Minnesota Real Estate Investors Association, Inc.

This is a question that has crossed many people’s minds lately. There is no question about the fact that the banks are taking forever to respond to short sale offers. In fact, many times, the property goes to foreclosure and/or the buyers walk from their offer before the lenders respond to the original short sale offer. This has caused a lot of good properties to go through the entire foreclosure process and make it back on the market as a Bank Owned REO. These properties now sell for as much as half of what the original short sale offer that was submitted months before could have generated for the bank.

This has caused a lot of people to ask why? And Rick Kupchella from Kare 11 news was the next person on a long list of people who are asking why. Rick Kupchella contacted me last week to see if I had an answer and all I could give him was explanations as to what is going on with the lenders, but even I cannot answer the ultimate question of why the banks would rather take a property back rather than accept a short sale.

Watch the TV segment that aired 2 weeks ago from Rick Kupchella
Extra: Banks slow to respond to homeowners in trouble

On Friday, I spent half the day with Rick Kupchella from KARE 11 News talking about foreclosures and short sales. The segment is slated to air Sunday night March 29, 2009 on the 10pm news.

At the February 2009 MnREIA (Minnesota Real Estate Investors Association) Monthly Meeting, I did an explanation of the Foreclosure Process for Minnesota. We got such good feed back about the presentation that I decided to record the explanation and post it on YouTube.

There are 6 short videos totaling about 33 minutes. Here is a link to the play list were you can watch each video play automatically one after another.
The Foreclosure Process - Play all 6 Video's

Inventory is declining, pending sales are goin up and interest rates are going down. These are all good things. Lender mitigated sales are increasing as buyers flock to the market to purchase good deals. The housing affordability index is at a whopping 239%. Things couldn’t be better.

Watch a short clip from the Minneapolis Association of Realtors about the current market conditions.

Ever wonder were all that money is going from the stimulus bill that congress passed without even ready what was in the bill? I have, and thanks to a colleague of mine who just sent me a link to a very cool website, we can now start tracking were the money is going.

Stimulus Watch is a website setup by many talented programmers that got together to create a website that compiles all the information about projects across the country that’s getting their funding directly from the stimulus bill. Simple got to Stimulus Watch and select your state.

You have to see this YouTube Clip:

The Housing Bubble bursts on a speculator. Parody using a clip with Hitler as the real estate investor. He bought a house to flip, faces foreclosure, and now wants to get bailed out.

Parody Fair Use of clip. See:
www.publaw.com/parody.html

Laughter is the best cure for the blues and I know a lot of us can use a good dose of laughter these days. Hope you enjoyed this one.

If you have a house for sale, or are planning on selling one, then you need to know about the first time home buyers tax credit for 2009. This tax credit will give first time home buyers upto an $8,000 tax credit this year if they purchase a house by December 31, 2009.

IRS - First-Time Homebuyer Credit

This year, qualifying taxpayers who buy a home before Dec. 1, 2009, can claim the credit on either their 2008 or 2009 tax returns. They do not have to repay the credit, provided the home remains their main home for 36 months after the purchase date. They can claim 10 percent of the purchase price up to $8,000, or $4,000 for married individuals filing separately. http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=204671,00.html

This credit does not have to be paid back like the $7,500 tax credit/loan issued in 2008 as long as the buyers remain in the property as thier primary residence for at least 36 months (3 years).

In this era of opportunity for the real estate investors it is important that you develop a healthy understanding of your local REIA (real estate investor association), fellow investors, and your business.

There is no better place to find such a large number of real estate investor in which to network and construct deals with than at the meetings and events of your local REIA. Business without a REIA would make it more difficult for investors to develop because these REIAs provide the links necessary for fledgling investors to start off wholesaling, for seasoned investors to rehab and lease option, and for those with properties to run them by other investors who have a buyer’s list. Another benefit of the REIAs are their vendors, they support the club and offer services such as legal, accounting, consulting but the real gem here is that these vendors are at the very least familiar with our line of business!

There are a lot of good lawyers out there, but even the best lawyers don’t know everything, the lawyers that show up at your local REIAs are the lawyers you are looking for because they have an understanding of what you are trying to do, what your business really is! Without this source you would end up spending and wasting a lot of time chasing lame referrals and making cold calls from the yellow pages to firms that don’t really have a vested interest in maintaining the kind of reputation that the lawyers at your REIA does. This spans most s
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Here is an article from the Associated Press “Retail Sales rise unexpectedly in January”. Really? Unexpectedly? Really? How can this be unexpected? Oh yeah, silly me, the Economic Recovery Bill hasn’t passed yet, so in theory, this cannot be possible. However, it is what it is and it has happened. So what is really going on here? Simple, the economy is beginning to recover on its own. Yes, I said “On its own.” I know for some people it is hard to believe, but it is true.

Let’s take a look at what has happened over the last year and put the pieces of the puzzle together. The two biggest factors were gas prices and house prices. These are the two biggest items that drives a person’s day to day life. When light crude oil prices reached record levels in 2008 at almost $150 a barrel, gas prices were around $4.00 a gallon or higher. At the same time, real estate values were plummeting at record levels and no one could sell or refinance without taking a hit.

Foreclosures reached historic levels in 2008 and prices started dropping fast as these properties either went through foreclosure or loan modifications. While everyone expects even more foreclosures over the next couple of years, that is to be expected as that always happens after a boom, which we went through one of the largest
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Geithner unveiled their plan to aggressively combat the so called worst crisis in seven decades. They are saying that their plan of over $1 trillion dollars is designed to get the frozen credit markets functioning again. See their full plan outlined at Yahoo News.

Let’s break this down using common sense. I know, for some people I will need to explain common sense. Common sense simple means that we look at the facts and come to a reasonable conclusion based on the most likely outcomes. There is also one other item that needs to be looked at if we are using common sense, and that is the desired goals of the planners and whether or not they have been disclosed. However, the advantage of common sense is that we can actually discover the desired goals of the planners if we properly apply common sense.

The Obama administration wants to push down our thoughts a $1 trillion dollar social engineering program and they are disguising it as an Economic Recovery Package. So let’s look at the facts. First of all, most of the spending in this pork package will not start until 2010 and the spending plan is designed to end in 2019. Does that sound like and emergency recovery package designed to free up our credit markets right now? Using common sense, the answer is no. How much of this plan is designed to help the credit markets, as far as we can tell, there is noth
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Yet again, leave it up to the government to demonstrate their ability to legally create a double standard. In many if not most states, it is illegal for investors to buy a property from someone in Foreclosure and then rent it or sell it back to the homeowner. This type of transaction is called Equity Stripping when a nongovernmental investor does it, but according to Freddie Mac, it must be considered compassionate.

According to the Finance and Commerce legal paper in Minneapolis, MN, Freddie Mac announced a new policy that would allow some borrowers the ability to stay in their properties after the foreclosure process if they can demonstrate the financial ability to make a rental payment. Freddie Mac s reasoning is that it is better for overall property values and neighborhoods if the properties were occupied rather than vacant.

While that may seem like a worthy goal, it is simply illegal for the rest of us to do the exact same thing, so we now have a new competitor in the real estate market, Government. And besides, if they had a clue, they would realize that by keeping the previous homeowners in the property as renters, would result in a lower
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