Do More With a Smaller House

Smaller homes are energy efficient, use less materials, and take up less land. But how do you make a 1200-1500 square foot home on a small lot appealing for a buyer?

Forest Creek Development in Parrish, Florida has discovered the secret. Their cottage program offers homes no larger than 1600 square feet, all on lots that are 27 feet wide. And, they are selling like hotcakes!

Here are some ideas on how to design a small home that has market appeal:

1. “Let the light in” - Window walls and windows set high up on the wall let in lots of light, allow the placement of furniture, and make the spaces seem larger.

2. “Make the indoors private” – Placement of windows is key when homes are so close together (as close as one foot in Forest Creek). Stagger window placement in each house so no one has to worry about being looked in on.

3. “Reserve outdoor space that’s private” – High outside walls allow families to have privacy in their yards, as well as their houses.

4. “Don’t forget the front porch” – Porches are a luxury item that add value to a home. The cottages at Forest Creek offer 50 square feet of front porch area for neighborhood socializing.

5. “Keep it open” – Wide hallways and vaulted ceilings add an open feeling to a house.

6. “Build a simple structure” – All the cottages at Forest Creek are square. Architectural details are installed only on the front of the house, reducing costs.

7. “Landscape it right” – Pay attention to the streetscape and overall look of a development to make homes more appealing.

For more information on the Forest Creek Development community and how they implemented the above measures, see the article published by Housing Zone.

Credit Card Center Hits A High, Then Bottom Falls Out.

ATM & Debit News March 15, 2001 Credit Card Center, a Philadelphia-based independent sales organization, had quite a year last year, placing at some estimates more than 10,000 ATMs. The company grew quickly into the nation’s largest and most aggressive ISO.

But the company’s bubble appears to have burst. The ISO has stopped payments on its deployed or warehoused ATMs and is apparently unable to find a partner to underwrite merchant leases for any more ATMs. Moreover, ATM suppliers have stopped shipments to Credit Card Center, and merchants are complaining they are not receiving surcharge revenue.

The ISO appears to have built its business mainly on ATM sales without long-term transaction revenue to pay creditors.

Houston-based Tidel Technologies Inc. and Dayton, Ohio-based NCR Corp. report that Credit Card Center has stopped paying for ATMs it purchased from them. NCR replaced Tidel as the ISO’s preferred ATM provider in October 2000.

David Bearman, NCR chief financial officer, says NCR will “work closely” with the ISO in hopes of eventually collecting the debt. But he says NCR does not expect repayment. NCR, in fact, has written off $42 million it is owed by Credit Card Center, of which $22 million was used to buy about 4,400 ATMs. NCR will count the loss as a charge against its revenues. A deal between Credit Card Center and NCR to distribute 50,000 NCR cash dispensers over 42 months is off. here dillards credit card

Cash-Flow Woes Credit Card Center owes Tidel about $26.5 million for more than 6,000 ATMs. While Tidel is not yet writing off its losses, it has little confidence it will receive the money it is owed. “It is clear they have run into serious financial difficulties,” says Leonard Carr, Tidel senior vice president.

In a prepared statement, Credit Card Center President Andrew Kallok said he expects Credit Card Center to pay its debts eventually but admitted the ISO has severe cash-flow problems. He said Credit Card Center has up to a nine-month supply of ATMs. He did not say where the ATMs are warehoused, but a source tells ATM&Debit News that at least 6,000 ATMs are in a Philadelphia warehouse.

The NCR delivery of those ATMs came at the same time Credit Card Center lost the ability to resell the ATMs to merchant clients when its key leasing partner, Advanta Leasing Services, closed its leasing division. NCR was drawn into Credit Card Center by its pursuit to gain shares in the off-premise ATM market, where NCR was weak. Credit Card Center was viewed as NCR’s key distribution vehicle for its MCD cash-dispenser models, says Bearman, a move he now admits was risky.

From October through February, the ISO’s debt to NCR continued to mushroom. NCR shipped at least 4,400 ATMs, at $5,000 each, since October, in addition to shipments made earlier in 2000. NCR also loaned Credit Card Center $16 million to install new ATMs and pay bills.

But by late February NCR’s examination of Credit Card Center’s books revealed that ATM deployments had begun to decline, hampering the ISO’s cash flow and ability to pay NCR or Tidel.

Warning Signs There were earlier warning signs that Credit Card Center was in trouble. The ISO had halted debt payment to Tidel in January, Carr notes, and that was known to NCR. Moreover, Advanta shut down its leasing division on Jan. 22 because of losses and delinquencies at about the same time Credit Card Center stopped paying Tidel, notes Carr. “One thing is connected to the other,” he says. One source familiar with the situation tells ATM&Debit News that at least 800 merchants are in default of their lease contracts with Advanta.

Credit Card Center was the only ATM vendor that used Advanta’s leasing program, an Advanta spokesperson says. “We have several thousand of (Credit Card Center’s) ATMs,” says the spokesperson. “We are experiencing higher delinquencies on those ATMs than on leases on copiers and things like that.” The defaults were a key reason why NCR wrote off Credit Card Center’s debts, says NCR’S Bearman. “The lease obligations began failing, and now the business base is failing,” he says. Kallok believes few of the delinquent ATMs have been repossessed.

Other ISOs say there were more fundamental problems. Credit Card Center based its revenue stream on high-volume ATM sales instead of long-term monthly transaction volume, says Sam Jonas, president of the Englewood, Colo.-based Cash Resources Inc. Credit Card Center enticed merchants to buy ATMs at exorbitant markups with promises of revenue that did not exist, he says.

Credit Card Center clients paid at least $269 per month for five years to lease a $4,000 Tidel, says Jonas, noting that five-year leases for cash dispensers typically run about $160 per month. The incentives included promises of ad revenue and side agreements in which Credit Card Center would pay merchants a monthly stipend of at least $150 per month. The promised stipend and ad revenues totaled almost what the merchant would owe in monthly lease payments. “They were basically telling some merchants they could get an ATM at about $8 a month,” says Jonas. in our site dillards credit card

But neither the ad revenue nor the transaction revenue to pay the stipend materialized. Merchants paid excessive leases while Credit Card Center and its national sales team received commissions from the sales of ATMs to leasing companies such as Advanta, says Jonas. Kallok says $100 million of $140 million in total Credit Card Center revenues in 2000 were from ATM sales. The rest of the revenue came from ATM fees.

Merchants in low transaction-volume locations could not afford such leases, says Thomas Hannon, president of Hanco Systems Inc., an Atlanta-based ISO. Hannon agrees that Credit Card Center’s profit promises to merchants on ATMs with fewer than 50 monthly transactions were deceptive.

The Credit Card Center debacle shows that merchant sites generating less than 100 transactions per month cannot justify having ATMs, says Hannon. “We have turned down some of the very merchant locations Credit Card Center moved into,” says Hannon, noting that higher monthly lease payments and tougher lease-approval terms already are being adopted among leasing companies.

NCR’s and Tidel’s willingness to pour money into an unproven ATM business to prop up short-term ATM sales is the most disturbing aspect of the Credit Card Center debacle, says Hannon. “You had a company without integrity, and two reckless companies, Tidel and NCR, putting value into something that had no value.” Credit Card Center At A Glance * Headquarters: Philadelphia * Year Formed: 1996 * Employees: 700 in 65 sales offices * 2000 revenues: $140 million * ATM Supplier: NCR Corp.(*) Source: ATM&Debit News and Credit Card Center. (*) NCR replaced Tidel Technologies Inc. as the ISO’s preferred ATM provider in October 2000.