few people outside home office accountants would be able to grasp, let alone get motivated by, streamlining the production process. “Part of leadership,” O’Neill once explained, “…is to create a crisis.”

O’Neill saw the safety record as something that would win their minds and their hearts. And it would require a deep look at the production process. You can’t improve safety without understanding every step in the process—understanding each risk—and then eliminating it. But understanding the process doesn’t motivate people.

Safety could.

So, O’Neill picked a fight.

He picked a fight with the idea that something inside the company was injuring and even killing their employees. O’Neill picked a fight with the notion that industrial manufacturing came with an “acceptable” amount of risk. O’Neill wanted to fight the idea that any risk—any injury—was acceptable.

He got to work recruiting others to join him in that fight. His speech at the shareholder meeting was the first of many declarations of war against whatever was harming Alcoa employees. And it was strategically chosen. It sent the message to employees that shareholder returns weren’t his priority—employees were.

O’Neill’s commitment to leading the fight for safety would get tested early and often. About six months into his tenure, O’Neill was awoken in the middle of the night by a telephone call from a plant manager in Arizona. Earlier, a machine had stopped working when a piece of aluminum scrap had jammed a hinge on one of the machine’s large mechanical arms. A new employee offered to fix it. The man had only worked at the company for a few weeks—he joined because Alcoa offered free healthcare, and he and his wife recently found out they were pregnant. To try and fix the jam, he’d jumped over a safety wall and walked across the machine until he’d reached the jam and removed it. However, when he cleared the jam, the machine sprung back into action. The six-foot-long arm swung back across its arc quickly, striking the man in the head and crushing his skull.

He died instantly from the impact.

By the end of the day, O’Neill had assembled a meeting with the plant’s executives. “We killed this man,” he told them. He was unwavering. “It’s my failure of leadership. I caused his death. And it’s the failure of all of you in the chain of command.” In that moment, it was clear to everyone in the room…and to everyone who would later hear about the tragedy and O’Neill’s response. Unlike other industrial plants and unlike their own past. Accidents were unacceptable.

Accidents were the enemy.

In that meeting, O’Neill and the executives went through every detail of the accident. They watched video footage again and again. They recreated the stages of the accident through diagrams. Eventually, they compiled a list of dozens of mistakes made by multiple parties. Two managers had seen the man jump the safety wall but didn’t stop him. That was a failure of management. As was the man’s lack of knowledge that he should find a manager before attempting a repair. That was a failure of training. The machine should have had an automatic shut-down procedure if it sensed a human was inside. That was a failure of engineering.

As a result of that incident, major changes were made and made quickly. All of the safety railings at every plant were repainted bright yellow. New policies and procedures were created. And perhaps most surprisingly, O’Neill sent a companywide message to all workers asking them to call him directly, even at home, to suggest new safety practices. Especially if managers weren’t listening or implementing their ideas.

The next big test would come midway through O’Neill’s tenure. Alcoa was making progress on their fight, but accidents still happened. At a plant in Mexico, a carbon monoxide leak went undetected as it poisoned one hundred and fifty employees. Each one had to be treated at an emergency clinic though thankfully, no one was killed. The senior executive in charge of the plant had installed ventilators to remove the fumes and prevent future events. But he’d never reported the incident. In their individual fights to keep the accident rate at zero, a lone executive had decided to keep the accident a secret.

It wasn’t until a shareholder meeting that O’Neill even heard of the incident. A Benedictine nun from the area near the plant raised the issue. The nun’s order had heard about the tragedy in their community and purchased fifty shares of Alcoa for the express purpose of traveling to that meeting and forcing the issue. O’Neill sent a team down to Mexico to investigate. They gathered all the facts and concluded that the executive had most likely intentionally covered up the incident.

Two days later, he was fired.

It wasn’t an overnight transformation, but Paul O’Neill’s internal fight against accidents—his fight for worker safety gradually changed the systems and the culture. Since prioritizing worker safety meant studying the production process, the improvements made also made the plants run more efficiently. Since monitoring and responding to accidents meant constantly communicating safety numbers and ideas for increasing safety, eventually executives began sharing other data and other ideas more rapidly as well.

O’Neill’s fight for safety didn’t just turn around accident rates—it made the whole company better. When O’Neill left Alcoa in 2000, the company’s income was five times higher than when he’d started. And its market value had increased from $3 billion to over $27 billion. It was a nearly impossible turnaround.

And it would have been impossible had O’Neill not chosen the right tactic to motivate senior executives, union representatives, and individual workers alike. “Increase efficiency” isn’t a rallying cry that moves anyone. Safety—protecting each other from the threat of accidents—moved nearly everyone (disgraced Mexican plant executives notwithstanding).

O’Neill picked the right fight. And that fight saved lives—and saved Alcoa. ~ by David Burkus

Cindy Glynn
Coldwell Banker American Home
479-586-6262
agentcindyg@gmail.com

Monday Morning Coffee 5.22.23

The CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI) reported year-over-year home price growth fell to 3.1% in March, hitting its lowest appreciation rate in 11 years. Monthly price growth fell to 1.6%.

Although construction spending was up overall in March, residential spending came in a tick below February. Given the low existing home inventories, builders are optimistic but cautious.

Realtor.com’s latest weekly report saw active inventory 39% above a year ago. Sellers have more competition, but homes are still spending 15 fewer days on the market than before the pandemic.

This commencement speech was credited to Kurt Vonnegut, but it was actually never given by him and was actually written by Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune…

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen. ~ Mary Schmich

Cindy Glynn
Coldwell Banker American Home
479-586-6262
agentcindyg@gmail.com

https://clientcreator.com/admin/monday_morning_coffee_preview.asp?ID=82882

New Home Sales increased nearly 10% in March, posting the strongest monthly gain since March last year. It was the fourth straight monthly increase, as builders continue to benefit from the lack of existing home listings.

Evidence of that? The index Pending Home Sales, or signed contracts on existing homes fell 5.2% in March. Yet buyer demand is strong, with about a third of listings getting multiple offers and 28% selling above list price.

Meanwhile, annual home price growth dropped from 3.7% in January to 2.0% in February according to a National Home Price Index, with the monthly price gain a miniscule 0.2%.

Some great quotes from famous commencement speeches:

Pursue whatever it is that you want to do with your life. It is the only secret to happiness that I know except for maybe true love, that and maybe having the amazing health insurance plan that our congressmen have. ~ Lewis Black

From where I stand from an outsider’s perspective, here’s the truth: You are all nerds, all of you, except here’s the difference. You are the nerds who are going to make some serious bank, which is why I am here today … to marry the best-looking amongst you. ~ Mindy Kaling

Just remember, you can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

There is also sadness today, a feeling of loss that you’re leaving Harvard forever. Well, let me assure you that you never really leave Harvard. The Harvard Fundraising Committee will be on your ass until the day you die. ~ Conan O’Brien

Even though, as a class, you are smart, you are still allowed to say, “I don’t know.” Just because you are in high demand, you are still allowed to say, “Let me get back to you.” This will come in handy when your parents ask when you plan to move out of their basement and you answer, “I don’t know. Let me get back to you. ~ Amy Poehler

You will never have more energy or enthusiasm, hair, or brain cells than you have today. ~ Tom and Ray Magliozzi

And don’t worry if we do not approve of your choices. In our benign self-absorption, I believe we have given you a gift; a particular form of independence, for you do not owe the previous generation anything. Thanks to us, you owe it to the Chinese. ~ Steven Colbert

So, what’s it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don’t recommend it. ~ Bill Watterston

Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, never follow someone else’s path unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path then by all means you should follow that. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

You’re going to fall down, but the world doesn’t care how many times you fall down, as long as it’s one fewer than the number of times you get back up. ~ Aaron Sorkin

Go to it. Be bold. Be true. Be kind. Rotate your tires. Don’t drink so much. There aren’t going to be enough liver transplants to go around. ~ Richard Russo

I just listened to that inner voice. By the way, it’s always a good move to listen to that inner voice… if it doesn’t lead to a crime. ~ Lisa Kudrow

If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito. ~ Bette Reese

It doesn’t matter that your dream came true if you spent your whole life sleeping. ~ Jerry Zucker

You will find the key to success under the alarm clock. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere. ~ Erma Bombeck

So long as your desire to explore is greater than your desire to not screw up, you’re on the right track. ~ Ed Helms

The unfortunate, yet truly exciting thing about your life, is that there is no core curriculum. The entire place is an elective. ~ Jon Stewart

If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of payments. ~ Earl Wilson

Now, I know that having a honorary doctorate degree will do nothing for me, but I’m here to tell you today that your degrees, the ones you toiled to get, the ones you actually took classes to earn, those degrees, will also basically do nothing. ~ Charlie Day

Your whole life is ahead of you. Not the fun part. That part’s over. ~ Seth Meyers

I know that I am supposed to say something meaningful to you. Maybe some good advice for you to always remember. Now, I usually try not to give advice. Information, yes; advice, no. But what has worked for me may not work for you. Well, take for instance what has worked for me. Wigs. Tight clothes. Push-up bras. High-heel shoes. ~ Dolly Parton

Be the left shark. Remember last Super Bowl, when the Patriots won? You may be thinking of Tom Brady’s deflated balls right now, but I’m thinking of Katy Perry’s half-time performance. She was on stage dancing with two sharks. The shark on the right knew every dance move and performed perfectly. But it was the left shark, the one who went rogue and danced to his own crazy beat, who stole the show. So don’t ever be a conformist for convenience’s sake. ~ Meredith Vieira

Cindy Glynn
Coldwell Banker American Home
479-586-6262
agentcindyg@gmail.com

Monday Morning Coffee 5.8.23

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” – Maya Angelou

Professor Randy Pausch Graduation Speech Transcript:

Last August I was told it was likely that I had three to six months to live. I’m on month nine now and I’m not going to get down and do any pushups, but there will be a short pickup basketball game later.

Somebody said to me, in light of those numbers, “Wow, so you’re really beating the Grimm Reaper.” and what I said without even thinking about it is that we don’t beat the reaper by living longer. We beat the Reaper by living well and living fully, for the Reaper will come for all of us.

The question is what we will do between the time we’re born and the time he shows up, because when he shows up it’s too late to do all the things that you always want to kind of get around to.

I think the only advice I can give you on how to live your life well is first off remember, it’s a cliché but I love clichés, it is not the things we do in life that we regret on our deathbed. It is the things we do not.

You will need to find your passion.

Find your passion, and in my experience, no matter what you do at work or what you do in official settings that passion will be grounded in people. It will be grounded in the relationships you have with people and what they think of you when your time comes.

If you can gain the respect of those around you and the passion and the true love, and I’ve said this before, I waited until 39 to get married because I had to wait that long to find someone whose happiness was more important than mine.

If nothing else I hope that all of you can find that kind of passion and that kind of love in your life. Thank you.

Click this link below to read the full article

Monday Morning Coffee 5.1.23

Click link below for your MMC article!!

Monday Morning Coffee 4.24.23

Monday Morning Coffee 4.17.23

CLICK BELOW:

https://clientcreator.com/admin/monday_morning_coffee_preview.asp?ID=81700