Friday Asia Digest: China’s Mega-Rich Lose Billions, Asia Bubble Potential Intensifies China‘s property billionaires are far from happy this year, as government measures intended to curb speculation in China’s huge and virginal private ownership property market have been put into place. 8 of the country’s richest property moguls, all of whom are on Forbes’ “top Asian 100″ rich list, have lost a combined 3.87 billion USD, or 16% of their wealth, in the last year. Hui Ka Yan, … [Read more...]
Friday Asia Digest: China’s Mega-Rich Lose Billions, Asia Bubble Potential Intensifies
October 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Hedge Funds and Their Impact on Mom-and-Pop Investors
October 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Hedge Funds and Their Impact on Mom-and-Pop Investors Back in May I wrote an article titled “Smart Money Woke Up – Now What.” The basic theme was that my market changed almost overnight when the well capitalized hedge funds started actively buying. In the article I highlighted how I was going to outsmart them by being nimble and learning where they weren’t playing in my market.In this article I am going to highlight my thoughts on the good, the bad and the ugly of Hedge Funds’ … [Read more...]
Friday Asia Digest: Singapore RE Market White-Hot, India Steps Up Its Game
October 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Friday Asia Digest: Singapore RE Market White-Hot, India Steps Up Its Game Singapore’s residential & industrial real estate sectors are on fire, despite government attempts to keep prices under control. July saw 1,946 new homes sales, a rise of 42 percent month-on-month. That puts the total sales figure for the first eight months of 2012 at 15,300 new properties, close to the full-year total of 2011. Savills anticipates a return of foreign investors into the Singapore property market. … [Read more...]
What Your Tenants Won’t Tell You
October 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment
What Your Tenants Won’t Tell You A new study of single family and multifamily tenants by John L. Burns Real Estate Consulting based upon data from Fannie Mae’s American Homeownership Series fills a huge void in our understanding of single family rental tenants and how they differ from multifamily.Especially on topics that your tenants probably will never discuss with you, the findings include more than a few “Aha” moments, a few surprises and useful insights that could help you better … [Read more...]
History Doesn’t Repeat Itself but it Does Frequently Rhyme
October 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment
History Doesn’t Repeat Itself but it Does Frequently Rhyme To say we are in or entering a time of uncertainty is an understatement of massive proportions. However, you can either let the uncertainty cause paralysis or you can take action by reviewing historical times of great upheaval and apply the lessons learned.While I believe in staying current on all of the hot topics, I find it a lot more valuable to review history to see how things worked out in the past. Most importantly, I try … [Read more...]
Real Estate and “The Bathtub Recovery”
October 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Real Estate and “The Bathtub Recovery” In last week’s article I talked about the importance of a ten year plan for real estate investing. In addition, I highlighted how important it is to use changes in market cycles to your advantage and the importance of adjusting your business model to suit the current and changing market cycle. Lastly, I called the reader’s attention to the fact that the market may be turning in a significant way. An outcome of the article was a reader’s … [Read more...]
Why Investors Were the Real Heroes of 2011
October 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Why Investors Were the Real Heroes of 2011 A single survey, even if conducted to meet the highest professional standards of opinion research, can only include a limited number of questions, and thus, it can address a finite number of issues.That was the case with the Joint BiggerPockets.com/Memphis Invest survey released last week. I had the pleasure to participate in its design and execution, and we focused to three vital issue investors face: their purchasing plans for the near future … [Read more...]
Realtor Ads as a Gauge of Your Local Real Estate Market
October 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Realtor Ads as a Gauge of Your Local Real Estate Market Investors are constantly bombarded with statistics. Housing starts are up in the United States, housing starts are down in a particular city. Resale inventory is high, retail inventory is low, short-sales are up, short-sales are down. Don’t get me started on the “shadow inventory” that’s been poised to flood the market for years now. It’s very easy to get caught up in all these statistics. Unfortunately the numbers can be … [Read more...]
Why Real Estate Returns Are Higher than Stocks, Bonds and Mutual Funds
September 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Why Real Estate Returns Are Higher than Stocks, Bonds and Mutual Funds Investing in rental property is like eating a hot fudge sundae. Buying stocks, bonds and mutual funds is like eating hot fudge with the occasional spoonful of ice cream.With real estate rentals, your returns include:1. Cash Flow from Monthly Rental Income – A Huge Scoop of Your Favorite Ice Cream 2. Buying Money – A Second Scoop 3. Tax Free Refinancing – A Third Scoop 4. Appreciation – Hot Fudge on Top 5. Write … [Read more...]
Friday Asia Digest: The Great Tokyo Rebound | Asian Real Estate Gets Greener
September 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Friday Asia Digest: The Great Tokyo Rebound | Asian Real Estate Gets Greener Two decades of deflation, following the great Japanese property bubble burst in the early nineties, have left speculative investors on the sidelines as far as Japan is concerned. The ultra-safe and highly regulated business environment, tax incentives for foreign investors, and even the promise of spectacular cash-flow, in a world gone mad with negatively geared sub-prime properties, have not been enough to lure … [Read more...]
Where Oh Where Have All the Distressed Sales Gone?
September 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Where Oh Where Have All the Distressed Sales Gone? The signing of the Attorneys General agreement five months ago was supposed to speed up foreclosure processing and move more properties through the pipeline faster than we’ve seen since Robogate. Over the past year, new initiatives by the GSEs and the biggest banks, and improved transaction management technology were supposed to get record numbers of short sales to closing faster and easier than ever.So what the heck happened?If you’re … [Read more...]
2 Ways Washington Can Use Real Estate Investors To End The Housing Crisis
September 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment
2 Ways Washington Can Use Real Estate Investors To End The Housing Crisis Like many people in my generation, I spent a few extra years in college, 5 ½ to be exact, and yet I have no diploma to hang on my wall. I enjoyed my years at the University of Memphis playing a varsity sport, hanging with my fraternity brothers and in general trying to avoid studying. Don’t get me wrong though, I learned a lot in my time there and it has absolutely served me well since leaving college. I was a … [Read more...]
Real Estate Investing for the Next 10 Years: If It Were Easy, Everyone Would Do It!
September 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Real Estate Investing for the Next 10 Years: If It Were Easy, Everyone Would Do It! Real Estate seems so simple; all you do is buy low and sell high, right?Wrong!!!Well, what about buy and hold investing or land lording? That’s simple, right? All you do is buy a property and sit on it for 10 years or so and magic happens, no?Wrong!!!Okay, but setting up a long term financial plan and retiring from your day job has to be easy, because all you do is buy one additional property a year for … [Read more...]
A Sawtooth Recovery: Validation of What You can Expect in Our Housing Market!
September 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment
A Sawtooth Recovery: Validation of What You can Expect in Our Housing Market! Back in May of 2010 I wrote an article for BiggerPockets with the title of, “A Saw Tooth Recovery.” By the title you can guess that the housing recovery was expected to see ups and downs in both prices and inventory until a full recovery could be expected. Two years later it seems that indeed we are in the middle of a Saw Tooth Recovery. As predicted, we are just now experiencing a bottom in inventory and … [Read more...]
Friday Asia Digest – Hotels, Casinos & Other Luxuries. Turkey is the New London
September 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Friday Asia Digest – Hotels, Casinos & Other Luxuries. Turkey is the New London5 months, 10 offers, and 68.5 million AUD – this is what it took to sell the world’s first 6-star, fashion branded designer hotel – The Palazzo Versace, on Australia’s Gold Coast. The trophy asset was sold to an undisclosed Hong-Kong based consortium, whose bid was the strongest out of the myriad of prospects who, according to the selling agent, have been jetting in with their respective entourages to … [Read more...]
Asia Digest – Beer-Maker Brewing SE-Asia’s Biggest Deal, Australia Real Estate Crash Looming
September 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Asia Digest – Beer-Maker Brewing SE-Asia’s Biggest Deal, Australia Real Estate Crash Looming Singaporean Fraser & Neave Ltd (more commonly known as F&N), one of the world’s biggest and oldest drink makers, has recently completed the drafting of a deal which will see it selling its brewery business to Heineken NV at 5.4 billion SGD (4.3 billion USD). With further fracturing and selling of F&N’s other assets anticipated, the remaining lion’s share of the company’s … [Read more...]
How Does The Recent QE3 FED Announcement Affect Mortgage Rates?
September 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment
How Does The Recent QE3 FED Announcement Affect Mortgage Rates? The Federal Reserve made an announcement on September 13, 2012 about their plans to support a stronger economic recovery. This was a much anticipated announcement, because of what the actions will do to mortgage rates and the overall economy in the future.The two major actions the FED plans on doing as part of this QE3 are:Purchase additional mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month.Extend the target range … [Read more...]
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My Experience Investing in a Changing Real Estate Market
My Experience Investing in a Changing Real Estate Market I quit my corporate job in 2005 to pursue real estate fulltime. I had listened to Carlton Sheets’ “Zero Down Investing” course multiple times the year leading up to my departure from my day job while trying to learn as much as I could. Flipping through study guides and reading real estate books only served to increase my appetite for this industry because I wanted to change the real estate market. I remember the excitement of … [Read more...]