Where’s the BEEF?!

Remember that commercial back in the 80’s with the little old lady hollaring, “Where’s the beef?!” I have a feeling she’s not the only one these days asking that question.  So where is the beef?  Better yet, where’s the bacon?  The cheddar? The remaining REAL ESTATE JOBS that bring home the money and help you put filet mignon on the table (tofu steak if you’re a vegetarian).  The answer might involve the good olfactory bulbs working in high gear with the solution being right… under… our noses.  That’s right!  We are inundated with news of increased FORECLOSURES happening in most of our major metropolitan areas. Read more

No-money-down loans for 2008?

You would think that while we are STILL in the middle (and hopefully, tail-end) of this real estate debacle, all exotic and zero-money down loans would be relics of the past.  Isn’t that the initial thought?  Lenders have tightened up their guidelines and many of today’s loans are plain vanilla, original cake donut, full doc only loans.  But wait!  Bust out the sprinkles on that donut because there’s a new form of NO-MONEY DOWN LOANS that you should be aware of.  Do these loans really help us stimulate employment and real estate value?  Or are we just shooting ourselves in the foot, arm and gut with this new, simple carbohydrated, but delectable offering? 

Take me to the donut..err, No Money Down Loans!

Solving the Real Estate Credit Crunch

“How do we solve our real estate credit crunch?”  The $500 billion dollar question can be answered in almost as many ways, depending on whose asked the question and from what angle he/she speaks from.  Interestingly, when a presumptive GOP candidate was asked a similar question recently in Santa Ana, CA, his/her response was ostensibly shocking to white collar crime expert and former colleague, Bill Black.
 
Obama, Clinton, McCain or Paul.  One candidate makes it clear that in order to solve this real estate mess, the suggestion is to deregulate. 

Forget about the politics and who I’m voting for in November.  I want to know if this “Deregulation” is really the answer to our Real Estate mess?  Like I said, it’s the $500 Billion dollar question with just as much riding on the answer.  All insight, opinions and speculation are welcome!

See the original article here.

Ice Cold Housing (fill in the blank)

It doesn’t take much surfing to find anything negative about the current real estate market.  Numerous articles and press releases about housing prices continually dropping, foreclosures “doubling,” people sitting on the side lines waiting for any indication that it’s getting warmer.  When speaking with a co-worker about the real estate industry, he mentioned that there was “no end in sight.”  Coincidentally, while perusing through some articles, I found a similar quote.  Did he read the same thing or is this the new message resonating throughout industry info-waves?  Whatever it is and if it’s true,  it’s definately a huge, horse pill to swallow.

“There is no sign of a bottom in the numbers,” says David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P. 

 Click here to read more.

Real Estate Values UP!

Real Estate SHOW values, that is.  The public is keeping a keen eye on these type of shows.  Perhaps, they area looking for market changing signals or possible money making opportunities.  Whatever the case… it’s interesting to know that another sector of the real estate market is seeing an uptick (something outside of foreclosures and BK’s).

For the rest of the article, click here.

Real Estate and Moonlighting

By Eve Tahmincioglu 

Moonlighting is back.

No, not that TV series from the 1980s that starred Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd.

I mean this: Lynda Nicely, a 28-year-old public relations administrator for a nonprofit in Milwaukee, found it increasingly hard to make ends meet on her $40,000 salary because of escalating gas and food prices. So last month she took on a second job as a cocktail waitress at night.

“I don’t have cable or the Internet, and I’ve cut down everything to the bare minimum. You’d think I’d make enough at my job to pay the bills and catch a Brewers’ game once in a while, but I don’t,” she says. . .

 ”I’ve run into some of those same real estate agents from the workshop bartending at local restaurants,” she says. “I know one who drives a limo during ‘down times’ to bring in the extra cash. I know three in the industry who launched into network marketing gigs and another who took a job at a bed-and-bath store to help pay bills.”

With housing in the dumps, she says, people fear losing their jobs.  “They are crunching numbers and moonlighting to make ends meet. For many the second job is what keeps them in the first job — the one in which they’ve invested a lot of time and money to get rolling.”

Even though there appears to be a growing desire by employees to get a second job, they face an economic conundrum.

Story Continued Here

Bargains: The sunny side of the housing slump

Despite the downturn, some people are still managing to make money off real estate. Here’s how they’re doing it.

By Judi Hasson, MSN Real Estate

Yes, there’s gloom and doom in the housing market. Prices are plummeting, sales are stalled and foreclosures are rising. But for some, the hard times are an opportunity.

“There’s always someone selling. There is always someone buying,” says Steven Brown, an investor who buys houses in Mobile, Ala., does a face lift and makes money on the resale.

Houses too burdensome for their previous owners have become ways for new owners to build nest eggs for retirement and college.  While the market for foreclosed and distressed homes is tough to master, rock-bottom prices in some areas have tempted renters and investors out of the woodwork.

Some buy a single house and flip it for a profit. Some buy in hopes of becoming a landlord. And some buy because it’s now cheaper than renting.

Renters turn homeowners

One of those renters was Morganne Teseniar, 26, of Mesquite, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, who says she wanted to buy a house last fall despite the touch-if-you-dare market.estate agent. She found her dream house for $64,000, bid $50,000 on the foreclosed property and moved in this past November.

The previous owner walked away from the house when he got a new job in California, couldn’t sell it and wouldn’t pay the mortgage, she says. Left behind was a perfectly fine house with redone floors, wrought-iron fixtures and granite countertops.

“It was gorgeous. I couldn’t breathe when I got it. It was so cool,” says Teseniar, who is divorced and has a 4-year-old daughter. The price was right, too. She now pays $586 a month for her mortgage, taxes and insurance, $200 less than what she had been paying for rent. And she qualified for a 30-year Federal Housing Administration mortgage to buy it.

Then there are buyers like Lymaris Roman, a Tampa, Fla., pharmacist, and her husband. They saw opportunity, too, in a one-story home with four bedrooms in suburban Lutz, Fla. They bought it for $270,000, far less than its $400,000 appraised value. They moved in on Christmas Day.

Roman’s husband, a self-employed contractor, had plenty of time on his hands because of the housing downturn. He spent less than $10,000 upgrading the house, pulling up the carpeting and installing hardwood floors.

They took out an interest-only mortgage and are renting their old house until the market “comes back up.”

“Hopefully, the economy will be up and running again. If we can rent it out for longer, great,” Roman says.

Opportunity for the little guy

For the smaller entrepreneur, the deal is the thing.

Alex Szalay, a software writer from Pittsburgh, has redone two houses in the past 18 months. He says it’s profitable to buy foreclosed homes that are in reasonably good shape. He bought one house for $72,000 and sold it for $117,000 a few months later in Sharon, Pa., about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh.

“You have to be willing to sit on a down market,” Szalay says. “I have been fortunate in finding good deals. When I started doing properties, I would buy one fixer-upper at a time. Now, I am able to do a couple at a time.”

Tom Cook, an Arlington, Va., contractor, bought a ranch house in January for $500,000. He didn’t think that was too risky. He plans to sell the renovated home in this Washington, D.C., suburb for $1.2 million after a complete renovation that will include five bedrooms, 4½ baths and a two-car garage.

“The market is flat in Arlington but not as flat as outside the Beltway,” Cook says. “Arlington is resilient. People work in the government and defense industries. In the long run, we feel we can move it in 60 days.”

While Cook and others see openings in the short term, Stephen Crawford of Richmond, Va., is looking for long-term opportunity.

The father of four children, Crawford recently bought three investment properties in Atlanta at reduced prices in hopes they will help finance his kids’ college educations. He’s still looking for a fourth nest egg for his 6-year-old.

Crawford has no problem sitting on the houses, betting that the property values will rise as the market regains its footing. In the meantime, he’s renting out these homes to pay down the mortgages.

“Once the market takes a turn, these properties will be worth it,” says Crawford, who works for a health-care company. “Real estate has always been a good investment.”

Flipping on a grand scale

While mortgage rates have been dropping, it is still tough for some people to get a mortgage as a result of the subprime scandal, where buyers were signing up for badly crafted loans. Plenty of mortgage money has dried up, and banks are extremely cautious about making sure buyers are qualified to make their monthly payments.

Still, there are plenty of people willing to take a chance if they can. Brown, the Alabama entrepreneur, sold 85 houses through his company last year. He expects at least that many sales this year, banking on the construction of a ThyssenKrupp Steel USA carbon and stainless-steel processing plant that will bring many new jobs and home buyers to his region.

He usually spends less than $20,000 on rehab, adding new fixtures, upgrading the flooring and installing central heat and air conditioning in houses built 50 years ago.

Florida investor Cody Loughlin is another of the hard-times risk-takers, expressing confidence that the market will do well for him even in a state that has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.

Unlike big builders who constructed giant homes at top dollar and are stuck, Loughlin says he makes money by buying properties at 50 cents on the dollar and selling them for 75 cents on the dollar.

Loughlin’s company, Florida Property Club, is attracting buyers from all over the United States and as far away as South Korea.

He recently bought a four-bedroom, three-bathroom home in Lakeland, Fla., for $240,000, made $30,000 in repairs and sold it for $365,000 within three months.

“When people tell you, ‘Don’t buy real estate,’ well, you should buy real estate,” Loughlin says. “People aren’t going to stop retiring. Kids aren’t going to stop graduating from colleges. This lag will catch itself, and there will be more demand than supply.”

And there are plenty of people such as Loughlin still willing to take a chance to make money on real estate. Sandy Muff, 31, an office manager in Tampa, Fla., decided to buy a bungalow last year for $70,000.

She’s renting it out at $950 a month and paying a $900 monthly mortgage. She eventually hopes to sell the 950-square-foot home for $135,000, its current appraisal.

“You have to spend money to make money,” Muff says. “You’re not going to be in a slump forever.”

It’s not all sawdust and profit

Experts caution the housing market has not reached bottom, and it may be another year before the economic realities shake out. Lehman Brothers has reported that the number of foreclosed homes is expected to quadruple this year, adding 1 million properties to the market in 2008 and another million in 2009.

One economist warns that people can still “lose their shirts” with high-stakes gambles.

 ”There are certainly places where the market is going to be good and growing. But you still could be making a bad move,” says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

Yet plenty of investors are willing to take that chance.

Foreclosure auctions can pit a small investor against well-schooled experts who know how to calculate a property’s real value. In addition, many properties are mortgaged so steeply that banks often ask for bids that are higher than what the properties are worth. On top of that, an increasingly stringent credit market means fewer buyers can qualify for a mortgage.

Thriving in the chaos

Despite the pitfalls, many say they can beat and have beaten the system by seizing opportunity while remaining flexible.

In Tacoma, Wash., Steven Ling is making money off foreclosures or on houses that are on the verge of being put on the auction block. He buys them at a steep discount, adds granite countertops and maple kitchen cabinets, and gives them a bit of curb appeal.

Right now, he’s working on a house originally listed at $300,000. He bought it for $175,000 because the owner wanted to avoid having a foreclosure listed on his credit record. Ling is adding some updates and a fresh coat of paint, and getting it ready for an “average Joe.”

Ling says it takes maneuvering to get some potential homeowners qualified for a mortgage. That occasionally means renting them a house on a lease-purchase deal and helping them straighten out any credit mess to qualify for a mortgage.

“We make sure the income they make is feasible to handle the house. And if that is the case and credit is messed up, we let them buy the house on a lease option,” Ling says.

Still, skeptics remain.

Mike Meredith from Washington, D.C., renovated and sold 75 properties in the past two years, but has decided to sit it out for a while.

“I am waiting until next winter, when the prices will drop more,” Meredith says.

Proceed to Article Here.

No Mortgage Candidates Need Apply???

Update on March 10: the words “NO MORTGAGE CANDIDATES” have been taken down from AppleOne’s job posting (see link below).
posted by Andrew Galvin

Angela Camacho of AppleOne told me it never should have happened: she made a mistake when she cut and pasted the client’s wording into the online posting. “I do wholeheartedly apologize for that,” she said.

I’ll write more about this soon. In the meantime, my original blog post follows:

I’ve been hearing rumors about this kind of thing, but now somebody has finally shown me the evidence:

Some companies are specifically stating that they don’t want any job applications from former mortgage workers.

For example, take this online posting by AppleOne, a staffing company, on Gadball.com, a job-search site:

I am looking for candidates for the following PERMANENT job orders. This company is the number one sales and training company within their industry. It’s located in San Juan Capistrano. They grow 37% each year!

Here are the 4 job orders they currently have open:

Customer Service- Candidates must be fun, upbeat, professional appearance, 3-5 years of customer service experience, good personality. Pay is $18-$20 per hour. NO MORTGAGE CANDIDATES.

No mortgage candidates? This lends credence to complaints by former mortgage workers that they are being stigmatized and discriminated against.

Click here for the Article.

Real Estate as one of The Best Job for Single Parents

Flexibility doesn’t always need to translate into a lower-paying career. 

By Tara Weiss

updated 12:23 p.m. PT, Fri., Feb. 15, 2008

When it comes to being a single mother, the two most important characteristics of a job are flexibility and salary. And while those elements are found on a company by company basis, there are certain industries that lend themselves to being more flexible than others.

The most flexible professions include sales, public relations, health care and real estate. As an added bonus, employees who work in those fields have the potential to make decent salaries. Education is also on the list. Although the hours are set, they’re likely to be the same as their school-age children’s…(flex your way here for the complete story)

 

Do you have what it takes for the ‘08?

It would be an understatement to say that the last year has been pretty rough for real estate industry professionals.  For those able to withstand the barrage of obstacles plaguing us; the subprime credit woes, wholesale lenders shutting their doors, brokers, title and escrow offices also shutting down or reducing staff to the barebones minimum, declining home values throughout most of the nation…the list goes on and on.  Is it too much to handle and does the new year bring new resolutions that include getting a new job?  Some say there are reasons to find a new job in 2008.  

If you can weather the storm and retain your clients while simultaneously prospecting for newer ones, then you’ll come out bigger and better when the storm settles.  Coincidentally, its raining cats and dogs here in California.  I hope you brought your umbrella. 

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