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.
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 ...
3 things to get people to watch your investment videos– and stop boasting please!
I am a strong supporter of investors who use videos to market their services and emphasize their expertise. The numbers prove this point. A YouTube search for "real estate investing" reveals approximately 347,000 results related to this subject. The issue is not whether investors should create their own series of ...
What I learned the hard way about property managers
When I moved my real estate investing business from Minnesota to Florida I found myself in need of a property manager. Up until this point I had been managing my own properties, a mistake I will never make again, but more on that later. I set out to find a ...
Crowdfunding: The good, the bad and the ugly
I believe the investment world will look completely different within the next five years. We’re at a perfect storm between technology and changes in government regulation. In April of 2012, the JOBS Act went into effect. Title II of the JOBS Act allows for public solicitation of private equity funds ...
How does a corporate rental differ from a vacation rental?
We are continuing our question and answer guide to help real estate agents and their investor clients understand the ins and outs of corporate housing as an investment opportunity for their portfolios. This week we look at corporate rentals vs vacation rentals. Vacation rentals are typically offered for nightly or ...
Two real estate investment schemes shut down
Two real estate investment companies in Missouri have been shut down after investigations by the secretary of state’s office showed schemes where investor money was converted for personal use. Investment Midwest, operated by Renee Goodman, and Herman Beck and Ozark Investor’s Group, LLC, were both told to stop doing business ...
Overall interest rates will stay low with small bumps here and there
Markets have paused, warily studying new plumes of smoke on the horizon. Not enough hazard to run to Treasurys or to scramble for oil, but not business as usual. Bergdahl, Brat, Baghdad, and Barak… but the important happening was Uber. US data do not support the acceleration camp: May retail ...
Mortgage rates inched up this week, but still remain low
Bankrate reports that mortgage rates inched up this week, but they remain attractive as more homebuyers and refinancers jump at the opportunity to grab a low rate. The benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 4.34 percent from 4.32 percent the previous week, according to the Bankrate.com national survey of large ...
Foreclosures down 5 percent in May, but some states still buck the trend
Foreclosure rates dropped 5 percent in May, the lowest monthly total since December 2006, but 21 states still posted monthly increases in foreclosure activity according to RealtyTrac® (www.realtytrac.com). In a release from Marketwired, the company said that foreclosure filings -- default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions- were reported on ...
It’s not location, location, location
You’ve probably heard the old saying, “Real estate is all about three things: location, location, location.” I think we should throw that one right out the window because is entirely wrong. In fact it’s wrong to the point that people who invest primarily on “location, location, location” often take significant losses. In ...
