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Hot Real Estate Canada Renovations for Increasing Selling Price Apr 8, 2006 - Linknet Real Estate - by Rick Hendershot - There are two ways we usually think of home renovations. We sometimes view them as improvements done in order to increase the value of the home -- in other words, as investments. Or we may think of them as simply increasing our own personal enjoyment of our home, without being concerned with the impact on the potential resale value. == Carpet cleaning company in dallas - A Dallas based Carpet Cleaning Company providing carpet and upholstery cleaning. Carpet Cleaning in Dallas, Frisco, Plano, Richardson and Surrounding cities. Affordable Price == Thinking of a renovation project as an investment implies that a project should have an impact on the resale value of the home. Many of us are conditioned to think like this. We tell ourselves, "If I spend $10,000 on installing a new hot tub in the back yard, or $20,000 renovating the basement, that should increase the value of my home by at least as much as I spend on the renovation." == Commercial Steel Buildings All types of Steel Storage at affordable prices == But experienced real estate agents know it doesn't work like that. Most houses have a resale value range that is determined by the neighborhood where the house is located. People come looking in your neighborhood for houses in the price range of the neighborhood. If your house is priced $ 30,000 higher than the neighborhood average it is not likely to sell at that price. Read the rest of Renovations to Increase Selling Price... Canadian Home Improvement in Ottawa, Ontario and Gatineau, Quebec Service Blocks offers full service home improvement in the Ottawa, Ontario, and Gatineau, Quebec, region of Canada, including bathrooms, electrical, basements and roofing. There are many home renovation myths floating around today, but the representatives of Service Blocks will be able to explain each one for you. Visit their website today for all their fees for home renovations. If you are not in the Ottawa, Ontario, and Gatineau, Quebec area, here is a list of other Canadian home renovations available on the web. Saskatoon Renters Hit by Increases Mar 13, 2007 - Linknet Real Estate News Saskatoon renters feeling the heat from hot rental market - The boom that has been driving the economies of Canada's western provinces has been pushing up rents in Saskatoon. According to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's (CMHC) 2006 rental market report, the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Saskatoon was $608 last year, and will likely climb to $650 this year. The rental housing vacancy rate in Saskatoon is predicted to decline to 2.5% in 2007. Many new jobs resulting from the vibrant economic growth in the west are bring a steady flow of new rental households into the city. Rental increases normally result when apartment buildings are sold to new owners. New owners make upgrades and improvements and rents must increase to cover the extra costs. Rent controls, if applied, would be legislated by the provincial government, but Saskatchewan's experience with rent controls has not been good. With rent controls developers are more likely to turn buildings into condominiums, leaving renters with even fewer available apartments to choose from. Rising rents have already hit British Columbia and Alberta Between October 2005 and October 2006, average monthly rents shot up by 19.5% in Calgary and 9.9% in Edmonton. Saskatoon city officials expect the market to work its sometimes painful magic. If rental rates go too high, renters who cannot afford the increases will move to lower priced units, and building owners will moderated their increases accordingly. |
SBO-Linknet.com is the home of the Linknet Publishing Network. This is a growing network of active websites covering various areas of interest from Online Marketing to Golf to Personal Health and Real Estate. Purchasing Property With No Money Down: My Personal ExperienceMay 28, 2006 - Linknet Real Estate News Carpet Cleaners Dallas - A Dallas based Carpet Cleaning Company providing carpet and upholstery cleaning. Commercial Real Estate Loans - No restrictions on use of funds. Halifax Nova Scotia Real Estate - Real Estate info for Halifax Ottawa Ontario Real Estate - Ottawa Ontario Canada Real Estate information Purchasing Property With No Money Down: My Personal Experience by Mark BarnesHave you ever seen those infomercials about buying houses with "No Money Down?" They are really well done. They have all kinds of people offering great testimonials about how they have gotten rich, buying rental properties, with absolutely no money out of their pocket. You see this guy, standing on a street corner, talking to someone, and he says, "I own that one," pointing to a beautiful colonial. "I also own that one next to it, and the one two doors down, and I'll be closing on the one directly across the street from it, next week." He then assures us that he has purchased 17 homes in the last eight or ten months, with zero money down on the properties. Plus, in many cases he's also paid no closing costs. And, let's not forget, this same guy is grossing tens of thousands of dollars monthly, and his net worth is nearly one million dollars. So, he says. Now, all of this looks wonderful, so when the person selling the course that will teach you how to do this, at a nifty price of just 7.00, speaks, you are glued to his every word. "Real estate is the safest and fastest way to make money, today," the expert will tell you. So, can this really be done? Can you purchase houses with no money down? Can you become a landlord in as little as one month's time and start raking in the cash from those rent payments? The answer is an absolute "Yes." It can be done, and I am proof positive, because I've done it. The question you should be asking yourself is not can I buy real estate with no money down, but should I? You see, this is a question that the guy selling the No Money Down course, with all of his people and their great testimonials hopes you never ask. His advertising and marketing strategy would collapse, if he gave anyone a chance to ask this question, because he would be forced to lie if he answered it. Rarely is the whole truth anywhere to be found in infomercials, especially when the advertising is about No Money Down real estate programs. The infomercial makes the idea and the program look so easy that any child could handle it. It makes it seem like every American should be doing it, and we'd all be millionaires. But every American is not doing it, and many of the ones who are doing it not only are not getting rich, they are actually going broke. The infomercial won't tell you this. That's why I'm here. The Truth Now, let's get started with the truth about buying real estate with no money down and the truth about being a landlord. The first thing you need to know is that they are both very bad ideas. Let me illustrate by using my own experience in these areas. I started buying rental property nearly 10 years ago. The first property I bought was a deal orchestrated by some real estate con artist, who told me I needed just $ 2,000 to take ownership of this home and, in the process, help out a woman who was about to be foreclosed upon. In two years, she would clean up her credit, refinance the loan on the house, and I would make $ 10,000. Sounded good to someone who was quick to buy into anything that returned big dollars in a short time. This worked for the first year, as the woman paid on time, and I pocketed an extra $ 100 monthly. Later, though, things began to collapse, as the house began to need repairs, all of which the woman couldn't afford, so I had to pay for them. I put nearly $ 5,000 into the house in a four-year period. When I was finally able to sell it, I didn't quite make back what I had put into it. Meanwhile, I was eager to overcome this problem by adding many more. A slick mortgage broker got hooked up with an even slicker real estate prospector, and the two of them convinced me that they had a way I could buy houses rapidly, with absolutely no money out of my pocket. Although my experience will probably be enough to enlighten you to the pitfalls of this model and of being a landlord, let me say that I can't emphasize enough how dangerous buying property with no money down is. In six months time, I had purchased eight houses - many with loans from the same wholesale lender. These lenders should have been concerned with all of the debt I was building, but they kept approving loans, based on my good credit and rents covering the mortgage payments. One of the biggest problems, which I was not experienced enough to detect, was that most of the rents were just $ 50 to $ 100 above the mortgage payment. "Don't worry," the investor/ hustler would say. "You'll make all your money on volume. We'll get you into 30 or 40 houses, and you'll be pocketing $ 4,000 to $ 5,000 every month." As you might imagine, my mind raced. I was making the huge deposits at that very moment. My bank account was fattening up at breakneck speed. The Illusion This is what people who buy houses, using the No Money Down plan envision happening. After all, if you can buy one house with no money down, why not five or ten or fifty? For some reason - the vision of the dollar sign, most likely - I failed to seriously consider the maintenance of these houses, the possibility of missed rent payments, and the chance that renters might actually stop paying, altogether, forcing me to evict them - a time-consuming and extremely costly undertaking. As you may have already guessed, all of these things happened to me, after I had amassed 26 rental properties. In fact, oftentimes, all of these problems happened in the same month. Now, for awhile (when I had about 10 houses), if one person failed to pay rent, I could cover it with the nine other payments. But when two, three and sometimes even five tenants didn't pay in the same month, it was devastating to my business. I had to go to my business account and pay up to $ 3,000 at a time in mortgage payments, with no income to cover it. Plus, I had to pay a property management company to get my tenants to pay or to evict them. Soon, this became the norm, not the exception. There were constant problems at my houses. Unhappy tenants led to poor upkeep of the property and even more maintenance problems. About one year, after I had amassed 26 houses, I was having problems with roughly 10-15 houses and/or tenants each week. I was evicting at least two tenants each month, and approximately four to seven tenants were either behind on rent or not paying at all. Promises were made, payment plans arranged and few, if any, ever followed through. It didn't take long for me to realize that this was no way to make money in real estate. Consequently, I got rid of these houses as fast as I possibly could. There were plenty of buyers, willing to take over my headaches, because they had the ability to make it work, they believed. In 10 years of being a landlord, I lost thousands of dollars and likely took some years away from my life with all the stress I had endured. So, whatever you do, avoid the No Money Down Trap. There are much better, still inexpensive ways to make money in real estate. Learn the best ways at www.winningthemortgagegame.com Mark Barnes is author of the wealth-building system, Winning the Mortgage Game and other investment real estate books. He is also a suspense novelist, and his new novel, The League, will thrill both suspense and sports fans. Learn about Mark's wealth-building system and get his free home loan course at http://www.winningthemortgagegame.com. Learn more about The League and read an excerpt at http://www.sportsnovels.com
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