Real estate fraud isn’t just happening occasionally in the U.S. It’s happening every day. According to an article by Forbes’ Aly Yale, the FBI reporting nearly $150 million in real estate fraud losses last year, with most of these losses happening because of a hacked email account or an abundance of publicly available data, allowing a fraudster to step in…
Avoiding a Nightmare Contractor We won’t say that in recent years the process of finding a good contractor has become easier. Finding a communicative, astute, responsible contractor is still like finding gold. But home repairs still tend to attract con artists. If you know a few things to look for and avoid, however, you may be spared a less-than-HGTV-happy experience….
SAVVY FLIPPERS KNOW THE SCORE House flipping is not for the faint of heart, and with today’s lack of housing inventory, competition is fiercer than ever. Compared to last year, the biggest difference in 2018 is that the increase in buyers might push home values even higher. In this market, finding a buyer usually isn’t the problem. Finding an affordable…
Myths About Realtors That Need To Go Away People often believe a real estate agent is simply someone who: knows about homes for sale in their area, hammers signs into front yard lawns and makes a slew of money just showing up at an open house. A no-brainer, right? Not quite. In perpetuity, there have been a host of myths…
Voice Activated Personal Assistants are Fun and a Little Scary We made fun of Siri, but then we learned to love her once we found it easier (and safer) to talk into our iPhones instead of typing as we drove. But Siri was just the beginning for voice-activated personal assistants. When Siri first came out, we felt like mini-James Bonds…
Selling Your Home on Your Own? It’s No Walk in The Park It looks like a no-brainer. Spiff up your house, do a little self-staging (well, box up your figurine collections), throw a sign up in your front yard and save yourself thousands of dollars when selling your home. What the typical FSBO (for sale by owner) seller may not…
When Reality Really Means Fantasy in Real Estate TV Shows It’s a no-brainer. You can fold laundry in it, play your own music in the background or walk away from it. Then you can come back 55 minutes later and see the “big reveal” of a home that was renovated on a reality real estate TV network. It’s gorgeous, of…
A Semi-Myth: Rising Tides In Real Estate Values There are time-worn real estate adages that never seem to go away. “Location, location, location” is one of them, and it still applies. But what about the one used in every “fix-and-flip,” or “fix-and-occupy” program on HGTV about buying the worst home in the best neighborhood? For all those experts who push…
Does Remodeling Make Economic Sense? Anyone visiting a weekend open house knows that most for-sale properties today have been “staged” to show them at their best and most appealing. Some would-be home sellers have wondered whether it might be better to go one step beyond staging and do a remodel of their home to increase its value. After all, who’s…
Government programs helping to rebuild after natural disasters Natural disasters, like the storms and devastating wildfires, do far more damage than destroying people’s property and lives. They also disrupt local municipal budgets. Some might say, local bureaucracy is far less important than people’s homes and possessions. These local governments are responsible for: police and fire protection schools roads and…
