Carole VanSickle Ellis

  • Carole VanSickle Ellis serves as the news editor and COO of Self-Directed Investor (SDI) Society, a membership organization dedicated to the needs of self-directed investors interested in alternative investment vehicles, including real estate. Learn more at SelfDirected.org or reach Carole directly by emailing Carole@selfdirected.org.

SGF Contracting Services Joins the Affinity Enterprise Team

SGF Contracting Services Joins the Affinity Enterprise Team

This week, Think Realty’s parent company acquired an asset that has the potential to provide lasting benefit to every Think Realty member and associate. Affinity Enterprise Group (AEG) acquired SGF Contracting Services, a provider of rehab and renovation services for real estate investors, asset managers, and landlords. The SGF team ...
Renters are Feeling Rich in This Market

Renters are Feeling Rich in This Market

Renters are feeling good about their finances, but they are not necessarily feeling like they would like to become homeowners. According to a new consumer study released this month by Freddie Mac, renters are increasingly likely to feel confident about their finances and their current living situation these days. In ...
Immigration: The Key to Housing Sustainability

Immigration: The Key to Housing Sustainability

According to the Urban Land Institute (ULI), the housing industry could suffer on a nationwide level if current rates of immigration into the United States are “not sustained.” ULI’s Terwilliger Center for Housing recently released a new report, “Home in America: Immigrants and Housing Demand,” addressing the topic. Stockton Williams, ...
Pam Goodwin, Joins Women to Watch Think Realty Dallas Expo 2017 Panel

Pam Goodwin, Joins Women to Watch Think Realty Dallas Expo 2017 Panel

| Article | Market & Trends, Profiles
Woman: Pam Goodwin Company: Goodwin Commercial Place in the Industry: Eleven years ago, Pam Goodwin made the leap out of “corporate America,” where she had been a very successful commercial interior designer and, subsequently, commercial developer for Brinker International. The group that owns, among other restaurant behemoths, Chili’s. She maintained ...
One-on-One with Pam Goodwin: A Think Realty “Woman to Watch in 2017”   Owner of Goodwin Commercial

One-on-One with Pam Goodwin: A Think Realty “Woman to Watch in 2017” Owner of Goodwin Commercial

| Article | Market & Trends, Profiles
Pam Goodwin will serve as a panelist on Think Realty’s 2017 “Women to Watch in Real Estate” panel at the Think Realty Dallas Expo on April 29, 2017, in Dallas, Texas. Pam Goodwin is the founder and owner of Goodwin Commercial, a boutique commercial real estate and consulting firm specializing ...
Julie Ziglar Norman Joins Think Realty’s “Women to Watch in Real Estate in 2017” Panel as a Motivational Moderator

Julie Ziglar Norman Joins Think Realty’s “Women to Watch in Real Estate in 2017” Panel as a Motivational Moderator

| Article | Market & Trends, Profiles
You can learn more about Julie Ziglar Norman and reserve your spot at the “Women to Watch in Real Estate in 2017” panel at the Think Realty Expo on April 29, 2017 by clicking here. If real estate is all about relationships, then Think Realty’s “Women to Watch in Real ...
Woman to Watch: Kimberly Smith

Woman to Watch: Kimberly Smith

| Article | Profiles
Woman: Kimberly Smith Company: AvenueWest Corporate Housing, AvenueWest Global Franchise Place in the Industry Before there was Airbnb, there was Kimberly Smith and AvenueWest. Smith founded the company in 1999 as a real estate brokerage specializing in furnished property management for monthly fees. “We worked with private investors to get their properties ...
Woman To Watch: Sue Nelson

Woman To Watch: Sue Nelson

| Article | Profiles
Woman: Sue Nelson Company: REO Note Profits Place in the Industry Sue Nelson describes her real estate investing as “simple.” “I buy apartment complexes, basically,” she said. Of course, over the past 12 years the former-art-teacher-turned-commercial-investor has built a portfolio that once included 2,500 units, has taught hundreds of students to do ...
Woman To Watch: Vena Jones-Cox

Woman To Watch: Vena Jones-Cox

| Article | Profiles
Woman: Vena Jones-Cox Company: You Buy Houses Place in the Industry Vena Jones-Cox has been investing in residential real estate in the greater Cincinnati area full-time since 1989, and she’s completed over 600 deals in the process. “I consider myself a generalist,” she said. “Everything I do is around single family ...
Woman To Watch: Svenja Gudell

Woman To Watch: Svenja Gudell

| Article | Profiles
Woman: Svenja Gudell Company: Zillow Place in the Industry Svenja Gudell has a very big job. As Zillow’s chief economist, she not only leads a team of more than 10 economists, data scientists, and analysts in producing real estate research for consumers, academics, policy-makers, and the rest of the decision-makers in ...
Woman To Watch: Kathy Fettke

Woman To Watch: Kathy Fettke

| Article | Profiles
Woman: Kathy Fettke Company: Real Wealth Network Place in the Industry Kathy Fettke considers her place in the industry to be one of offering hope. “I offer people a lot of hope that they will someday be able to experience financial freedom through real estate investing thanks to a path that ...
Woman to Watch: AdaPia d'Errico

Woman to Watch: AdaPia d’Errico

| Article | Profiles
Woman: AdaPia d’Errico Company: d’Errico Creative Consulting Ltd. Place in the Industry AdaPia’s highest-profile project to date may be her role as chief marketing officer at Patch of Land, working with the founders and CEO to set the strategic marketing objectives necessary to raise $23.6 million in series-A funding. And ...
Cincinnati Real Estate Rental Market On Positive Course For Investors

Cincinnati Real Estate Rental Market On Positive Course For Investors

| Article | Profiles
Cincinnati, Ohio, started 2016 off with a bang. The Queen City, which had been experiencing population declines since the 1950s and took the housing crash very, very hard (with losses in values and a foreclosure crisis that extended long into the purported national “recovery”), found itself once again gaining in ...
Investor Highlight: Bryan Blankenship

Investor Highlight: Bryan Blankenship

| Article | Profiles
Bryan Blankenship describes himself as a “boring Ohio guy,” but the “general contractor at heart” is much more than that. With multiple roaring real estate investing businesses that literally run the gamut of the industry from retail fix-and-flips to commercial development, and a thriving turnkey rental property organization, Blankenship is ...
Shanghai

Chinese Investors Hit the Accelerator as Trump Presidency Progresses

| Article | Market & Trends
When Donald Trump was elected 45th president of the United States, a number of real estate investors drew a huge sigh of trepidation along with the many other protestors of one of the country’s most divisive and controversial elections. While most U.S. real estate investors believed all personal preferences aside, ...
Woman To Watch: Carrie Cook

Woman To Watch: Carrie Cook

| Article | Profiles
Woman: Carrie Cook Company: Preferred Trust Company, Ignite Funding Place in the Industry When Carrie Cook says success in real estate is earned - she knows what she’s talking about. “I do not have an Ivy League education. In fact, I didn’t go to college until 10 years after I graduated high ...
Woman To Watch: Sonia Booker

Woman To Watch: Sonia Booker

| Article | Profiles
Woman: Sonia Booker Company: Sonia Booker Enterprises Place in the Industry When Sonia started investing more than two decades ago, “I did it all,” she says. That doesn’t seem to have changed much. The self-described wealth-builder and thought leader not only buys and rehabs single-family properties for sale and rental ...
market predictions

2017 Market Predictions

Kathy Fettke Stresses Investors’ Need to Understand Market Cycles “I’m going to depress all of you, and offend about half of you,” Kathy Fettke, co-founder of California’s Real Wealth Network (RWN), said as she kicked off her 2017 Market Predictions session at the Think Realty San Diego Group Event Feb ...
real estate investing

Five Steps to Flipping Properties for $100,000 a Year

REVTRAC’s Ryan McFarland Explains the Science of Successful Investing When it comes to flipping properties, Ryan McFarland of the Real Estate Veterans Training Academy (REVTRAC), has the process down to a science. REVTRAC was founded by Chris Bedgood, star of A&E’s “Flipping San Diego” and provides training to real estate ...
Using Knowledge to Overcome Fear

Using Knowledge to Overcome Fear

SDIC Co-Founder Imran Clark Says Education is Key What drives people to real estate from every walk of life? Imran Clark, co-founder of the San Diego Investment Club (SDIC) has a very simple answer: “At the end of the day, most of us really like hanging out with our families ...
Real Estate Property Investment

The Truth About Diversifying Your Investment Portfolio

Ignite’s Bill Bray Makes the Case for Variation Sometimes, words that get thrown around in investing don’t mean what you think they mean, and a great example of this is the word “diversifying.” Bill Bray, an investment agent at Ignite Funding, delved into this particular misconception in detail at the ...
When Buying Ugly Yields Pretty Results

When Buying Ugly Yields Pretty Results

Equistream’s Kent Davis Shares His Expertise at Think Realty San Diego Event Kent Davis, co-founder of Equistream and longtime pastor and missionary, starts everything out with a bang, including his general session at the Feb. 18, 2017, Think Realty San Diego Group Event. Within five minutes of his introduction, Davis covered ...
Budget-Busting Property Insurance Myths

Budget-Busting Property Insurance Myths

Don’t Let These Property Insurance Myths Kill Your Real Estate Investments, Advises Shawn Woedl What you don’t know can hurt you, especially if what you don’t know has to do with your passive real estate investment. Shawn Woedl, senior vice president of REIGuard, a provider of property insurance specifically for ...
The 10 Most Important Days in Your Real Estate Career

The 10 Most Important Days in Your Real Estate Career

Insights from Bruce Norris Kick Off Think Realty’s San Diego Group Event Of all the important days in your buying career, there are 10 that stand out in particular. If you’re Bruce Norris of The Norris group, a California-based private lender heavily focused on real estate investment strategies, then you ...
Down Payment Myths Scare Younger Buyers

Down Payment Myths Scare Younger Buyers

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), more than one-in-five potential home buyer is opting out of exploring the option of buying a home. At least not without doing the proper research. Simply because they believe the down payment will be prohibitively expensive. The NAR’s 2017 Aspiring Home Buyers ...