With the release of iOS 4, AT&T finally allows internet tethering on the iPhone.  This lets you share your iPhone’s internet connection so you can surf the web wherever you have a cell phone signal.  This will definitely be useful for any mobile real estate professionals that need internet access but are not close to a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Click HERE if you can not see the embedded video above.

How To Tether Your iPhone With Your Laptop in 5 Easy Steps

Step 1:

Upgrade your data plan with AT&T to allow tethering.  You can change your plan on their website or with the AT&T iPhone app.

You should know that if you change your plan from the unlimited data plan you will not be able to change back to the unlimited data plan.

Step 2:

Download the latest version of iTunes onto the laptop you want to tether.

Step 3:

Enable tethering on your iPhone.

Go to Settings > General > Network > Internet tethering.

You can tether your iPhone via a USB cable or a bluetooth connection.

Step 4: Plug your iPhone in your computer.  You might need to select “iPhone’ from the list of available networks on your computer.

You know you are sharing your iPhone’s internet connection because there will be a blue bar across the top of you iPhone that says, “Internet Tethering”.

Step 5: That is it!  Enjoy the internet wherever you have a cell phone signal!

You can view the new pricing plans for the iPhone that includes the ability to tether at ATT.com

You will have to monitor your data usage if you change from the unlimited plan.  AT&T will help you by sending you text message and email alerts. You will get an alert after you reach 65%, 90%, and 100% of the threshold.  You can also check your data usage by using their free iPhone app.

If you are curious about how much internet surfing you can do with the new data plan, check out our previous post,

AT&T Gives The iPhone Some Love With Tethering, that shows you how you can track how much bandwidth you use on your computer.

Will you be tethering your iPhone to your laptop now that AT&T allows it?

Geographical competency has become a hot topic for real estate appraisers.  There have been a lot of complaints about real estate appraisers appraising properties in an area they are unfamiliar with.

The video below shows how you can use Google Maps to show your geographic competency.  All you need is a list of property addresses that you have appraised, a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel, and the website Batchgeo.com.

Cick HERE if you can not see the embedded video above.

I have a database of addresses that I have personally appraised since I started my career as a real estate appraiser.  I wanted to graphically show my experience so anyone could easily determine my geographical competence.

One thing that I did not want to do, because of privacy concerns, is publish the exact address of the properties I have appraised.  Instead, I just wanted to publish the street, city, state, and zip codes.

In order to strip out the house number from each address I had to use several Excel functions.

• LEN returns the number of characters in a text string.
• LEFT or RIGHT returns the first character or characters in a text string, based on the number of characters you specify.
• FIND locates one text string within a second text string, and return the number of the starting position of the first text string from the first character of the second text string.
• ISNUMBER determines if a character is a number or not.  If there is a number in the string, the result is TRUE, otherwise it is FALSE.

This article is an excellent resource if you need to extract numbers from strings.

Example

My data was formatted with the the address, a dash, the city, a comma, the state, and a 5 digit zip code.

100 Main St – Perry, GA 31069

The first thing I wanted to do was remove the zip code and state from the address.  This is easy because it is all of the information before the last 10 characters (5 digit zip code, 2 digit state, 1 comma, and 2 spaces = 10 characters).

This is the formulas I used:

=LEFT(A1,LEN(A1)-10)

The above formula returns “100 Main St – Perry”

I used the function LEN to determine how many characters were in the sting and use LEFT to tell excel to return all of the characters minus 10 characters starting at the left side.

Next, I wanted to determine how many numbers were in the property address.  Fortunately for me all of the properties in my markets have only 3 to 5 numbers in the property address.

=IF(ISNUMBER(1*(LEFT(C1,5))),5,IF(ISNUMBER(1*(LEFT(C1,4))),4,IF(ISNUMBER(1*(LEFT(C1,3))),3,0)))

The above formula returns “4”

This is a lengthy formula.  I nested several IF THEN statements and use the ISNUMBER function to determine how many of the first characters were numbers.   This formula returns the number 4 telling me there are 4 numbers in the address, the house number plus the blank character.  I can use this number to strip out the house number.

=RIGHT(C1,(LEN(C1)-D1))

The above formula will return “Main St”

Hopefully, you won’t have to go through these formulas to get your data formatted correctly.  If you do have to format your data a little, you should be able to use some combination of the functions above.

Batchgeo is a great website and very easy to use.  They have several how-to videos to help you get started and be sure to check out their blog.

Would you use Batchgeo to help publish a list of property addresses (minus the house number) that you have appraised?  Do you think doing so would help instill trust?

Sweet Home 3D is a free interior design application that creates a 3D model of your house plans.  You can upload a copy of you house plans or draw the plans yourself.  The application is easy to use and there is an online version so there is nothing to download or install.  You will need to register and login if you want to save your 3D model.

Click HERE if you can not view the embedded video above.

This program is aimed at people who want to design their interior quickly, whether they are moving or they just want to redesign their existing home. Numerous visual guides help you draw the plan of your home and layout furniture. You may draw the walls of your rooms upon the image of an existing plan, and then, drag and drop furniture onto the plan from a catalog organized by categories. Each change in the 2D plan is simultaneously updated in the 3D view, to show you a realistic rendering of your layout.

Sweet Home 3D is a fun an useful tool for anyone that needs help arranging the furniture in their house.  This would be especially useful for someone unsure how to arrange their furniture in a new house they are buying.  You can make very detailed 3D models that include not only doors, windows, and furniture, but also items like shampoo, tissue boxes, and iPods.

I played around with the online version today and it only took me a few minutes to learn to use it and create my first 3D model.  The image below shows the house plan I used (top window) to create the 3D model (bottom window).

Version 2.3 was released March 22, 2010 and includes new several new features like video creation.  Video creation lets the user create a virtual path in the 3D view and create a video from that path.  You can view a video that was created of a 3D model on their blog.

Sweet Home 3D has an complete user’s guide to help you.  You can also view their online gallery to see examples of what you can do.  According to their website, 212,192 people downloaded the program last year.  I can see why, it is a fun and very useful tool.

You can map multiple addresses on you iPhone using Google Maps in three easy steps.  First create a Google Map on your desktop or laptop.  Second, email that map to yourself.  Third, check your email on your iPhone and click on the link for the map you created.

Click HERE if you can not see the embedded video above.

It takes a little planning in order to map multiple addresses on your iPhone but it might save you time in the long run.  One tip I have learned is to always put the zip code or city/state in the map that you created.  Even though the map looks good on the desktop, without the zip code the iPhone map might not be able to find the correct address.

There are several tools available online to map multiple addresses.

MultiPlottr is a free tool that creates a map with multiple addresses.  MultiPlottr is really useful becuase not only can it map multiple addresses, but you can label and color code each address and marker.

Batchgeo creates a map from an excel spreadsheet.  Just copy and paste your data from an excel spreadsheet (or you can use their template), validate the data, and press the map now button. Batchgeo is free to use.

gmaps.kaeding.name created a free tool for mapping multiple addresses.  Just ender the addresses, one per line, in the form on the website and press submit.

Do you plan out your routes before an real estate appraisal?