Government WORKING!

Yesterday was a very busy one filled with all kinds of unexpected information and experiences.  From Central Georgia to Atlanta to Chattanooga, it was quite an 18 hours.

The most delightful and unexpected (other than family dinner), was our visit with the City of Atlanta Aviation Department's Vivica Brown, Deputy Assistant General Manager at Commercial Development, and Katie Stanciel, Director of Parking.  Working on a valuation analysis for them, we met to get details about income and expenses for parking.  Vivica has been very responsive and on-task about getting us information and introduced us to Katie for the details.  


This is no Mickey Mouse operation (no offense to Mr. Disney).  The Airport has more than 30,000 parking spaces - the only larger operation in the US Katie knew of is in Denver.  Their website has the following:

Parking - Domestic Terminal:

There are more than 30,000 public parking spaces at Hartsfield-Jackson, including over 10,000 in covered parking decks, 7,300 in Domestic North and Domestic South Economy parking lots, 1,300 in the Domestic Park-Ride Reserve lot and 7,800 in the Airport's Domestic Park-Ride lots. Special parking spaces are also provided for disabled passengers in each lot.

So what happened?


Lo and behold, we asked for all kinds of information and in under an hour, we had every bit!


This was IMPRESSIVE to say the least, and Katie did it with a beautiful smile and delightful attitude.  Kudos to the Aviation Department for hiring and keeping such fantastic people as Vivica and Katie.

Lateral Support

Ok, so it has been quite a bit of time since my last post.  With two teenage daughters, notice to proceed on 50 or so appraisal reports, and returning for post graduate education, left over time is in short supply.


However, this is rather important.


During my class, and particularly a quiz I just took, it occurred to me that there are always parallels in life.  We are studying property rights, and one of my quiz questions was "what is lateral support".  Defined by my text it is "The right of lateral and subjacent support is the right to have land supported by the adjoining land or the soil beneath."  Real Estate Law, Robert J. Aalberts, 2012.


What if we replace the word land by the word "value"?  Is there some particular right of property owners to be 'supported' in their values by adjacent values or 'lateral support' of other property and other financial instruments and perhaps even the fiscal policies of our government.

Consider this:  

It seems to me that our lateral support is rapidly disappearing.  Perhaps we ought to take action, quickly!

Technology is helpful if you use it.

Would you agree? Is that true for you?


We recently spent two days in South Georgia reviewing a market and taking photographs of land sales all over a county. In the interest of getting the 'best' pictures, we used a nice digital camera.


Arriving back at the office in Chattanooga, we began the task of matching the photos to the sale information. I opened iPhoto and got to work, but alas, there was no map showing the picture's location. I mentally reviewed my potential errors and found to my surprise, I had been using my iPhone or iPad to take photos at the end of the previous project for clean up because it was easier (the camera you have is the one you use) and those devices (iPhone/iPad) both take great pictures. They also have 'geolocational' feature which means they 'tag' every photograph with its location within about 10 meters.
Alas, the "better" photos were NOT better because they were missing what for me has become a key ingredient in my picture taking, geolocational tagging.


Guess I will be giving my 'camera' to my daughter Katherine. For me from now on, I plan to exclusively use my iPhone and iPad for work photographs.


(and plan for my next trip to Italy so I'll have a map on iPhoto that looks like this one . . .)