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Can The Internet Be Your Agent?

The number of consumers that go online each year to research at least a portion of a new home search is steadily growing year after year. As the internet gains an even bigger foothold in the United States, its use is likely to steadily grow and accomplish much of that growth in unexpected areas. One of those areas has been the selling of property online...


Your Showing: Beyond The Basics

Cleaning is perhaps the most crucial part of a successful showing. When communicating the value and uniqueness of your home, dirty clothes in the laundry room and stains in the carpet will cut you off at the knees every time. However, while most people think to clean a property and remove clutter from areas of the house, there are some ways that a seller can go the extra mile to interest a potential buyer...


Picking Out The Perfect New Town

Moving to a new city or state will always be a difficult transition, no matter what kinds of precautions you take. Bundling up all of your worldly possessions into one big van and setting them down on the doorstep of a new home in a strange city will always be at least a bit of an awkward experience. However, picking the right city can be the difference between struggling mightily and simply working through the transition...


A Friend, A Home, A Mortgage

There comes a time over the course of any renter’s time in a particular piece of real estate where it seems that the payments are providing a great stream of income for a landlord but little for you. Indeed, as incomes begin to creep up and the ability to handle at least a portion of a mortgage becomes a possibility, more and more renters are beginning to feel that way and enlist a friend to make their home ownership dreams happen...


Find The Lowest Rate

So you’ve got your new home picked out and you’re ready to embark upon the long process of securing a home loan and ultimately taking ownership of your dream home. Armed with that excitement, you take to the Internet in hopes of uncovering a hidden interest rate nugget, that low rate that other people have overlooked and that you have found through persistence and effort...


Five Real Estate Investment Tips

There are countless tips on real estate investing available and this is by no means intended as a comprehensive list. While every investment has its own intricacies and problems that need to be worked out, there are some very basic aspects that are common to most investment properties...


Do The Fixer-Upper Math

Renovating homes has gotten a boat load of publicity over the past few years as a great way for prospective real estate investors to make great money over a short period of time. Hopefully, you’ve taken that message with a grain of salt as renovations can often take a lengthy period of time and selling the home for a big profit is never a guarantee...


Keep Your Cool on Undervalued Homes

The best possible scenario for a real estate investor is to find a home that is undervalued to be able to then turn around and sell it for a profit. Obviously, this can be a difficult prospect as real estate markets becoming increasingly clogged with willing investors, but what happens we you do find a possible target? How do you evaluate its viability? The real answer: keep your cool...


Keeping Your Fixer-Upper Cash Flow Under Control

While there are some real estate investors that pursue fixer-upper properties because they like the challenge, most are in it for one thing: the money. Getting the most out of your particular piece of real estate should be your only goal and should govern your actions well before signing on the dotted line or hammering down the first nail...


New Construction Homes Need Love Too

The process of developing new subdivisions as a unified building concept is now more prevalent than ever. In regions all around the country, new home builders are creating entire communities from scratch, building in a way to create a unified residential area and the profits that go along with that...


The Science of Market Analysis

The key question most home sellers ask at the beginning of the home selling process is simple. How much is my home worth? Determining that value takes a comparison technique that matches up your home with others in your immediate area that have recently sold with similar amenities. Any real estate agent will first develop a market analysis for your home to provide that price and the evidence behind it...


Prepayment Penalties Erode Your Worth

When a home buyer gets involved with buying a home, thoughts usually tend to center on staying in that home for a lengthy period of time, building both a family and equity. However, as we all know, your life can change in an instant and you never know when the next great job offer or life change will be presented, prompting you to leave town and seek a new beginning...


Stay Ahead of the Curve: Proactive Selling

As with anything else in life, becoming proactive in your pursuit of a particular goal will ultimately pay off. Everyone has heard the stories of men and women that took the reigns of their career and were able to rise through the ranks of their profession to a position of power...


Seller Financing the Safe Way

Before getting too far into some of the ways to protect yourself when pursuing seller financing as a way to get a higher price for your home and a nice return on some investment money, let me make it clear that a real estate lawyer or accountant should be consulted at all times when pursuing something like seller financing...


Release Your Equity: Home Owner Loans

Home owner loans attract all types of consumers with all types of reasons to free up some of the equity they have built up in their home for other uses. Perhaps you’re looking at taking at that once-in-a-lifetime European vacation or just need the cash to pay off the rest of a credit card or other debt...


The Financing Road Less Traveled

Over time, the availability of credit in the United States has grown and more and more people nowadays are able to take out lines of credit with little or no effort. There are certainly some ramifications to that, but one of the positive results of the country’s credit explosion has been the proliferation of financing options for prospective home buyers that stray from the traditional 80 percent financed, 20 percent down framework...


Is Your Home Sale Affected By Seasons?

Believe it or not, the answer is yes. The difference in selling a property in summer and selling it winter can go unnoticed by some sellers and some real estate agents, but there are some changes you can use to make your home show better in the winter than those that make no effort to change their strategy...


More Eyeballs, More Money

The process of selling your home can seem like a long process, but after you get through things like picking an agent, making any necessary repairs and pricing your property, you get to the most important stage of the process, actually selling the darn thing...


Preemptive Renovations: Protect Your Rental Property

The term fixer-upper common applies to properties that real estate investors purchase, improve and then sell on the open market for a profit. Too often, investors involved in rental properties ignore the concept of a fixer-upper as something that should only be explored by those looking to sell their properties...


People As Your Real Estate Resource

Information about the real estate industry is all around us. Between local newspaper real estate sections and the thousands of real estate-related web sites on the Internet, there are more resources for real estate information now than ever before. However, as these sources grow, the time spent by some prospective buyers and sellers with actual people decreases...


The Successful Investor: Not What You Think

While much has been done to crush the misconception, many still believe that to be a successful real estate investor, you must either have a lot of money or find some one-in-a-million opportunity. That is plainly not true and while it may certainly turn out that making money through investing comes easier as wealth increases, all wealth has to start somewhere and the real estate investing arena is no different...


The Lease Option Option

The world of real estate investing is filled with mechanisms investors use to get into properties and turn a profit. As a new real estate investor, that avalanche of information can often seem insurmountable. Financing options alone on a real estate investment could take days to fully understand...


Help Your Buyer Daydream

Getting your home ready for a potential sale can be a bit of a nerve wracking task. You have to clean your home immaculately, light it properly, make sure your fixtures sparkle and basically get your home in a condition that you would never live in just to have a stranger walk throughout your house...


Dress Up Your Home: Tips To Sell

Prospective home buyers are just like anyone else, they gravitate to what they can have a tangible connection with. Abstract teaching will always be harder to understand than concrete examples and real estate transactions are no different. When a home buyer walks in to a property, they want to feel at home and you can help that feeling grow...


Are You A Short Term Investor?

The world of real estate investing can certainly seem like a vast one full of many different types of projects and opportunities. That can certainly be true, but by asking yourself the key question of what kind of investor you want to be, you can cut through a lot of that material and focus on the activity that you will not only benefit most from, but will enjoy the most as well...


The Return of the Auction?

With the housing market starting to slow up a bit in some areas of the country, sellers are using more tools at their disposal than ever to get a house sold in a timely fashion. While these methods vary greatly by region, nationally there has been a rise in the amount of real estate auctions seen. Naturally, auctions are not a new phenomenon, but to see them increasingly used as a primary tool in selling real estate is...


Three Steps To Home Inspection Zen

For many prospective home sellers, going through the process of a home inspection can be a painful process that entails letting a stranger into the home to judge every nook and cranny. As the biggest and most prized possession of most consumers, having the home inspected in this way is a bit like having the inner sanctum of your life on display. Inspections certainly do not have to be like this...


The Ultimate Selling Buzz Word: Curb Appeal

Chances are, in the mind of a potential buyer, your home is not the unique gem that you might think see it as. It can be hard to understand that, but most homes have a pretty basic structure that might change from home to home but does not vary greatly overall. If you are aiming at creating that elusive buzz word, curb appeal, understanding that and playing up the strengths you do have can help you tremendously...


Age From The Buyer’s Perspective

From your perspective, your home has grown with you over time, standing with you through all of the major milestones in your life and evolving with your own lifestyle. That evolution might be seen through the changes in the interior design of your home. It might be seen in a new addition or new renovation to the property...


Buying In: What To Expect From Your Inspection

As a prospective real estate buyer, getting to the inspection stage is one of the big milestones over the course of a real estate transaction. You may have walked through the home a few times and given it your own critical eye, but now the big guns are coming in to tell you just what you might be getting in to...


The Value of a Closing Fee Free Deal

There are many things in life that include extra fees. Sales tax is added on to most purchases. Service fees are added on to credit card statements. In real estate, that extra fee is seen through closing costs and finding a deal that either mitigates or removes those closing fees from what you have to pay can be a great goal as you go through the home buying process...


The World of Zero Down Investing

Zero down investing has been one of the big buzz words recently in the real estate investment industry and while there are many things positive about such a situation for a real estate investor, there are also some bits of information that need to be cleared up for anyone interested...


Your Framework for Real Estate Investment Success

Every real estate investor has gone through the process of getting that first investment opportunity and then running with it to make a profit. While every situation is different and there are probably thousands of examples on initial investment deals, every investor has at least some part of an investment foundation they draw from...


Can A Simple Mineral Sell Your Home?

Though times and tastes have changed in what can help sell a piece of real estate, one of the current hot items is granite countertops. These countertops give your home a modern, updated feel and will often speak volumes to an interested buyer that you have put time and effort into updating your home. This, more than many other things you can do to a property, can increase a potential buyer’s likelihood to purchase your piece of real estate...


Riding the Ups & Downs of Your Home’s Value Online

The Internet has certainly provided consumers with a wide array of tools used throughout real estate transactions that provide more information and more utility than ever before. One of the tools that has grown in popularity of late is the home value calculators that uses your location and historical data of sales in your area to compare your home against those to determine a value...


The Method Of Your Move

In the United States, many consumers are more than happy to pay for convenience. That can mean getting a bag of chips at a gas station or picking up some candy at the checkout, and indeed some people feel that way about moving. For an expensive premium, major moving companies will pack, move and unpack your goods to take the hassle completely out of what can be a draining moving experience...


Your Real Estate Double Agent

Choosing a real estate agent is perhaps one of the most critical parts of the real estate process as that agent will become your closest ally in the long term effort to buy or sell a home. Real estate transactions are major milestones in a person’s life and that real estate agent is the key person to be involved in making sure your wants and needs are met throughout that process...


Pick The Right Contractor

As part of any home sale or investment property upkeep, repairs will almost certainly be necessary. Those repairs can range from small jobs that you can handle yourself to larger jobs such as roof or foundation repairs that most likely only a contractor can fix for you. In that eventuality, there is a lot of time and energy required to pick the right contractor for the job...


Stay Out Of Financing Trouble

After graduating from college and entering the workforce, the attention for many recent graduates turns to saving money and planning for that very first home. Certainly, planning for a first new home is an exciting prospect, but it can be a daunting one as well. Workings towards a home right out of college should actually involve staying out of financial trouble before ever thinking about a down payment or interest rate...


The Weight Of Relocation

The excitement of a new job in a new city can be tempered by the daunting prospect of moving all of your worldly possessions. Any time you think of moving cross country for a job, the inevitable stress of relocation will seep in and that is certainly not fair during a time of joy over a new promotion or new opportunity. There are some ways to eliminate at least some of that stress. While moving is indeed a taxing experience, it doesn’t have to be a complete downer during what should be an exciting time...


Student Loans & Mortgages: Owning Real Estate In Your 20s

No more than ever before, people in their 20s are looking into owning real estate. As mortgage payments have increasingly been the domain of younger and younger people, questions have arisen over the true benefit of owning a home at a young age and just what type of person should do so. Certainly, owning real estate at a young age is not for everyone and there are some things to keep in mind when considering the possibility...


Enhance Your Investment For Sale

There comes a time during the course of any real estate investment when it becomes clear that selling off the property is the best course. When that time comes, getting the most out of your piece of real estate is crucial to seeing the big payoff at the end of the real estate investment experience that you have been expecting over the course of the investment, often many years...


Foster Successful Investing Habits

The essence of success is achieving a long period of prosperity through your actions. In real estate investment properties, that kind of success can be fostered through committing some habits to your investment routine, using them to continually work towards new opportunities and new investments...


Bad Credit Isn’t A Death Sentence

Many potential new home buyers have been discouraged from purchasing real estate by the perception that those with bad credit have no ability to do so. While it can be difficult to purchase a home with a bad credit rating, it is certainly not impossible. What is true is that it higher fees and interest rates are the price potential home buyers pay for a less-than-stellar credit rating...


The Story Behind Real Estate Growth

There are times when the growth of the real estate industry has drawn the nervous energy of local or national media expecting a downfall after a period of prolonged growth. There are some serious flaws in the logic behind expecting a burst in the real estate bubble nationally and during any period of prolonged growth, you as a real estate investor should not panic in the expectation that a market fall will ruin your investment...


How To Fix Your Fixer-Upper

Taking on a fixer-upper as your real estate investment opportunity entails a series of steps that must be taken to bring the value of the property up. With so much in any property that could use some work, the process of enhancing a fixer-upper can seem daunting even before hammering in the first nail...


Know Your Investment Type

With the decision to get involved in real estate investing, so too comes an avalanche of information that must be deciphered before you can truly get started with your investment proceedings. To go along with the myriad of ways to finance real estate and the thousands of potential properties out there, so too exist a variety of different types of properties to get involved with, all with pros and cons...


Hunting Down Your Investment

After making the decision to become involved in Real estate investing, the next step is hunting down the perfect project for you, one that will both net profit and hold your interest. No matter if it’s your first investment deal or your 50th, locating the right project is the most important part of the process and while things like profit and loss come later, nothing can happen until you locate the property that will get you on your way...


Are Foreclosures Worth The Risk?

Many home buyers and real estate investors have been prompted by steadily increasing interest rates to be more aggressive in their hunt for bargain homes. Competition for the best-priced and most attractive homes has only increased in most real estate markets and because of that intensity, foreclosures are drawing more and more interest from prospective home buyers and investors...


Do Your Moving Insurance Homework

Packing up all of your worldly possessions can be a daunting task. Hours of packing, taping, moving and storing can leave you drained and dreading the trip across the country or across the city to your new home. After all of the expended energy, seeing damage to your goods along the way could have the real ability to push you over the edge. As a way to protect yourself, moving insurance can be a great way to take some of the sting out of potential troubles along the way...


Assemble Your Investment Team

In sports, the way a team works together to achieve a common goal can mean the difference between success and failure. Much has been made, and rightfully so, about team chemistry in professional sports and your real estate investment goals can benefit from the same kind of solid teamwork. As you delve deeper into real estate investment, the people you work with will go a long way towards increasing your profitability...


The Art of Negotiation

Feeling comfortable with a real estate transaction is the easiest way to ensure that you have a positive experience, whether it be as buyer or seller. Knowing what is going on and taking an active role in the proceedings o f your real estate transaction will give you the piece of mind necessary to erase some of the worry and doubt inherent to any real estate deal...


The Validity Of Non-Traditional Mortgages

As interest rates have begun to creep back up after such a long period of low interest rates and the tantalizing mortgages that correspond to any kind of low interest period, interest has increased in mortgages touting low down payments or low monthly payments. These mortgages often have wrinkles to them that work creatively to appear attractive to prospective home buyers and have spawned continued growth in many real estate markets around the country...


When Real Estate Lawyers Become Useful

Getting involved in a real estate transaction is truly a milestone in a person’s life, a process that takes thousands of dollars and sometimes months to complete. With something so complicated, there is certainly some merit to involving a lawyer in the proceedings...


Why Cheap Homes Are Cheap

When items are discounted at the grocery store, there’s always a reason. Maybe the bread is a little bit stale or the item has been discontinued. Before buying any discount produce, you should probably understand why it is being discounted. The same is true for homes and while there are many cheap homes on the market, learning why that real estate is selling for such a low price will go a long way towards telling you just how worth your effort that property may be...


When Your Finances Get Stretched Too Thin

Foreclosure is a four letter word for most home owners. As times get tighter and finances get stretched thinner and thinner, the high price tag of a mortgage payment can quickly seem like an untenable cost that is only dragging down you or your family. In that instance, while foreclosure may have a slew of negative connotations, it should be one of the options looked at, no matter how painful...


Setting The Perfect Price

Pricing a home is perhaps one of the most controversial steps to the real estate process and can often become a point of contention between home owner and realtor. The difference between the time and money you’ve poured into your home and what the market says you home’s value is may be far apart in your mind and that can lead to a lot of confusion and hurt feelings...


One Level Deeper: More Questions For Your Agent Search

Interviewing a real estate agent can be a time consuming process. Your desire to get the best agent possible might lead you through a few phone calls, a handful of interviews and a decision in the end that makes you feel like you’re only doing your best to make a decision you’re sure could be wrong in the end...


Pre-Qualified vs. Pre-Approved

It is becoming more and more common amongst potential home buyers to pursue the most efficient route possible to a brand new home. Instead of going through the process of scouting out a neighborhood or collecting flyers, intelligent buyers are instead making a lender their first stop...


The Fortifying Financial Nature of Home Ownership

Home ownership can be one of the most meaningful aspects of any person’s life. With a house and plot of land to call home, a family can feel secure, safe and comfortable. After a long day at work, a man or woman can relax in the solitude and quietness of their very own home...


The City/Property Connection

Buying a new home is an exciting prospect that consists of purchasing not just a place to live but in some cases a whole new way of life. A fresh lawn, a new place to call home, all of it comes with a home purchase. However, the purchase entails more than just building materials and pavement...


The Power of Real Estate Competition

To say that competition defines the value of homes is a bit short-sighted, though it does impact the price you will see for your home. The only thing that can define the value of any piece of real estate is a buyer willing to pay for it, but the market and the competition seen within the market can give a prospective buyer a framework to derive a value from...


The True Derivative of Your Home’s Value

Pricing your home is sometimes seen as a way of finding out just what your home is worth. While you may end up getting the price you set for your property, the only person that has any say over what your home is worth is the buyer that eventually goes through with it and purchases your property...


Three Loans, Three Separate Reasons

Securing a loan off of the backing of your home’s equity is one way to get money for whatever you need it for. However, using a home’s equity is only one way to land a loan and should you decide that you need a loan for any reason, it is a good idea to be well read in the various types of loans available and the requirements to land each one...


Pick The Right Real Estate Attorney

For many buyers and sellers, a real estate agent is all that is needed to get through the buying or selling real estate process. A real estate agent can provide valuable advice on the current state of the market, the best way to stage your home for sale or good areas to look at when investigating a home purchase...


Credit Care For Real Estate Buyers and Sellers

In modern America it is agreed that home buying is always a better idea than renting. If everyone understands that, why are so many people still renting or stuck renting? That is answerable in one word. Credit...


Benefits Of Owning Your Own Home

The security of owning the roof over your head, the feeling of contentment, satisfaction, fulfillment, it is the wish of most, if not all, Americans, it is what they call the classic American dream, it is called Homeownership.
Owning a home is the biggest and best investment a person can ever make and so he has to manage that investment to the best of his ability. It requires extraordinary commitment not only of funds...


Comparative Market Analysis

Home pricing is the most important factor to consider in order to sell your home quickly and easily. The usual mistake the seller's make is that their asking price is way too high. You cannot fool the market. It is best to price your home right because if you overprice it and it stays in the market for a long time, buyers will lose interest, thinking that it has not sold because something is wrong with it, or other homes in your area similar to yours may be selling at a more realistic...


Real Estate Vocabulary ~ Who Are The Players

When beginning a new venture, there is always a new language to learn. In real estate knowing the right language can be the difference between making good choices, and having serious problems down the road. To help buyers and sellers get on the right track, here are a few key words so you, too, can tell the different between real estate personnel...