Real Estate Investing

Google may be entering the mortgage business.  This will give Zillow and other online mortgage giants a run for their money, but I still maintain my stand that it’s always better to find someone local who knows the area, knows the market, and knows the agent so they don’t dare add on unnecessary fees to close.

Check out the latest celebrity real estate activity here.

Realtor Jack from Evanston, Illinois commented on an article about short-sales messing up the housing market in Chicago.  His numbers didn’t add up the same as what’s apparently happening in the Windy City.  This bring us to the absolute truth that all real estate is local.  In one city on the outskirts of Nashville, short-sales, bank-owned, and HUD housing made up 30-35% of properties listed.  In other areas, less than 1% are distress sales.  The homeowners in the high foreclosure community have been hit really hard and are struggling simply to get showings, but other townships are still fairly healthy.  Remember, location location location when you buy!

Speaking of short sales, the Bloodhoundblog has a great post about investors buying these properties.

But the truth is, speculators are the garbage collectors of capitalism. They come in and clean up messes they did not create, returning productive value to underperforming assets.

It you’re looking for a villain in these stories, look to the borrower, to the lender or just to the vicissitudes of life. But it is the speculators who are going to bring the real estate market back to a viable state.

Finally, Shakhammer recently posted a video of the trials and tribulations a customer went through to buy and install his own water heater.  It IS a long video, but gives the Sears Company some strong, logical advice.  (I hope this link works today!)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF4CqjvSCmA]

Photo from Huffington Post.

There was an incident in my neighborhood yesterday evening.  A neighbor telephoned because two enormous pigs showed up in her backyard and she was trying to find the owner.  After much ado about the future pork chops, the owner was located and the pigs made it home without being barbequed.

Whether your neighbors drive you crazy because their roosters crow in the wee hours of the morning before daylight, their cats leave muddy footprints all over your car, mean dogs roaming in a pack, or their dog barks all night every night, that’s still not as bad as other neighbors.

After more than 10 years of complaining to the police, members of the city council, and the actual noise-maker, neighbors finally called the local television station’s “That’s Messed Up” segment to see if anything could be done.  The reporter said on his site, 

Almost on cue, through jittery camera work, pointing toward the source of his consternation, you hear the cacophonous thunder of a high octane engine. At first it roars, then it consumes more fuel and the accelerator forces open the hungry carburetor. The thunder intensifies into rapid pulses, shrieking sonic booms, like an platoon of M-16’s firing indiscriminately. If there was a DB meter pointed at the tree line, it would have burst.

The neighbor would not back down in order to restore the peace, however the news finally got the attention of the Metro Codes office which issued him a citation for having an unlicensed car in the driveway.

I’m so lucky that our neighbors have been mostly decent, hard-working, respectful people, but if they were bad I’d probably just go talk to them first before doing something more drastic.  How do you handle bad neighbors?