Smart Money Management

Are You A Real Estate Investor?

The current real estate environment is ideal for long-term real estate investment. You may want to become a real estate investor. However, do you have what-it-takes to become a successful real estate investor?

It is more than having cash or business acumen to become a real estate investor. To become involved in real estate investment, one needs the following intrinsic qualities:

1. the coverage to take the appropriate action

2. the foresight to anticipate the unexpected

3. the willingness and diligence to work hard

To be successful in real estate investment needs knowledge, and knowledge is empowering. You need to do the following:

1. You get to know your local real estate market and your local area, such as what is going on, what is hot and what is not.

2. You get to know a banker or a real estate agent in your area.

3. You get to start finding property - the type of property you wish to busy and sell, e.g. apartments, fixer-uppers, foreclosure property, older community where people are retiring and moving out.

4. You get to know the real estate market, which is forever changing. You must be knowledgeable about the real estate bubble and the crash in the real estate market. As a savvy real estate investor, you must be able to determine if a downturn is going to be a crash or just another negative hype. Can you take advantage of housing prices continuing to rise? Can you avoid losing money if the bubble bursts or housing prices continue to fall? 

As a successful real estate investor, you must be able to not only recognize but also capitalize on market fluctuations, which are inevitable. Real estate is more than just "location, location, location": time of essence. So, do you have the astuteness? Real estate investment is profitable during any of the real estate cycles, but to become a successful real estate investor is not easy.

If you think you have got what-it-takes to become a successful real estate investor, the following may be useful tools to achieve your goals:

Build A Fortune With Real Estate Foreclosures

Creative Real Estate Investment System With Complete Tools For Today's Real Estate Investors

Stephen Lau

All About Stephen Lau

How to Do Home Inspection Before Home Purchase

Maybe now is the time to buy your first home, or to invest in real estate. Say, you want to buy a property you have in mind. Before you make an offer, home inspection is smart money management. To avoid unnecessary cost, hire a licensed building inspector, or you can do home inspection yourself. Here are the specifics of a proper home inspection:

1. Look for termites in areas of earth-to-wood contact, or thin spirals hanging from ceilings.

2. Look for discolored patches on the roof, which are often signs of replacement.

3. Look for mold and mildew in the basement, which are indications of a wet basement.

4. Look for leaks in windows. Make sure they all open and close properly.

5. Look for alignment of doors. Settling of the foundation can cause out-of-alignment of doors.

6. Look for cracks in foundation. If the mortar between bricks in the walls or the chimney is crumbling, it can be attributed to unstable foundation. Repair can be extensive and expensive.

7. Look for water stains on ceilings, carpets and walls. Fresh paint can be indicative of a recent cover-up of existing water damage.

8. Look for cracks in all bathroom, kitchen and laundry appliances and fixtures.

9. Look for the right water pressure for each faucet.

10. Look for corrosion and rust on pipes, and water damage of the water heater.

Even if you hire a professional home inspector, you should be in the know regarding home inspection specifics. Always ask relevant questions during a home inspectionto get as much information as possible about the property your intend to buy. A walk-through in a home inspection will give you a rough estimate of how much you are going to spend, or what upgrades you will need. Home inspection specifics will also help you determine the price you are going to offer to the seller.

For more information on real estate investment, visit: Creative Real Estate System 

Learn how to survive in the current recession: Recession Survival Guide, and How to Profit from the Credit Crisis.

Stephen Lau

About Stephen Lau

The Recent Rebound Is Not The Recovery

The recent robust rebound is not the economy recovery we have been hoping for. However, the dominant opinion is that the current rebound is a sign of recovery and that our economy has hit the bottom - just as most economists are saying we are at the end of the tunnel. Attesting to this optimism, the stock market has recovered more than 30 percent of its loss. Yes, the recent rebound has been robust.

But the rebound is not the recovery we would like to see.

Why not?

Because there is simply much too much debt around - consumer debt, federal debt, mortgage debt, credit card debt.

If the economy were to continue to expand (as it had been for the past two decades), the severity of the deb would have been alleviated. But now the economy is shrinking and there is the stubborn credit crunch despite attempts to flood the markets with cash.

Now, all the debt that has been accumulated over the years has to be paid down before there will be any meaningful recovery. But real interest rates are rising, asset prices are falling, and consumer spending is shrinking. All these do not bode well for the ailing economy - at least for now.

To reduce the debt may take a much longer time than we want. It is a fact that debt is easier to incur than to erase. This process of debt elimination may take years, not months.

Do not wait for the government to bail out you. Design your own strategies to bail yourself out of these financial woes. To survive the recession, make money online with Abundant Web Cash.

For more information, go to my web page: Smart Money

Stephen Lau

All About Stephen Lau.

Selling Your House in a Down Real Estate Market

Knowing everything about the real estate market holds the key to success in selling your house in a down real estate market.

Do you know how to sell your own home fast?

Don't make the following mistakes:

• Trying to sell your property for the price you want.

• Pricing your house too low may give sellers the impression that there is something wrong with your house..

• Pricing your property too high will never let you sell your house in a down real estate market. If you think you can reduce the price later when it cannot sell, think again! The reason is that once your property is on the market for a while, some real estate agents may not even want to show it to their clients. Any property on the market for long suggests that it is not a bargain.

So what do you need to do to sell your house?

• You need to know the correct overview of the real estate market.

• You need to know how your property compares with others in your local real estate market.

• You need to know how much time you can afford to sell your house.

If it is a buyers' market (like the current real estate market), then you should take aggressive steps, e.g. avoid making mistakes, fix your home, and make competitive pricing of your house to sell.

If you are knowledgeable about the competitors' properties and are aware of the lack of uniqueness of your own property, then get creative. To illustrate, if most of the homes for sale have three bedrooms, and yours has only 2 bedroom, maybe you should consider adding a third bedroom over the garage, or one in the walkout basement.

If time is of essence in selling your house, then be aggressive in the pricing.

To get more information, go to my web page: Smart Money. If you need help in your financing and money matters, go to my web page: Abundant Web Cash.

Stephen Lau

All About Stephen Lau

How to Sell Your Own Home in a Down Real Estate Market - Have the Right Attitudes!

How to sell your own home in a down real estate market. Have the right attitudes!

To sell your home, all you need is only one buyer. However, as a seller, you need to have the right attitudes:

• Have a proactive attitude. Undoubtedly, the real estate market is undergoing a major correction right now. Who knows how long this may last! However, the real estate values will eventually come back. Share this perspective with your prospective buyers in order to put them in the right frame of mind. Let them think about the long-term value of your home as a long-term investment.

• Have the right attitude towards time. You don't have to wait out the market until it turns around to sell your home for top dollars. If you are trading up, the present real estate market is most favorable because you will  gain more in equity. On the other hand, if you are selling your home and you are not trading up any time soon, then you either wait out the market for the next cycle, or you price your home to sell. If you really need to sell it for whatever reason, time is of essence.

• To sell your home in a down real estate market, you need to fix your property in order to sell it and for a lot more money. If you have problem getting the necessary cash, go to smart money to get some information. If you need to make some money online, go to abundant web cash.

Remember, if you think you can sell your home, you can; if you think you can't, you can't. Be positive, but realistic, while assuming the worst scenario.

Stephen Lau

All About Stephen Lau

Put Your Mortgage Interest Into Your Pocket, Not the Bank's

You can save literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in mortgage interest for yourself, not the bank - if you know how.

Time distorts the value of money: over time, you can earn more, and money depreciates (especially now that the Federal Reserve is printing money like there is no tomorrow).

If you have a 30-year mortgage, refinance it to a 15-year. For one thing, a 30-year mortgage usually carries a slightly higher interest rate than that of a 15-year term loan from the same lender.

For example, if the monthly mortgage payment is $1,000 for a 15-year loan, a 30-year loan may require a monthly payment of, say, $800. A saving of $200 a month over 30 years will not offset the huge amount of interest paid over 30 years. In other words, the interest you pay for the 30-year mortgage may be enough to buy you a second home over the long haul. Just think about that!

If refinancing is not an option, you can have an amortization schedule specific to the term of your loan (you can get this from Quicken).

• Send one check in the amount of the required monthly payment.

• Include a second check in the amount of next month's principle (indicate on your check that the amount is for "principle only").

If you continue to pay the scheduled monthly payment with the additional payment for the principle for the following month, then before long you will have earned a lot of interest for yourself, not the bank.

Smart money management is important in this recession. Learn to survive the recession.

Stephen Lau

All About Stephen Lau

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Say No Evil - But Do Evil!

Not too long ago, former Treasury Secretary John Snow said: "I think the bubble (he was referring to the housing bubble) is a gross misnomer. The idea that we're going to see a collapse in the housing market seems to be improbable."

Donald Trump, the billionaire TV star concurred: "I'm not a person who believes in the bubble so much. I have seen real estate go up and down, but it always seems to go up more than it goes down. I really think it's a good time to purchase."

There you go, all the experts saw no evil, heard no evil, said no evil! And now the bubble busted and the real estate collapsed.

The signs were there, and the writings were on the walls, but no one saw the evil coming.

The facts were glaring: housing affordability was at all-time low; over one-third of all homeowners devoted more than 30 percent of their incomes to monthly mortgage payments; more than 40 percent of first-time buyers made no down-payment on their home purchases in 2004; sub-prime borrowers accounted for nearly one-third of all new mortgages.

How come they saw no evil, heard no evil, and said no evil.

The moral lesson: Don't listen to the so-called "experts"! Be knowledgeable and do your homework when it comes to money and investment. These experts can afford to lose some of their billions of dollars, but you may not have the luxury to follow suit.

The good news is that if you are a smart real estate investor, you can still make a fortune in real estate with no money, no credit, and no experience if you have the know-how. There are always opportunities for those who have sharp ears and keen eyes.

Smart Real Estate Investor shows you step-by-step approach to real estate investing. Do it the smart way. There are many opportunities on real estate investment. But beware, don't buy all the wrong products that teach you all the wrong techniques that lead you nowhere.

Stephen Lau

Abundnat Web Cash

The Economic Environment Belies An Imminent Recovery

The economic environment has not improved. Economic growth, which is vital to any economic recovery, is either a myth or a fabrication.

For example, the Chinese government forecasts a growth of 8 percent for 2009. Is this a myth or euphoric optimism? The real growth rate for the last quarter of 2008 was indicative of a contracting economy, and certainly not a robust one.. Remember, China has a huge population, and it needs significant growth to provide jobs for more than 20 million new workers who come of age each year. If there is inadequate growth, a deep recession is inevitable. The economic environment in China will not help U.S. recovery - not in the near future.

Other countries in the Far East are not much better off than China in terms of economic growth. Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore are all shrinking their production. Even Japan, a major economic power in the world, has its production slashed by about 20 percent.

 

However, according to Forbes, “There is light at the end of the tunnel.”  The stock market is recovering. The United States continues to pump billions of dollars into the financial world. Recently, Japan, too, is pumping another 100 billion dollars into its ailing economy. The Japanese have been doing for almost two decades what the Americans are now doing – pumping more money into the economy.

 

Do not be trapped by delusive optimism spun by the media.

 

Just remember this: the toxic assets, the inflated real estate properties, the never-ending foreclosure – they will not all disappear overnight. If it took years to create these bubbles, deflating them will take as many years too.

 

Any rally in any sector, whether it is real estate, investment, or the stock market, is nothing more than a trap for the unwary investors who are too eager to catch a falling knife.

 

Learn how to survive the recession, and live a debt-free lifestyle  for a better financial future.

 

Stephen Lau

 

Abundant Web Cash

How to Increase Your Savings

In this economic crisis, it is critical to increase your savings to prepare for the worse yet to come.

 

Given the present bailouts may not work out as planned and projected, and even if they did, there is still a long way to go for financial recovery. Therefore, one of your financial goals is to save as much as possible. After all, the United States is in this financial mess because the Americans spend money on things they do not need with the money they do not have.

 

But how do we save in this tight-budget situation we are currently in?

 

There are several strategies to increase your savings rate:

 

• Take 10 percent of your income and put it away. This is a drastic measure, requiring much adjustment of expenditures, and change of lifestyle if need be. But you can be assured of a more comfortable lifestyle down the road.
• Start with a fixed amount of saving each month. For example, you may put away $50 or $100 a month. Once you have established a routine in your spending, re-evaluate it periodically to increase the amount of your monthly savings.
• Enroll in some automatic savings plans that automatically deduct money from your paycheck or withdraw from your bank account.

 

Have the mindset of saving today and spending tomorrow, rather than spending today and saving tomorrow. Learn how to surf the financial storm.

 

Stephen Lau

Abundant Web Cash

Your Financial Strategies in This Financial Crisis

Your net worth may be dramatically different from that a few months ago. Do not dwell on your diminished net worth. Instead, your current and immediate financial strategies in this economic crisis should be:

 

1. Find out where you are today from a financial perspective.

 

2. Determine where you would like to be.

 

3. Evaluate your resources and assess how you can utilize them to recover losses incurred in the recent financial meltdown.

 

4. Project the time frame and the objectives outlined.

 

 Times are rough, but there is no reason why you should make a bad situation worse. You need financial intelligence to surf the financial storn.

 

Stephen Lau

 

Abundant Web Cash