If you’ve been investing in mortgage pre-foreclosure homes with little success, you may want to look into switching up your game plan and investing in houses with unpaid property taxes instead. Why? One simple reason: they rarely, if ever, are encumbered by a mortgage.

Houses with unpaid property taxes that make it all the way to tax sale have a few things in common.

First of all, they’ve had ample opportunity to be “saved” by their mortgage companies. Normally, if a house has unpaid property taxes and is in danger of being sold at tax sale, the mortgage company will come in and pay the taxes to avoid losing their stake in the property. More often than that, mortgage payments include property tax- so those houses would never end up with unpaid property taxes. (more…)

Private home sellers or those selling by owner are often unaware of the power of a conversation and are losing out on home sales everyday, and sadly they will not know why. Typically the seller who has lost the attention of a potential buyer will have thought this was purely down to the property on offer. In fact in many cases it may have been down to the individual selling the home, blissfully unaware that it was their conversation that lost the sale. I am going to explain how you should converse with a potential buyer and how a seller can have a profound effect on the likelihood of a sale.

You can change someone’s life.

Buying and selling a home is recognised as one of the most stressful things a person can do, get it right and you are on the pathway to happiness, get it wrong and it could be the biggest mistake of your life. Home sellers need to learn that they are in a position of power, a buyer thinks you may have something they want and you could be about to change their lives. No wonder a buyer will hang on to each and every word. (more…)

I think I am going to write the government. I just figured out how to solve a huge problem in today’s economy. I just figured out how to fix the housing market. The answer is to pass a law that nobody in America can rent out a single family house. Renting will only be allowed to apartments.

The only thing you can do with a single family house other than live in it, is to sell it rent-2-own. The reasoning is simple. It will make everything easier. In a standard rental of a single family house, an owner wants to get a cash flow from the rental and they want the tenant to pay on-time every month and never bother them. In comparison, in a standard rental, a tenant wants to get into a house and pay rent and they want the house to function well and be problem free. That is in a perfect world, but what really happens is quite different. The tenant has problems with the house because after all, it is a house and things break in a house. It’s nobody’s fault that the things break (sometimes) but that’s what happens. (more…)

Okay, the real estate market has gone down and a quick rebound is not likely, or possible. Homeowners are finding viable options to continue to make money in the real estate market despite the recent changes. By adapting to the environment, savvy real estate investors are still flipping home properties with a twist. They are purchasing lower cost single family houses in areas of great potential and updating them. However, rather than putting them on the market for sale right away, these flippers are becoming landlords, renting the property to keep building equity and pay the mortgages.

How long are these new landlords renting their flipped houses for? On average, the versatile businesses are renting as long as five years or as short as only two until they can find a home buyer. They are keeping the cash from the rented properties in the short term, but are banking on the idea that an improved real estate market in the future will help them get the profits they are aiming for years down the road. Of course, this type of stalled profitability attracts a limited number of former flippers, but it is an increasing option for home buyers investors. (more…)

Open houses are the most common method for marketing your property. While the majority of sellers see this as an effective way to sell their properties, some find open houses as just a waste of time. Neighbors and curious visitors mob to your house and go around, checking your private living space. Most of these individuals have no intentions of purchasing your house. This can be hazardous, as some of these strangers are in fact thieves, wanting to inspect your house.

Some brokers opt to hold private open houses, where other brokers in the place tour the house, remember their clients. This is helpful for both the buyer and the seller. The buyer acquires info inside about a house from their broker as soon it is positioned on the market. The seller has the advantage of not having to bother about opening their doors to just anybody else along the street. (more…)

When prices are falling, it doesn’t pay to fix up houses. In a previous post, I explained why I am raising rents and selling my rentals when they become vacant and I can’t raise the rents. The same holds true for fixing up houses.

Because most of the houses I own are in “bubble” areas where prices rose very swiftly for 5 years before the current downturn, prices are now dropping about 2%-3% PER MONTH. Suppose I bought a 1500 square food “fixer” for $78,000 that needs about $20,000 and a month to fix it up prior to offering it for sale. (more…)