recession

Grandma Was Right – Especially About the Farmer and His Mare

by Jeff Brown | February 9, 2010

Grandma was a saint. I’m bettin’ most reading this share that opinion about their grandmas. The older I get, and the more experience I acquire (endure?), the more I’ve come to realize what an incredibly wise woman she was. She was also the only person who’d address me as Jeffrey Scott without me cringing, wondering [...]

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Real Estate Investing

You Can Learn a Lot About Investing in Real Estate by Dusting off Your Old Monopoly Board Game

by Winston Westbrook | January 11, 2010

So over this past weekend I went to Target looking for the Monopoly board game. Target carries the game in a beautiful wooden box. This is exclusive only to Target along with all the other classic board games we grew up with. The box fits like a big dictionary in your library bookcase and looks [...]

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Landlord Tenant

Getting Tenants in Tough Times

by Brendan O'Brien | November 17, 2009

The U.S. rental vacancy rate is now the highest it has ever been, at 11.1%. This is not at all what we expected when the housing market crashed and mortgage companies started going out of business in record numbers. At that time, the prediction was that landlords would actually benefit, because people who weren’t able [...]

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Commentary

Real Estate Fiasco Seems To Foreclose On Critical Thinking

by Charles Feldman | October 28, 2009

Think. That is one word I grant you. But, sadly, something fewer and fewer people seem to be doing when it comes to critical analysis of the near term prospects for the real estate market in the U.S. (And, yes, I know the real estate “market” is a patchwork of many markets dotted across the [...]

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Commercial Real Estate

The Largest U.S. Property Bankruptcy Filed by General Growth Properties

by Joshua Dorkin | April 16, 2009

Image via Wikipedia In yet another sign that the economic downturn can gobble up companies small and large alike, Bloomberg is reporting that General Growth Properties, the owner of such prime properties as Faniel Hall and the South Street Seaport, filed the biggest real estate bankruptcy in U.S. history. The company had accumulated “$27 billion [...]

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Blogs

Bring Back Those Cute “WIN” Buttons!

by Richard Warren | March 9, 2009

The Federal Reserve, Treasury and two Presidents have been throwing everything at the current economic downturn in the hope that something might actually work. Despite interest rates reduced to near 0% levels, $700 Billion thrown at banks, the $168 Billion stimulus (remember those checks?), various rescue schemes to save major corporations, the economy continues to [...]

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Blogs

Another Financial Crisis Looming?

by Richard Warren | March 2, 2009

Could anything be worse than the foreclosure crisis? People who purchased more expensive homes than they could afford or used risky mortgages to obtain them are losing their homes in record numbers. Banks who aggressively pushed loans on poorly qualified borrowers are suffering the consequences. The economy has been dragged down by the crisis. Will [...]

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Economy

Are we Moving Further and Further from those 4.5% Mortgage Rates we’ve Been Hearing About?

by Steve Heideman | February 2, 2009

Consumer confidence reached an all-time low and 100,000 Americans were issued layoff notices last week, each playing a role in the mortgage market’s relative worsening. For the third consecutive week, mortgage rates rose and average loan fees increased, too. Amid all of the negative economic news, however, there were two bright spots worth identifying and [...]

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Commentary

It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

by Tom Koziol | December 19, 2008

If you saw the Dec 14, 2008, 60 Minutes broadcast featuring a segment titled, “A Second Mortgage Disaster On The Horizon?” you’d probably be scratching your head asking yourself when this meltdown will end. The segment had Scott Pelley interviewing Whitney Tilson an investment fund manager who is supposedly the new guru on the mortgage [...]

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Economy

Well, it’s official – it’s a Recession!! What does it mean for Mortgage Rates?

by Steve Heideman | December 8, 2008

The week’s most talked-about story hit the wires Friday. According to the government, the U.S. economy shed 533,000 jobs last month and the national Unemployment Rate rose to 6.7%. This was the largest number of jobs lost in any one month since the recession of 1974. In a normal market, job losses of this magnitude would [...]

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BiggerPockets News

On the Brink of Rebellion: National Priorities and the Housing Crisis

by Tom Koziol | August 8, 2008

A friend of mine sent me to this website: National Priorities Project The headline on the page reads: National Priorities Project analyzes and clarifies federal data so that people can understand and influence how their tax dollars are spent. There is a link titled Affordable Housing Units on the page that tells you how many [...]

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Commentary

The Good News of Recession

by Troy Schuricht | July 24, 2008

Before we can talk about the good news of a recession, lets define exactly what a recession is: ”In macroeconomics, a recession is generally associated with a decline in a country’s real gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth. According to widespread definition, a recession occurs when real growth is negative for two [...]

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Housing

Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac: What Will The Feds Do?

by Charles Feldman | July 11, 2008

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, combined, own or back up some $5 trillion dollars of debt. That is about half of ALL the mortgages in the U.S. They have already lost some $11 BILLION since the current mortgage/credit crisis began, so it is easy to see why there is profound concern about their fiscal health–or [...]

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Commentary

Real Estate’s Perfect Storm – Are you ready?

by Rob Powell | July 6, 2008

“BOOM! Here comes the BOOM….ready or not!” – from the song Boom by P.O.D. Greetings from the Metropolis of Cedar Crest, New Mexico! With a torn achillies tendon, I hobbled my way into the gym and turned up my Ipod. The song Boom by P.O.D. (one of the best workout songs there is) came on [...]

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Credit

July 4th Foreclosures: Congress Celebrates, Homeowners Vacate

by Charles Feldman | July 2, 2008

To just about no one’s surprise, the U.S. Congress failed to act on a foreclosure prevention measure before closing down for the long July 4th weekend. And, some think the Congress won’t do all that much once the weekend is over, either. A New York Times estimate is some 55,000 more homes will be in [...]

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