America‘s most miserable cities Add high rates of violent crime and unemployment to income taxes, commute times, weather and pollution and what do you get? Detroit. By Kurt Badenhausen, Forbes.com Imagine living in a city with the country’s highest violent-crime rate and second-highest unemployment rate. As an added kicker, you need more Superfund dollars allocated to your city to clean up toxic-waste sites than just about any other metropolitan area. Unfortunately, this nightmare is a…
Category: Cash Flow Real Estate Investing
Detroit is Still the King of the Hill
Another article, this time from the Associated Press. I have added the emphasis. Detroit had top foreclosure rate in ’07 By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer Wed Feb 13, 6:28 AM ET LOS ANGELES – The Detroit area, hit hard by the double-whammy of unemployment and a slumping housing market, had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation last year, with several cities in California ranked close behind, an analysis of foreclosure activity in the…
Denial is Not Just a River in Egypt
I read this article this morning. I was surprised by it because I’ve been thinking just the opposite over the last six weeks, because I’ve been seeing homeowners actually giving up and throwing in the towel because they’ve finally realized the harsh reality of this market. This article demonstrates, though, just how much further we have to go before things turn around. From CNNMoney.com . . . . Home Prices in the State of Denial…
The Game Is Changing
I’m in the process of doing another of my cash-out refis. I just bought it last Friday, and I’m trying to set a new record and do a cash-out refi based on the appraised value in less than 30 days. I just did two yesterday – one was 42 days and the other was 55 days. My mortgage guy is top notch (Dave Geraghty at Centerone Mortgage), and he’s been keeping me abreast of the…
The Flight to Quality
I received a couple of questions after my last post on Capital Deployment. To address one of them – no – I won’t tell you Bluetooth convertible guy’s name. I haven’t heard from him since I wrote it though. I was wondering why my email spam traffic was down 30%. The relevant questions were on this whole issue of capital deployment, so I thought that it made sense to discuss it further, especially in light…
Capital Deployment, or Don’t Listen to the Guy With the Convertible and the Bluetooth Headset
As I have mentioned in prior posts, the most difficult part of this real estate business used to be finding the really great deals. I remember just 14 short months ago how I lost two consecutive deals because I ended up getting outbid on both, and that the prices of both of those properties had risen several thousand dollars over my original offer price in the bidding process. I can also remember thinking that at…