Real Estate Investing

As Monty Python says, “And now for something completely different.”  We’ve talked about the housing market and you can’t even go online to any news site without reading about the economy.  So to mute the noise coming from the constant buzz about the financial crisis, let’s pull up our bootstraps and do something about it!

I found the Milk Your Money site a couple of months ago, but was waiting for a perfect time to use these 27 tips for around the house!  Try as I might, I can’t limit to just “house” stuff, so here you go!  Some of the 27 tips…

1. Newspaper weeds away: Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers put layers around the plants overlapping as you go over with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.
2. Squirrel Away: To keep squirrels from eating your plants sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn’t hurt the plant and the squirrels won’t come near it.
3. Get Rid of Ants: Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it ‘home,’ can’t digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don’t have the worry about pets or small children being harmed! (Also try dry Grits, when the ants eat the dry grits, the fluid in their stomachs will cause the grits to expand blowing up the ants and the colony.)

Read more here!  And visit the whole Milk Your Money site to see tips on saving gas money, dealing with your cell phone company, what to do with your IRA’s, and more!

PS - Here’s another site that says grits don’t work on ants!

October wasn’t a good month overall for real estate, except for the buyers who snagged thousands of great deals thanks to the sliding house values we’ve seen this past year.

According to the National Association of Realtors and as reported by MSNBC.com, existing home sales dropped by 3.1 percent in October.

Nationwide sales of existing homes fell more than expected last month, as economic fears made buyers leery even though prices plunged to the lowest level in more than four years.

The National Association of Realtors said Monday that sales of existing homes fell 3.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.98 million units in October, from a downwardly revised pace of 5.14 million in September.

My own sales in October are typically strong, but like the rest of the country they too were down somewhat in 2008.

Following this same pattern, new home construction has also slowed to where it was 50 years ago,

Construction of new homes plunged last month to the lowest level on records going back nearly 50 years as U.S. builders slashed production while Wall Street nosedived.

While the “experts” are saying the decline is unexpectedly large, I view it as a necessary evil to level the market.  The number of houses available now far exceed the number of buyers.  This is one of the reasons home prices are dropping - ye olde supply v. demand economics are well into play.

On the flip side, fewer sales at mega stores like Lowes and Home Depot, fewer jobs for workers at these stores and at construction sites, few manufacturing jobs making nails, light fixtures, etc. have trickled down and is causing our economy great pain.  But reflecting to 50 years ago, home sales did recover then… and they will again.  Patience, grasshopper.

Photo by Lee Coursey through Flickr Creative Commons.

What thoughts have been in this head of mine these past few days?  The headline says it all:  Red Convertibles, Twilight, and Foreclosures.

Red Convertibles

My daughter is in the first Christms parade of the holiday season tomorrow and her baton twirling school needed to find three convertibles for the “queens” to ride in.  Real estate offers so many opportunities for people willing to be involved in their community, stay connected, and be generous with your time.  I think that I volunteer so much helped me in my efforts to locate two red convertibles for the team within 10 minutes.

Twilight

What teenage girl isn’t talking about the new movie “Twilight” released to the big screen at midnight last night?  I confess I’ve read all four books in the series and am looking forward to the movie.  I thought I was going to miss tonight’s show because I have to pick up a red convertible, but my friend and the fellow agent who owns it just informed me that he’ll drive it up to Springfield, Tennessee for tomorrow’s parade.  He’s a great agent!  That’s as close as I can come to making it real estate related, but I’m all aboard the Twilight bandwagon!

Foreclosures

Finally, foreclosures have been on the minds of hundreds of thousands of people.  It looks like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going to offer some relief to homeowners nearing foreclosure over the holidays. 

Fannie Mae said about 10,000 households would be affected, while Freddie Mac said the changes would affect about 6,000 borrowers who are facing foreclosure. The change does not apply to vacant homes.

I’d like to see more than 16,000 families helped but unless a moratorium is announced by the Feds, it’s unlikely that others will be spared the trauma of eviction.

On that note, I caution you to be wary of the video in which former Vice President Candidate Sarah Palin pardons an Alaskan turkey this weekend.  Have a good one!
 

Convertible photo courtesy of szlea through Flickr Creative Commons.

Twilight photo by Brewed Fresh Daily, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.