Hey Everyone and welcome to the 88th Edition of the Carnival of Real Estate! This week, we had 23 submissions and I’m going to share with you 14 of the ones I think are most interesting.

Top Pics

• Will’s Why I Still Love Real Estate Investing: Being A Landlord on the Your Finish Rich Plan blog, talks about the pros, cons, drawbacks, and discusses many tips for the wanna-be landlord. The post is quite thorough, and a definite read for any potential landlord!
• Neelakantha’s 101 Tips & Resources for the Upside-Down Homeowner is a comprehensive list of tips and resources for homeowners who are upside-down on their homes. (International Listings Blog)

Quick Reviews

• Cliff Jacobson shares his list of the Top Ten Foreclosure Myths at the WebHomeUSABlog. While the list is a good one, it appears as though the list concentrates on REOs (bank owned properties), and not those properties that are in foreclosure, but haven’t gone to auction yet.
• Dan Melson at Searchlight Crusade writes a timely post, What $5 (and Higher) Gas Means to Suburban and Exurban Real Estate. This article is not only thorough, but pretty much nails it.
• Is there really gold in building green? by Patrick Duffy (The Housing Chronicles Blog) is a nice piece of commentary that examines the current status and importance of Green homebuilding.
• Roberta Murphy from the San Diego Real Estate Blog writes an interesting post called A San Diego Short Sale Solution that details how people in San Diego are focused on foreclosures instead of short sales, and comes up with a conclusion why this is the case. Her argument works for the entire country, not just San Diego, I believe.
• Handy Saputr shares How to Find A Good Mortgage Broker Online, which discusses why someone would want to use a Mortgage Broker, and gives some good general tips for dealing with them.

The Rest

• Is there such thing as a ‘green’ bubble? by Nathan Blair
• Observations of the Mortgage Market by Nigel Swaby
• Apartment Owners’ Liabilities Under Review by Matt DiChiara
• Second Real Estate Financial Model - First Development by TerryT2
• How to Maintain Your Lawn on a Budget by Debbie Dragon
• The Real Estate Market - When Will We See The Turn? by Joe Manausa

The Graphics

Chart from The Graph That Shows Why New Home Sales Are At 17-Year Lows by Dan Green of The Mortgage Reports Blog

We hope you enjoyed all of the great articles in the carnival, and I look forward to hosting again some time soon (probably won’t happen for a LONG TIME, though).

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Tags: , carnival, carnival-of-real-estate, green real estate, housing, landlord, real estate, real estate carnival, real estate investing

Hi everyone and welcome to Volume 8 of the Carnival of Real Estate Investing. While there are many good submissions this week, only 2 are of any help to real estate investors (I’ve marked them with **). I hope upcoming editions of the carnival have more useful information to help the everyday investor out . . . that’s what this carnival is all about, right?

• Advice to Equity Office Bidders by Market Poetry
  While I can’t stand that people blog anonymously (no personal info can be found on their blog), I really did enjoy the creativity of this post. I’m not sure that I’ve read other poems about the business of investing. This is a great little piece to kick off the Carnival!
• ** One of My Favorite Landlord Tools by Anesia Springborn
  The winner of this weeks carnival (I just felt like announcing a winner), Anesia’s article tells us about an AMAZING tool that can really make life a little easier for landlords.

• ** Buyers lesson part 1 by Eric Medemar
  This is a detailed look at how to find buyers for wholesale deals - a well written article for anyone interested in wholesaling.
• The Big Picture About Cash Flow From Foreclosures by Steve Burns
  A nice article that explains how to get paid by helping people avoid foreclosure, and by saving their home.

• What Increases Your Home’s Value and By How Much by Steve Faber
  This article examines how different improvements can affect the value of your home.

• Real Estate Indicators - Nothing Decisive Yet by Nigel Swaby
  Using current economic news and data, this piece examines how the housing market will trend in the near term.
• Is Real Estate Calling You? by Katie
  While it concentrates on real estate investing, this article is a very broad piece that doesn’t really tell you much. I think it is intended to be a motivational piece, but never really does the job.

Tags: biggerpockets, blog, blog-carnival, blogger, blogging, carnival, carnival-of-real-estate, carnival-of-real-estate-investing, real estate, real estate investing

Blog Business

• The 5th Edition of the Carnival of Real Estate Investing was hosted at Mortgage Manifest this week and felt our post Keeping Your Tenants Happy During the Holidays was worthy of a mention. Once again, we’ve found ourselves absent from the Carnival of Real Estate, which focused on videos, web 2.0, and comedy. Other then the time we hosted the carnival — a few weeks back — we can’t seem to break into the carnival. I’m starting to feel like we’re in high-school all over again!
• Thanks to Derek Burress for his mention in today’s Real Estate Countdown!
• Much love to our friend Teresa for meme tagging me this weekend. I was unavailable to come out and play, but it seems like the virus has spread even without my help.

Back to Real Estate

• I’ll start with a question: Is there Really A down Time Of The Year for Real Estate? What do you think? Join the conversation!
• Think the economy is just chugging away? Don’t look now, but State of Emergency: The USA is $50 Trillion in debt and unsustainable. Sadly, our government has been ignoring any sense of fiscal responsibility, incurring huge amounts of debt, and putting the burden on my generation (and that of my future children). After finally starting to reduce our debt, Bush - like him or not - came to power and may have sunk us. Lets just hope our creditors don’t come to collect!
• The IEMortgageBlog shares a great post with us about What’s Important About Qualifying For a Home Loan. This is a good read for all those fist-timers out there.
• USA Today looks into the Los Angeles housing market and explores why, while monthly sales volume is down over 20%, median home prices have continued to climb. “The lack of affordable housing in Los Angeles has reached “crisis” proportions, says Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and the exodus of the middle class is hurting the city.”

  I can vouch for this report. I’ve been looking around at some of the homes in the city and prices aren’t coming down; it has to be unsustainable, though. Small starter homes in middle class neighborhoods are starting in the $800,000’s. I don’t know of too many middle class families who can afford that kind of money. It does look like things might be changing soon, at least from the ground level. I can’t go 10 houses in my neighborhood without seeing a For Sale sign.

Tags: Angeles, biggerpockets, carnival, debt, Economy, estate, loan, Los, real, Real Estate Investing, trillion, Villaraigosa

Last time we hosted a carnival, it stirred up a bit of controversy. Today, we’re announing the winners of a different Carnival - The Carnival of Real Estate Investing 4th Edition. There were many good submissions that investors and agents will find helpful - here are the best of the best:

For Real Estate Investors

1. Michael Emilio, a Realtor, writes a good basic article explaining How to Wholesale Real Estate to Make Quick Cash. This article was written for the total newbie, who wants to find out what wholesaling is. It presents good info, but does not get into enough detail to actually get anyone started.
2. Nick Gifford reviews 3 pieces of software that landlord investors will find useful in Rental Tracking Software. There are a few that I’d add to his list, but they are all worh a look.
3. Steve Burns writes a fantastic piece advising investors of the benefits of their County Assessor’s Office in The MOST Effective Tool an Investor Can USE!. I completely agree with Steve on this one! If you don’t know about your assessor’s office, the time to find out is NOW!
4. In Keeping A Bad Tenant Can Delay An Expense, Anesia Springborn talks about a section 8 horror story where a tenant just trashed one of her units. The post is a great one, however I would like to pass on some advice to help avoid this situation. Always inspect your units when purchasing a property, especially when the tenants are section 8. In addition, I recommend holding periodic inspections for these tenants as well. If they aren’t living up to their end of the deal - taking care of your apartment - let them go! I feel your pain Anesia - been there - done that! Good luck!

For Real Estate Agents

1. In Working Effectively with Real Estate Investors, Derek Burress talks about working with real estate investors from the agent’s point of view. With advice like “cut his investor client part of his or her commission as a way to ensure that with each new transaction, that their client is getting a great deal”, it sounds like Derek has worked with some of us before!

There were several other submissions that did not make the carnival - I felt that these 5 were of much more value to the real estate investing world. I would like to note that there were also some SPAM submissions this week . . . looks like the spammers are now trying to infiltrate the carnival circuit. (I loathe SPAMMERS!)

Thanks for having me as a host and stay tuned for next week’s carnival on December 18th at Mortgage Manifest!

Tags: 8, agent, assessor, carnival, estate, landlord, real, Real Estate Investing, realtor, section, software

This week, our post real estate partnership questions was featured in two blog carnivals, The Carnival of Real Estate Investing hosted by Fliperati, and The Carnival of Business, hosted by Business & Technology Reinvention. We were notably absent at the carnival of real estate, however, as a consolation prize, we were mentioned as having submitted our material.

That said, we have the distinct pleasure of hosting next week’s Carnival of Real Estate! If you are interested in submitting a post, please do so - we’ll post our results next Monday the 27th. I’m not sure what we’ll focus on, but I’m going to try and spread the love a bit!

See you there!

Tags: blogging, business, carnival, estate, fliperati, real, Real Estate Investing

The latest edition of the Investing Carnival took place today over at Investing World Today, and featured Real Estate Investing for Real. Our Pinnacle Development Partners Under Investigation article has now been mentioned in 3 blogging carnivals this week.

In addition, with over 11,000 views and over 100 replies, our Pinnacle Discussion forum thread has shown how important this discussion about the company really is.

Tags: blog, carnival, development, discussion, forum, partners, pinnacle, Real Estate Investing

In addition to the Carnival of Real Estate, we were also mentioned today in the HJL Money Blog for the Carnival of Business regarding our post investigating Pinnacle Development Partners.

Tags: blog, business, carnival, development, estate, for, of, partners, pinnacle, real, Real Estate Investing