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.
FHA Loan Limits Increase—For Now
In response to rising home prices nationwide, the Federal Housing Administration has raised loan limits for 2017. So if you have been or will be looking to buy a home, you may be able to qualify for an FHA loan next year a bit easier than you could this year ...
6 Ideas to Prep for Trump’s New Tax Plan
With Donald Trump in the White house, big changes are coming for taxpayers. New tax policies are still a moving target, but there are some things you can do now, to reduce your 2016 taxes, and prepare for 2017. Disclaimer: I am not a tax accountant. Any tax tips mentioned here ...
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 ...
U.S. Home Refi Originations Increase
ATTOM Data Solutions’ newly released U.S. Residential Property Loan Origination Report for Q3 2016 shows more than 1.9 million loans – 1,919,180 – were originated on U.S. residential properties. This is down 2 percent from the previous quarter and up less than 1 percent from last year. Purchase originations were ...
Position Your Deal for Best Exit
And we’ve made it! This is the last installment of our special multi-part video mini-series sharing the steps that will help you dominate your deals. To recap, previously we covered your investment personality, exit strategy, how to find deals in your market & how to evaluate them and also how ...
Renters, Buyers Appreciate In-Home Office Space
We calculate that 39 percent of people shopping for a new home work from home at least one day per week. Almost 25 percent of those homebuyers born in the 1960s and 1970s work at home at least three days per week. This shift in work and home life has ...
5 Reasons to Attend a Real Estate Investor Conference
Sometimes the best thing for real estate investors to do is attend conferences. There are numerous conferences held across the country. You can meet with fellow investors, learn valuable insight from industry experts and expand your network of vendors and lenders. And get useful resources to help you grow your ...
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 ...
3 “Values” of Real Estate Investors
Though we are most familiar with the concept of value as a number, it is so much more than that. Today we are going to focus on 3 measures of value in real estate investing. There are many other forms of value than just a numerical one that are present ...
How much time do you spend on planning a vacation versus planning your financial future? This was a question asked to me years ago, and it hit home. Now, when I ask it of others, it hits them the same way it hit me. We spend months planning a vacation, ...
7 Ways Landlords Could Benefit from a Trump Administration
Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States on Jan. 20, 2017, with plans to fully “shake things up” on Capitol Hill. Whether he can pull that off remains to be seen. No one really knows what the future holds, but we do have ...
Scaling the Wall of Maturities
A significant portion of outstanding commercial and multifamily mortgages held by CMBS-backed lenders were to mature in 2016-17—an upcoming “wall of maturities.” Online marketplace lenders have a place in sorting out these pre-Recession commercial loans. After-Effects of the Great Recession A huge number of commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) conduit loans ...
5 Things We’re Thankful for in Today’s Real Estate Market
When William Arthur Ward wrote that “gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings…and change ordinary opportunities into blessings,” it is a near certainty that he did not have the 2016 housing market in mind. However, as a self-described “Christian optimist,” there is little doubt that were he still opining in ...
Where Out-of-State Investors Live and Buy
About 16 percent of the nation’s single-family rental homes - or 3.4 million properties - are owned by out-of-state investors, according to a new study from ATTOM Data Solutions. In many cases, ATTOM found investors lived in blue states with hotter housing markets and were buying in red states where properties ...
NAHB Predicts Growth in New Multifamily
Expect a strong year for new multifamily properties in 2017, the National Association of Home Builders reported. The newest Multifamily Production Index climbed three points in the third quarter to 53. A measure of 50 or higher indicates conditions are improving. The index often serves as a leading industry indicator ...
More Homeowners Have High Levels of Equity
More and more homeowners can be considered “equity rich,” according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ new U.S. Home Equity and Underwater Report. More than 13.1 million homeowners have a loan-to-value ratio of 50 or lower on their residence or 23.4 percent of all homeowners with a mortgage. Areas with high levels ...
A Look Ahead to the 2017 Housing Market
What does 2017 hold for the U.S. housing market? Zillow.com has released its forecast for the coming year and it looks like some noticeable shifts could be on the way. The home-ownership rate, which has been lower than normal, will rise as more and younger buyers enter the market. Many ...
Are You Focusing on the Real Money?
I see way too many investors on a daily basis trying to save money by, for example, managing their property themselves, because they don’t want to pay the 10 percent (or whatever the amount may be) to their property manager. Well, that is absolutely ridiculous! A good property manager is ...
Finding the Right Money Can Make or Break Your Deal
This is No. 4 in our special multi-part video mini-series sharing the steps that will help you dominate your deals. And as I’ve said, this isn’t just talk. These are steps that we are using every day, so I can attest that they work. So far in our mini-series, we’ve ...
To Flip or Not to Flip? If Not Now, When?
If you are considering investing in real estate, you've likely done a little digging on the internet to determine if now is a good time to buy. Looking at those online articles from time to time, I've noticed that the answer is always “Yes”—and always “No.” The people who say ...
Out-of-Staters Own 16 Percent of All Single-Family Investment Homes
A new analysis from ATTOM Data Solutions shows that 3.4 million single-family investment homes (non-owner occupied) nationwide are owned by an out-of-state investor. That’s 16 percent of all single-family investment homes. ATTOM Data Solutions, parent company of RealtyTrac, is the nation’s leading source for comprehensive housing data. In many cases ...
Are you focusing on progress over profits?
To put the subject of “Progress Over Profits” into context, I recently heard another real estate investor say, “When you chase money it will run.” And I couldn’t agree more. Based on my own personal experience as a full-time real estate investor in Dallas, Texas, for more than 10 years ...
October Foreclosure Activity Up 27 Percent
The number of nationwide foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions —in October was up 27 percent from a 129-month low in September but still down 8 percent from a year ago, according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ just-released October 2016 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. A total of ...
5 Options for Evaluating a Flip
In this latest installment in our multi-part “Getting Started” mini-series I’m going to give you 5 options for evaluating a flip. This episode is all about how we evaluate flips when we're doing deals in Atlanta and Charlotte. I’m talking about flips only. I’m planning an upcoming segment or two ...
