C21AGVoices

Image by thinkpanama via Flickr Real estate is such a quirky industry.  I work with a lot of investors, and most everyone that invests in real estate is looking for the same thing: a good deal.  Actually, even “owner-occupant” buyers now are looking for a good deal.  (Didn’t people used to look for a nice […]

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Foreclosure is a hot topic among the press lately.  It’s hard to turn on the television or open up a newspaper without seeing a story about it. But what’s most interesting about foreclosures is that they appear to be concentrated in just a few parts of the country.  According to the foreclosure-tracking service RealtyTrac, 4 […]

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On the first Friday of every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its Non-Farm Payrolls report.  More commonly, it’s called the “jobs report” and the October’s data is trending with the rest of 2008. After shedding another 240,000 jobs last month, the economy has now put 1.2 million Americans out of work this year and unemployment […]

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The Federal Reserve confirmed what most of us already knew — getting qualified for a “prime mortgage” is increasingly more difficult. In a quartely survey of 84 banks, 75 percent of respondant banks tightened mortgage guidelines over the last 3 months for the most qualified of home loan applicants. “Prime” is a vague term when it […]

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Photo courtesy of creativecommons.org Blogs have become ever popular in the last few years, but lately a cousin of the blog has taken over known as micro blogging. Micro blogging is a shortened form of a regular blog with posts lengthening 24 words or less (for some). Two popular micro blog applications are Twitter and Yammer. […]

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More than a handful would-be home buyers stayed on the sidelines this year, waiting for Election Day to pass.  The prevailing thought was that once the new President-Elect was identified, credit markets will systemically unfreeze and housing markets will return to normal. If history is a guide, this is an unlikely scenario. Election Day doesn’t […]

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According to foreclosure-tracking service RealtyTrac, the foreclosure rate is falling nationwide.  Versus August, foreclosures fell by 12 percent in September 2008 as more than half of the states showed month-over-month improvement.  Most interesting in the data is that several states that led the foreclosure boom in 2007 now appear to be leading the charge out of it. For […]

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Statistics are what you make of them, but sometimes, they can provide good perspective. For example, from its peak in 2005 to its trough in late-2007, the number of “used” homes sold nationwide plunged. In 2005: Roughly 7 million homes sold annually In 2007: Roughly 5 million homes sold annually Through all of 2008, though, […]

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Image by Getty Images via Daylife I admitted earlier that I had totally jumped on the Phillies Bandwagon during the playoff season of Major League Baseball. You may remember that when I was 14 years old, the 1964 Phillies had thrown away a 6 1/2 game lead in the race for the pennant by losing […]

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Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) is a mortgage lender’s insurance policy against highly-leveraged homeowners.  It’s typically required when homeowner equity is less than 20 percent at the time of closing. With PMI defaults up 40 percent over last year, though, private mortgage insurers are taking big losses. They’re also taking outsized steps to prevent additional claims going forward […]

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