Bailey

It’s hard to deny that Facebook and the other social networking sites have had a profound impact on the world. The ability to keep up with old high school friends and relatives who live far away is merely part of the allure of social networking. Many businesses are actively marketing their products and services via Facebook and the like. Some have even predicted that yellow page advertising will one day be a thing of the past.

As with other forms of technology, the benefits of social networking sites should be balanced with the risks that come with them. For example, I recently learned that pictures you post on your Facebook page contain data that can be interpreted to tell someone where you took the picture. That may or may not be a big deal to you. However, if you have children it might give information to child predators that could be used to locate your child. Scary stuff.

Adults who use Facebook sometimes need protection as well, usually from themselves. For some reason, many people will post things on their Facebook page or Twitter account that might come back to haunt them in the future. For example, police and prosecutors across the nation are getting valuable evidence to use in the prosecution of criminal defendants. It’s not entirely clear whether law enforcement is required to have probable cause and obtain a warrant before getting the information from your Facebook page. The issue under a Fourth Amendment analysis is whether a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in what they put on their Facebook page. Legal scholars are hotly debating this topic every day. Some scholars argue that under the Third Party Doctrine you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. The Third Party Doctrine basically states that if you give information to a third party, then you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Their argument is that you are effectively giving the information to the people at Facebook because they have the ability to view even “private” messages you send to your friends. Other legal scholars argue that the Third Party Doctrine should not defeat your reasonable expectation of privacy because you are merely communicating through Facebook, much like using a telephone. Since it is unclear how a court might rule on this issue, criminal defendants should be extremely cautious about what they put on Facebook.

Even non-criminals need to be careful about what they put on Facebook. Civil litigation lawyers (like me) are having a field day with what we can get on social networking sites to help our clients (and use against the other side). For example, people involved in personal injury cases are often cross-examined in court with pictures taken from their Facebook showing them engaging in sports and other physical activities which they claim they cannot do anymore due to the accident. Parents involved in custody battles are being impeached with photos of partying and other embarrassing behavior. A Connecticut judge recently ordered a divorcing couple to exchange passwords to their social networking and dating sites. I can only imagine the wealth of information that the lawyers will obtain once they have the passwords for the other side in their hands. This is a trend that is likely to continue, in my opinion.

I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t have an explanation as to why people seem to lose their good-judgment filter when it comes to posting on social networking sites; however, it is abundantly clear that they do. The best legal advice any lawyer can give you is to be extremely careful what you post. Ask yourself: “Would I be embarrassed if my preacher saw this post or this picture?” That would be a good place to start. Of course, if you’re involved in a personal injury case, you might also want to leave out the pictures of you water skiing with your church youth group as well.

If you have a legal question that you’d like to see me write about in this column, I invite you to submit it to me via my website www.baileylawfirmpa.com Click on the “Ask the lawyer” tab and fill out the form.

When it comes down to it, the real estate industry in general has become an issue of much discussion in Washington, D.C. The high number of foreclosures has been a concern and the same goes for falling home prices. Furthermore, there has been an emphasis on risk – the notion that lenders ought to write mortgages for people who are likely to live up to the obligations under the loans.

It is a very good thing to make sure that borrowers don’t get in over their heads when taking out mortgages – that lenders are underwriting loans for people who will probably pay them back. Also, who will argue against the notion that a stable housing market featuring prices that don’t fluctuate wildly from year to year is good for the economy?

It appears a good number of private groups and governmental entities see the value of a stable housing market, but what has not been clear is how to achieve that goal. David H. Stevens, President and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association, put his finger on problems surrounding housing market reform on Jan. 18 in his speech to the Exchequer Club of Washington, D.C. He pointed out that there is little in the way of certainty when it comes to reform.

“One of the main reasons for our economy’s continued struggles is our present state of constant uncertainty,” he said. “This uncertainty has impacted consumers and industries alike, creating difficulties for both.

“In recent years, policymakers and legislators have focused on proposing a plethora of new rules rather than on actions that would create confidence. It is not that rules are a problem or contrary to creating confidence; it is that simply racking up hundreds of rules – rules that are often vague or confusing without clear logic, application, or protection for consumers – is contrary to creating confidence. What individual, let alone what industry, can figure out how to proceed if they are overwhelmed by and do not understand the hundreds of rules?”

Stevens argues the housing market has become a political football in that sometimes contradictory rules and reforms have been put in place with little regard to their consequences. For example, consider residential mortgage servicing standards – the regulations regarding the relationship between a borrower and the entity collecting payments on a mortgage. Currently, states and the federal government are all considering their own rules rather than coming up with one, uniform set of standards.

Stevens argues that going for common sets of rules will lead to certainty in the housing industry and that is good for everyone involved. Certainty makes consumers and investors more confident and helps the people responsible for issuing mortgages understand what they are obliged to do.

How can that certainty be achieved? Stevens said such certainty can be achieved through a strong U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) – a federal agency that set up shop in July. That group can either oversee uniform rules regarding mortgage lending or keep going with the patchwork reforms that have been the rule over the past few years. Stevens, of course, argues that the CFPB should pursue uniform sets of rules of regulations.

“We must create straightforward rules that apply equally and nationally,” he said. “This would provide crystal clear guidance, creating certainty in a time of uncertainty.”

Home Sweet Home is written by Ethan C. Nobles and is sent weekly to publications throughout the Natural State on behalf of the Mortgage Bankers Association of Arkansas.

Beth Cook owns B LaRue, a Rogers gift shop that will soon sell only American-made items

A Rogers gift shop owner is on a mission to help America get back to work. Instead of talking about it or telling politicians to do something about it, Beth Cook, owner of B LaRue, is making major changes in how she does business.

B LaRue, a popular gift store that is now located in the Village on the Creeks in Rogers, offers an eclectic selection of gift items and already supports local vendors by selling wares from Arkansas artisans.

Soon, nothing in the shop will be made outside the United States. Cook is getting rid of all merchandise that is not both manufactured and assembled entirely in the United States and will now only sell gift items that fit that category. The “Chinese Scavenger Hunt” is a sale on all items Made in China, which are marked with a red sticker.

A sale going on now in the B LaRue shop is accomplishing two goals: it’s ridding the shop of all non-American made items and it’s bringing awareness to just how much merchandise in stores is not American-made. The “Chinese Scavenger Hunt” sale features items that are made in China, all which are marked with a red dot sticker.

The idea is that if more American stores sell items that are both manufactured (the parts) and assembled in the United States, that it will create jobs, she said.

“My mission here is, by purchasing American-made products, to enable some company to be able to afford a job for someone. Even if one person can get hired somewhere because of this, I’ve accomplished my mission,” she said. “This way, we can get America back to work.”

The idea of buying only American-made products is far from new, but it’s receiving a renewed focus from consumers and business owners across the country. Cook is in the process of joining an organization called Made in the USA Foundation, which is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting products manufactured and assembled in the USA.

B LaRue is a Rogers gift shop that is working to sell only items that are manufactured and assembled in the United States.

Word of the new endeavor is being received with rave reviews from the shop’s existing customers on Facebook, in person and via email.

“I’ve been bombarded with emails from people realizing what we’re doing and people in the store are saying it’s awesome,” Cook said. “People are trying to buy American made but it’s been difficult because practically everything on the shelves in stores was made in China.”

Cook was concerned that she would have trouble replacing some of the products lines that she will now no longer carry because they were made out of the country. Her recent trip to market in Atlanta gave her new hope that there is already a good assortment of American-made gift items available.

“They had a whole section dedicated to ‘made in America’ items,” she said. “People are becoming very conscious of trying to buy American-made products.”

Beth Cook, owner of B La Rue, chats with a customer last Saturday in the shop. Cook is working to sell only American-made items in her Rogers gift shop.

Editor’s note: This article is from a press release provided by Jamie Smith, one of our writers. She wrote it as part of her business, Jamie’s Notebook. All of the images are by Nicole from Capture Me Photography.  Like her on facebook too!

On Jan. 11, the Metro Area Board of Realtors met in Fayetteville and defeated a proposal to merge that board with the Bentonville-Bella Vista Board of Realtors, Rogers Board of Realtors. Members of the Metro Area Board defeated the proposal by 13 votes.

The matter will be taken up for another vote at a noon meeting of the Metro Area Board on Feb. 2 at the Clarion Inn in Fayetteville. According to a merger agreement  presented to members at the Jan. 11 meeting, the merger would result in a new entity called the Northwest Arkansas Board of Realtors.

Should the merger take place, the new organization will be the largest one in Arkansas with 1,518 members. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) , the Metro Area board has 883 members, the Rogers Board has 464 members and the Bentonville-Bella Vista board has 171 members.

The largest board in the state is currently the Little Rock Realtors Association with 988 members. There are 6,447 Realtors in Arkansas.

The three boards involved in the proposed merger are all located in Benton and Washington counties in extreme northwest Arkansas. The Metro Area board operates in Washington and the western half of Benton county and includes Realtors from Madison County. The eastern half of Benton county is covered by the Bentonville-Bella Vista and Rogers boards.

According to the Metro Area blog, some Realtors have questioned whether the matter should be again brought up for a vote because it was defeated just a couple of weeks ago. According to responses from the board, the NAR says such a vote is allowed under the association’s bylaws. For more information, click here to visit the Metro Area blog.

The Arkansas team is known as the Ice Hogs, and they play in the South Eastern Collegiate Hockey Conference or SECHC.  The SECHC has all but two of the teams in the better known football SEC: Kentucky and LSU.  Currently, the Ice Hogs are tied with Alabama at 12 points in the West Division.   They are 6-1 in the conference and 15-6 overall.  The Ice Hogs have two shots at taking down the Frozen Tide on February 3rd and 4th at the Jones Center in Springdale, AR.  Come on out and check out your U of A hockey team!

~ Article by Stephen Pawlaczyk, Photos by Nicole Pawlaczyk of Capture Me Photography by Nicole (find her also on facebook)

There are, of course, ways to prevent missing posts around here. It’s a simple matter to subscribe to our RSS feed, “like” us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or subscribe to email updates. It is free to use any of those services, so pick your favorite one and take advantage of it. Oh, and you can always get a recap of the week’s events by checking here for a “week in review” post such as this one.

So, what articles did we run this week? Click the below links and see for yourself.

* Freddie Mac rolls out program for the unemployed — another program to help people struggling with mortgage payments. Will it work? Read the article, do some research and make up your own mind.

* Housing market reports — First Arkansas News has the first year-end housing market reports available in the state. Click here for the central Arkansas report and here for the one from northwest Arkansas and the Jonesboro area.

* CBS Radio Mystery Theater — that program was based on classic old time radio entertainment but ran from 1974 through 1982. We wrote an article about a site set up so people can listen to those programs for free. You’ll find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

* What’s impacting your credit score? You can find out by getting a free credit report. Remember, that’s legitimately free — not one of those bait-and-switch things.

* Dr. Zodiac and Weekend OTR find a new home. Those features have been moved to The Natural State Hawg. You’ll find this week’s horoscope here and an episode of Tales of the Texas Rangers here.

Fans of CBS Radio Mystery Theater have their favorite episodes and Chester is no exception — he’s got a favorite series and pointed out that listening the programs is a great family activity, too.

“The Mark Twain week from January 1976 is a special favorite of mine,” he said. “I think that Brown and his writers did a great job with the material.

“Adaptations of great literature are always fun to me. I think that the Christmas episodes with E.G. Marshall playing Scrooge are my daughter’s favorites.”

While CBS Radio Mystery Theater was inspired by old time radio (OTR), Chester said there are some notable differences.

“We see a big change in the technical quality of the productions between the 30s and the post war era. The same is true from the end of the Golden Age of Radio era in 1962 and the first broadcasts of CBSRMT in the 70s,” he said. “The technology simply improves, and CBSRMT was being recorded just as the electronic revolution was beginning.

“The other big difference is the one hour format. Earlier anthologies like Inner Sanctum, Escape! and Suspense told great stories in half an hour or less, but the extra time allows the writers and actors a better chance to develop characters and stories.”

An obvious question that comes up when the subject of old time radio or programs such as Radio Mystery Theater that revived the format is whether such shows could find a radio audience today. Chester has an answer to that question.

“I think that audio drama has a lot of potential, but unless all of the Internet server farms crash, broadcast radio is going to continue to decline,” he said. “Audio drama has a lot of potential because it is a cheap way to present a story, as well as a fun way to enjoy being told a story.

“Even in the era of “multi-tasking” it is easier to listen to a story or show than to sit and watch one. I have the feeling that there are some creative kids out there who would have do great things with their story telling skills and some computer generated sound effects.”

Click here to read Part 1 of this article.

Remember a few years ago when taking out a mortgage was easy? If a lender decided a borrower was too risky, the potential homebuyer could likely find a subprime lender or a banker offering some loan options designed to get people with less-than-stellar credit into a home.

After a few years of somewhat freewheeling lending practices, we saw a lot of defaults starting around 2007. Some of the riskier mortgages offered some fantastic initial terms, but those were replaced after about five years with higher interest rates and other things that drove up monthly mortgage payments.

Some mortgage payments on those more exotic loan products went up by hundreds of dollars per month. Those borrowers who were making their payments just fine after the initial mortgage terms found themselves unable to afford their new obligations. A rash of foreclosures followed – more bad news for an economy that was already struggling.

As a result of all those foreclosures, lenders and the federal government started putting reforms in place. More often than not, the reforms were established to address risk reduction – to make sure that people who took out mortgages would probably pay them back.

With that emphasis on risk reduction came the increased importance of credit scores. While people with lower credit scores may have had to forgo the best interest rates and such in the past, new risk reduction measures meant that a good number of people who could take out mortgages before the subprime lending crisis found themselves unable to get loans under new, stricter regulations.

That being the case, a good credit report is vital in the current lending environment. People don’t have to have perfect credit to take out mortgages, but it’s a good idea to see what negative items are on a credit report prior to applying for a loan.

Fortunately, the federal government allows people to pull their credit reports and inspect them once a year. That service is free to consumers and is available on the Internet through annualcreditreport.com. Consumers can also access their credit reports by calling (877)322-8228.

While those reports won’t show consumers a credit score, they do reveal all items impacting those scores. The reports are from the three major credit reporting bureaus – Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.

It’s a good idea to review those reports for at least two reasons. For one thing, there may be some items on the credit reports that are inaccurate but negatively impact credit scores. The reports include instructions on how to dispute inaccurate items. Once those are gone, a credit score will improve.

Also, reviewing those reports can reveal is someone is a victim of identity theft. If someone is running loose taking out credit cards and applying for loans in your name, you’ll want to know about that and start taking steps to correct the damage done. Finally, it’s important to realize that late payments, judgments, bankruptcies, foreclosures and other items on a credit report negatively impact your credit score. Finding out how many of those items – if any – show up and taking steps to improve your payment history is critical to boosting a credit score.

Few people have perfect credit, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t loan products available to people wanting to take out mortgages. A good way to find out what options are available to you is to get in touch with your local mortgage banker and ask.

Home Sweet Home is written by Ethan C. Nobles and is sent weekly to publications throughout the Natural State on behalf of the Mortgage Bankers Association of Arkansas.

The program owed much to old time radio (OTR) programs, even if it aired long after the Golden Age of radio had passed. From January 1974 through the end of 1982, 1,399 episodes were produced and broadcast every weeknight.  That fact leads to a question — how did the program find an audience at a time when OTR was virtually extinct?

Paul Chester of CBSRMT.com — a site dedicated to the preservation of CBS Radio Mystery Theater — has an answer or two to that question. In a nutshell, Brown launched the series in the wake of the success of American Graffiti, a coming of age film staring Ron Howard that was released in 1973 and set in the 1950s.

“Himan Brown sold Radio Mystery Theater on a couple of different levels,” Chester said. “The big thing he was trying to tap into was the ‘nostalgia craze’ that was sweeping the country after the release of American Graffiti. I think the second was that there was an incredible pool of talent available for him to draw upon.”

Brown was well familiar with that talent pool as he cut his teeth in old time radio as a producer of a number of programs — The Adventures of the Thin Man, Bulldog Drummond, Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon, to name but a few show in which Brown was involved during OTR’s heyday.

“Some of this talent were included the great voices that (Brown) had worked with before in the Golden Age of Radio,” Chester explained. “And of course Brown had worked with lot of different talent through more than seventy years in the radio business! The other talent pool were the up and coming actors and actresses from CBS television in the ‘70s. When CBSRMT started, most of CBS’s soap operas were being produced in New York.”

Chester said the actors attracted to the program were in it mostly for fun, but some were out to build their resumes.

“Just about everyone who appeared on CBSRMT was paid ‘scale,’ the entertainment industry equivalent to minimum wage, so it was worth their while to make an appearance for the fun of it, But it was not a living for any of the talent,” he said.

The show connected with both people who were fans of OTR when it ruled the airwaves, but Chester said Radio Mystery Theater also connected with younger fans who were intrigued by the stories. He said those programs still hold up and CBSRMT.com was established to both preserve the legacy of the series and to find new listeners. Visitors to that site can read up on the history of Radio Mystery Theater and stream all 1,399 episodes for free.

“We officially launched CBSRMT.com in 2010 because we wanted to share these great shows, and hopefully expose them to a new audience,” Chester said. “We have taken the time on CBSRMT.com to bring listeners some of the back-story behind the series. To us, that is the real fun of OTR; not only are the shows themselves great entertainment, but listening to them while being aware of the context they were broadcast in doubles the experience.

“That’s why I like to expose people to the episodes with the commercials intact when ever possible. The mental comparison between the modern beer commercials and bubbly King of Beers (Budweiser) spots are great fun. There are a few ‘70s era American made cars still wheezing around my neighborhood, and I get a big kick from hearing about when those cars were the new thing.”

While there’s a certain amount of nostalgia associated with Radio Mystery Theater and OTR in general, Chester said that only goes so far. If audiences aren’t entertained, they won’t come back for more.

“There is much more to CBSRMT than nostalgia,” he said. “After you’ve spent an hour listening to a CBSRMT show, you don’t think, “That was a neat artifact of the ‘70s.’ You think ‘Wow! That story scared my socks off!’

“I would like to think that there are a bunch of kids out there who have iPods full on these shows hidden under their pillows. I am sure they must listen under the blankets with one earbud in and give themselves nightmares just as intense as the kids in the 70s did listening to their AM transistors.”

Nostalgia, in fact, plays a considerably smaller role than it did when Radio Mystery Theater was new.

“The truth is that most of the people who are nostalgic for original old time radio are almost all gone,” Chester said. “That doesn’t change the fact that OTR is still great entertainment. I know people who like to listen to OTR programs while they are working out on the treadmill at the gym. I hate to think of all the extra gas my parents have burned waiting for the end of a program after driving home from the city! And I know there are a bunch of university kids who have begun swapping mp3 files of old soap operas.”

Click here for Part 2 of this article.

For the purposes of this report, central Arkansas includes five counties squarely in the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area — Faulkner, Grant, Lonoke, Pulaski and Saline — as well as Jefferson and White counties which are not properly within that MSA. In those seven counties, there were 633 single-family, residential units sold in December — down 2.76 percent from 651 closed transactions in December 2010 and down 6.08 percent from 674 sales in the same month in 2009. In 2011, 8,436 homes were sold in central Arkansas — down 3.81 percent from 8,770 sales in 2010 and down 11.28 percent from 9,509 sales in 2009.

The average sales price last year was $165,666 in central Arkansas — down a bit from $166,763 in 2010 and up 2.03 percent from $162,371 in 2009. The value of the homes sold in 2011 was $1.34 billion — down 4.78 percent from $1.41 billion in 2010 and 10.16 percent down from $1.49 billion in 2009.

In short, there’s still room for improvement in central Arkansas markets. It’s worth mentioning that sales increased from July through November when compared to 2010 totals. Additionally, 2009 and 2010 totals are skewed a bit due to tax credits for home buyers that started in April 2008 and were available to both first-time and repeat buyers by the time they expired for all homes not under contract by the end of April last year. It stands to reason that sales fell after the expiration of the tax credits — when the government stopped paying first-time buyers up to $8,000 and repeat buyers up to $6,500 to purchase homes, the aftermath was predictable.

Moving forward in 2012, we see that mortgage rates started the year at record lows and fell further in the second week of the year. According to the national Mortgage Bankers Association, the average national rate on a 30-year, fixed interest mortgage was 4.11 percent on Jan. 6. A week later, that average fell to 4.06 percent. Time will tell how much low interest rates will influence potential buyers in 2012 and the same goes for falling average list prices.

Click here to have a look at the year-end report for central Arkansas. To see how housing markets fared in northwest Arkansas and the Jonesboro area last year, click here.