Luxury Real Estate

By Jim Walberg of Keller Williams Realty - The Bay Area Team

For the past several years the Rotary Club that I have been a member of since it was chartered in 1989 has distributed dictionaries to the 3^rd-graders of the San Ramon Unified School District. There were over 30 of our Rotary club members who participated in the distribution last week. David Behring, president of the Wheelchair Foundation, and myself assisted with the dictionary distribution at Tassajara Hills Elementary. David and I went into the 3^rd-grade classrooms to the delight of the students. As we were distributing them we had them help us look up words so they could learn how to navigate through the beautiful hardbound dictionary. Some of the words were “service”, “Gila monster”, and “impertinent”.. As a student would find the word they would raise their hand, then stand up and read the definition. I hope you agree with me when I say the love of reading is one of the most important skills a young student can learn. Dictionaries are intended to bring words to life, and as a resource for students to use for many years.

The idea for The Dictionary Project began in 1992 when Annie Plummer of Savannah, Georgia, gave 50 dictionaries to children who attended a school close to her home. Each year she continued to give this gift, raising money to help give more and more books so that in her lifetime she raised enough money to buy 17,000 dictionaries for children in Savannah. Early on, her project attracted the attention of Bonnie Beeferman of Hilton Head, S.C., who began a project of raising money by selling crafts to buy dictionaries for the schoolchildren of Hilton Head and the surrounding communities.

By 1995, Bonnie was getting so many requests from local teachers to be included in the project that she wrote a letter to the editor of the Charleston, S. C., newspaper explaining the project and asking for someone to help meet the requests from the Charleston area. Mary French, who was already an active school volunteer even though her two children were still of preschool age, read the letter and decided this was a project for her. Starting with a few schools in Charleston and Summerville, she realized quickly that providing dictionaries to all the students in Charleston was going to require serious fundraising. She and her husband Arno French formed a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit Association in 1995, along with a Board of Directors. Arno served as president, Mary became the director of the association, and The Dictionary Project was born.

Since 1995, over 11,668,293 children have received a dictionary thanks to the generosity of sponsors like our Rotary Club, who have participated in the Dictionary Project. We have chosen to focus on all the 3^rd- graders in our local school district so they can enjoy the benefits of a large vocabulary. In 2008, alone, there were 2,417,994 dictionaries given to students as gifts from organizations like Rotary and my local real estate agents. The goal of this program is to assist all students in completing the school year as good writers, active readers and creative thinkers by providing students with their own personal dictionary.

Most children do not own a dictionary, nor do they have access to one in their home. We selected the third graders as the group to provide them to each year since there are at the age at which dictionary skills are usually taught. It is a challenge for a student to do their best work without a dictionary. By providing this tool we are helping teachers as they are helping all their students become active readers, good writers, creative thinkers, and resourceful learners.

The Dictionary Project is now in 15 countries. If dictionaries are not being distributed to the 3^rd – graders in your community you may want to consider organizing a way for it to happen. Until next time…your East Bay lifestyle detective remains on duty! CLICK HERE if you would like information on any real estate services.

By Jim Walberg of Caribbean Islands Realty

Jim Walberg and his fellow Rotarians completed another map of the USA on the playground of Tassajara Hills Elementary School - 40 feet long and 25 feet high! It is part of our continued support of education projects in our community.

Since our local Rotary Club was founded in April 1989 it has been serving the many needs of our East Bay communities. During the past 20 years, we have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of people hours to address these local needs. Many of our Rotary Club’s community projects have been focused on educational needs of our school districts. We call one of them “The Maps Project”. Several years ago we learned of a map painting kit that was painted on elementary school playgrounds to assist kids with their understanding of our country’s geography. It sounded as if it was a winner of addition to any school.

We contacted our local school district and opened a discussion with them regarding how it could be of benefit to school kids to better understand the geography of our country. They accepted our invitation to paint this map on all of the elementary schools in the district. Yesterday we completed our eighth USA map on the playground. It has evolved into a very organized operation which now allows us to pull it off in just one day. Yesterday we are done from start to finish in must under six hours because of many volunteers showing up to help.

One of the ways that “Service Above Self” is learned by our younger generations is by modeling it. We invited local high school students and students from Tassajara Elementary School to assist us with yesterday’s project. So, you had young and old working together to create a magnificent end result. There were smiles and high-fives all around as we admired the finished product. The last step of any of the maps we have painted is having the Mississippi River painted along its entire route with it ending at New Orleans. What a great day.

During yesterday’s project I overheard many conversations among the adults and students about when our next project would take place because they wanted to make sure they helped us again. The “virus” of community service continues to be spread as we are always on the lookout for the needs within our community that need to be addressed. Our “army” of volunteers has now expanded to include high school and elementary students who also want to give back to their community.

You may remember my daily mantra, “To whom much is given, much is required.” As long as we are still breathing our work is not over on this earth in order to make it a better place. So, what does community service have to do with East Bay real estate? The quality of life of a community is a key factor as to why people want to live in our region. We want to make sure we are doing our part to improve the life experiences of all who live here. Contact me anytime if you would like to join us on any of our community projects. Until next time…your lifestyle detective remains on duty in the East Bay.

By Robert Lockard

A while ago I stepped back from writing about luxury real estate to discuss a terribly destructive force that threatens to destroy families and make people miserable: debt. I would like to discuss something that I find to be just as dangerous as addiction to debt – the illogically high cost of earning a college degree.

I read a potentially explosive story on CNN yesterday about a bubble in the cost of higher education that makes the real-estate bubble or the tech crash in 2000 look tame in comparison.

I’d like to start by talking about my experience in college. When I attended college not too long ago, tuition and book costs were already getting out of hand, although they were manageable. I attended a community college in Washington state for my first two years to obtain my Associate’s degree. I had hoped to transfer to the University of Washington to complete my Bachelor of Arts in Communications, but the cost was prohibitive and, even though I graduated with honors and on the Dean’s list, I still had to wait a long time to enter that college.

Instead, I decided to accept a scholarship at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah and that turned out to be a very smart decision. In addition to the positive environment that beautiful campus offered, the cost of attending there was relatively low compared to my other options and I was able to pay for my entire education without going into hardly any debt. I am one of nine children, and my parents wisely told me that I would have to find a way to pay for my education by myself. Through a great deal of hard work and tight budgeting, I made it through without having to burden my family members.

During my time in college, I kept my mind focused on why I was there. I wasn’t there to waste time or take frivolous classes; I was there to finish my degree as quickly and as meaningfully as possible so that I could put my skills to use. I am grateful for the opportunities my college degree has opened for me. However, education costs are rising so fast that there might not be much reason for people to attend college in the future.

I would probably be sympathetic to colleges if the reason for the rise in education costs was because they were improving their education techniques or doing other things that would warrant such cost increases. But the truth is that this is not the case. Many colleges are increasing tuition costs for no other reason than because they want more students to apply. It seems to defy logic, but it’s true. Colleges appear to be playing a game that they will eventually lose. When they raise prices, people assume that they must have done so because they are more prestigious or offer better learning opportunities and so the colleges usually receive an increase in applications. This pattern cannot last forever.


Education is extremely important. It allows people to rise from humble circumstances and it also helps them make informed decisions about where they want to go in life. By making education worthless, colleges are doing a great disservice to their students. By worthless, I mean that the cost far exceeds the rewards. Greater cost does not always mean greater return on investment.

Increases in healthcare, energy and real-estate costs don’t even come close to touching the rise in education costs, as you can see in the graph in the CNN article. Knowledge is power, and if the cost of education becomes so high that that the benefits of earning it become small in comparison then we will be in big trouble. I am not suggesting that college degrees be easier to obtain or that unqualified people should receive an education without working hard. I am suggesting that colleges are in danger. They spend much of their increasing amount of money on frivolous amenities that do not improve their educational services or make their students’ diplomas any more valuable. Posh restaurants, nicer dorms and other foolish perks are unimportant for students who are simply hoping to receive the education they need to progress in life.

At some point people are going to realize that an education is not worth living under such an extreme amount of debt to obtain. When that day comes and colleges must cut their tuitions drastically, many cherished institutions will most certainly be unable to cope with this dramatic shift and they will come crashing down. Destroyed by their own pride and haughtiness. They will discover that they have spent their money on things that have no value and they are unable to offer students what they promised: an honest education.

I dislike focusing on something so negative as this, but I think it deserves special attention. Thank you very much for your comments. Feel free to let me know what you think of the state of higher education.


Editor’s Note:
Robert Lockard is the Public Relations & Media Specialist with LuxuryRealEstate.com. I am Robert. I create all of Luxury Real Estate’s newsletters, write the editorials in LuxuryRealEstate.com Magazine and much more. I apologize again for sounding so negative. I am a very hopeful person and I trust that things will turn out right in the end. The photo of the bleeding wallet is from www.flickr.com/photos/adobemac/161319144 and it is the copyright of adobemac. The photo of the door is from www.flickr.com/photos/ben-zvan-photography/468487548 and it is the copyright of Ben Zvan.

By Michael Edlund

Being in charge of the technology department within Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate, I am often asked about whether we can build some particular kind of real estate-related Web service or not.

Basically, we have enough competent staff to create pretty much anything. We have a strong web team consisting of a dozen top-of-the-line Graphic Designers, Programmers, Account Managers and more. The team covers everything from our award-winning aesthetic Graphic Designers on one side of the spectrum to the Programmers on the other side of the spectrum that used to program mine-detecting robots for the U.S. Defense Department.

Skills within design, style and technology are crucial. However, there is another skill that is equally important to possess when setting out to create tools and websites that support a particular trade. That is a deep understanding not only of technology but also of the trade in question.

That is why I signed up this week for the Rockwell Institute real-estate license training course.

It is very likely that I will never use my real-estate license as a real-estate agent, but I do want to complete the course in order to better understand the daily work and challenges for agents within the LuxuryRealEstate.com network. I hope that this improved knowledge and understanding will lead to even better Luxury Real Estate products and services online.

I will keep you posted on the progress…


Editor’s Note:
Michael Edlund is the Director of Technology with LuxuryRealEstate.com. He is in charge of all of LuxuryRealEstate.com’s Web projects, including website creation, software updates and implementation, and much more. Michael is absolutely right about the need to not only be an expert at using and creating technology, but also to develop an understanding of the purpose of that technology. I am very impressed by Michael’s ability to seek knowledge that will help him serve luxury real estate agents better in the future. What a great example.