Drum roll please….

The top housing market in the U.S. in 2017 will be metro Phoenix, according to a new realtor.com forecast. It’s about time. The Valley’s steady growth in sales and priceincreases, tighter new home market and short supply of foreclosures make it one of the healthiest in the country. Plus wise housing analyst's who track home sales and trends every day state last year that 2017 would be the big year for the Phoenix-area housing market. Realtor.com, a national real estate website, is predicting Valley home prices to climb 5.9 percent, and sales to jump by 7.2 percent. That’s not the biggest projected price increase on its list of top 10 markets in 2017, but it’s the biggest sales increase.

It makes sense since one of the…

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Seasoned investors seeking their road to wealth will readily acknowledge that the easiest and surest path to long term wealth is through holding a portfolio of houses. And the best way to keep your houses is using the lease options. To appreciate how important lease options are to your financial prosperity, it is important to first having an understanding of what a lease option is.

Lease options as an exit strategy may or may not result in the actual sale of your property. You are renting the house out to someone and giving them an option to later buy it. They have a rental agreement with you and then they pay you additional money in exchange for the right to purchase the property at some point during their lease. It is customary to charge 3-5% of the…

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To anticipate the impact of the 55+ age population on the nation's housing, Freddie Mac commissioned a survey of older Americans on their attitudes toward their current and future housing options. The survey sample included 5914 individuals 55 years or older with a subsample of 4886 homeowners. Here are some of the key findings:

  • Two-thirds of the homeowners are satisfied with their homes and communities and want to age in place.
  • However, many of those same homeowners are not sure they will be able to afford the retrofitting their homes will require as they grow older. Other studies indicate the remainder of our respondents may be underestimating the need for retrofitting.
  • Many respondents want to age in place but in a different place from…

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  Permit requirements. They’re just more ways for the city to nickel-and-dime you to death, right? And the city’s being too invasive by caring whether you want to replace your overhead light fixture with a ceiling fan, right again?

Understandable feelings, yes, but before you get too worked up, realize that cities usually have solid reasons for requiring permits. Obtaining a permit means that someone knowledgeable will review your plans and help spot mistakes before you begin the work.

If you’ve made improvements without a permit, don’t be surprised when you get a big, fat denial letter from your insurance company when something happens and you want to cash in. You know the phrase “You don’t know what you don’t know”? Well, that’s the way it…

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By definition, a real estate exit strategy is a contingency plan that one executes to either dispose of or divest from a position or interest in real estate once a certain timeline is passed, a status is attained, a circumstance occurs, or a transaction is finalized. Sound business acumen dictates a real estate investor must have an exit strategy or strategies whether or not he or she is seeking a certain deal or planning to pursue a chosen real estate niche. Equally sound business judgement requires a consideration of all contingencies, positive and negative, within any business planning and prior to any acquisition or obligation incurred.

Here is what I look at when “Choosing an Exit Strategy”. Focusing on the three strategic exiting components of…

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Feng shui practitioners believe the ancient Chinese art plays a role in everything we do, from helping us feel balanced and happy in our daily lives to changing how the energy circulates in our homes. But there’s more to achieving good feng shui than just furniture placement. Color feng shui, specifically, focuses on how color adds to the practice of feng shui. Feng Shui for Mind, Body, Spirit, Space, says it’s a lot more involved than heading to your closest hardware store and picking out some paint chips. Always make the connection between the emotional underpinnings of the clients’ challenges.

Whether you’re selecting colors for your new Boca Raton, FL, real estate or think your San Antonio, TX, home needs an update before you list it for sale, take…

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Here are three serious considerations to evaluate before you determine whether to pursue a home purchase.

The old real estate cliché doesn’t name this quality as tops for nothing. Unless you plan to take a unique or historic home off its foundation, you can't change location. If a home is on a busy intersection, across from a shopping plaza, or within earshot of the freeway, take major note. That home will always be valued at significantly less than a similar home nearby. Unless you’re willing to sacrifice to get into the school district or neighborhood of your dreams, keep looking. Once you snag a good location, nobody can ever take that away from you.

home with a tiny kitchen closed off from the rest of the house is much less desirable today than…

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Home staging doesn’t have to be expensive, yet many home sellers – and real estate agents, for that matter – don’t opt to put the property’s best foot forward before going to market. According to the 2015 Profile of Home Staging by the National Association of Realtors, 34 percent of seller’s agents stage all homes, but 44 percent of agents surveyed suggest to only de-clutter and fix property faults.

This suggests there’s a real disconnect between what agents believe home staging actually is, because those suggestions are only a part of the entire home staging process. Home staging is the act of preparing and showing a property for sale. While some staging projects may be pricey – like fixing decades-old repairs that have been neglected or furnishing…

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The real estate market fluctuates often, making it tough to predict whether the market will favor buyers or sellers when it’s your turn to buy. Especially if you’re shopping for real estate in San Francisco, CA, or another market that currently favors sellers, you need to know some tricks of the trade to help ensure you don’t make any mistakes. Buyers in a seller’s market can get what they want, but they need to bring their “A” game — buying a house in a hot market isn’t for the indecisive. Here are six common mistakes many buyers make — mistakes that you can learn to avoid — when shopping in a seller’s market. 

1.Not making your best offer:
The drive to buy what we want for as little money as possible is practically in our DNA. So when most people…

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Shopping for a mortgage became easier in early October when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau began mandating that lenders provide a new, simplified disclosure form to help consumers compare home loans. This disclosure (see below) is most useful after you've found the home you want and need a solid estimate of borrowing costs from a variety of lenders. But before you get to that stage, you'll need to prove to a seller that a bank will lend you what you need to close on the deal. To avoid miscommunication snarls, you have to understand the difference among lender guarantees.

The Prequalification

A prequalification is really just to get you started, so you have a ballpark idea of how big a mortgage you can afford. When a bank prequalifies you,…

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