OK, so the title of this post is a bit misleading. But it is true, Africa is for sale.

OK, so that’s a bit misleading as well.

However, if you’d like a little piece of “The World” development off of the coast of Dubai, scrounge the change out of the couch and pick your island.

Ireland was just purchased for AED 142 million, which translates into about $38 million USD.

Personally, I find this “real estate development” very intriguing, and it proves how strong the world economy really is. However, knowing what little I fully understand about our own US …

Yesterday I received the yearly home valuation from the county.  Basically, they come up with an “appraisal” of your homes value as a tax basis for property taxes.

Home valuations from my county very closely match the actual market value of the homes, which is nice, until you have to pay your property taxes, at which point the value of your house is too high.  (The only time you want the value of your house to go up is when you want to sell.  Kind of cynical, isn’t it?)

This years valuation came in at $207,000 which is an increase of about 4.1% over last year, but down by about 0.15% compared to the increase the …

Trisha at Building an Empire posted a video on a new trend circulating the internet called “Lock Bumping”. Evidently, by modifying a generic key, you can tap on it to open nearly any door you wish, leaving in question your actual security.

While I’m a firm believer that if someone really wants in your house, they won’t be coming through a door, this little fad makes it that much easier to breech security.

For those who know where I live, please call for an appointment to come visit my two new Rottweilers…

The FSBO vs. Real Estate Agent saga continues.

My friends’ house is still on the FSBO market, over two months since the FSBO test started.

In that period of time, they’ve lowered their price by $5,000 while under the impression that it’s the price that is keeping people away.  You’ll remember that the people next door sold their house for $2,000 under what they were asking in under a week using a realtor.

The trend continues, as another family down the street put their house on the market three weeks ago and now have a contract on it.

I’ll continue to monitor the status, …

Well, it’s been over a month since the FSBO test started, and very little has changed, other than the fact that the realtor has the competition all wrapped up in this little experiment.

In talking with my neighbors, they’ve had a few people look at their house, but no offers yet. On top of that, of the half dozen people who’ve walked through it, a majority of them are realtors.  I suspect that they are scoping out the FSBO market for potential clients.

To make things more interesting, after having their house on the FSBO market for only a month, they dropped …

If you want to sell your house, you’ve got two options: Get a realtor to do your legwork, or leg it out yourself and sell it “by owner”.

One of the advantages to using a realtor is that your home gets listed in the MLS database, the widely accepted one stop shop for home listings.  The disadvantage? You’re going to cut 6% off the top of your homes contract price.

The disadvantage of selling your home by owner? You can forget about a MLS listing.

BUT! This could change as lawmakers in Maine are trying to create an independent database …

After I got the lease signed on my first rental property, everything went fairly smoothly and I had no complaints…

…then it got hot.

Evidently, the air conditioner was blowing air, just not cold air.  After a day of elevated nerves and frustration that the air conditioner might be my first major expense, I was relieved to find out that it was only a loose wire on the back of the thermostat.

Whew!  While it did cost me about $60 to fix the problem (a hefty $49.99 for the service call and $10 to check the unit and screw the wire back to the box), it …

About two months ago some friends three doors up put their house on the market. They had plans to build a new home, so they weren’t in too much of a hurry to sell their house. In fact, it would but them in quite a predicament if they did sell their house in record time…

In steps Mr. Murphy.

In no less than 7 days they had an offer on their house that they couldn’t refuse, and off they went trying to find an apartment for the next 6 months.

I thought they were asking a bit much for the …

I saw a quick blurb on CNBC yesterday about a new home loan that takes on the appearance of a savings account tied to equity.

Essentially, each month your paycheck is automatically deposited into your loan account, thereby lowering the principal and interest and raising the equity by that amount.  Then, you make withdrawals from that account to pay your bills, lowering the equity and increasing the principal.  You can draw on your principal but not your interest payments.

I’ve been searching the internet for more information on this new loan program, and haven’t come up with any details…

I can see how this loan …

The walk through is done, the keys are handed over, the rent is collected.

My first real estate/rental venture is complete. Or at least officially in progress.  Now all I have to do is wait for that mailbox money each month, and make sure the neighbors are kept happy…