Carole VanSickle Ellis
Appraiser’s Board to Ease Certification Requirements
Property appraisers no longer need a college degree in order to receive their certification, and they do not have to put in nearly as many hours as they used to in order to obtain and maintain that certification, either. According to a recent announcement from the Appraisal Foundation’s Appraiser Qualifications ...
Investors Benefit from Home Equity Increases
According to CoreLogic’s recently published Home Equity Report, borrowing money to buy a home is paying off for homeowners these days. In 2017, homeowners with mortgages gained more than $15,000 in home equity, the highest growth in home equity in four years. That equates to a cumulative equity in mortgaged real ...
Is Your Seller Violating Privacy Laws?
According to reports from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), an increasing number of home sellers are using their home surveillance systems to monitor showings while they are out. While the desire to see how a showing went firsthand is natural, it could be hurting their chances at selling for ...
Why Texas is Best State for Tax Investors
Dallas, Texas – “Texas is a redeemable tax deed state, and that is the best structure of any state. I’m not just saying that because I’m here in Texas!” began Arnie Abramson, founder of Texas Tax Sales Resource Group in his educational session on Saturday, February 24, 2018, at the ...
3 Tech Hacks for Active Landlords
Dallas, Texas – Sometimes, the simplest things can have the biggest impact, especially when it comes to saving time and money as an active landlord. Active landlords, also referred to as “DIY landlords” by the property managers who specialize in serving them, such as Linda Liberatore of Secure Pay One, ...
Tearing Down Walls And Opening Up Value
This article was originally published in the April 2018 Think Realty Magazine. 2018 is likely to continue to be a sellers’ market according to recent reports from Trulia. The company released the results of a recent survey of more than 2,000 homeowners indicating that only about three in every 50 ...
The Credit Secret They Don’t Want You to Know
Dallas, Texas – A simple error on a loan application can cause banks and other sources of credit to simply toss your application out without ever evaluating your creditworthiness. “I remember when I first realized there was a game afoot with the credit industry,” said Merrill Chandler, founder, CEO, and ...
Mack Brown Opens Dallas Conference with Insight
Dallas, Texas – When former head football coach of the Texas Longhorns football team Mack Brown entered the main presentation hall at the Think Realty National Conference & Expo in Dallas, Texas, the room erupted in cheers. Brown, who is credited with revitalizing not one but two major college football ...
Real Estate Market Weaker in Some Areas
According to national housing experts, the spring housing market will likely be the indicator for 2018 regarding whether the market is heading into a slowdown. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), about 40 percent of the entire year’s sales during a typical year happen from March through June ...
2 Questions to Optimize Lead Generation
Dallas, Texas – One of the best ways to generate solid lead generation for your real estate investing business is to get out “in the field” and talk to sellers directly. Especially in highly competitive real estate markets like Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), which recently hosted the Think Realty National Conference ...
HUD Mission Statement Change Proposed
According to a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the department may adjust its mission statement in the coming months. The statement currently reads: “HUD’s mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality and affordable homes for all. HUD is working to strengthen the ...
3 Things to Know About Owner Financing
Dallas, Texas – As mortgage rates rise and credit requirements on traditional mortgages from conventional lenders remain stringent, creative financing is becoming increasingly common in the real estate space. One of the most common forms of creative financing, seller-financing or owner-financing, is also one of the most attractive options because ...
Market for Student Housing Could be Softening
Student housing may be one of the most reliable investment options in real estate, thanks to a largely recession-proof tenant population and increasing student populations on most college campuses. However, in 2017, many analysts said that the market might have become oversaturated thanks to an enthusiastic 2016, wherein investors spent ...
Oscars Affect One Movie-Titled Real Estate Market
After the Academy Awards announced the movie “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” as an Oscar contender, the real estate market saw an increase in viewership – just not the market you might expect. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), visitors to Realtor.com spent a fair amount of time ...
Robot Real Estate Agents Showing Properties
If you wish you could show every one of your properties in person without ever leaving your office, then you could soon have that wish granted. Robot guides are successfully showing properties, creating floor plans, and even shooting videos for listings in California. In one Woodland Hills brokerage, robots will ...
Foreign Investor Population Changing in U.S. Markets
Chinese buyers have dominated the conversation about foreign interests in U.S. real estate for years, but that trend appears to be shifting. According to research from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), despite massive spending on the part of Chinese buyers, the influx of Chinese capital into U.S. markets is ...
Samuel K. Freshman: Building Big & Buying Right
Samuel K. Freshman, author of Principles of Real Estate Syndication, the industry-acknowledged "bible" on the topic, and founder of private real estate investment firm Standard Management Company, describes his life as “the story of the lady or the tiger.” The narrative, a short story written in the early 1880s by ...
Brutal Honesty from Multifamily Investor
Dallas, Texas – When Brad Sumrok, founder and CEO of Apartment Investor Mastery, first started investing in apartment buildings, he wasn’t in it for the love of real estate. He was in it for what real estate could do for him. “I like investing in apartments, but you didn’t hear ...
Homebuyers Heading for Texas, the Millennial Wave
Dallas, Texas – Millennials are the largest generation since the Baby Boomers, and it turns out they have a taste for Texas. Michael Miller, CMO at 5Arch Group, broke down the ramifications of an inbound Millennial population on the Texas housing market and Texas real estate investors in a market ...
3 Forces Working Against Your Retirement Portfolio
Dallas, Texas – “Why is it that only five in every 100 people are financially secure at age 65?” Edwin Kelly, CEO of Specialized IRA Services, took some dramatic steps toward isolating the reason for this disturbing statistic at the Think Realty National Conference & Expo in Dallas, Texas, on ...
5G Technology Slated for Four Cities in 2018
Imagine using your phone to do just about anything with just about no delays ever. That dream could become a reality for certain cellular customers by the end of 2018. AT&T recently announced three cities would have access to its 5G service by the end of 2018 and promised that ...
Fed’s Asset Purchases During 2008 Questioned
Skeptical economists have authored and presented a paper criticizing the Federal Reserve’s asset purchases during the 2008 financial crisis. They argue that in the future, instead of making large scale asset purchases (LSAP), which were a key part of quantitative easing (QE) in the wake of the housing and financial ...
Telemarketing Scam Targeted Investors
The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Illinois recently indicted two California residents on charges related to a national telemarketing scam targeting real estate investors. The charges included conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, and result from the two individuals’ participation in a scheme that involved selling ...
Single-Family Rental Rates Up Year-Over-Year
According to the CoreLogic Single-Family Rent Index (SFRI), 2017’s rents were higher than those of 2016. This continues a seven-year trend of rising rents that started in 2010, although analysts noted that the price growth rate has decelerated gradually since it peaked at 4.3 percent in February 2016. The index ...
Renovation Rock Stars: Mountain Cabin
When Bill Twyford and his son, Will, took on what they quickly began referring to as the “Water House” in the Colorado mountains, they knew the project would be tough but rewarding. “It was a six-month project and we put about $75,000 into it, but we completely changed the look ...
