Real Estate and Homes - What to Expect When Attending an Open House

As a first time home buyer in Ahwatukee you are likely to encounter numerous first-time experiences. The process of buying your first home can be exhilarating and daunting all at the same time. During this process you may work with a real estate agent who will make appointments for you to view various homes for sale in the area that meet your needs. You may also have the opportunity to attend open houses. If you have never attended an open house, you may not know what to expect.

An open house provides multiple prospective buyers with the opportunity to view a property that is for sale during a window of time on a specified date. For example, an open house might be held from 2pm to 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. During that time real estate agents and buyers are encouraged to tour the home. The sellers may or may not be present during the open house.

When you first arrive you will likely be greeted by a real estate agent and asked to sign in. This will allow the agent to follow-up with you later regarding your interest in the home. In many cases you may also be provided with a flyer or brochure that details information about the home. Many real estate agents conduct tours of the home to new arrivals, while others encourage interested buyers to wander through the home and inspect it.

Refreshments are often provided at an open house as way to encourage buyers to feel at home and mingle while they are there. Generally, there will be a real estate agent present who will be able to answer questions you may have, but you should not expect to have the agent's undivided attention.

Do not be afraid to poke about, open closet doors and ask questions. Even if there are others present, including the sellers, you should take full advantage of the opportunity to find out as much as possible about the property. Purchasing a home is a big decision and an even bigger investment, so take full advantage.

If there are several open houses being held in the area where you want to buy on the same day you may find it helpful to carefully schedule your outings that day so that you can take advantage of the opportunity to attend as many as possible and find out what is available in the area before making a decision.

With that said; however, you should be prepared for the fact that there are often several prospective buyers who attend an open house and if the property is highly sought after more than one offer may be submitted on the property on the day of the open house. As a result, if you are interested in the property you should not delay in making an offer or you may find that it already has a contract on it by the time you get around to submitting an offer.

2010 RMLS Statistics For Eugene Real Estate and Surrounding Areas

The final 2010 RMLS stats are in. When we compare the market activity for 2010 with that of 2009, we can see that close sales were up 1.8%! That is great news given that if we were to compare December 2010 to Dec 2009 closed sales were down 6.1% New listings fell to 19.2% and pending sales decreased to 2.2%. If I led with that one could get a false impression. I'm not sure if it will be true for other offices or not, but at my office, Hybrid Real Estate, we have seen a large uptick of "paper" coming in. That to me says that buyers are writing offers this January. They may not all close, but at least the conversation is being started.

Back to statistics. If you compare the average sales price over the last year we can see that it is down 3.9% for the year (2.1% if looking at the median price). When comparing the average sales price of December 2010 with that of November, we can see that the average sales price grew from $202,900 to $205,800 a 1.4% increase. When looking at our inventory we are up from last year at 8.1 months. With that said we did decrease from 9.2 month of inventory the month prior.

The bid appreciation winners of December 2010 were Mohawk Valley at 23.2%, West Lane County Properties at 4.8% and the Coburg Area at 4.4%. We were down overall this month and these areas do not have a lot of volume exchanging hands right now so these numbers to me are a little misleading. Who was hit the hardest with depreciation? Junction City with a 16.6% depreciation (ouch), Pleasant Hill area down 13.3%, Danebo down 9.8%, and River Road down 7.1%.

My beloved Ferry Street Bridge remains consistent at.2% appreciation. Neighboring Gilham continues to suffer down 8.2%. Springfield is hanging in there down just.7% in December. I expect more of the same in 2011, but only time will tell. Consumer Confidents (in the real estate market anyway) seems to be getting stronger. With that said real estate loans are getting harder to obtain and I expect interest rates to start creeping back up. As I have stated in the past, if you can financially afford to do so "Now is the time to buy!" I hate owning rentals (although I have owned several over the years). If I am looking to invest in some cash flow properties again you better bet that there are some deals out there that are just too good to pass up.

Two Ways to Passively Invest in Real Estate and Earn a High Return

First, before we begin discussing the two ways to passively invest in real estate and get a high return on the money you do invest, I want to acknowledge that should you need to step in and protect your investment, it may become an active investment for you (or the team you might hire). Also, the selection of the investment up front should be an active process. However, excluding those two possible active roles, I would consider this a passive real estate investing strategy. With that full disclosure, let's continue with our discussion of the two ways to passively invest.

First, you could become a private lender.

Private lenders usually lend money secured by a particular property. They earn a return on the money they invest. Payment arrangements can range from monthly payments, to quarterly payments, to yearly payments and even to lump sum payments when the property is sold. You may receive interest only payments for these payments with the entire principal amount to be paid at the end of the investment period. Or, the agreement might include interest and some of the principal so that over time the entire balance of the loan is paid off like more conventional, amortized loans.

Typically when you become a lender on the property you are receiving a set amount of interest on the money you loan and not part of the profit produced in the deal. Using an oversimplified example excluding all discussion of transaction costs, if the loan lasted one year and you had loaned $100,000 at 8% per year you might earn $8,000 on that investment.

Second, you could become an equity partner.

Instead of lending money secured by the property, you may want to find a professional real estate investor and come to an agreement on how to partner on the deal. You may be providing the money and/or credit to buy the property and the real estate investor would be responsible for the activity part of the arrangement.

With this type of investment you may, in some cases, receive interest on the money you have put into the deal as well as part of the profits. Or, you may just receive part of the profit from the deal.

Again giving an oversimplified example excluding transaction and other costs, if you loaned $100,000 in exchange for half of the profit on the deal and the deal took a year from start to finish, but the profit on the deal, after all expenses, was $30,000, you might make $15,000 on the deal and the real estate investor would receive $15,000 as well.

Structuring win-win deals like this is fun and can be extremely rewarding if done correctly. There are almost limitless possible ways to structure them depending on the needs of the people involved. Some lenders might want monthly income. Others may want to maximize capital growth. Some real estate investors might need living expenses while investing the time to manage the project; others might have alternative sources for that. Part of what makes the process of structuring these enjoyable is finding solutions that truly are win-win for all involved.

A Flipping House Tip For Real Estate and Property Investors Who Are At Home Just Doing Deals

Flipping houses can be very profitable. Mainly because of the leverage the transaction provides. A tip to remember is to avoid seeing the prospective house through rose colored glasses. Personal preferences should be left at home, because all that matters is the numbers to a successful home flipper.

If you love real estate, it is an expensive taste to have because the time to be admiring of properties is when the work is done and you are shopping for your own personal habitat. When you have the fiscal capacity to have the luxury of actually enjoying the property for yourself. Until then you are strictly shopping for a market. You are searching for what you know your specialized niche want and need, which brings us to the tip I think will improve your prospects and your results greatly.

I am affiliated with a great many investors and a good proportion are active real estate investors. Some focus in more specialized areas like art, precious stones and sea going vessels. What I noticed about my property investor friends is many spend a lot of time searching. Does this sound familiar? I have seen many give up after a few months of this, quipping that they just can't find the property they are looking for.

In actual fact, this is an attitudinal problem and not a supply problem of appropriate flip deals. If you would repeat this with me as you read and remember it in your real estate career, we can both sleep sounder. Ready? "I am seeking to uncover a profit" Again! "I am seeking to uncover a profit"

Good, I feel a little better now. Now that I know you have said these words in your head, I know it might bounce around for a few minutes while you read the rest of this article.

You see, noticing imperfections in the property yourself will weaken your deal. Looking at the unmown grass and the falling apart letter box will make you willing to take less. The point is grass can be mown and letter boxes can be repaired fairly cheaply.

A property flipper, an expert property flipper deals in numbers. He can translate emotive factors like a messy porche and a garage full of junk into cold hard figures, like $230 and 1 days work. A retail buyer will look at these things and turn their nose up at the entire offer, no matter how cheap it is, they will subconciously tie in a garage full of junk with, "there is something wrong with the entire house" "Who knows whats wrong with it" Retail buyers want to buy emotively. Wholesale buyers want to buy logically.

As a flipper of properties, you want to buy wholesale and sell retail. However there is an imbetween. What if you don't have much money to do your first deal. You don't have the cash to put down in escrow. This is what many of the quitters I mentioned above suffered from but did not recognize it. They had some money, only a little, and they felt they could maybe do a flip if they found exactly the right property.

If they recognized their situation they would have taken my advice, the advice I am about to offer you. Yes there are retail buyers, yes there are wholesale buyers who are cashed up. Then there is the hybrid. This buyer has little money but plenty of time and enormous enthusiasm.

A hybrid buyer usually sells to a wholesaler. For example a mom and pop investor is a wholesaler. They want to buy and rent out properties for long term capital gains and a little cash flow. So they generally are very picky about price, but not so picky that they would not pay a few percentage points over wholesale. Thats where you come in.

You do not buy the property, which immediately means you don't incur stamp duty and a host of costs that the wholesaler will incur. All you are doing is finding properties and presenting them to the wholesaler in a way that it makes it appealing for them to buy. Things like a list of likely repairs and the estimated costs, all ordinary fees and charges and practically everything about the property on a fact sheet.

You will need a few special forms that commits the seller, so your wholesaler cannot go around you and take your 5% or so, but apart from that you are a free agent.

The real tip is this. These mom and pop wholesale buyers are just one type of buyer. They buy multiple properties per year not just one. You must foster links with maybe 20-30 of these wholesalers. You should keep in constant touch with them and offer them fact sheets nearly every week. Not all will be ready to buy when you have something to sell, but sometimes, you will hit one in just the right way and even if they are imbetween deals, they may still take yours on too because it was right up their alley.

Of course, the real beauty of this is that if you fail to interest anybody, you lose nothing. The 10 days or whatever you negotiated to control the property has passed and you failed to find a buyer, nobody lost a thing and you had a chance to pick up a quick and clean $5,000 to $40,000 in a weeks work. It's a numbers game.

A car, some gas and a newspaper is all you need.

How To Buy More Houston Area Real Estate Investment Properties Than You Can Handle

There are several ways to buy houses: Houston foreclosures from the downtown auction, Houston pre-foreclosures by mailing to a list of those about to go to auction, or even from the primary website for Realtors (HAR.com).

But what are the top investors in Houston doing to find bargain priced properties? Well, they use several different methods, that's for sure. But one method in particular has been used regularly by EVERY top investor I've spoken to, including myself.

So what is this method? It's buying properties from OTHER Houston real estate investors at huge discounts.

But first, some vocabulary for you: When one investor sells to another investor at a discount, it's called "Wholesaling". The person who buys (you) is called a "Rehabber" if they plan to fix and resell it or "Landlord" if they plan to fix and rent it.

Most new real estate investors don't realize how powerful this source of deals (other investors) can be. Heck, most don't realize that wholesaling even goes on! "Why would another Houston real estate investor sell a house to me for dirt cheap?," they say.

Well, the reason is that the selling investor wants to make a quick buck by selling "as is" quickly an easily with no hassles. The seller doesn't want to deal with fixing it, marketing it, and eventually selling it to a retail buyer.

That's where you step in: You buy the property, fix it, re-sell it, and make the big profits.

I have wholesaled a number of properties in may day, and all of the buyers (investors) made some good money by fixing and re-selling the houses. And I was happy to get some quick $$.

But my best profits have come when I bought from a Wholesaler and fixed and sold the property. I still do a combo of wholesaling, rehabbing, and renting. I wholesale when I need a small amount of fast cash. And I rehab when I'm willing to wait 3-5 months to make the big bucks.

Ok, now you know the basics! So the next logical question is, "Where do I find these wholesale deals?" Fortunately for you, I've become a master at rounding up these wholesale deals, so I'm qualified to tell you.

Just do these four things consistently:

1. Go to most of the RICH Club (Realty Investment Club of Houston) meetings (richclub.org) so that you can get to know some of the active investors in Houston. Find out what deals they are wholesaling. The RICH Club has 20+ meetings per month now.

2. Call ads in the newspaper (Houston Chronicle, Greensheet, Thrifty Nickele, etc.) that say "We buy houses". These ads are always placed by investors. Ask them if the wholesale properties and which properties they're selling.

3. Search the Internet for deals: You can use Craig's List (craigslist.org), the Rich Club's website (richclub.org), Linda Purcell's group (finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/lindas_realty_investments_group), Joshua Berg's list (houstonrealty.us) and more.

4. Follow up with everyone that wholesales deals on a weekly basis with phone calls and emails.

That's about it! But it actually does take a lot of time an energy. I should know. I spend much of my week doing the things above. But it's worth it!

Happy (and profitable) investing,

Real Estate and Property Rights, a Cautionary Tale That Is a True Story

As a child I received a piece of advice from my mother. She told me never sell your mineral rights or your water rights on a piece of real estate you own. She also said don't buy a piece of land where those rights don't convey.

This may not be the kind of advice little kids usually receive from their moms, but it is very good advice.

My mom was the daughter of a farmer. People tend to think of farmers as ignorant rubes. In fact good farmers have to be pretty savvy about property legalities and scientific matters like soil conservation, plant propagation, animal care and biology, too.

As an adult I was a Master Gardener with our local county Agricultural Extension office. In my training course we learned that plants need somewhere between 16 to 18 minerals to be present in soil to grow. Most farms use fertilizers that include only 3 minerals, nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous.

About 14 years ago I read the annual report of a large mineral company. In it they said that when they mined minerals from a piece of land it is so devoid of nutrients that without intensive efforts to restore the fertility of the land they have mined nothing will grow for 1,000 years or more.

Plants cannot grow without minerals.

Many less educated people who farmed in the US and other places sold their mineral rights to this company. They believed they could make money from the sale of the minerals and still farm the land they owned.

In fact the land became profoundly infertile after the minerals were gone. Worse still, the company knew what would happen.

Was it deceptive?

Of course it was.

Mom, the farmer's daughter, knew what she was telling me was important.

With oil producers, oil leases and "fracking" it's more important than ever. Ask yourself, "What will this do to the land?"

This is an important issue for other property owners, too.

Many developers of subdivisions and gated communities reserve the rights to minerals, water and other resources when they sell lots. It might be a real shock to look out the window of your dream home and see an oil derrick pumping away, or someone digging a mine.

To protect yourself find good legal representation and learn all you can about property rights. The risk is, you could discover a very bad surprise down the road, particularly as natural resources become even more scarce.

Zoning Your Real Estate - Commercial Property Land Can Be Somewhat Challenging

Proper zoning for the type subdividing you have in mind is critical! Eighty percent of the counties in the US having zoning of some kind. Some people look at this as an advantage as it controls the amount and quality of the growth in an area, while others look at it as an infringement of their rights as owners. The counties have zones which are created by the planning or zoning commission and some of the basic zones are; residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural, with each one having several categories of restrictions. There can be restrictions on the minimum number of acres per parcel that you can subdivide your property into, limits on the number, size, or purpose of buildings, number of homes and population density per acre, etc.

New zoning is not normally that much different from the type activities or zoning already in the place for a neighborhood. But there are stories of people who have owned their property for many years and suddenly are restricted as to hat they can do with it! And without compensation! Zoning laws for particular areas cause some problems but their absence can also. You may have a beautiful tract of land and unexpectedly have a paper mill built near you, or have mobile homes or very small houses appear nearby, or a stock car track! Who knows? Personally I prefer zoning restrictions as long as they aren't greatly restrictive. If you are involved in real estate, it is beneficial to stay informed of the present zoning laws and proposed changes, as well as other county activities, such as planning for new roads or industrial parks, etc.

Once zoning laws are in effect, the county building and health departments ensure they are abided by as they won't issue building or sewage permits until they have analyzed your proposed building or subdivision plans. Should you locate a parcel of land that you like but it has the wrong zoning for your plans, there is a possibility that you might get a particular zoning changed. Once I was successful in getting the zoning changed from residential to commercial on a large building lot my wife and I had acquired, which allowed us to sell it to a doctor for a new office. But it was a great deal of trouble and was certainly time consuming. After I submitted the request to the planning commission, we had to get signatures from property owners in the neighborhood stating that they didn't object to the zoning change, and present them to the commission. Once they received the signatures it still took forever as it had to be advertised and presented at a council meeting. But if finally worked. If a Realtor tells you that the zoning can be changed or a variance received on a particular property, I would be cautious as it is difficult, and sometimes impossible.