Leadership is most essential in a team environment. It has the absolute power to make or break the cohesiveness of a team. A leader has the responsibility of ensuring the unity of the team, to bring forth the desired result. With more young people coming directly into management positions, leading a team from day one, they are left with no alternative but to develop leadership skills on the job.

Problems faced by newbie managers

Many new entrants in managerial positions, struggle hard, undecided about whom to turn to for advice and help – unsure whether their approach is a success or not. New managers have a hard task deciding when to be forceful and when to loosen up. Whether it is productive to be distant or friendly to the subordinates is a dilemma faced by them.

Being woman increases the hardship ten-fold, as they have to carry the additional burden of authenticating their selection and job suitability in the male-dominated world.

Searching for solutions

A mentor from a higher management position can help young people overcome the initial hiccups. If the mentor is closely associated with their work, even better. With their vast experience and keen observation skills, mentors can provide the necessary guidance. However, finding a mentor is not an easy task in this dog-eat-dog world.

Another option is to find a role model within the organization and draw inspiration from his/her leadership skills. It is immensely beneficial for youngsters to watch a successful leader at work at close quarters. Paucity of role models, especially for women managers, is a drawback. The difference in personalities of the people involved may also limit its utility.

Developing a good rapport with the boss is one of the best solutions that can be applied in most cases. As a person closely monitoring the team, a boss will be able to provide proper guidance in those difficult days and help in developing a unique leadership style.

Best leadership styles

A best leadership style, readymade for all situations, is an illusion. Each individual has to develop a repertory of styles for use in specific situations. This depends on the people involved, demands to be met and many more.

Leadership styles can be broadly classified as visionary, coaching, democratic, affiliate, pacesetting and commanding, based on the team status quo and personalities of team members. Each comes with its own merits and demerits. When utilized in situations where advantages are more pronounced, their disadvantages become inconsequential.

Visionary style is appropriate for teams without direction or goal. A visionary leader can get the people moving towards a dream goal. Here goal is fixed, but the choice of path is left to team members. Coaching style is more suited for developing individuals, but can turn too stifling, when applied incorrectly.

Democratic style calls for inputs from team members and use the collective knowledge to move forward. Delay in decision-making is its main drawback. Affiliate style encourages team effort by building rapport among team members. However, exceptional talent and mediocrity may co-exit in this style.

Pacesetting style is taxing for team members, when the leader sets too high a standard for them to follow. It can lead to dissatisfaction and low morale in the team. Commanding style is abandoned even by its proponents, viz. the army. Fast turnaround during a crisis is its only advantage.

Those who have led successful teams, stress the need to borrow from all the styles to suit the occasion. However, in general, leaders should be firm, open, compassionate, clear and direct in their approach towards team members, to be successful.

written by REI Circle (www.reicircle.com)

The United States Housing and Urban Department gave a New Year gift to the new homeowners in the form of new federal rule, which requires use of a redesigned and more simplified Good Faith Estimate Form commonly known as GFE. The GFE is a calculation of fees in relation with a mortgage loan that is due at closing. Lenders and brokers/mortgagees provide these costs to the borrowers in a span of three days, but these costs increase until the closing time.

The main motto behind this revision is to prevent the close-table shocks, which the new homeowners get at the time of closing when they have to shell out extra bucks at the closing table.

Under the old system, there was not set format and fees were communicated in various ways, which only made the act of comparing costs complicated. However, under the new rule, lenders will have to use the same form of GFE, issued by the HUD. This new rule has brought a substantial change in the process in which lenders convey the information related to fees to the borrowers.

These new rules have also brought the increments in costs disclosed on the Good Faith Estimate and provide guidelines that are listed on the first GFE to be in accordance with the actual cost of settlement. This means that the fees that are charged at the initial stages of the process will be uniform to the charges that are paid at the closing process.

Though the new GFE guidelines are beneficial for borrowers, they also possess some drawbacks. These drawbacks mainly come in the form of opportunistic pricing. That is, if two different borrowers go to the same lender, and if the lender gives each of them different estimates by bifurcating one of them as a sophisticate and the other, a dupe, and charges the latter substantially higher than the former, there is no hardcore way in which the disclosure statement can prevent the activity of lenders.

Potential buyers should also keep a note that though the new GFE rules will give them some kind of respite with respect to cost related with closing, they won’t be fully free from clutches of other overhead costs which the lenders will thrust on them. These overhead costs include the costs incurred by the lenders such as buying of new software, training loan originators, printing of documents, which the buyers will have to pay at the time of the closing.

Another point of criticism of this GFE is that, whether it will help borrowers to shop around in search of loans and its puzzling complexity. Richard Vetstein, a real estate attorney in Framingham, stated that the forms are complicated and that he even being a real estate attorney, it literally took him several hours to make out its exact idea.

Given below is a summarized version of charges, which you’ll get to see on your GFE

• Fees that remain unchanged from the initial GFE to final settlement, which include the lender’s underwriting and origination charges, the ‘points’ or credits on the chosen specific interest rate.

• Fees, which can go up to 10% at the time of the settlement such as services, recommended and required by the lender. The fees cannot go beyond the 10% mark from the direct estimate to final if the borrower opt for a third party to provide title insurance, title services and recording charges which are in accordance to the lender’s acknowledged list.

• Fees with unlimited changes: This includes fees of service providers, which the borrowers opt as against the recommendations of the lender. This category also involves things such as homeowner’s insurance, daily interest charges, pet and flood insurance. It gives a major fillip to borrowers and allows them to do their own shopping.

As the new rules of GFE promise reduction in the burden of borrowers, considering its complex nature, it will be quite interesting to see how many borrowers will actually be able to use it to their advantage.

written by REI Circle (www.reicircle.com)

An increasing number of young families and singles are moving to the countryside. Their aim is to escape the cutthroat competition in this bad economy and seek a better lifestyle. For instance, recently, a middle-aged couple, along with their four sons moved from their suburban Atlanta home to a five-acre farm in Wisconsin. The husband, who previously worked at a parking garage has not found a new job yet. He helps his neighbors on their farms while his family learns to raise chickens, do gardening and hunting.

His generation has not seen anything like the recession before and he believes that the fear is good, because it pushes people to do things that they normally would refrain from doing.

The rural market is holding up against the economic pressure much better than urban markets partly due to people like him, who are often referred as ruralpolitans- people who consider land as safe investment with the hope that it would prove to be more secure and stable option than their current job and 401(k)s.

People who buy land in the countryside can be broadly classified into 3 categories:

• People who buy it as an investment and hope to live on it someday
• City dwellers who buy the land to escape the city
• People who buy the land to engage in farming as a hobby

A 25-year-old freelance writer, relocated from Oregon to New York in 2006- the time when the economy slipped. She was forced to live frugally in a boarding room house and buy clothes from resale shops. Finally, this August, she flew to Montana to invest her $12,000 savings into a 12 acre plot of land. Though she didn’t buy that property, she is gung-ho about looking for more rural properties. She is now looking for a rural property with a house in it.

Small-scale hobby farming is flourishing as a hobby. Mother Nature Network, an environmental News website, raked 100,000 hits when it ran a piece “40 Farmers Under 40” this year, clearly showing the rising interest level in farming among the young people.

At United Country Real Estate Inc., the residential sale price rose 7% last year as compared to 2006, before the recession hit the market. According to the firm, prices are set to rise further by 2% this year.

A United Broker says that this may be due to the trend of younger generation moving to rural areas. Another United Country agent is of the view that 20 to 30 year olds now form almost 15% of his client base as compared to only a handful earlier.

However, not everyone can adjust to the countryside life. The picture does not seem very rosy when you actually get there with problems such as weeds, vermin and dirty well water adding to the woes.

Over the years, it has been observed that economic slowdowns or other devastation such as the Sept 11 terrorist attacks caused people to seek temporary escape. Also, people nearing retirement look for distant and remote properties. As per the U.S Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, if people in their 50’s (baby boomers) continue to follow the trend, the rural population age (55 to 85) will rise by 30% between the years 2010 and 2020.

Some people look at rural living as a protection against future economic uncertainties. A 36-year-old employee at Intel Corp., grabbed the opportunity to start a farm in Missouri with his parents. He knows that his coworkers envy him. In his own words, “Everyone is looking for the next opportunity of hope”.

Factors such as Internet access, renewable energy options and related tax credits mean that the home will be more self-reliable and affordable in long run. This rural relocation has both its pros and cons. Whether this trend will continue in the future or will die a natural death, only time will tell.

written by REI Circle (www.reicircle.com)