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Unlocking future home-price gains

By , Friday, November 13, 2009.

Tom Glassanos is one creative techie. He also happens to have a touch of the Midas, so it wouldn't hurt to bet alongside him.

In the mid-1990s, the high-tech entrepreneur created one of the earliest Internet banking application businesses, which he eventually sold to PeopleSoft Inc. Glassanos may have been unemployed, but his inventive mind was still at work. In 2000, he launched a new company to automate business payments for big organizations including what he says was the largest settlement network for global businesses. In 2007, JPMorgan Chase snapped up that enterprise and Glassanos was out of work once again.  more...

A beef with Realtor association blogs

By Teresa Boardman, Thursday, November 12, 2009.
Flickr image by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxtongue/24720422/">Foxtongue</a>.

Over the years Realtor associations have expressed interest in starting blogs, and some have followed through. I have been watching the association blogs. It is hard to get them off the ground and to keep them going.

Some associations rely on agent volunteers to write, and others rely on staff or some combination of the two.

I went searching on the Internet looking for blogs written by associations and found several. Most don't appear to get much traffic or have a clearly defined audience.  more...

Must-haves when buying from builder

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Thursday, November 12, 2009.
Flickr photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/minidriver/423349158/" target=blank>sciondriver</a>.

Q: I am a first-time homebuyer in the New York metro area. I am considering purchasing a new condo in one of the boroughs, where most of what I am looking at is new construction. If I am buying a new-construction condo, is there any real need or benefit to having a Realtor represent me?

A: Short answer? Yes. Now for the longer answer.

Here's a hypothetical. You're a novice poker player -- in fact, you've never played a game before in life. And you're playing in the World Series Olympiad Playoffs ...  more...

Favoring families over frat boys

By Janet Portman, Thursday, November 12, 2009.

Q: For the past three years, we have been renting out our summer cottage for two- or three-day overnight periods to a group of university boys. We were given their Greek name, which we interpreted to be a Greek honorary group. This is a relatively new fraternity and when we began renting to them, we could find little information about them.

During a recent rental, our neighbors became concerned because the boys were conducting some kind of a ritual on our deck involving chanting, robes and candles (I believe it was a new membership ceremony). We now know that this is a fraternity for gay, homosexual and progressive men.  more...

Buyer $5,000 short: How to close the gap

By Bernice Ross, Thursday, November 12, 2009.

DEAR BERNICE: We need $237,900 to pay off our first mortgage and to cover closing costs. We have an offer from some buyers who qualify for a total purchase price of $233,000. We have to move because of my job change. We have the money for the downpayment on our next house. If we take this offer we will have to use part of our downpayment money to close the deal. That will probably put us short on our next house. Our agent says we should be thankful we have a preapproved buyer who can actually close the deal. Do you have any suggestions? --Mark L.

DEAR MARK: First, if you have a preapproved buyer who can definitely close the transaction, it would be very smart to take the offer, even if it's $4,900 less than what you need to pay off the loans and closing costs.  more...

Debt collectors must play by rules

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Wednesday, November 11, 2009.
Flickr image by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/hikingartist/3000884104/" target=blank>HikingArtist.com</a>.

In the case Edwards v. Niagara Credit Solutions Inc., debtor Brenda Edwards owed money to creditor Consumer Shopping Network. The creditor retained Niagara Credit Solutions, a collection agency, to recoup the money owed by Edwards. A collection agency calls and writes debtors to collect debts, and is governed by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).

Niagara Credit Solutions made more than 12 calls to Edwards over a four-month period, leaving voice messages when she failed to answer. Each message stated the debtor's name, the name of the individual calling, the phone number to which the return call should be made and an account number to reference.  more...

The runaway real estate bus

By Kris Berg, Wednesday, November 11, 2009.
Flickr photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/safaris/160601256/" target=blank>safaris</a>.

Stop the bus. I want to get off.

I find myself having a moment like this at least once a month, a moment where it all starts to feel just a smidge overwhelming. This morning I was having yet another anxiety attack, and I blame it on my feed reader.

There were the links to the approximate 6,800 articles on the extension of the homebuyer tax credit, of course.  more...

Insulation advice varies by climate

By Bill and Kevin Burnett, Wednesday, November 11, 2009.

Q: My husband is building an addition to our home in the San Francisco Bay Area and was told by the city building inspector that he installed the flooring insulation incorrectly.

We installed the paper side facing the soil; he wants my husband to either remove the paper vapor barrier or turn the insulation around so the vapor barrier is against the floor. To do this we have to remove the netting that supports the insulation and reverse the insulation batts.

From your article, it appears that moisture comes from the ground, not the building, and we installed the insulation correctly. Can you give us your opinion?  more...

5 ways to avoid mover's remorse

By Mary Umberger, Wednesday, November 11, 2009.
Flickr photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/akeg/3937000167/" target=blank>akeg</a>.

Anybody who has ever moved to an unfamiliar area -- a new neighborhood in one's own city or a town 500 miles away -- may have experienced an "I wish I'd known that before I moved here" moment.

It's not just the new house -- it's what might be around it. Whether it's something as unsettling as discovering that a leaking underground storage tank is just blocks away or merely as disappointing as finding that the nearest public park is too far away for the kids to walk to, there are myriad quality-of-life issues that a prospective homebuyer needs to factor into a purchase decision.  more...

Homebuyer optimism dodges reality

By Tom Kelly, Wednesday, November 11, 2009.

Is there too much excitement about the recent gains in the housing market? Can the jump in sales figures this past summer truly be sustained?

Some of the nation's foremost housing experts question some national data and trends and are wary about the number of adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) that are scheduled to adjust in the next nine months.  more...

Think like a millionaire

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, November 10, 2009.
Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9780446537834.htm" target=blank>Hachette Book Group</a>.

By now, most personal finance book aficionados are familiar with the Lifestyles of the Rich and Not-Usually-Famous genre exemplified by "The Millionaire Next Door." These titles tend to be equal parts counterintuitive voyeurism ("75 percent of millionaires drive a bucket and hand-wash their own undies) and advice on how to get where the books' subjects are. ("If you drive a bucket and hand-wash your own undies, you, too can be on the path to millions!")

"The Richest Man in Town," written by Worth Magazine founder W. Randall Jones, sticks to the formula of providing interesting tidbits about the lives of his subjects and their path to wealth, and spinning the common threads into a fabric of wealth-building advice. However, there is something inherently compelling about the approach of the book that flips the formulaic genre on its ear.  more...

Timing a holiday home sale

By Bernice Ross, Tuesday, November 10, 2009.
Flickr photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fauxen/337884210/in/set-72157594447727252/" target=blank>Fauxen</a>.

DEAR BERNICE: My husband just received a job promotion that will require us to move from Virginia to South Carolina. He starts his new position in January. Our girls are ages 2 and 4, so we don't have to worry about when we sell in terms of their preschool.

I was wondering if it would be smart to list our home over the holidays or to wait until after the first of the year. We have owned our home for 10 years. It's in a good school district. There are not many houses for sale in our area, so we're thinking it might be smart to sell sooner rather than later. What's your opinion? --Cheryl S.  more...

Shorter URLs and real estate SEO

By Gahlord Dewald, Tuesday, November 10, 2009.

One of the tricky parts about using social networking sites for marketing your real estate business is that you don't make the rules about how they work. For example, one of the most ubiquitous features of social networking sites is "status updates." These are blurbs of text that tend to be updated frequently and let the rest of the social network know what you're up to.

The length of status updates tends to be limited, usually 140 characters. This is great, except when you want to publicize a link via your status update. Let's look at how two powerful marketing tactics can collide and then use a tool to do something about it.  more...

Townhome repairs no laughing matter

By Barry Stone, Tuesday, November 10, 2009.

DEAR BARRY: We own a townhome and are trying to deal with the fools who run the homeowners association (HOA). Last month, we had a major roof leak that wiped out our master bedroom ceiling. The HOA is supposed to maintain the roof, but they've neglected it for years. Now that their negligence has damaged our home, they refuse to pay for interior repairs. They say the interior is our responsibility. A lot they know about responsibility. At the last HOA board meeting, we requested that they pay to replace our ceiling, and they dismissed this as though it was a joke. What can we do to get some fair treatment? --Karen

DEAR KAREN: The HOA is in no position to be laughing. Instead, they should rethink the situation. Under ordinary circumstances, interior repairs are paid by the homeowners.  more...

Hyperlocalism, face time and dollar signs

By Bernice Ross, Monday, November 9, 2009.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging -- somehow if you're not online, you're hopelessly outdated. To succeed in today's highly competitive market, you need Web 2.0 skills, but they must also be coupled with good old-fashioned basic sales skills.

What's old is new once again. Good old-fashioned sales skills are more important than ever. Where do you stack up on these basics that are critical for success in 2010?  more...

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