Prepare Your Real Estate Investing Exit Strategy Before You Buy By Andy Heller There’s no denying it: We’re in the middle of a crazy real estate market. While there are still many different ways investors can make money in real estate, my strongest recommendation is to pick a strategy that allows for long-term wealth building [...]
Help Is on the Horizon for Unemployed Homeowners By Ilyce Glink Despite government efforts to stimulate the economy, many homeowners are facing the one-two punch of unemployment and looming mortgage payments. As of the beginning of July 2011, the official unemployment rate still hovered around 9.2 percent (with the U-6, the most complete measure of [...]
Housing Price Predictions: When Will Prices Rise? Steve Cook, Real Estate Economy Watch In 2006, the experts said housing prices would never fall. They were wrong. In 2009, they said prices had bottomed out and things would be getting better. They were wrong again. Now, they say that the recovery will finally come in 2012. [...]
The Cube Project: What Would You Give Up To Live In A Tiny House? Ilyce Glink Who among us has never looked at their overstuffed closet in despair? If you feel like you are constantly running out of storage room in your home, check out the Cube Project and imagine your life on a smaller, [...]
Now is the Time of the Real Estate Investor Steve Cook, Real Estate Economy Watch If your image of a real estate investor is someone like the caveman in the “We Buy Ugly Houses” ads or the fast talkers who sell videos and seminars on the Internet, you’ll be surprised by the results of the [...]
Pet-Friendly Housing Steering the Real Estate Market Steve Cook, Real Estate Economy Watch In a national survey released in February of this year, the fifth-ranking reason that people buy homes today was found to be “They Don’t Want to Pay Extra to Own Pets.” This reason outranked “They Want to Live the American Dream” and [...]
In the current market, first-time homebuyers have their work cut out for them. In the past, when the market was going up, first-time homebuyers’ main concern was finding a home—any home. Their secondary concerns were how to get financing for the home and the condition of the property. They knew that if they could purchase [...]
Housing Market Predictions: Home Values Continue to Sink By Ilyce Glink By any measure, it’s been a tough week for the real estate market: According to the latest S&P Case/Shiller Index, home values have fallen back to where they were in 2002, although in some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, housing values have fallen back to [...]
Buying an REO or Foreclosure: What You Can Expect and What Can Kill the Deal By Ilyce Glink These days, many homebuyers are turning to foreclosures and taking advantage of the drop in home prices. A foreclosure—or a “real estate owned” (REO) property—is a property that is now owned by a bank. But be careful, [...]
Congress Doubles Funding for Troubled USDA Housing Loans Steve Cook, Real Estate Economy Watch While slashing funds for disability, elderly, and Native American housing programs, Congress has doubled the funding for a USDA housing program that may cost the government $4 billion in defaulting loans. Why? Because over a third of the government-guaranteed rural home [...]
