December 2010

Why I Liked Last Week

by Douglas Lazovick | December 7, 2010

All things considered, last week went pretty well. Lets start with the real estate news that made the most headway last week: Pending homes sales jumped over 10%. The jump was pretty uniform across the country, with only the West not experiencing an overall increase in pending sales. Obviously, this is good news by itself. But [...]

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Housing

Pending Home Sales Surge, Mortgage Purchases UP Despite Interest Rate Rise – The Week in Housing

by Ryan Hinricher | December 6, 2010

This week housing’s biggest story was a big rise in pending home sales. In addition we’ll cover rising interest rates and mortgage purchase applications. Standard & Poor’s also reports on the broad-based home prices and we’ll finish up with final thoughts and a look forward. Pending Home Sales: A Big RISE Coming off slightly lower [...]

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Landlord Tenant

Landlord Home Inspections: How Thorough Should they Be?

by Richard Warren | December 6, 2010

Most investors and a fair number of retail home buyers would never consider purchasing a property without a thorough home inspection. This is your opportunity to uncover problems and negotiate their resolution with the seller prior to closing the deal. The proper escape clause in your purchase contract also allows you to walk away from [...]

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Real Estate Investing

Learn How Five Real Estate Investors Did their First Investing Deals

by Joshua Dorkin | December 5, 2010

A few weeks ago I started to experiment with video once again and created a new channel for BiggerPockets on YouTube. The goal was to use this medium to help spread the vision of our site, to educate our members and visitors, and to share useful and entertaining real estate-related videos. My friend Vlad thought [...]

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Real Estate Investing

Short Sale Investor: Not All Real Estate Short Sales Are Created Equal

by Bill & Jackie Patterson | December 5, 2010

There are different kinds of short sales: some are direct from the seller to a buyer who is going to use the property as a principle residence or investment property, and others are to an investor who is planning to flip the property for a profit. The flip can result in a back to back [...]

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Real Estate Investing

Finding Your Next Real Estate Deal: How to Prospect & Farm Your Market

by John Fedro | December 4, 2010

As real estate investors it can often times seem that the hardest part of investing is locating where our next deal will come from. In the early part of my investing career I struggled with how much energy and time to invest into each seller before I would give up on a deal.. Scenario 1: [...]

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Real Estate Marketing

Google Gives You Another Reason to Satisfy Your Customers

by Mark Saunders | December 3, 2010

I know you are all aware of how quickly word spreads these days. Through blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook, and rss feeds alone, it takes seconds to spread the word. When the word isn’t good, people are not shy about making sure they are heard. Now Google is changing its search engine algorithm to take into [...]

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Commentary

Its Happened Before and It Will Happen Again

by Steve Dexter | December 2, 2010

Most lost their houses, many went into foreclosure chasing the real estate dream of riches these last ten years. So many new to real estate investing believed that the latest guru who promised an out of area property would cash flow or a “financial adviser” knows best where to put their life savings — “Sure, [...]

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Financing Real Estate

The Hard Money Loan Funding Process: A Guide for Rehabbers

by Joshua Dorkin | December 2, 2010

You spot a house that you would like to rehab or flip and decide make an offer. You plan on financing through a hard money lender, but haven’t yet done this kind of deal, and wonder what happens after you’ve got the house under contract. Here’s a brief look at the process: All hard money [...]

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Real Estate Law

Six Clauses Essential for Every LLC – Part 1

by Clint Coons | December 2, 2010

A properly drafted operating agreement can greatly enhance the liability protection. An improperly drafted operating agreement will do the opposite, leaving creditors a superhighway of access to the assets. The issue is how to determine if your operating agreement is properly drafted or not. Most LLC operating agreements that I review fall into what I [...]

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Real Estate

Could Your Property Manager Rob Rent Money From You?

by Julie Broad | December 1, 2010

When I walked out of the classroom after an intense 3 hour lecture I checked my cell phone. I had 23 missed calls and 18 voicemails. My stomach jumped. I figured someone must have died. Why else would someone be so intense about calling? I scrolled through the missed calls and most of them were [...]

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Real Estate Investing

Perfect Gifts for a Real Estate Investor this Holiday Season

by Marty Boardman | December 1, 2010

No boat, no vote. That’s what Mike Scudder would say whenever we were out on his boat and someone would offer him constructive feedback. You see, it’s considered poor etiquette to offer suggestions to the boat owner when you have no financial interest in the operation. Scudder was like an uncle to me. He and [...]

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Commentary

Home Prices Continue To Decline; Pity Poor Cleveland

by Charles Feldman | December 1, 2010

So much for a recovery in the real estate market. The way things are going, we’ll be out of Afghanistan and Iraq way before the value of your home is likely to go up again to any significant degree. The latest Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index of home prices in twenty metro areas shows home prices [...]

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