Carole VanSickle Ellis
Voice-Controlled Properties Trending in 2017
Voice control is set to be the next smart-home amenity home buyers cannot live without. If the idea of just speaking to your house and asking it to lock doors, turn off lights, or activate the security system makes you think a little bit of “The Jetsons” and then get ...
Don’t Let Bedbugs Kill Your Real Estate Deals
Only a decade ago, bedbugs were virtually unheard of in the United States. While many homeowners had probably heard the saying “Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” the majority were largely unconcerned with the reality of such instruction. Today, however, nearly everyone knows someone who has experienced issues with a bedbug ...
Are You ‘Helping’ Hackers Scam Your Clients?
Are you unwittingly helping hackers scam your clients? More and more real estate professionals are reporting that their clients are finding themselves victims of hacking and identity theft, thanks to real estate transactions. Hackers have discovered that breaking into a single real estate professional’s email account yields a treasure trove ...
Real Estate Investing in Orlando, Florida
It’s all about the numbers in Orlando, Florida, these days, and the numbers are looking pretty hot. The city recently made headlines as the fourth-hottest market in the nation, the “28th-Best Place for Careers and Business” and third-best city in the nation for job growth, per Forbes and online real ...
Carl and Peggy Mullin have made it their mission to provide real estate solutions. “Whether you are selling a house, buying a home or looking for investments, we provide solutions that are moral, ethical, legal and provide win-win-win results,” they state proudly. That’s a tall order in any investing sector, ...
When Marco Santarelli, founder of Norada Real Estate Investments, bought his first property at the age of 18, his gut told him the transaction held the key to his eventual financial freedom. What he did not realize at the time was just how many other investors would find financial freedom ...
In May 2016, San Diego, California, was the “eighth-hottest” home market in the United States according to Realtor.com. That had the media, analysts and even some economists starting to whisper the word “bubble.” At that time, Think Realty Magazine took a hard look at the San Diego housing market (“San ...
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, ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
As more and more homebuyers look to parents and other sources for the lump sums required to make a down payment on a new home, the idea of down-payment assistance is becoming more familiar in the housing sector. However, any time that assistance goes undocumented with the mortgage lender, you’re ...
A Facebook Face-Off About Housing
Facebook doesn’t shy away from a problem, even one as big as California’s affordable housing crisis. The social media giant recently announced that it would begin combatting its home state’s massive lack of affordable housing squarely in the most expensive metro area in the country, San Jose, where the median ...
Trump Taps Carson for HUD Secretary Position
President-elect Donald Trump has nominated retired neurosurgeon, outspoken Obamacare opponent and former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson for the position of U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). By tapping Carson for the position, Trump diverges once again from the “norm” of appointing individuals with bureaucratic experience in government ...
Save by Buying Property in Winter Months
If you’re willing to buy when the weather is frightful, your real estate investment deals could be quite delightful. So delightful, in fact, you might save as much as $50,000 or nearly $100,000 in certain locales. According to online real estate management and investment firm HomeUnion, the national square-footage price ...
Will You Be Paying Back-Overtime in 2017?
If your real estate investing business has any salaried employees, you could find yourself paying them some serious back-overtime in 2017 if a recently blocked Labor Department ruling is overturned in the New Year. Late last month, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued an injunction against ...
Red-States for the Win: Why Blue-State Investors Buy Elsewhere
No matter what side of the political aisle you prefer, odds are that when it comes to your real estate investment portfolio, your choices tend to be more red than blue. A recent report from ATTOM Data Solutions indicates that although deep-blue California is home base for a vast population of ...
Florida Supreme Court Gives Banks a “Do-Over” on Dismissed Foreclosures
Last week, the Florida Supreme Court decided to unleash a potential tidal wave of “new” foreclosures in the state, but the foreclosures in question are not really all that new. Instead, they’re mortgage foreclosure actions that were dismissed fewer than five years ago where the homeowners in question have once ...
Rodney Pike knew from the start that he loved making real estate a reality for others, thanks to his longtime association with Habitat for Humanity and experience in the construction sector. When he decided to start making his own real estate dreams reality, however, “I just didn’t have all the ...
Dallas-Fort Worth: Ensuring Economic Diversity
The Dallas-Fort Worth area undeniably relies heavily on the oil industry for its economic health and well-being, but regional and state policy-makers have spent more than a decade designing programs, incentives and policies to ensure that the local area continues to grow and evolve regardless of gas prices. Here are ...
