Articles
Ready to get your read on? Dive into the article archive to help you build wealth through real estate investing. We feature top subject matter experts exploring every facet of the industry.
Articles
Ready to get your read on? Dive into the article archive to help you build wealth through real estate investing. We feature top subject matter experts exploring every facet of the industry.
When Matt Rodak, CEO and founder of Fund That Flip Inc., funded his first deal in January 2015, he was already confident he had a winning real estate combination on his hands. So confident, in fact, that he quit his high-paying corporate job running sales for a billion-dollar insurance company ...
5 Housing Markets Set for 2017 Population Surge
When populations surge in size, housing prices and transaction volumes tend to follow. For that reason, many savvy real estate investors closely follow timely Census data released about population movements on an annual basis (not the data collected and released every few years). This December, the U.S. Census Bureau released ...
Make Sure Staging Reflects Reality
Virtual staging is becoming more and more popular as sellers leverage a variety of software and photoshopping options to make their homes look their very best. Not surprisingly, virtual staging has also led to some pretty nasty disputes when reality and virtual reality don’t entirely match up after closing. However, ...
Home Affordability Drops to 8-Year Low
The Home Affordability Index, which shows national affordability of housing, shares that Q4 2016 was at its lowest level since Q4 2008. The report, issued by ATTOM Data Solutions, parent company of Realty Trac, shows that 29 percent of the U.S. county housing markets were less affordable than their historic ...
Will Trump’s Immigration Policy Lead to Another Foreclosure Crisis?
It’s no secret that President-elect Donald Trump made a lot of promises on the campaign trail and was pretty controversial while he did it. One of the biggest things that he promised voters was that he would take a hard stance on immigration policy; specifically, that he would start deporting ...
Google lawsuit has implications for real estate investors
A challenge to strict Google personnel policy bears watching by real estate investors and others who also often find themselves subject to non-compete, non-disclosure rules. However the court fight plays out, there are lessons to be learned. A Google product manager has brought suit against the search giant, saying that ...
Will Fed Rate Hike Crash the Market Again?
The Federal Reserve finally raised rates for the first time this year at its December meeting and suggested there could be three more rate hikes next year. There are varied opinions about what this could mean for real estate, so let’s tackle it! After threatening to do so for several ...
New Year Book Choices for Real Estate Investors
At Think Realty, we love to share knowledge. Listed below are our team's book choices for you, the real estate investor and is a terrific way to start the New Year. These books are perfect for the experienced investor, a new investor or simply a curious want-to-be investor. Some are even available on Kindle! ...
3 Ways to Stand Out from the Crowd
How will you be remembered as a real estate investor? Or more specifically, what is going to set you apart from the crowd of real estate investors in the eyes of a distressed homeowner seeking a buyer for that property? It’s a measure of your success that allows you to ...
2016 Book Choices for the REI in Your Life
Are you finished with your holiday shopping? Do you have a real estate investor to shop for? Maybe there is a new or soon-to-be new real estate investor in your life and you are puzzled about what kind of gift to give them. Well, here at Think Realty we always ...
A New (Female) Buying Power in Real Estate
Women are, once again, changing the face of the housing market, and they’re not waiting for spouses, partners, or anyone else to do so. The buying force represented by single women in real estate is rising and, over the past three decades, the number of “single-female” transactions has risen from ...
Is Villainous ARM Making a Second Grab?
With mortgage rates rising, more and more homebuyers are considering something that most probably thought out of the question: taking on an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) in order to make a home sooner than they otherwise could. ARMs (and the lenders who originated them) received a large portion of the blame ...
Longer Closing Times Could be the ‘New Normal’
It looks like “hurry up and wait” could be the new normal for real estate investors and traditional home-buyers who are eager to close on their new properties. According to recently published information from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the average time-to-close this year was nearly four days longer ...
Total U.S. properties with foreclosure filings had a noticeable decrease of 18 percent in November, per a report from ATTOM Data Solutions, parent company of Realty Trac. The total 86,561 foreclosure filings in November was down 18 percent from the previous month and down 17 percent from one year ago ...
Non-Yahoo Users at Risk from Massive Hack
If you have ever, for any reason, had a Yahoo email account or used the search engine in any sort of personalized way, then the odds are pretty good that at least a little bit of your personal information is now floating around out there in the ether waiting for ...
BEWARE! If you own an apartment building or other commercial structure that was constructed in the 1950s, ’60s, or ’70s, you need to be aware of potential PCB contamination and any liability associated with it. PCBs could be the new "asbestos" in apartments and commercial buildings, as well as in ...
EDITOR’S NOTE: This excerpt from “Debunking the 13 Insurance Myths for the Real Estate Investor” explores insurance exclusivity, named additional insured on your homeowner’s policy and using your homeowner’s policy to cover your investment properties. Whether you are just getting started or are a seasoned investor, our aim is to ...
Win-Win-Win: Business Strategies for Real Estate Brokers
Real estate brokers face the daily challenge of searching for ways to maintain growth and profitability. It can include contracting with new agents, flooding the market with direct mail and sports schedules, and boosting advertising expenditures on television, radio and print publications—many times with questionable results. Agencies might be better ...
A few years ago, Joe Ross—an award-winning hotel entrepreneur with more than 50 years in the business—went looking for his next big adventure. And he’s found it in Fairway Suites. The Kansas-based company puts together deals to build extended-stay hotels next to golf courses and similar attractions. And that unlocks ...
Many factors have been driving the evolution of the world’s financial infrastructure since the economic debacle of 2007-2009. Traditional investment vehicles have been demonstrably unstable. Some of the financial giants that managed (and mismanaged) billions of dollars of investments were deemed “too big to fail”; they required U.S. federal government ...
A Look Ahead to Existing Home Sales for 2017
Existing home sales probably won’t increase much in 2017, according to a new forecast from the National Association of Realtors and its fourth-quarter Housing Opportunities and Market Experience (HOME) survey. A majority of renters - 57 percent - say now is a good time to buy a house but that’s down ...
Rising Home Values Mean Fewer Underwater Mortgages
About 11 percent of U.S. homeowners were underwater on their mortgage during the third quarter, down from 13.4 percent a year prior, Zillow reports. That’s great news if you consider where things stood a few years ago. Back in early 2012, about 15.7 million Americans owed more on their mortgages ...
Starter Home Inventory Continues to Dry Up
The supply of U.S. starter home inventory has dropped off 12.1 percent since a year prior. The steepest year-to-year decline in three years, according to the latest Trulia Inventory and Price Watch. And if first-time buyers are able to find a house they like, it will consume about 38.5 percent ...
Experts Doubt Airbnb-Style Services Hurt Housing Inventory
Do short-term-rental services like Airbnb and HomeAway make it harder for average renters to find affordable housing? Zillow decided to ask housing experts. According to the new Zillow Home Price Expectations Survey, most of them don’t believe short-term rentals are the root of the inventory shortage. Only about 5 percent ...
Understanding Second-Lien Loans
Second-lien loans differ from mezzanine debt and preferred equity in several respects; each has different sets of rights. Preferred equity, for example, should not be subject to bankruptcy concerns, as it is not debt. And both preferred equity and mezzanine debt generally take over the manager’s control rights as a ...
