Investing in real estate can be challenging even in the best of times. Investing in today's climate is a real test! Needless to say the biggest hurdle today is the availability, cost and terms of financing. As a result of the subprime crisis, lenders today are nervous about all forms of real estate even though the default rates on commercial
The national median housing price is down an unprecedented 16% from the 2d Quarter of 2006 through the 1st Quarter of 2008. This is a big deal. Not since the Great Depression have we seen housing price drops of this magnitude. (more...)
It is no secret that the residential real estate world is experiencing tremendous pain and chaos today. Homeowners are losing their homes. Default and foreclosure rates are higher than they have been in decades. Lenders of all types are incurring huge losses. As a result, the opportunists are starting to get really interested. (more...)
The FBI is apparently having a record-breaking year. It recently announced that it received 30,000 "suspicious activity reports" from Federally chartered financial institutions – just for the first half of the 2008 fiscal year (July 1, 2007 – December 31, 2007). For the entire 2007 fiscal year, it received 46,000 such reports. In other words,
Last week Starbucks, one of the really smart site selectors in the real estate world, announced that it was going to close 600 underperforming stores. That is not an insignificant number – almost 10% of U.S. stores. What is interesting about this decision is not just that it is a reflection of a soft economy. Everyone already knows that.
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