URBALO

For the past few months, I have been giving you advice on how to manage a foreclosure situation that you might find yourself in. But what if you are on the other side of the fence and you are constantly trying to find a cheap property to invest in? How would you go about finding a foreclosure property?

1. Check out a couple of the new online services like propertyshark.com, foreclosurefreesearch.com and foreclosure.com . These foreclosure listing sites provide the latest foreclosures in your area and often include the amount owed and the estimated value. Both of these websites provide a free trial so you can test the site out before you commit to their paid service. Very useful websites even though they cost money.
2. Unless you’re an experienced investor, you should skip for now the public foreclosure auctions. These auctions are mainly controlled by financial institutions so there are slim chances that you will get a good deal on a foreclosure property. The online websites actually have a feature that will show the properties that will go into default. During that time there is a brief window to negotiate directly with the property owner which is your chance to get the property before it even hits a public foreclosure auction.
3. First thing you should do is to get in touch with the default property’s owner. If they have a lawyer, feel free to contact them as well. Your goal here is to ask the owner if there is any way to negotiate a purchase of their property before it goes into auction. Remember, DO NOT only negotiate with the lawyer because he basically has no interest to work out a deal before the property goes into foreclosure.
4. If the owner is willing to work out a deal then the next step is to negotiate the price and terms. There are a few occasions when the owner might want to partner up with you. How does it work? Well, you can start by paying the mortgage-backed payments to get the loan out of default. Once you fix up the house and sell it, you give the owner a check for a portion of the profit.

Of course, there are many other way to get a foreclosure property and the amount of websites that offer these kind of properties are increasing every day, but the above points should be a good starting point for you.

While Chicago home prices don’t seem to be affected much by the continuing price decreasing that we see throughought the country, it is still obvious that the housing market continues to be unfavorable to people looking to sell their property.
The median single-family house price in the United States fell to $220,800, which was down 2 percent from a year ago. Condo prices showed some resiliency: At $226,900, they rose 2 percent compared with 12 months ago.

The biggest decline in sales appears to be concentrated in areas that had significant levels of speculative investment, including Nevada, Florida and Arizona,” Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, said in a statement.

Most declines occurred either in once hot markets or Rust-Belt areas clobbered by economic setbacks and job losses, like Detroit and Cleveland.

Regionally, the best performing area was the Northeast, where the median home price rose 3.2 percent to $286,300. In the Midwest, the median price, at $170,800, was up 0.5 percent. Prices in the South fell 3.6 percent to $180,800, and in the West, they dropped 3.8 percent to $338,100. But the top performer house market is  San Jose, Calif. where prices grew 9.4 percent over the past 12 months to $852,500.

A few months ago, we wrote an article on how to save your home if you are in a foreclosure situation. The article had a great impact at that time since the economy was shaking at the latest reports on foreclosure numbers. Yesterday, I was browsing the Money CNN section and I came across an interesting article about a family in Cleveland that managed to dodge the bullet and save their home.

As I have mentioned before, it is always wise to talk to your lender and try to work things out, they are in a position to help you and they would rather have you keep your house than to sell it in a foreclosure auction.

Read the article, it is very inspiring.
When Darlene Stutzman visited the offices of the East Side Organizing Project, a community advocacy group in Cleveland, she didn’t know if she’d be able to keep her home.

She showed up on a Wednesday - “intake day” - when ESOP offers group and individual counseling for borrowers trapped in bad loans. With qualified borrowers, they can also try to work out a compromise with lenders. The Wednesday sessions are well-attended with as many as 150 people showing up at their peak. Cleveland has one of the highest numbers of foreclosures in the nation.

Read Full Article ->

During the housing boom, home sellers were in the driver’s seat with real estate agents circling around their property and they were offered very low commission rates. These times seem to be old gone and the roles have changed a bit.

According to Steve Murray of Real Trend, the average commission rate in 1991 was 6.1%. Ten years later, the average dropped to 5.4 and starting in 2005, the 5% rate was common among realtors. Everyone expected the rate to go even lower but when the housing bubble has burst, many houses found themselves sitting on the market for long periods of time. Therefore, the average commission in 2006 has increased to 5.18% .

According to recent surveys, many home owners believe they can sell their homes quicker by hiring the best real estate agents but those sales people come with a premium. I

n this case, the added percentage might actually help the realtors in the short run and even if the sales volume has dropped, their income might be steady.

As homes stay on the market longer and longer, with more and more of them for buyers to choose from, a growing number of agents aren’t merely getting property details into the Realtor multiple-listing system and hoping for the best. All the technological advances made during the housing boom years - when a low-tech “for sale” sign seemed to be enough - are really being put to use now.

Many realtors decided to focus their attention on real estate blogs or social networking sites. One good example is Facebook which seems to be a very popular advertising method.

Video walk-throughs of homes are also more common - in part thanks to YouTube, which makes it easier to upload the finished product and put it on other sites. If you haven’t tried this, then you really don’t know what you’re missing. The youtube’s users base is extremely large and it is perfect for marketing purposes.

Here is an interesting article that talks about the Realty Market going high-tech

Facebook recently added the ability for anyone to create flyers which is accessible under the advertise link at the bottom of any Facebook page. After creating the flyer, the first thing anyone should do is to check out the cost per impression(CPM). Basically, your flier gets served up in the inventory for the targeted network of your choice.

It kinda works this way:

-if you buy 10,000 fliers in 5 locations over seven days, the flier will be seen in each city 2000 times a day for the full week.

The full cost for this will be $140, not bad at all for that much exposure.

If you have launched a new business, brokerage or a new real estate site, then you could advertise it this way for example.

Here is an example on how Facebook helped increase traffic on a blog.

Rod Boothby from SocialMediaToday.com

Trulia really didn’t show much love to the realtors. Instead the brokers receive most of the attention and tools to market their business. Trulia had offered very little marketing tools to the real estate agents, of course, Trulia Voices is a wonderful way to communicate with potential buyers or sellers but most of the people that visit trulia.com are interested in one thing: to buy properties. Recently they have decided to change that.

With the release of Agent Featured Listings, real estate agents can brand their listings. Even though this first release lacks many other functionalities, it’s a start and at least now all the realtors have the options to add a photo and contact information to their listings.

Agents will have access to a self-service tool to highlight up to 10 listings per month for a monthly subscription fee of $50. For less than the price of a typical newspaper classified ad, agents can now highlight their listings and connect directly to more than 2 million unique users per month.

More information from Trulia’s Blog

There are many upgrades that will simplify your life and boost the saleability of your home but most of the time the simple things are just overlooked. Here are some tips on how to maximize the space in your house and make more more room.

1. Closet organizers - Canvas sorters

The simplest way to expand closet space is to buy sweater cubbies that hang from the closet rod, back-of the-door shoe compartments and storage boxes for the shelf and floor.

Price: $100 to $400 (for an eight-foot-wide closet)

Where to buy: $12 to $22 canvas bags from StacksandStacks.com

2. Closet organizers - Wood system

This setup looks professional, but be ready for a major project. You must first assemble boards into shelves and then hang them on the closet wall. For strength, go with boards that are three-quarters of an inch thick, not five-eighths of an inch, and a wood veneer or at least melamine (white laminate) finish instead of painted particleboard

Price: $400 to $1,000 for melamine and $800 to $1,600 for wood veneer

Where: EasyClosets.com

3. Closet organizers - Metal system

You can arrange these metal shelves and baskets in nearendless ways. European makes like Elfa (sold only at the Container Store) are higher quality than domestic products but pricier.
Metal shelves are easier to install than wood systems. Still, buy an electronic stud finder ($10 to $30) to ensure that your screws hit pay dirt, because the whole heavy array hangs from a single horizontal track

Price: $500 to $2,000

4. Cabinet organizers - Rollout trays

Install one and you’ll never have a hard time reaching the back of a low cabinet.
Look for a wood or chrome-plated steel tray with full-extension glides (so that it pulls out all the way) and at least four screws to hold it in place.

Price: $40 to $100 each

Where: organize.com

5. Cabinet organizers - Drawer inserts

Make all your silverware and odds and ends neat and easy to get to. With adjustable drawer inserts, you can move the dividers around to fit your needs.
Custom drawer inserts cost more but deliver a lot more too. The drawer insert and the dividers are sized to order, so you can accommodate odd-size drawers and supplies.

Price: $10 to $15 and $70 to $250 for a custom divider

Where: KitchenSource.com

6. Cabinet organizers - Corner Susans

This add-on will make that impossible-to-access cornercabinet usable.
Be careful to get the right configuration - full round, pie cut or half moon - for your cabinet’s shape

Price: $150 to $250

Where: Revashelf.com

Number of vacant homes on the market nationwide has reached the 2 million mark. The number of vacant homes for sale rose in the third quarter, according to the latest government reading that casts new harsh light on the weakness of the housing market.

The Census Bureau report puts the number of vacant homes for sale at 2.07 million in the period, up about 2 percent from the second quarter, and 7 percent above year ago levels.

The number is down 5 percent from the record high reading reached in the first quarter, though.

For purposes of comparison for the current situation, imagine the Detroit metropolitan area, which the Census Bureau estimated had 2.08 million households in its 2000 Census. Now picture virtually every house or condo empty, with a for sale sign in the front yard of every home, from inner-city Detroit to its suburbs, all the way to nearby cities such as Flint and Ann Arbor.

There are always some homes vacant and for sale, even in a booming real estate market.

Read Full Article ->

This is a great time for buyers to invest in second homes. Chicago has an abundance of great condos at good prices with great rental and appreciation potential. Besides appreciation and rental income, second homeowners can add to their income with great tax deductions.

Mortgage, taxes and insurance

• Property taxes
• Property insurance
• Flood insurance
• Liability insurance
• Mortgage interest
• Private mortgage insurance (PMI)
• Refinance and closing fees

Homeowner’s association

• Monthly assessments
• Special assessments Read Full Article ->