Archives for September 2013

Understanding Land Trusts (Part 1)

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The land trust is one of the most talked about, but least understood, entity utilized by real estate investors. The reason for this is simple, most attorneys or CPAs have never come across the entity in their professional practice. How can this be?

You might be asking yourself: if the land trust is a legitimate entity used by real estate investors all over the country shouldn’t my local attorney know something about it.  Unfortunately the answer is no, they most likely wouldn’t have a clue and this is because only a handful of states actually recognize a land trust via statute.

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Changes to the Home That Will Lower Home Insurance

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Many new homeowners are looking for ways to save on their home insurance. Although some seem obvious because they are so highly advertised (bundling with auto, shopping online), there are others that are more subtle. You can get discounts on your home insurance just by making some minor changes to your home. Here are some of the things that you can do to help lower that insurance bill.

 

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Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid in Real Estate Investing (Part 2)

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Make sure you read part 1 of the Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid in Real Estate Investing to find out the first 5 mistakes to avoid.

Again, these are listed in no particular order of importance because they are all equally important:

6. Negative cash flow.  I’ve never met a single real estate investor in my life that said “I wish I did not have so much positive cash-flow coming in from my real estate investments.” However, I have met countless investors that purchased property with negative cash flows in hopes that the appreciation would counterbalance this negative, only to end up walking away from the property because they simply couldn’t afford it any more. [Read more…]

Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid in Real Estate Investing

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In real estate, like many facets of life, it can often times be more useful to know what NOT to do than to know what to do.

Being in real estate for many years, I have seen a pattern of mistakes that most people tend to make as beginners. We have helped thousands of people invest in real estate, and of all the mistakes we've seen, the following 10 make up over 95% of them.

If you're able to avoid even some of these mistakes before you invest in your first or next property, you will be far ahead of most investors out there.

The following are the Top 10 mistakes to avoid in no particular order of importance, because they are all important:

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National Economic Outlook (September 2013)

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The rate of annual job growth in August, 1.7 percent, was basically the same as in previous months. We had better get used to the idea that this is the new normal, because there probably won't be much help from the lagging government and construction sectors.

Budget difficulties will prevent any meaningful increase in government spending, even though local and state revenues are now in better shape. The recession revealed the extent of unfunded pension liabilities for public employees, which will absorb any extra dollars.

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