Real Estate Investment Clubs?

Posted by admin | Real Estate Investing | Monday 19 July 2010 6:10 pm


Your local real estate investment clubs or associations will educate you. It won’t be book education, but useful knowledge about your local real estate market. The people there are investors, many who have gotten wealthy investing right in your town. This means you’ll get meaningful and specific advice on what is working in your area, where to go for an inspector or property manager, and many other tips and based on real experience.

There are also the actual money-making opportunities that you’ll find. People there may need a partner with money, or a partner with time to find deals. Some have properties for sale and want to save the sales commission by selling to one of the members. Also, if you have a business that’s in any way related to real estate, you can make valuable contacts. Handyman or landscapers can often find business at our local real estate investment club meetings.

Real Estate Investment Clubs – An Example

The local association that my wife and I belong to is AZREIA, or “The Arizona Real Estate Investors Association.” I’ll tell you a little about it. If you don’t have a similar organization in your own town, this may give you ideas for what to include if you start one.

The association sponsors many educational events and seminars for reasonable fees, but the regular meetings are once each month, and included in the membership fee. It cost $195 per year for the two of us to join. As I write this, I am looking forward to tomorrow’s meeting, which will include a winner of the TV show “The Apprentice,” Kendra Todd, telling us how she made her first million in real estate.

Speakers are great, but I also like the regular events. Every meeting starts with “Open Networking,” for thirty minutes or so. It’s an opportunity to meet people, learn a little, and take down names and numbers. We each have a name tag that also tells everyone what our primary interests are, ranging from rental properties to fixer-uppers to wholesaling.

The monthly meeting then officially starts with “Structured Networking.” This involves filling out 3 x 5 cards with your name, occupation, real estate experience, and investments you are interested in. This information is systematically traded with randomly chosen others. It’s surprising how often profitable connections are made during this process.

The best part of the meeting is the “I have / I want” event. Members (or even visitors) can stand up and announce what they have and what they want. The host writes their phone number on the overhead projector. It is sometimes something as mundane as a microwave an investor needs to get rid of, that someone doing a fixer-upper might need. Often, it is someone who has money but needs help finding good investments. I once announced that I was looking for a mobile home park to buy, and I received three calls within a week.

The meetings are not formal affairs. The millionaires in the room are as likely to have on jeans as a suit. Everyone shares a common purpose – to make money investing in real estate. In fact, even if you have no money to invest, yuo can do just fine. Just go find a great deal, and if the numbers truly work, you can probably find the money at these meetings. It is just one more great thing about real estate investment clubs.

By: Steven Gillman

About the Author:
Steve Gillman has invested in real estate for years. To learn more, get a free real estate investing course, and see a photo of a beautiful house he and his wife bought for $17,500, visit http://www.HousesUnderFiftyThousand.com



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Use Real Estate Leads to Grow Your Real Estate Business

Posted by admin | Business Real Estate | Monday 12 July 2010 10:30 am


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Jumbo Mortgages

Posted by admin | Mortgages | Thursday 8 July 2010 11:47 am


What makes a loan a Jumbo?

Jumbo loans are classified as a mortgage that is above $417,000 in most areas of Texas. Before the shakeup in the mortgage industry that was the limit for all of the US. So if you lived in many parts of the East or West coast, a high percentage of the mortgages were in the Jumbo category. In 2008 Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac put increased the limit in “high cost” areas. Currently in many parts of California you can get a conventional loan for over $700,000. This is all based on the median house price in a given area.

A quick history of Jumbo Mortgages

Any loan that is not insured by Fannie, Freddie, HUD, or VA is considered a non-conforming or portfolio loan. That means that the lender is holding that loan in their portfolio and it is not backed by a government entity. Up until 2007 many different loans were included in the term non-conforming loans. This included Subprime, Alt-A, and Jumbos. These loans were packaged up, securitized, and sold on Wall Street. In many cases there would be twenty-five to thirty percent of jumbo loans in these packages, the rest were subprime loans. When everyone came to the realization that many of the subprime loans were over-leveraged or non-performing, then the jumbos were unfairly thrown into the same category.

Then the credit crunch came along. Most lenders and banks began to horde cash and not loan money. Subprime and Alt A loans were gone almost overnight and jumbo loans were not backed by any government entity. So they had a similar fate. While many of the subprime loans were done with 0 down payment and poor credit, most jumbo loans still required a 5 to 20 percent down payment and above average credit. Currently the default rates on jumbo loans done in the last 5 years are lower than almost any other type of loan done in the same period. However because the investors that bought jumbo loans have been holding on to their cash, the market for those loans has been almost non-existent for the last 18 months.

For the last 10 years jumbo loans required a bigger down payment and carried an interest rate from .25% to .50% higher than a conventional loan. That all changed in 2008, for the few lenders that would still buy a jumbo loan they were charging between 1.5% and 2% more than conventional loans. This has created big problems on the housing market in the upper end of price ranges. Because of this short supply and expensive financing the luxury home market has been reliant on buyers that could pay cash for these properties. That limits a large segment of potential buyers.

Current Jumbo Loan Market
However things have started to loosen up, some lenders are realizing the hole in the market and are starting to finance jumbos again. Currently for some lenders Jumbo loans are .75 to 1% higher than a conventional loan, which is a huge decrease from earlier in the year. 20% Down-payment and good credit are a must.

By: Luke Strawn

About the Author:
Luke Strawn is a 10 year mortgage industry veteran. For daily updates on changes in mortgage rates and changes in the industry you can visit http://www.mortgagechanges.com For more information on Luke and his company please visit http://www.thefortworthmortgage.com



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Favored by Architects

Posted by admin | Architects | Wednesday 7 July 2010 4:08 pm


What pops into your mind when you hear the words “favored by architects”? There could be a multitude of answers to this question. However, in this instance we are discussing the ever changing copper roof. On the day of installation, the color is probably amber. But, as time marches on; the gleaming yellowish-brown automatically turns to a greenish shade. Day by day, like a slow motion picture show, the transformation quietly occurs.

The beauty of copper roofing is not the only factor that makes it favored by architects. This metal has the best of both worlds; it is very strong, yet it remains a very pliable material. Therefore, architects can let their imagination roam freely when they are designing a building. The roof can be configured anywhere between extremely flat to any kind of curves that a person is able to think of. This substance can conform to anything.

A properly installed copper roof will last a lifetime. It is lightweight; consequently no additional structural support of any kind is needed. Of course, it is fire resistant. Future corrosion of this valuable metal is prevented by the formation of patina, which is a greenish colored film resulting from oxidation of the surface. The required maintenance on this type of roof is almost zero; which is always good news.

On the other hand, some people are not so excited about this particular kind of roof. It is very, very, very expensive. The average homeowner may not have allotted this much money in their building budget. Not only that; the color changes that take place are not always appreciated by everyone.

By: Jonathan R Richards

About the Author:
Jonathan is the owner of For Sale By Owner Columbus, a Flat Fee MLS company that specializes in placing For Sale By Owner (FSBO) properties on the Realtors® Multiple Listing Service (MLS) for a low one time flat fee. Please visit Columbus For Sale By Owner to learn more about their services and the Flat Fee MLS packages they offer.



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