Knowledgebase
All of Think Realty's extensive content archive is at your fingertips. Filter by media type and keyword to hone in on exactly what you need.
Knowledgebase
All of Think Realty's extensive content archive is at your fingertips. Filter by media type and keyword to hone in on exactly what you need.
Long-term rates stabilized but we are still in a down pattern
Long-term rates stabilized this week as events, puzzles, forces, and conflicts scattered all over the world canceled each other. We focus on the yields of long debt because they are the result of real-time voting on economic prospects. Belief in improved growth and its companion inflation push upward on rates ...
The battle over rental rights and tenants: Who can limit rentals and when?
To many homeowners’ associations and cites the word “rent” is truly a four-letter word. The 2008 Indiana Supreme Court case of Villas West II v. McGlothin began as a community association’s legal action against a homeowner who was renting out her property to tenants. It ended as a landmark decision ...
Invest like a pro by understanding the real estate cycles
Invest like a pro by understanding the real estate cycles I work every day with investors and I often hear these words: “I wish I had…” “I wish had bought two years ago.” “I wish I had bought more properties.” “I wish I had sold those properties then I would ...
9 things you need to know about buying property at auction
During the height of the housing downturn, “auction” usually referred to a foreclosed piece of property sold to the highest of many jostling bidders on the local courthouse steps. Typically, there was no chance for a preview of the property, little time for due diligence and the requirement of full ...
12 ways to earn money as a real estate syndicator
IS IT REAL ESTATE OR A SECURITY? EDITOR’S NOTE: The investment industry is not organized for the convenience of investors! The people who can help you buy stocks, bonds and funds are licensed as stock brokers, financial advisers or sellers of stock-related offerings. The people who can help you buy ...
Lesson No. 5 in build to rent – Permit fees, rights and HOAs
There is a lot more to building real estate investment houses than you might think, unless you are a builder. Permit fees are self-explanatory, as you can get the information from the county where the lots are located. However, sometimes a developer who went bankrupt did not live up to ...
A lot of Americans do not see the real jobs picture improving
Long-term rates have again touched the lows of the year, good news for real estate investors. To make sense of that news and a great deal else going by this week, step back -- especially from the awful sights on your screens. Way back. We try to be rational in ...
Do you know the four keys to invest like a pro?
During my last month in Minnesota in 2003 in preparation for my move to Florida, I sold 22 investment properties to investors who were all thrilled at the returns they were getting. Moving my investing business 1,600 miles south to Florida, I suddenly found a very different market. WOW! It ...
People in Illinois and other states want to move: What does that mean for real estate investors?
Gallup in a new poll has found that residents of some states would readily move if they could. This migration desire is something real estate investors should be aware of and plan for in their investments. While every state has at least some residents who are looking for greener pastures, ...
5 things will tell you if it’s a great property buy or disaster lurks
As a real estate investor, here's a question I have to ask on a regular basis involving a property for sale: Should I renovate it? Or pass on the property as an investment? The challenge is that appearances often are deceiving. Simply eyeballing a home is not enough. A property may ...
When it makes sense to sell the lots instead of build on them: Build to rent lesson No. 4
I used to be primarily a wholesaler in Florida, but this dried up as investors abandoned the market. The market went up so fast in the early 2000s that is was not sustainable and led to our real estate bubble. Everyone I know that was in the real estate business ...
Who are the foreigners buying up American residential real estate?
All real estate may be local, but the buyers are not. Wonder why home prices are continue to be so high in California? Why are there so many cash buyers? The answer may be international buyers, with 55% of them buying in just four states: California, Florida, Texas and Arizona ...
Long-term rates continue falling as mortgages stay just above 4%
The big story of last week is the odd combination of saber-rattling by the Fed but falling long-term interest rates, mortgages just above 4.00%. First a rundown on other matters high in the news but ho-hummed in markets. Iraq has gone off-screen entirely, oil prices right back where they were ...
Housing bubble inflating again mortgage bankers say
Mortgage bankers fear another real estate housing bubble, according to the latest quarterly survey of North American bank risk managers conducted for FICO, a leading predictive analytics and decision management software company, according to a release from PRNewswire. In the survey, 56 percent of respondents directly involved in mortgage lending ...
HomeVestors breaks growth record
Franchisee growth for HomeVestors is up for the first two quarters of 2014, breaking records set in previous quarters as the highest ever class enrollment of new franchisees, according to a release from PRNewswire. The Dallas-based company is the largest professional house buying network of independently owned and operated franchisees ...
How mowing lots at age 15 led to my first real estate investment
I had a lawn mowing job for a local developer when I was 15. I mowed all the land he was developing into plots for home building sites. Watching the roads go in and seeing the land take shape inspired me as a teenager. One day after my mowing was ...
Four convicted in $50 million North Carolina mortgage fraud case
A former government organized crime informant and a Ft. Lauderdale grandmother were convicted in federal court last week on conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud involving a $50 million luxury real estate deal in the North Carolina Mountains involving many Florida “straw buyers.” Domenico ‘Dom’ Rabuffo, 77, of ...
Too much good news causes long-term rates to rise
Long-term rates rose last week. In our perverse world, the cause was too much good news. As always, rate-watching is a probability business, surprise the only constant. Odds have shifted from the May-June flirtation with lower rates toward a test of the highs of this year. But the good news ...
Home price appreciation cools as the weather warms
Home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased 8.8 percent in May 2014 compared to May 2013, according to a new report from CoreLogic. This change represents 27 months of consecutive year-over-year increases in home prices nationally. On a month-over-month basis, home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased 1.4 percent in ...
Do you know which smart additions can add value to real estate investments?
When I lived and invested in the Midwest I loved buying newer style homes with unfinished walk-out basements. It is common there to build a home on a hill with the front elevation of the home looking like a single-story house, but the back of the home opening down the ...
Why home price gains have flattened and what investors need to know
Long-term rates have fallen back near the lows of the year, despite Wall Street salespeople trying to frighten investors about inflation and Fed tightening. That extraction of funding from crowds is indefensible, but our situation is confusing. Example: we would like to unseat Assad in Syria, and we wish bad ...
Mortgage rates continue to drift lower
Mortgage rates were down for the second week in a row, with the benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage rate sliding to 4.28 percent, according to Bankrate.com's weekly national survey releassed by PrNewswire. The average 30-year fixed mortgage has an average of 0.31 discount and origination points. To see mortgage rates in ...
Build-to-rent lesson No. 3: What does it cost?
Did you wonder what it cost to build a house? Have you heard prices from $50.00 a square foot to $300 a square foot? There are various costs that you want to separate in order to understand the true cost. I suggest that you have a separate cost for: The ...
Tenants prefer online ratings more than referrals in seeking rental housing
Prospective renters place higher importance on online reviews than referrals from friends and family, according to a Kingsley Associates' study June 19 at the National Apartment Association Education Conference & Exposition in Denver, and reported by PRNewswire. The first-ever multifamily study on ratings and reviews entitled Highly Recommended: The Influence ...
Inflation up but rates holding steady
There are times to suspend analysis and just listen to markets. Have to be careful even with that. First, pick the right markets. The stock market is not worth the trouble, thousands of different stocks at once sounding like a symphony performed by 5th-graders. Pick bullet markets: the 10-year US ...
