Travel expenses to real estate technology conference

We've received our second pre-payment of $500 from another current client. We are REALLY excited about this consulting relationship because, like many of our clients, Chris is in the investment / financial community.

We're also excited because Chris is our most recent client to propose their own flat fee plan. It's a hybrid of our $3,000 retainer, which we'd love to see more clients select because it effectively reduces our hourly consulting rate to $75 per hour for the first 40 hours. That's a reduction of 50% from our most expensive hourly rate.

Our current menu of fees and rebates is online, and we'd be glad to talk about which plan best meets your needs and helps you maximize potential savings.

Our ChipIn campaign currently stands at $1,200 even though the graphic at right shows $700. The reason for the $500 difference is explained below.

The Real Estate Cafe is very pleased to report our first payment of $500 from an existing client. Eric and Sheila have already logged over 20 hours service, and their prepayment of hours 21 to 25 will give them an extra hour FREE of charge. That the kind of special offer we'd be glad to offer existing or new clients who help pay for travel expenses to the real estate technology conference beginning in about 30 minutes here in San Francisco.

One note, the first $500 donation does not appear on the ChipIn system, because the payment was inadvertently made through "Make a donation" button on our blog. Be sure to use this link on this page to make sure your prepayment is credited to our first-ever "ChipIn" campaign.

We're a bit embarrassed about asking our clients and others to ChipIn to pay for our attendance at a real estate technology conference, but as one of nation's first and leading fee-for-service real estate consulting firms the slow housing market has reduced cash flow. We haven't charged for access to cutting edge market research in the past, but we may be forced to experiment with "fee-for-research" in the future.

To date, we've done the opposite -- we've paid clients to add content to our Real Estate Bubble Map! Their collective efforts helped us earn Platial.com's "Best Real Estate Map" Award for 2006, and the map was featured in an international conference on the future of journalism.

Visit our map of homes selling for below assessed value in Greater Boston to learn more about our "Tipping policy."

The Real Estate Cafe has attended all but one real estate technology conference hosted by Inman News annually in San Francisco to identify "best of breed," money-saving tools and trends for our fee-for-service clients. Here's the agenda for this year's conference:

http://www.realestateconnect.com/sf07/schedule.aspx

Watch for more details here, on our blog, Facebook, or Ning site., or propose your own on our wiki.