I love tools. We should all love tools. Especially tools that make our work day easier. Digital Laser Rangefinders are one such tool I cannot live without. Whether I am out with a client looking through a house or checking out a house on my own that I want to buy, I always carry one of these rangefinders with me.   You can easily verify square footage in a room or throughout the whole property. [...]

Boy the stories I hear. Many real estate investors do whatever it takes to move fast from the close of their real estate investment, through the flip process and on to listing the property and a quick close. Get in, get out and maximize profits. Sounds good, doesn’t it. If it were only that easy.   True story, I am working with a buyer who is buying a house from experienced real estate flippers. In [...]

If you are a real estate investor, you may want to pay attention to this statistic. Why invest where people are leaving? Using data from Moody’s Economy.com, Forbes identified the top-10 states where more residents are leaving than arriving. The factors that encourage outbound migration from these states are mostly economic — high employment and high cost of living — although both Louisiana and Mississippi have been affected by natural disasters. The 10 states that [...]

Top 5 Issues Affecting Commercial Recovery Here are the top five issues facing commercial real estate in 2011, according to consultant Deloitte LLP.

Just the other day I was talking with a friend of mine who has an SBA loan on a commercial building he owns. He was telling me that he has had a lot of trouble getting the SBA to refinance his loan on the building. A quick summary of the particulars for his situation. The building is valued at $1.2 million and he owes $800,000 on the property. He has a 15% equity position in [...]