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.
More than 1 in 10 Homeowners Still Underwater, Zillow Figures Show
Both urban and suburban communities have a significant share of homeowners in negative equity five years into the recovery, according to the second quarter Zillow® Negative Equity Report. In a press release, Zillow said 13.7 percent of homeowners in urban regions and 11.2 percent of homeowners in suburban regions across ...
Are You Going for the Gold, or Were You Not Even Invited?
As I write this, the summer Olympic Games are going on in Rio. And as I watch the competition, I can’t help correlating the Games to my life as a real estate investor in Dallas, Texas. At the Olympics, we see the top athletes from around the world competing at ...
Centrally located in the Sunshine State, Orlando has always been a popular destination—not just for tourists, but for relocating families and investors, as well. The weather and job growth witnessed decades of slow, steady growth in population and real estate values. This healthy growth turned into rampant speculation during the ...
I’m thinking of a city with the busiest international border crossing in North America. Where downtown apartment vacancy rates are below 5 percent and continuously dropping. A city neighbored by suburbs with some of the safest rated living standards in the United States, where entry home prices are in the ...
Bubbling with Profit Potential
Where are many reasons to invest in Kansas City, Missouri—one of our clients’ favorite markets. Well-known for its contributions to the musical styles of blues and jazz, the city is also noted for its Kansas City-style barbecue. And with over 200 fountains, it has been dubbed the “City of Fountains.” ...
Red-Hot, But Is It Sustainable?
We have all seen market cycles—the peaks, the dips, the flat lines. So what makes a real estate market stand out? Time. How long does it dip? How long does it climb? Does it follow other market trends? Why or why not? The answers to all of these are questions speak ...
The single-family house business in the Tampa area has investors scrambling for scraps for house purchasing opportunities. The multiple listing service (MLS) and mortgage foreclosures are where most investors begin their search. Multiple bids on various opportunities put sellers in the position to sound the bell for highest and best ...
The convergence of two important trends—the improving U.S. real estate market and growing interest in self-directed retirement savings plans—presents an opportunity for people saving for their post-working years. Self-directed IRAs give you the freedom to invest in a wider range of assets, including real estate. The following data from clients ...
San Diego is a coastal town with more than 140 sunny days, low humidity and very few mosquitos. Ocean-access properties always seem to weather the storms and are the first to come out of a recession. The rent prices have increased 13.6 percent between the 3rd quarter of 2014 and ...
Another sign—if you need it—that the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area is a prime target for real estate investors is this: DFW has only around two months of resale housing inventory available for sale. This is truly a seller’s (and smart investor’s) market. DFW housing is being squeezed by three unrelenting ...
1031 Exchange, named after Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, allows a real estate investor to defer (postpone) tax liability when selling one property and buying another. This raises an important question: How much income tax will I owe if I sell this property but do not acquire a ...
When we look at claims information we see that many of the properties subject to break-ins, thefts and vandalism are usually vacant or going through renovations to prepare them for sale or the next tenant. I’m sure it’s truly disappointing to arrive to show a house that was finished only ...
Know Before You Go: A Loan Commitment Checklist
While issues such as interest rates, principal loan amounts, underwriting requirements, etc., generally are included in a loan commitment, many issues are often not addressed until after the prospective borrower has signed the loan commitment, paid the nonrefundable loan commitment fee and funded, in advance, a deposit for expenses related ...
As a specialist in owner financing of residential properties and a teacher to students across the nation, I am often asked about the default rate. Nationally, in 2010, the default rate for subprime loans was about 10 percent, but those likely included options, adjustable-rate mortgages and other variable interest loans ...
5 Strategies For Building Wealth Through Note Buying
"You can make a living brokering notes, but you get wealthy owning notes!” This statement from a pioneer real estate note investor provided one of those “lightbulb” moments for me. Determined to start owning notes, I left a 10-year “job” in the corporate note-buying world to start my own note ...
Whether this is your first flip or your 20th flip, there are strategies you can use to help make your business even more successful. Fixing-and-flipping homes can be profitable for real estate investors in a number of different cycles. An important thing to keep in mind when starting out is ...
Seriously Underwater Property Numbers Decline
ATTOM Data Solutions’ recently released Q2 2016 U.S. Home Equity and Underwater Report shows 6,666,622 seriously underwater properties. That number represents 11.9 percent of all U.S. properties with a mortgage as of the end of the second quarter 2016—down from 12.0 percent in the previous quarter and down from 13.3 ...
Five ‘Gotta-Have’ Tools for Real Estate Investors
We all love lists, right? And today I’ve got an awesome one for you—five great tools that I know can help you in your real estate investing. Tool No. 1: Think Realty Starting with the obvious: The first one is Think Realty Magazine. You’ve got to subscribe to the Think ...
Trends in Real Estate: Urbanization, Changing Office Usage
Certain American cities are seeing prices rise; others are starting to cool. Some broader demographic trends have continued, though—urbanization is on the upswing, and urban office usage patterns are changing. Home Buyers Want Cities No less than Robert Shiller—a 2013 Nobel laureate in economics, professor of economics at Yale University ...
As a Real Estate Investor, Are You a Jack-of-All-Trades or Master-of-One?
As a real estate investor, should you be a jack-of-all-trades or a master-of-one? It’s a very important distinction because it will influence what kind of real estate investments you make. In exploring this subject, probably the best place to start is with something relatively familiar—the concept of diversified investments. You ...
Newbies, Don’t Let Sellers Take Advantage of You
I’ve got a gripe, and I think it’s important to share it so that some of the newbies out there don’t get unfairly taken advantage of. It’s driving me nuts that new investor—and even some seasoned, pro investors—are buying deals at terrible prices. I see it happening in Atlanta, where ...
NAR Student Debt/Housing Survey Provides Insight for Investors
Imagine this familiar scenario that so many Millennials face: they spend four years in college working hard to attain the grades they’ll need to get profitable employment once their schooling is complete, but at the same time, they are amassing thousands upon thousands of dollars’ worth of student loan debt ...
Home Values Higher in ZIP Codes With Good Schools
Homes in ZIP codes with at least one good elementary school have higher values and stronger home price appreciation over the long term than homes in ZIP codes without any good elementary schools, where homes lost more value during the housing downturn but have seen stronger appreciation during the housing ...
‘Wantrepreneurs’ Have Ruined the Term ‘Entrepreneur’
I have said it many times in my videos and social media posts: the word “entrepreneur” is dead. Or useless, anyway. All the “wantrepreneurs” out there have seen to that. Now you’re probably saying to yourself, how can the word “entrepreneur” be dead? Well, it’s dead because of so many ...
3 Characteristics That Define the ‘Active’ Investor
When talking about real estate investors, we generally put them into one of two categories: active investors or passive investors. In this post, we’re going to focus on the active, but first, let’s briefly touch on what is meant by “passive.” This could be a HomeVestors franchisee (as I am, ...
