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.
Credit, Using it Creatively & Responsibly
I once used a promotional “zero-percent-interest-and-zero-points" cash advance feature on my $25,000-limit credit card to buy a $25,000 property. Then, I refinanced it with a local community bank at 100 percent loan-to-cost (75 percent loan-to-appraised- value) within six months, right before the initial interest free period expired. That credit card ...
Green Pig Marketing Stunt Backfires on Brokerage
A real estate brokerage expanding into the Seattle, Washington, market got a lot of attention recently with a marketing campaign that may have misfired. The company installed about 1,500 small, green pig cutouts around the city to announce its new presence. The idea was to demonstrate how the company would ...
Redefining Legacy: It’s Not Just Financial Wealth
Many years ago, I was asked to give a speech in Charleston, South Carolina, to an audience of extremely wealthy men who were nearing early retirement. At that point in my life, I had already spoken on behalf of dozens of great corporations, albeit mostly about setting and achieving big ...
Dallas Area Investors Reveal Market Insights
Dallas, Texas – Seven local investors spent an hour digging into the local Dallas-Fort Worth real estate market this past Saturday, February 24, 2018, at the Think Realty National Conference & Expo. The Local Market Panel, hosted by Cathy Crowe of All Star Home Group, consisted of local experts from ...
Dallas, Texas – “We are all in different phases of stuck, and we need a bridge to productivity.” Robert Nickell, founder of REIVA, summed up his personal experience in real estate with these words. Nickell’s company offers the services of trained, dedicated virtual assistants (VAs) to real estate investors to ...
5 Economic Indicators Every Real Estate Investor Must Know
Dallas, Texas – When Carrie Cook, president of Ignite Funding, thinks about the roughly $460 million her real estate investment company is managing right before she goes to sleep at night, she sleeps just fine. While some investors might find numbers like that to be a bit intimidating even when ...
Why a Studio Apartment Could be Better than a McMansion for Your Real Estate Business
Dallas, Texas – “If you have a big, beautiful ‘McMansion’ that you’re trying to rent out right now, I’m betting you’re finding that market isn’t too hot. In fact, I’m betting a one-bedroom apartment or a studio might be much hotter, and I’ll tell you why.” That’s how Gene Guarino, ...
Real Estate Cryptocurrency to Launch Soon
A real estate firm in Los Angeles, California, has come up with a new way to fund real estate investments that literally cashes in on the investment trends associated with cryptocurrency. The company, Aperture Real Estate Ventures, will launch a real estate-backed cryptocurrency at the end of February. The currency ...
Top 5 Cities for First-Time Home Buyers
Certain things make a real estate market relatively more attractive to first-time homebuyers than another. For example, first-time buyers benefit from low down payments, which tend to be found in areas with affordable median home prices, multiple financing options, and good employment opportunities upon which to base their new household ...
Mortgage Rates Hit Four-Year High
According to Freddie Mac, national average mortgage rates rose to 4.38 percent last week on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. That rate, while still historically low, is the highest posted since April 2014. 15-year fixed-rate mortgage interest rates averaged 3.84 percent (up slightly from the previous week), and five-year hybrid adjustable-rate ...
Roth IRAs: The Best Legacy-Building Tool
If you leave nothing else for your loved ones, be sure that they inherit a Roth IRA from you. Even if the account has a tiny balance, leaving behind a Roth IRA provides a legacy benefit of overwhelming value: a lifetime of tax-free investment profits. In short, an inherited IRA ...
3 Things Not to do at a Real Estate Conference
We’ve talked to countless meeting hosts, presenters, and power-networkers to come up with a list of the three worst things you can do at a real estate conference. Take a hard look at this list and then, yourself. If you’ve made these mistakes in the past, be sure to avoid ...
Housing Markets Most Impacted by Tax Plan
The Republican tax proposal unveiled in late October and passed in December, included at least two changes to the income tax structure that could potentially have significant impacts on homeowners, and by extension the housing market. We’ve created two heat maps to illustrate which local housing markets could have the ...
“Buying Time” in Creative Ways
Ask a real estate investor why they left their “9-to-5,” and they’ll usually say something about having more time. Investors are, in many cases, parents and grandparents seeking more time with family. Just as often, they are passionate entrepreneurs and community servants seeking more time in which to enact their ...
Deal Funding with Credit Card Stacking
If you are a real estate investor and have been looking for capital to fund your real estate deals, there is a good chance you have heard of credit card stacking. Credit card stacking is the practice that credit brokers use to help individuals acquire credit by applying for multiple ...
What is Time to a Real Estate Investor?
Time itself is an investment. Often, you put in time for a very specific purpose or to achieve a certain goal. That goal could be to obtain more time. For real estate investors, the initial investment of your time may mean you later have additional days to spend with family ...
Keys to Successful Real Estate Investment
While reading a book, journal or magazine article about real estate investment may instill a sense of motivation for an individual to jump into the market, important research must be done to ensure your venture is worth your while. Buying a home, renovating it to meet aesthetic and safety standards, ...
Rigorous Honesty, Make it a Habit
Several years ago, I was asked by one of my mentors if I was rigorously honest. I thought I was honest and said as much. More recently, I was given a challenge by Michael J. Maher, the author of 7L: The Seven Levels of Communication. It was the same challenge ...
Take Heed, Housing Affordability Issue to Worsen
You might expect the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) to be happy to hear about inventory shortages since that means there is a need for more new construction. But the NAHB’s chief economist has a warning to accompany the association’s latest report on home prices, mortgage interest rates, and ...
Housing Affordability Impacts Investor Strategy
The Atlanta skyline has a lot of visible cranes right now making it easy to understand that we are in an interesting growth cycle. Everybody is giddy and excited about where the real estate market is headed, and we've had, what I think, is one of the longest run-ups in ...
Real Estate Agent Jailed Over Profitable Short Sale
When an Arizona real estate agent helped his parents purchase a distressed property from a motivated seller in 2012, he probably wasn’t thinking about bank fraud. In all likelihood, his main focus was on getting his parents a good deal on the property, which they bought for $580,000 in a ...
5 Must Avoid Bookkeeping Errors
Real estate investors tend to be extremely independent. That independence is one of the best things about these entrepreneurs, but that “go-it-alone” streak can lead to serious bookkeeping oversights that will create big problems in your real estate business. While most investors acknowledge they have neither the time nor the ...
Markets that Will “Double Up” in 2018
Although home prices have been rising briskly in many markets across the country, the prospects for investors in these markets can be quite different from market to market. This is especially true for investors in rental properties who need a longer-term perspective than those rehabbing and reselling. Jobs are the ...
Predictive Analyst Names Two Picks for HQ2
Last year, New York University (NYU) marketing professor Scott Galloway predicted that Amazon would purchase Whole Foods. In June 2017, the internet behemoth did so. Now, Galloway has another big, Amazon-related prediction: “It all comes down to two locations [for HQ2]: It’s either going to be the metro area of ...
The Stock Market: What You Need to Know
Last week, Wall Street went a little crazy. After more than a year of steady growth, the time was certainly ripe for a correction in the market, and that is what the market gave investors last week. February started off with some turbulence, with the Dow closing on February 2, ...
