Well, anyone trying to sell their home right now might not agree with the title of this post! Call me old fashioned or maybe some might call me delusional, but I still believe that in the future, history will prove this to be true. Real Estate became an area of investment that many people used to build tremendous wealth over the past 50 to 60 years and I do predict that my Grandchildren will someday look back and will be able to say that one of the safest and best long term investments they made were in Real Estate!
So, for those trying to sell right now and who think I am delusional, look at what you purchased the property for and consider the return on your investment. Unless you purchased it in the past 3 to 5 years, you probably made money! But if you want a quick turn on your investment, then Real Estate is probably not where it will come from. These past seven or eight years is not a-typical of what one should expect in this type of investment. If you don't need to sell, don't! Wait this out and sell in 18 months when things will be better than today.
What to do if you must sell... be realistic! Understand that you are not going to get what you might have hoped for and that you may even have to take a loss or look to negotiate a short sale if you are under water (upside down in the loan!).
The market will right itself again and the investment you made will provide a nice return if you can wait it out. Trying to sell now however, will not be easy!
Monday, November 10, 2008
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Effective Information Marketing is Key to Growing Your Customer Base
This post was writtena dn sent to me by a good friend and very successful Internet business person! Thanks to Cindy McAasey for the valuable information!
If you believe that conventional marketing tools and techniques have lost their powerful punch, then you might consider other effective options such as information marketing techniques. It develops trust and confidence with your target market by using the idea of 'giving' rather than 'getting'.
Information marketing is all about sharing valuable information (content) with your prospective customers, something that can be done in many different ways such as sharing email newsletters, MP3 recordings, youtube videos, articles, and ebooks.
The benefits of this type of "education" are endless.. it really depends how well you design and distribute your marketing materials. If you do it well enough, you start noticing some of these benefits:
Get the respect of prospective customers:
It is natural to be drawn to people who want to help you ... you accomplish this by giving what people are looking for. When you share valuable information on topics that your customers find interesting, you instantly create goodwill and respect, which in turn automatically increases your chances they will become regular customers. Just as the farmer plants the seeds watches them grow then harvests the crops, basically you too are sowing seeds then letting nature take it's own course.
Developing feelings of trust and confidence:
Most people won't trust a stranger on the street, but will trust their roommate. Well, the logic in this statement is exactly why information marketing is an effective marketing strategy. When you share information on a regular basis, your prospective customers develop a feeling of trust and confidence. This contributes to removing skepticism that they could have had about you, your website, and the offered products and services. To put it simply, your potential customers will not hesitate to do business with you if you are successful in developing the right feelings of trust and confidence.
Increasing income by reducing costs:
Since information can be used over and over again with only a few minor changes in between, it saves you time and time is money in your own business. It will continue to augment your income, even when you might be busy with other commitments.
Carving your own niche in the market:
If you tirelessly continue to share information with your prospective customers, you will soon be able to create a niche for yourself in the market, something that will place you and your business in a better position to compete successfully with other businesses.
If you are still on the fence with this marketing strategy.. just try it out and see for yourself. If you don't feel you have the knowledge to produce your own materials yet... then it's time for you to educate yourself first. In the wonderful internet world the education materials are waiting for you, but you must take action and take advantage of people willing to educate you or hire someone to create the materials for you.
If you believe that conventional marketing tools and techniques have lost their powerful punch, then you might consider other effective options such as information marketing techniques. It develops trust and confidence with your target market by using the idea of 'giving' rather than 'getting'.
Information marketing is all about sharing valuable information (content) with your prospective customers, something that can be done in many different ways such as sharing email newsletters, MP3 recordings, youtube videos, articles, and ebooks.
The benefits of this type of "education" are endless.. it really depends how well you design and distribute your marketing materials. If you do it well enough, you start noticing some of these benefits:
Get the respect of prospective customers:
It is natural to be drawn to people who want to help you ... you accomplish this by giving what people are looking for. When you share valuable information on topics that your customers find interesting, you instantly create goodwill and respect, which in turn automatically increases your chances they will become regular customers. Just as the farmer plants the seeds watches them grow then harvests the crops, basically you too are sowing seeds then letting nature take it's own course.
Developing feelings of trust and confidence:
Most people won't trust a stranger on the street, but will trust their roommate. Well, the logic in this statement is exactly why information marketing is an effective marketing strategy. When you share information on a regular basis, your prospective customers develop a feeling of trust and confidence. This contributes to removing skepticism that they could have had about you, your website, and the offered products and services. To put it simply, your potential customers will not hesitate to do business with you if you are successful in developing the right feelings of trust and confidence.
Increasing income by reducing costs:
Since information can be used over and over again with only a few minor changes in between, it saves you time and time is money in your own business. It will continue to augment your income, even when you might be busy with other commitments.
Carving your own niche in the market:
If you tirelessly continue to share information with your prospective customers, you will soon be able to create a niche for yourself in the market, something that will place you and your business in a better position to compete successfully with other businesses.
If you are still on the fence with this marketing strategy.. just try it out and see for yourself. If you don't feel you have the knowledge to produce your own materials yet... then it's time for you to educate yourself first. In the wonderful internet world the education materials are waiting for you, but you must take action and take advantage of people willing to educate you or hire someone to create the materials for you.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Renters and Foreclosed Properties!
In the past couple of days, the latest numbers were released concerning forclosures. They are most definitely up over same period last year, but what is alarming is that they are at the highest level since the the Mortagage Banker's Association began keeping records on this subject 29 years ago! Also interesting to note is that the rate of delinquency on mortgage payments has also increased to record highs.
Prime Rate ARM products as well as sub prime ARM products have been the biggest reason for the increase in delinquencies. They account for almost 60% of all new foreclosures reported!
That is indeed bad news for the markets. Let's ad on to that the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and then on top of that we will add that another CEO in the Financial arena has been forced out of his position. Washington Mutual's CEO is the latest of the top ranking Banking officials to go. As you may already know, WAMU is notorious for their family of ARM products, many of which are Option ARMs. Need I say more?
But the biggest question is what happens to the person renting a house that enters into foreclosure? Well, let's speculate just a bit! First of all, is the landlord going to tell the renter? Probably not. If the landlord did so, rental payments might stop, the renter might move out and the security deposit will probably be lost too. Although protected in most states, the security deposit would normally be returned, but if the landlord is in the midst of foreclosure problems, good luck!
That is all speculation on my part, but probably pretty close to what would probably happen! My biggest question, though is how does a tenant know if the home they live in is being foreclosed? Well a new program has just been announced by Baird and Warner, a Real Estate Brokerage Firm in Chicago. I hosestly have not visited the site, but from what I have read it works for states other than Illinois. If you are a renter and want to check it out, follow this Link.
For those savvy enough to do public record searches, many states allow Counties within their state to offer such searches Online. And public record searches through the County Clerk's office are FREE. If you are asked to pay a fee, you are probably on a private company's site that offers such a service. Do a search for your County Clerk and once on their web site, look for public/land records searches.
Prime Rate ARM products as well as sub prime ARM products have been the biggest reason for the increase in delinquencies. They account for almost 60% of all new foreclosures reported!
That is indeed bad news for the markets. Let's ad on to that the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and then on top of that we will add that another CEO in the Financial arena has been forced out of his position. Washington Mutual's CEO is the latest of the top ranking Banking officials to go. As you may already know, WAMU is notorious for their family of ARM products, many of which are Option ARMs. Need I say more?
But the biggest question is what happens to the person renting a house that enters into foreclosure? Well, let's speculate just a bit! First of all, is the landlord going to tell the renter? Probably not. If the landlord did so, rental payments might stop, the renter might move out and the security deposit will probably be lost too. Although protected in most states, the security deposit would normally be returned, but if the landlord is in the midst of foreclosure problems, good luck!
That is all speculation on my part, but probably pretty close to what would probably happen! My biggest question, though is how does a tenant know if the home they live in is being foreclosed? Well a new program has just been announced by Baird and Warner, a Real Estate Brokerage Firm in Chicago. I hosestly have not visited the site, but from what I have read it works for states other than Illinois. If you are a renter and want to check it out, follow this Link.
For those savvy enough to do public record searches, many states allow Counties within their state to offer such searches Online. And public record searches through the County Clerk's office are FREE. If you are asked to pay a fee, you are probably on a private company's site that offers such a service. Do a search for your County Clerk and once on their web site, look for public/land records searches.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Effective Interest Rates
Remember the feeling of excitement when you were heading to the closing table to purchase your first home? Exciting, on top of the world kind of a feeling would probably describe it well! Then you got to the closing and your Title Company or Attorney showed your the Truth in Lending Disclosure. When you saw what you will pay back to the bank in interest, you almost choked on that lump that immediately formed in your throat, right?!!!
Well, most might say to you "welcome to the world of mortgage financing! And, up until recently, my response was something to the effect that if you dwell on that fact, you will never purchase anything! But in reality, people continue to buy a payment. They look at what they can afford each month and based on the total of their Principal, Interest, Taxes and Insurance. Many times, people will base the amount of their down payment upon where they want their monthly payment to end up. I have heard the term "buying the monthly payment".
And sadly, most people either refinance or sell the home after only five years.Now there are a lot of mortgage brokers out there that will tell you that a fixed rate of interest is just that. I tell you that they do not understand a truth in lending disclosure. That can be a topic for another day, however for today's topic and because you are paying mostly interest in the first five years of the loan, your effective rate of interest is much, much higher than you might ever imagine. Take a 200,000.00 loan for example. After only 5 years, you would still owe 186,108.00 and if you paid off the loan, the effective rate of interest would be approximately 81%. Read the Asher Intitute Consumer Guide for the Banking Industrys Biggest Secret. It will help you to understand how the lender caluclates interest and how you the consumer is at a serious disadvantage. I am going to tell you how you can help yourself to get out of debt quicker than you might expect possible!
One way that you can increase your equity and reduce your mortgage principal is to pay additional money to the pricipal each month or better still, make two payments every January, one going directly to the principal. In effect, you just made 13 payments, which is what you do when you sign up for a bi-weekly program. If you do not have the discipline to send the additional money each month or once a year, the bi-weekly plan forces you to make those payments. And, the good news is that it will pay off your mortgage, in about 6 years less on a thirty year mortgage!
In my next post, I will discuss another way to pay down your mortgage. Stay tuned!
Well, most might say to you "welcome to the world of mortgage financing! And, up until recently, my response was something to the effect that if you dwell on that fact, you will never purchase anything! But in reality, people continue to buy a payment. They look at what they can afford each month and based on the total of their Principal, Interest, Taxes and Insurance. Many times, people will base the amount of their down payment upon where they want their monthly payment to end up. I have heard the term "buying the monthly payment".
And sadly, most people either refinance or sell the home after only five years.Now there are a lot of mortgage brokers out there that will tell you that a fixed rate of interest is just that. I tell you that they do not understand a truth in lending disclosure. That can be a topic for another day, however for today's topic and because you are paying mostly interest in the first five years of the loan, your effective rate of interest is much, much higher than you might ever imagine. Take a 200,000.00 loan for example. After only 5 years, you would still owe 186,108.00 and if you paid off the loan, the effective rate of interest would be approximately 81%. Read the Asher Intitute Consumer Guide for the Banking Industrys Biggest Secret. It will help you to understand how the lender caluclates interest and how you the consumer is at a serious disadvantage. I am going to tell you how you can help yourself to get out of debt quicker than you might expect possible!
One way that you can increase your equity and reduce your mortgage principal is to pay additional money to the pricipal each month or better still, make two payments every January, one going directly to the principal. In effect, you just made 13 payments, which is what you do when you sign up for a bi-weekly program. If you do not have the discipline to send the additional money each month or once a year, the bi-weekly plan forces you to make those payments. And, the good news is that it will pay off your mortgage, in about 6 years less on a thirty year mortgage!
In my next post, I will discuss another way to pay down your mortgage. Stay tuned!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
One last thought on Credit scores!
For now, I just wanted to say one more thing about your credit scores before I leave the topic for now! I recently assistaed a client with a mortgage application and must be very careful here about what I say due to confidentiality. But, what struck me was that this individual had a Chapter 7 in his not that distant past and his (not necessarily a man by the way!) credit scores were very high considering the public record, etc. I asked him about how that was and what he explained was exactly what I have always thought and professed to others. Simply put, he continued to struggle to make his payments through the Bankruptcy process. He discharged the accounts he knew he had to but continued to make payments on those accounts and all others that he reaffirmed after the Bankruptcy was completed! Yes, his scores di go lower initially, but only for a very short time. He even went out and got new credit, including a car loan at a rather decent interest rate!
I hope that none of you reading this post every have need to file such an action, but if you do, keep your payments current if you can, especially the ones you intend to reaffirm!
I hope that none of you reading this post every have need to file such an action, but if you do, keep your payments current if you can, especially the ones you intend to reaffirm!
Friday, July 04, 2008
More on Credit Scores
You know most people would guess that they would be better off with a high balance on one or two credit cards as opposed to a moderate balance on three or four cards! Well, my recommendation is to get rid of the card balances as soon as you are financially able! They will drain you and you will take years to pay them off, but not before paying exorbidant amounts of interest!
The fact is however, if you are unable to fina a way to consolidate the debt, it is better for you to have a few more card balances with lower balances! When you get close to the high credit limit on one card, it will actually lower your credit score faster than having leveraged the debt over a few cards . The idea then is to keep the debt to less than half your high credit limit on any card. So, if you have credit card debt, keep this thought in mind.
More about Credit Card debt and mortgage debt in future posts!
The fact is however, if you are unable to fina a way to consolidate the debt, it is better for you to have a few more card balances with lower balances! When you get close to the high credit limit on one card, it will actually lower your credit score faster than having leveraged the debt over a few cards . The idea then is to keep the debt to less than half your high credit limit on any card. So, if you have credit card debt, keep this thought in mind.
More about Credit Card debt and mortgage debt in future posts!
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