Archive for the 'Real Estate Investing' Category
Bad tenants are a landlord’s worst nightmare. Between not paying their rent, trashing your rental property, allowing pest infestations, committing criminal acts in the property and a hundred other miserable acts, bad tenants can make a landlord’s life miserable. Fortunately, there are tactics you can employ to minimize the damage caused by bad tenants.
First Line of Defense: An Airtight Lease Agreement
Before you allow a tenant to move into your property, you can lay the groundwork for addressing future problems by using an airtight lease agreement. Every state has different landlord-tenant laws governing what your lease agreement can contain, so be sure to use a state-specific lease agreement. Sometimes they can be obtained through your state’s website, but more likely you’ll have to buy one online.
Identifying your property’s value is crucial. As a real estate investor, you need to be aware of the three ways to determine the value of your real estate investments to guide you with your purchase, justify your selling price, or simply learn the basic market valuation techniques.
Sales Comparables
The most popular method is sales comparables or more formally known as comparative market analysis. In this method, sales information about properties that were sold within the last three to six months as well as those that comprise the list of pending sales in the neighborhood are compared.
For many individuals, the single largest “investment” of their lives will usually be their home, as opposed to investing stock, bonds, mutual funds or certificates of deposits (CD’s). This is because purchasing real estate is less risky than investing in the stock market and can be more rewarding than changing CD interest rates.
US investment property has been enticing foreign investors since the 1970s, and has become extremely attractive since 2008 based on the weakening of the US dollar. Many financial institutions in this country are reluctant, if not somewhat skeptical, of providing mortgages to foreign investors who want to finance real property here in the US.
“The bursting of the global housing bubble is only halfway through,” The Economist magazine wrote recently.
I disagree…
Here in the U.S. at least, the housing bubble is completely over.
It drives me nuts when I hear commentators say, “We’re halfway through,” and, “We have more pain to come.”
The fact is, right now, houses in America are the best value they’ve been in many generations. It’s not hard to understand…
If there’s one thing that Morgan Stanley would like to advise to you, it’s to take a look at single-family homes and consider it as part of your real estate investing strategy.
That’s right, these properties have become hot among real estate investors recently considering the shift in the US property market from home ownership to rentals (or as Morgan Stanley puts it, a “renter-heavy society”). It’s exactly the new real estate paradigm! Even Bank of America and the Federal Housing Finance Agency have sought measures to reduce the impact of mortgage delinquency by working on an REO rental program for its underwater borrowers.
Morgan Stanley Research released its latest real estate report, Housing 2.0: The New Rental Paradigm to provide market insights to investors. It’s interesting to know that the research team observes how more Americans have become renters instead of homeowners, attributing to different factors in the economy.
The report states:
Across the country, more Americans are becoming home renters, and fewer Americans are becoming homeowners. The beginning of the rentership society is upon us. But all renters are not equal – of the roughly 40MM rental housing units in the country (representing roughly $6 trillion in asset value), about half are multi-family and half are single- family.
Half of refinance applications are abandoned or rejected, as are 30 percent of purchase mortgage applications, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. All told, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) says that well over 2 million mortgage applications were rejected last year.
Want to avoid falling into that number? It’s tough — especially in light of the fact that mortgage lenders have become increasingly restrictive in terms of their lending guidelines since the housing market crash.
Here, as a cautionary tale and primer on what to expect, are the top six reasons mortgage lenders reject applications.
You’ve seen the headlines. The combination of lower prices, increased rents and a weak dollar are drawing investor capital from all around the globe and funneling it into American housing. According to NAR, foreign investment is US real estate has increased by 20% in the 12 months ending march 2011, totaling $82 billion in just one year. What’s missing in most of these stories is why.
Why are overseas real estate investors, who are standing thousands of miles away with little if any personal experience in US real estate, pouncing on this opportunity? Low prices and great exchange rates don’t explain it. If you hear of a stock that has plummeted, would you buy it based on that fact alone? Or would you want to understand the fundamentals of the company behind the stock. What do they produce? Who are their customers? Why should you believe this investment will pay off, as opposed to seeing the new low price as an accurate reflection of the value of the company? In other words, if it’s a piece of junk, you wouldn’t care how cheap it is.
Real estate is one of my absolute favorite areas in the tax law because there is so much flexibility in how to do things to legally maximize the tax benefits available.
Real estate is also one of the most complex areas of the tax law. This makes it easy to overlook important steps, which can lead to missing out on tremendous tax savings.
I recommend reviewing your tax strategy throughout the year, particularly as it relates to real estate. This makes it much easier to make adjustments timely, minimize oversights and reduce stress at the end of the year and tax return time.
With the end of the year approaching quickly, it is an ideal time to implement a year round strategy to review your tax strategy as it relates to your real estate.
Start with my year-end checklist for rental real estate and adapt it to use throughout the year.
Here are a few items from the checklist my team and I use:
The question most real estate investors often ask is, “Where do I invest now?”
As always, there are local housing markets around the country where homes are affordable, the underlying economy is strong, and appreciation is imminent. These are markets you should consider for your next long-term real estate investment.
Norada Real Estate Investments tracks the economic conditions and real estate trends of nearly 400 markets across the country. Because of the dynamic nature of real estate market conditions, we continually monitor and rank the top markets to make it easier for you, as an investor, to concentrate on the areas that will give you the greatest opportunity for success.
While you might be inclined to look for bargains in areas that have seen the largest price corrections in the past, watch out – there is no guarantee that home prices in areas of high speculation will ever rebound to boom levels.
Unlike the stock market, local real estate markets usually move in slow, predictable cycles. Appreciation is not luck or magic. It correlates closely with economic development and population growth in a local market.
If you missed out on Phoenix, Vegas and Florida (or if you rode those waves and know what it’s about), download the current issue of our free report.
Download your free copy of the 2012 Housing Market Forecast Today!
Half of all homeowners may be paying too much. Here’s what you can do about it.
Home prices are still going down in many markets. But your property-tax bill might well be going up.
The good news: There are ways to fight back.
Property taxes across the U.S. have increased by nearly 20% from 2005 to 2009, the most recent data available, according to an April study by the National Association of Home Builders. The median annual real-estate-tax payment was $1,917 in 2009, up from $1,614 in 2005.
Over the same period, home prices in major urban centers fared badly, decreasing 31%, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-City Composite Index.
Property taxes don’t move in lockstep with home values because local governments typically don’t measure values every year and some have limits on annual property-tax increases, says Natalia Siniavskaia, a housing-policy economist at the home-builders group. That means your current property taxes might reflect your home’s value when the market was healthier. Property-tax adjustments lag behind changes in home prices by an average of three years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Home prices and sales may be flat, but the rental industry is booming. The percentage of renters is on the rise, the number of households is increasing, and more Americans are downsizing, all of which point in a single direction: rents are on the rise.
At the peak of the housing boom, home ownership in America reached an all-time high at 69.2%. Today that number has plummeted to fewer than 67%, which may not sound like a huge drop, but that represents roughly 3 million households that were owner-occupied and are now tenant-occupied.
The high foreclosure rate has accelerated the transition toward leasing, but there are a myriad of other trends coalescing to boost demand for rental housing.
USA investment property is becoming very popular these days, and many foreign investors, especially from the UK, Australia and Europe, would prefer purchasing properties in this country.
There are several economic reasons that are responsible for the US property market to work well, where investors can make large profits from relatively small investments. It is important therefore to comprehend the crucial elements that contribute to the unparalleled opportunities which are available now, as the country is fast becoming one of the top property investment locations.
Economy – Even with the economy still in recession, the USA remains the largest national economy in the world that is complemented by its huge land mass and population. The country has an appraised GDP of more than $14 trillion with a relatively low cost of living, and an advanced market with contemporary infrastructure consisting of large finance and private sectors.
Property taxes can be a major expense for investors, but understanding how this tax works could save you thousands of dollars in the long run.
The first thing to learn about property tax is that property is divided into two categories: real and personal. Real property includes land, buildings and permanent property attached to land— such as a well. Personal property is everything else, including clothes, books, electronics, furniture and financial holdings. Personal property is further divided into either tangible property or intangible property. Tangible property is anything you can touch, such as a sofa or a blender and intangible property includes abstract possessions like stocks, bonds and patents.
Many entrepreneurs believe that, if you want something done right, do it yourself. Personally, I believe that is the rationalization of control freaks unwilling to delegate.
In reality, your dream team will help you reach your financial goals faster than you ever can alone.
Sure, you can find motivated sellers and build a great buyer’s list on your own, but other tasks require the expertise of others.
Some of the members of your team should include:
- real estate agents, who can bring you sellers
- home inspectors, who can spot things you might never notice
- rehab crews, who can do work in much less time than you could,assuming you want to pick up a hammer
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