We hope you are enjoying the summer months, maybe with a much-deserved vacation. The economy may be taking the "lazy days of summer" a bit too seriously, but that doesn't mean solid investment properties are not out there - good investments can be found in any season and any economy, up or down, if you look hard and proceed in a calculated fashion. RealData software products can help you sift through the multitudes to find the gems that provide solid income and a good return - what every investor should be looking for.

In this month's Dispatch, we are pleased to offer big improvements in two best-selling products. We also revisit the Urban Land Institute and the equally loved and dreaded Excel 2007. - Frank Gallinelli, President

New On Schedule Development
Software Version 5 is Now Available

On Schedule is a unique and powerful tool used by professional real estate developers involved in land & housing subdivision or condominium projects since 1984. We've listened to our users' requests and made the new Version 5 of On Schedule literally twice as powerful as before. We've doubled the project timeline to 120 months and we've doubled the number of user-defined unit types, so now you can make detailed construction estimates on up to 8 different types. Add to the list enhanced partnership capabilities, expanded hard and soft cost sections, and new reports, and you have one significant upgrade. Buy version 5 for $395 or upgrade for just $88 until August 31st. Act now and save over $70 on the upgrade - regular price is $159.

Real Estate Investment Analysis v14
just got better - at no cost to you

Since REIA v14 was released last fall, our customers have applauded its ease of use and the quickness with which they can complete a property analysis. Our industry-standard product just got better with the release this week of update build 1.15 which provides a number of new features:

• Automatic updating of software - download the latest build of the product directly from the Welcome worksheet.
• New at-a-glance Partnership Executive Summary report
• Updates to the Partnership Presentation report including Partner MIRR
• New Partnership features: Partnership distribution of cash flow by dollar amount, IRR, MIRR and PV calculations added for the GP as well as current LP
• Added display of active printer on Print Reports dialog
• Enhanced compatibility with Excel 2007 and Vista.

Urban Land Institute

You've probably heard of the Urban Land Institute. For more than 70 years ULI has been the preeminent non-profit education and research organization for developers worldwide. Its members include not only developers but also investors, architects, planners, lenders, professors, and students. It sponsors educational programs and forums as well as regional and national meetings, workshops and a lot more. We were browsing their site recently and came upon a service we didn't know about and we want to pass our discovery on to you. It's their Customized Research Center, where you can call to get help with real-estate and business-related questions. We were really intrigued by some of the issues they say they've researched for callers, and so we'll quote from their site:

" ...

• How communities have reused empty big box stores.
• Typical rental rates for apartments in particular MSA's and date ranges.
• Names of developers that build and manage student housing.
• Examples of creative mixed use projects that incorporate street level retail and multifamily housing above.

..."

At the very least you should familiarize yourself with ULI -- and perhaps bookmark their Custom Research Center for the day you need to find that vital piece of information. Find out more on the Learn page on our web site, http://realdata.com

Got Macintosh?

Several of our programs are available for Macintosh using Excel 2004: the Real Estate Investment Analysis product line, Commercial / Industrial Development and Personal Financial Statement. Unfortunately, our products will not run with Excel 2008 since Microsoft decided to exclude VBA macros from the new Office 2008 for Mac. The good news (for those who are patient) is that VBA support will return to Macintosh in the next release of Office. There is no release date for the next version but could be 2-3 years. Read Microsoft's press release on Excel and macro support here.

In the interim, users can still run our Macintosh releases under Excel 2004. Excel 2004 runs on top of Rosetta (Apple's technology which allows PowerPC applications to run on Intel chip Macs). As a result, our Mac programs tend to run slower than we would like. Generally we recommend that Mac users run our Windows products on their Macs along with BootCamp, Parallels or VMWare's Fusion.

Macro Blues?

We continue to fine tune our products to work equally well under the new (and very different) Excel 2007 as well as earlier versions of Excel. Excel 2007 has a great new look and enhanced security but some users have difficulty enabling macros, which are essential to our products' functionality. We have documented Excel 2007 issues in a separate Excel 2007 section of our knowledgebase.

Of course, you can always open a support ticket or call us at 203-816-8457 for assistance.

Bought or built property
using RealData's software?

We always like to hear from you. Customer feedback is the source of many new features to our products. Please let us know how we can improve our products or provide features that you need. Send us an email by going to http://realdata.com/helpdesk.