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Federal Meddling in Housing Market Spells Disaster
2008-05-05 14:43:00
In one of the best written articles on the housing market problems and how the Federal Governments intervention could make it worst has now been written by J.D. Foster. If you have a few minutes please read it. It is one of the most succinct articles on how much damage the meddling of our government can do ...
More About: Market , Disaster , Housing , Spells

What Consumers Do Not Know About Their Mortgages
2008-05-03 15:32:00
While we in the real estate blogosphere try to figure out why the mortgage crisis is not resolving itself, the reason might be staring us in the face. The consumer never learned the rules of the game. Real estate agents and mortgage brokers got so caught up in the frenzy of selling and doing deals ...
More About: Mortgage Fraud , Mortgage , Mortgages , Consumers

Mortgage Fraud Now A Specific Crime in Missouri
2008-05-03 15:21:00
Mortgage fraud was rampant in the beginning of the century, that is very obvious to anyone who has watched the real estate market recently. That is why the new legislation coming out of Missouri is good to see.  Missouri is going to make the crime of mortgage fraud it’s own category of law with enforcement and very specific ...
More About: Fraud , Crime , Mortgage Fraud , Foreclosure , Mortgage

Jose Canseco Loses California Home In Foreclosure
2008-05-02 12:57:00
I rarely wish bad tidings on people but the career of Jose Canseco has been laced with self absorption, cheating, lying, and other serious character defects. Could this result surprise you at all? Canseco makes an obligation to pay a mortgage but then decides that it does not make sense to keep paying on it. ...
More About: California , Home , Foreclosure

Sam Zell - Commercial Real Estate Coming Back
2008-05-01 18:49:00
Sam Zell, billionaire and commercial real estate maven, is predicting that commercial real estate is coming back, albeit slowly as the credit market is loosening up. The city center is the strongest market and there is great risk in the “ex-urban, the glass-block commodity office building” sector. Overall though Zell seems very bullish on the ...
More About: Commercial , Estate , Real Estate , Back , Real

Sam Zell - Commmercial Real Estate Coming Back
2008-05-01 18:49:00
Sam Zell, billionaire and commercial real estate maven, is predicting that commercial real estate is coming back, albeit slowly as the credit market is loosening up. The city center is the strongest market and there is great risk in the “ex-urban, the glass-block commodity office building” sector. Overall though Zell seems very bullish on the ...
More About: Estate , Real Estate , Back , Real , Sam Zell

Army Barracks Housing Video Stirs Pentagon To Investigage All Housing
2008-05-01 12:52:00
Congratulations to all who got behind the effort to alert Congress and the Army about the deplorable conditions at Fort Bragg. The Army launched a worldwide investigation into all barracks in the system to discover the level of housing issues our soldiers face. Great job and this should make the homecomings easier for America’s heroes. Brig. ...
More About: Video , Real Estate , Housing , Pentagon

Fannie Mae Chief Executive Predicts National Housing Recovery in 2010
2008-04-30 16:32:00
The head of Fannie Mae is predicting a slow real estate market spanning through 2009 as indicators such as the Case Shiller report as showing even greater weakness in the market. Daniel Mudd predicts the slowdown lasting longer than many other prognosticators, but interesting enough recognizes that he is guessing as forecasting housing is not ...
More About: National , Recovery , Chief , Housing Bubble , Housing

East Haven Connecticut Housing Official Charged With Stealing $173,000
2008-04-30 16:21:00
A Connecticut Housing Official and her husband is now charged with stealing Section 8 housing money from the East Haven housing authority. The amount of 173 thousand dollars was taken through a debit card that Cassandra Ashe illegally obtained. I do hope she gets what she and her husband deserve stealing our tax money that was designated for low ...
More About: Affordable housing

New York City Real Estate Tax Revenue Down
2008-04-30 16:13:00
Local government officials must be getting nervous if they are reading this story. New York City is one of the few hot warm spots in the real estate market and is showing a significant weakness in tax revenue collection. What are the mayors of Stockton and San Diego thinking as they try to keep all the bloated city ...
More About: Estate , Taxes , Real Estate

Worst Public Housing In America? How About Soldiers Housing At Fort Bragg
2008-04-29 21:20:00
If the conditions shown in this video were to happen in any rental property in the country the landlord would be facing a condemnation notice. Instead our soldiers coming back from a 15 month deployment are facing these living conditions. This has got to stop. No matter your feeling on the war, and I do ...
More About: America , Real Estate , Public , Housing , Soldiers

K&B Founder - Home Prices Could Drop 20 Percent More
2008-04-29 20:02:00
Into the gloom and doom of the housing market comes this tidbit of knowledge&# 160;from one of the founders of K&B Home s. Eli Broad is thinking that home prices could drop another 20 percent over the next couple of years. I bet the folks in the corporate offices of K&B are grumbling a bit over that quote as they ...
More About: Founder , Drop , Prices

United States Has 129.4 Million Homes- 18.6 Million of Whom Are Vacant
2008-04-29 15:30:00
The United States  real estate market has an inventory problem. When there are over 18 million empty homes across the country we have no reason to continue to build new homes. If this were a logical marketplace we would tell builders to take a 2 year moratorium until absorption met demand. Instead we have builders building ...
More About: Homes , Vacant

Top 10 Metro Areas For Foreclosures - 1st Quarter, 2008
2008-04-29 15:05:00
The top 10 metro areas in the United States for foreclosures include the usual suspects led by 6 California markets, Las Vegas, Detroit, Phoenix, and Fort Lauderdale. There were 2 real surprises for me in the RealtyTrac report, first that Detroit has dropped down to number 6 after being the leader in foreclosures for so ...
More About: Foreclosures , Foreclosure , Metro , Quarter , 2008

Theres An Alligator In My Kitchen, What Am I Gonna Do?
2008-04-29 13:48:00
My apologies to UB40 for the title, but this is not something you would want to see when you are hearing noises downstairs in the middle of the night. An 8 foot alligator sitting in your kitchen who chased your cat into the house after pushing in the screen porch door. Florida living can be ...
More About: Kitchen , Alligator , Gonna

Web Sites Triple in Size in Last 5 Years - Realtors Use That Bandwidth!
2008-04-28 16:57:00
In the past if you developed websites you aimed not to alienate the dial up user and those with smaller monitors. Well with the new information out that websites have tripled in size since 2003 and the number of objects on a page doubling, don’t get hung up on those metrics anymore. The size of ...
More About: Realtors , Web Sites , Sites , Years , Size

Speaker of House Nancy Pelosi Says 1 in 20 California Homeowners Will Be in
2008-04-28 13:00:00
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House , must be the Queen of the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). Instead of talking about the positive things that have gone on in the country over the past 2 years of her speakership, she instead decides to be a fear monger to those in the fear mongering business. Addressing a mixture of ...
More About: California , Nancy Pelosi , Foreclosure

Countrywide Selling REO Property To Minority and First Time Buyers
2008-04-26 15:14:00
Countrywide Financial has joined into a partnership with New Vista Asset Management to sell their foreclosed upon properties. What is different that most property sales by bank owned real estate is that Countrywide is not just dumping the properties. Instead they are trying to sell them to minorities and first time buyers as part of ...
More About: Selling , Property , Time , Foreclosure , Buyers

CB Richard Ellis Is First Commercial Real Estate Firm To Make The Fortune 5
2008-04-26 15:07:00
CB Richard Ellis has made the Fortune 500. This is pretty big news as the company is the first commercial real estate firm to make the list. They came in at 404th place of the largest companies in the United States. Congratulations to the crew over there. It looks like all of the aquisitions over ...
More About: Commercial , Estate , Real Estate , Real

NAR President Shows New Fangled Real Estate Technology - Like The Typewrite
2008-04-25 18:45:00
The National Association of Real tors has released a video today showing how the Past President of the NAR Pat Combs uses her technology. She shows how cool the concept of scanning documents makes her state of the art instead of using a fax machine. While it is not all bad, all I have to say ...
More About: Technology , Estate , Real Estate

New York Times Makes Precarious Leap on Foreclosure Market
2008-04-25 17:46:00
We all try sometimes to make a concept work and fail miserably. Well, that is what the New York Times did today with their story on Foreclosure s in Greenwich, Connecticut. They were trying to show that foreclosures are not just hitting the speculators and lower income, but were even having an affect on the gentrified ...
More About: Real Estate , Market

Great Article on How Inman Reinvented Themselves
2008-04-25 00:51:00
Marketing Sherpa, one of the most respected marketing sites on the internet, has an intriguing article on how Inman News has reinvented itself over the past couple of months to remain a market leader. There is a great deal to learn in the article and congratulations to Brad, Joel, and the rest of the team ...
More About: Real Estate , Article , Great

Rental Rates Surging Across Country For First Quarter 2008
2008-04-24 15:22:00
While housing prices remain moribund, the demand for rental properties has rates surging across the country. Simple economics will tell you the longer that people hold off buying the more renters are created. The newly married and young buyers that normally would enter the housing buying cycle are still renting as fear, uncertainty, and doubt are dominating the marketplace. But then a funny thing will happen. Rents will be too high to not justify buying even if there is some downside to the purchase. These same folks that have held off will create so much pressure on the rental market that when they decide to buy, they will all at once not to miss out. That is why real estate is such a funny business. Mass consumer sentiment plays a much greater role than almost any other marketplace. Here is a list of major metropolitan markets and the median rent being charged for the first quarter of 2008 from Realtor Magazine. Atlanta: $986Austin: $907Boston: $1,645Chicago: $1,355Las Ve...
More About: Country , Rental , Rates , Quarter

Sign of the Times: RE/MAX Partners With RealtyTrac To Add Foreclosure Data
2008-04-24 15:08:00
With a large percentage of homes that are selling being ones in foreclosure across the country, RE/MAX Regions has decided to partner with RealtyTrac and add foreclosure data to their websites. I can not find the report I read saying nearly one in three resales in California are foreclosures, but it is not surprising (found – via Inman News). Doug Quance has noticed the same issue here in Atlanta. But for some RE/MAX brokers to put foreclosure information on their listing page in competition with their full listings is intriguing. What it tells me is that foreclosures are the dominant housing product on the market and that even full service real estate firms are having to focus on the market to remain viable. This new feature is the result of a strategic partnership between RealtyTrac (http://www.realtytrac.com), the national leading source of foreclosure data; Reliance Network, a leading developer of Web-based applications for real estate companies and four indep...
More About: Data , Foreclosure , Sign , Times , Partners

Top 10 Seach Providers For March 2008
2008-04-23 22:12:00
Here are some interesting numbers for information use only if you are trying to figure out where to concentrate you real estate search efforts. Many people, and most who are trying to sell you something, think that you have to focus your efforts on many different search companies. Well, Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live, and AOL have 93 ...
More About: Real Estate , March , March 2008 , 2008

States Blame Federal Government For Failed Mortgage Remediations
2008-04-23 19:20:00
What should not be a big surprise for any who read this site, now the states are blaming the federal government for not slowing down the rate of foreclosures hitting the market. There has been no slowing of the rate of foreclosures no matter what efforts the states take at counseling or programs they have ...
More About: Government , Foreclosure , Mortgage , States , Blame

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Spanked For New Accounting Problems
2008-04-23 13:47:00
Is this any surprise, both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are now being told to moderate their aggressive accounting methods and be more prudent on the numbers they are reporting. The issue is a bit esoteric but coming after the accounting scandals that enveloped the agencies in the past year, any hint of impropriety should ...
More About: Mortgage Fraud , Mortgage , Freddie Mac , Problems

Why Bear Sterns Meltdown Hit GE?s Earnings
2008-04-22 17:04:00
General Electric (GE) has long been a bellweather for the economic state of the US economy. So when they missed on their earnings it sent a shockwave through the financial markets. But the reason they missed was due to Bear Sterns meltdown in mid March. GE always keeps some real estate in it’s pocket that has ...
More About: Investment , Earnings

Why Building Green Makes Sense These Days
2008-04-22 15:41:00
Many people look at todays celebration, Lenin’s Birthday Earth Day, as a reason to celebrate mother earth and all that it entails. This is not a post for that. Instead, lets talk about building green and why it makes much more sense. Until technology catches up to demand, energy costs are going to continue to ...
More About: Building , Sense , Green , Days

Fear Mongering or Prognostication: Pew Research Projects 1 in 33 Homes Will
2008-04-21 21:58:00
Man I hope that these folks are not accurate. I would expect market forces to come into play way before the results of the Pew Research report on housing would occur. One in 33 current U.S. homeowners may be headed toward foreclosure in the coming years because of subprime loans, according to our new report, ...
More About: Projects , Foreclosure , Homes , Fear