RE Think Tank Blog

Has the Real Estate Market Hit Its Sweet Spot???

Tara — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:41:33 +0000

My husband John is a high-school baseball coach and former pro-baseballer. Of course, to me, everything is about real estate, so lately I’ve been mixing the two subjects in my brain – baseball and real estate – pretty frequently. So when the California Association of Realtors reported that statewide, prices dropped 3 percent but the number of sales rose 15 percent in April 2008 (when compared to March), the first thought that came to mind was – the market might have just hit its sweet spot.

(more…)

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Taking the Tax Sting out of Short Sales for Upside Down Owners: Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Tax Act

Tara — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:06:55 +0000

It’s a common conundrum these days: homeowners faced with increasing mortgage payments need to sell their homes fast, but home values have decreased and they can’t sell their homes for as much as they owe on them!

There is a transaction that resolves this issue called a short sale, in which you actually sell your home for less than you owe on it, and your lender agrees to forgive the difference. Until very recently, if you did a short sale, your lender would send you a 1099 form at the end of the year, and the IRS would actually charge you income tax on the difference between what you sold your home for and what you owed on it. [Talk about kicking someone while they’re down, right? Can’t make your payment, selling your home at a loss, and now you get a tax bill, too?]

Many sellers simply said no, and chose foreclosure over selling the place and getting a big tax bill for the forgiven debt.

In December, the federal goverment passed this new law – it’s a mouthful – the Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Relief Act of 2007 – it basically says:

if you have to sell your home in a short sale, and
you do so in 2007, 2008 or 2009,
the IRS will not charge you with income tax on the mortgage debt that your lender forgives.

(more…)

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Book Review: Real You, Incorporated: 8 Essentials for Women Entrepreneurs

Tara — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:00:40 +0000

A good friend of mine, Kaira Rouda, just released her new book, and it is awesome. Kaira is the Co-owner and Vice-President of the fourth largest independent real estate brokerage in America – Real Living - and also holds the fabulous distinction of having written the foreword to my book, The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook.

Real You, Incorporated is in some ways a love note to women entrepreneurs, in other ways a very practical-yet-inspirational manual to support biz mavens in their efforts to develop a personal brand out of their authentic personal selves.

In Kaira’s words, the top 5 things you’ll take away from Real You, Incorporated are as follows:

One Real You chart that will help you define your unique passions, brand, and positioning in the marketplace.
Eight real facts — broken into chapters — to help you build a brand that’s all your own.
Sixteen inspirational stories from women who have built their own real brands. (Tara’s Note: And yes, Virginia, yours truly is one of those women!)
Twenty-four practical action steps to help you get you started.
Countless lessons from Kaira’s personal experiences as a marketing executive, writer, and entrepreneur.

(more…)

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Real Estate B.S. Alert: Don’t Hire a Consultant - Reduce Your Own Property Taxes in 30 Minutes

Tara — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:40:00 +0000

Don’t you just love public records? I’m all for transparency in government, but if you own a home, you (like me) probably receive a million pieces of mail “tailored” to your supposed wants and needs based on the data about your home and your mortgage that are on file with your County’s Recorder’s office.

I was horrified when I opened one such piece of mail this week. It was an “offer” for assistance in getting my property taxes reduced from a real estate broker purporting to “specialize in reducing people’s property taxes.” He wrote on:

My research shows that because you bought your property at the height of the market, there is a very good chance that you are overpaying the property taxes on the property at ____________________ (my address.)

I am one of the most experienced and successful agents in the state at reducing property taxes. . ..

Please understand that I would not spend the money to send this letter unless I was reasonably sure I could save you money on your property taxes.

I’m reasonably sure he could, too. The thing is, though, ANYONE can do this – on their own – for FREE!

(more…)

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Now THAT’s What I Call a Foreclosure Auction! Neverland To Go On the Block for 50% off!

Tara — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 05:57:07 +0000

Okay. So, last year, on the Bravo! series Million Dollar Listing, you might have seen SoCal megabrokers helicoptering potential buyers all over Michael Jackson’s abandoned adult playground, Neverland Valley Ranch, trying to sell it for around $50 million.

Though many developers were interested – I mean, the estate is over 2,900 acres of prime, Santa Ynez property (Oprah & Ellen have lived in the ‘hood) – nary a deal was cut. By contrast, the average residential lot is around 1/10th of 1 acre – you could fit 29,000 houses on the Neverland property, and each one would still have a medium-sized front and backyard of its own!

Well, I guess times are tough for everyone. Yesterday, a foreclosure auction was scheduled for March 19^th – if M.J. hasn’t paid the $24 mill. or so he owes on the place, it’ll go on the auction block.

Any lessons here for the real-world property owner? Yep – avoid overimprovement and overpersonalization. Neverland is a very valuable parcel, but it would cost the next buyer tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to dismantle the amusement park/zoo/private railroad and convert it into something usable to, uh, regular people. So the interested buyers didn’t want to pay a jillion dollars for the place and have to still demo and redevelop it.

My guess is that you don’t have a ferris wheel at your place, but remember when you convert your garage into a sauna that most folks would actually prefer the garage, so you might want to convert it back before you try to sell the place.

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Is there “Schmuck Insurance” on Run’s House? Russell Simmons’ Investing Term You Should Know

Tara — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:13:06 +0000

During my JetBlue flight to NYC last month, to attend the Inman Connect NYC 2008 real estate & technology conference, I watched a couple of episodes of Run’s House. If you haven’t seen it, it’s an MTV reality show that chronicles the daily lives of Rev. Joseph Simmons, a.k.a. “Run” from the rap group Run DMC. Rev. Run is the youngest brother of hip hop and business mogul Russell Simmons.

In one episode, Russell extends to Rev. Run the opportunity to invest a couple million dollars in a hip hop Web 2.0 venture, GlobalGrind.com. Run balks at the amount, and also at the fact that the web space is completely outside of his comfort zone. Despite Russell’s extensive market research into the opportunity and track record of startup success, Run remains undecided about the opportunity until his wife and youngest son check the site out and encourage him to get in.

Before Rev. Run agrees to invest, Russell reminds Rev. that Russell set aside a number of shares for his family and friends as “schmuck insurance.” Huh? Russell then defines schmuck insurance as shares of an investment you offer to those close to you, so that when you make a fortune on it, they won’t be left standing there with nothing - “like a schmuck.”

Anyone out there offering schmuck insurance to their friends and fam who are trying to ”wait for the bottom” of this real estate cycle?

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How to Unload Your House - Fast!

Tara — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 03:57:47 +0000

My hero(ine) Barbara Corcoran was on the Today Show yesterday, sounding off about mistakes sellers make. She also gave some tips for how sellers can get their homes off the market immediately.

I have my own take on this issue, too. Selling a home is not rocket science. In my opinion, there are only three elements involved in getting your home to sell, no matter how long it has been on the market, and no matter how slow the market is in your neck of the woods:

Pricing,
Condition, and
Marketing.

And the greatest of these is pricing.

If your home is not selling, you must tweak one or more of these three elements. Here are my tips - and some of Barbara Corcoran’s - on getting your house to finally sell:

Pricing

Lower the price. Period. And not a whole bunch of little, inconsequential price reductions. Look at the sales price (not the list price) of comparable properties that have recently sold in your neighborhood, and price yours below them. You can’t really underprice a home - the lower the price, the more it looks like a bargain. The more it looks like a bargain, the more people will come see it. The more showings, the more likely you are to get a qualified buyer. (more…)

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Tara — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 05:49:59 +0000

Rooting Out the Rotten Tomatoes

By CLAIRE SUDDATH

Workers separate tomatoes at the sprawling Central de Abastos market in Mexico City on June 10

Gregory Bull / AP

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So how much damage can a few rotten tomatoes really do? The tomato-linked salmonella outbreak announced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on June 3 has claimed 228 victims in 23 states over 58 days (and counting). It has put 25 people in the hospital and may have had a role in hastening the death of a cancer patient. And then there’s the flurry of panic as many of the tomatoes that American consumers take for granted every day suddenly disappear — from McDonald’s hamburgers; from the salsa at Chipotle Mexican Grill; from Burger King, Taco Bell and Sonic; and from the grocery shelves at Kroger, Wal-Mart and Target. Didn’t we just go through this with bagged spinach? With peanut butter? With pet food?

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Because the FDA’s tomato-recall recommendation is so specific — including only three types, grown in certain regions during a certain time — and because many national chains pulled their tomato stock within days of the announcement, most of the infected samples have likely been removed. But the outbreak remains ongoing; its source has not yet been determined, and the government is investigating new cases every day. It may be a few more weeks before the delicious staple fruit is given the all-clear.

Taking tomatoes off shelves and menus may contain the outbreak, but it doesn’t explain it. On May 22, the New Mexico Health Department notified the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that it knew of seven people recently infected with Salmonella Saintpaul, an unusual strand of the bacteria that accounted for only 400 of the 1.4 million cases of salmonella infection reported last year. And it was precisely because occurrences of the Saintpaul strand are so rare that the report caught the CDC’s attention. When Texas and a few other states reported cases of people being infected by bacteria with the same “genetic fingerprint,” a multistate search for Salmonella Saintpaul was launched. While the CDC tracked reported illnesses, the FDA interviewed victims to find out what they had eaten (and where). The common answer was tomatoes.

There have been 13 outbreaks of salmonella in tomatoes since 1990, which puts the fruit on the list of high-risk foods that are prone to infection. But unlike the bagged spinach from the 2006 E. Coli scare, the tomatoes don’t come with a traceable bar code. “When you’re dealing with tomatoes, it is much, much more complex,” explains Dr. David Acheson, the FDA’s associate commissioner for foods. The FDA’s great tomato hunt has an ever-expanding list of suspects. A salmonella victim can point to the supermarket (or restaurant) that sold the offending fruit, but that store probably sources its tomatoes from several suppliers, each of which uses several distributors — and distributors buy from any number of growers.

“Each set of questions just multiplies into a fan of information that has to be sorted through to understand where the links cross over,” says Acheson. Although the FDA has managed to rule out some regions — northern Florida is safe because its tomatoes weren’t ready for harvest at the time of the outbreak — it will be some time until the true source is found. “We’re not quite there yet,” says Acheson, “but we’re getting very close.” But Dr. Ian Williams, chief of the CDC’s OutbreakNet team, warns that the source may never be found due to the fruit’s short shelf life. “You don’t expect to find an infected tomato sitting on someone’s counter 10 days after the outbreak,” says Williams.

Still, the lag time between the initial outbreak and the government’s reaction is startling: the first Salmonella Saintpaul victim fell ill on April 16, but the FDA didn’t announce the tomato link until June 3. Williams says part of the problem identifying salmonella outbreaks is that a lot of victims don’t see the symptoms — diarrhea, fever, vomiting — as sufficiently severe to warrant a visit to the doctor, and so they go undiagnosed. “There may be a delay in reporting outbreaks because people do not have a stool specimen tested,” he says. Officials have not yet identified an infected tomato, and because of the fruit’s short shelf life, they probably never will.

The FDA unveiled a tomato-safety initiative in 2007 that sought to identify causes of salmonella infection, but Acheson admits that studying preventive techniques doesn’t help the FDA deal with outbreaks. The FDA has no plans to change the initiative in the face of the recent outbreak.

Even if the FDA can pinpoint the source of the outbreak, it’s hard for consumers to know where their tomatoes are grown. Certain imported foods are required to carry country-of-origin labels, but that doesn’t apply to domestic produce. “I’m not aware of any tomato outbreak that was not domestic,” says Acheson. There is no such thing as a mandatory state-of-origin label for food, and federal authorities have yet to create such a law. “Saying ‘product of the U.S.’ isn’t necessarily going to confer safety,” he says. So much for reassurance.

Vi ste jeben.

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Hiatus - OVER

Tara — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:23:53 +0000

Rooting Out the Rotten Tomatoes

By CLAIRE SUDDATH

Workers separate tomatoes at the sprawling Central de Abastos market in Mexico City on June 10

Gregory Bull / AP

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Bookmark this article:

RE Think Tank Blog

Has the Real Estate Market Hit Its Sweet Spot???

Taking the Tax Sting out of Short Sales for Upside Down Owners: Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Tax Act

Book Review: Real You, Incorporated: 8 Essentials for Women Entrepreneurs

Real Estate B.S. Alert: Don’t Hire a Consultant - Reduce Your Own Property Taxes in 30 Minutes

Now THAT’s What I Call a Foreclosure Auction! Neverland To Go On the Block for 50% off!

Is there “Schmuck Insurance” on Run’s House? Russell Simmons’ Investing Term You Should Know

How to Unload Your House - Fast!

Rooting Out the Rotten Tomatoes

By CLAIRE SUDDATH

By CLAIRE SUDDATH

Related Articles

Second Outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth

When Tomatoes Fight Cancer

Morning After at the FDA

How Ready-to-Eat Spinach Is Only Part of the E. Coli Problem

Hiatus - OVER

Rooting Out the Rotten Tomatoes

By CLAIRE SUDDATH

By CLAIRE SUDDATH

Related Articles

Second Outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth

When Tomatoes Fight Cancer

Morning After at the FDA

How Ready-to-Eat Spinach Is Only Part of the E. Coli Problem

RE Think Tank Blog

Has the Real Estate Market Hit Its Sweet Spot???

Taking the Tax Sting out of Short Sales for Upside Down Owners: Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Tax Act

Book Review: Real You, Incorporated: 8 Essentials for Women Entrepreneurs

Real Estate B.S. Alert: Don’t Hire a Consultant - Reduce Your Own Property Taxes in 30 Minutes

Now THAT’s What I Call a Foreclosure Auction! Neverland To Go On the Block for 50% off!

Is there “Schmuck Insurance” on Run’s House? Russell Simmons’ Investing Term You Should Know

How to Unload Your House - Fast!

Rooting Out the Rotten Tomatoes By CLAIRE SUDDATH

By CLAIRE SUDDATH

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Hiatus - OVER

Rooting Out the Rotten Tomatoes By CLAIRE SUDDATH

By CLAIRE SUDDATH

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Rooting Out the Rotten Tomatoes

By CLAIRE SUDDATH

Rooting Out the Rotten Tomatoes

By CLAIRE SUDDATH