HomeRun Homes Rent to Own Homes Blog

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HomeRun Homes is a centralized marketplace which helps people Find or Sell a Rent to Own Home, both Nationwide and Globally to the thriving Rent to Own Market. http://www.lease2buy.com

May 31, 2010

Tips for Saving Money On Your Electric Bill...

Hi Everyone,

We just wanted to wish everyone a happy and peaceful Memorial Day. We hope that you are spending some quality time relaxing and enjoying your day. It is certainly a hot one here in New York, and the Air Conditioners are running at full blast. This leads me to a tip that we wanted to share with you that might save you a few dollar per month.

Basically, rates are constantly on the increase from the electric company, and they give you every reason under the sun (no pun intended) for these increases. However, there are two options that you can look into that might save you some money, so let's address them both here:

Your first option would be to call your electric company/utility (on Long Island, ours is LIPA), and ask them what it would cost per month to be put on a "budget billing plan". What they will do is to calculate an average monthly payment, and with your permission, will change you to that fixed monthly payment. The benefits of this are immediately obvious if you take this plan when the summer begins. The reasoning is that if, for example, you spend $300 per month during the summer (air conditioner, pool filter, etc), and you pay $100 per month during the winter, your summer payments will drop dramatically. The drawback is that when the winter comes, your payments will be slightly higher (there are less months of running the Air Conditioner vs. not running it). Also, it makes it easier for your own personal budgeting, in that you know what the payments will be each month, and there will be no "surprises". We have been doing this, and when the 12-month billing cycle was over, we were actually faced with a surplus, which was credited back to us. That is actually a great surprise!

Your second option, which you can do concurrently with the first option, is to speak with your neighbors and get a sense of what they are paying. If you see a large disparity between what they are paying for a similar type of home and similar type of appliances (important!) and what you are paying, contact the electric company and request an audit. They will do some back-end review, and will probably send someone out to your home to review your infrastructure, as well as send you a link to their website to run a manual energy audit.

These are all good ideas for you to look into and we hope that they save you some money.

Do you have any other tips that we did not touch on here? We would love to hear. Please send us your comments to this post.

We will be posting more this week, as there are a lot of very exciting things going on here that will have a significant impact on your search for a Rent to Own Home, or to help you Rent to Own your home.

Have a Great Holiday and Happy Rent-to-Owning !

May 28, 2010

Top 6 Housing Features that Define Comfort

Hi Everyone,

Hope you have had a great week, and the Memorial Day Weekend is upon us. Literally...it's hours away !

We recently took a poll amongst people advertising their Rent to Own homes on our website, and we asked them a very specific question: "What do you consider the most attractive features of your home and neighborhood?". We posed the same question to people looking for a Rent to Own Home on our website, but we changed it slightly to say, "What would you consider the most attractive features of a potential new home and new neighborhood?" The results were tallied, and we have summarized the top 6 of them, since they were the most popular by a landslide. Here is what we found out:

6 Housing Features that Define "Comfort":
1. Ability to make the rental or house payments
2. Proximity to Employment
3. Proximity to Family
4. How easy it is to get around locally - bus routes, trains, etc
5. Amount of traffic in (1-mile) perimeter around the home.
6. Proximity to Houses of Worship

If you are all thinking the same thing I am, it is amazing that the majority is primarily concerned with being able to make the payments. I wonder if we had done the same poll 3 years ago, if the results would be different? We can only wonder. Incidentally, take note of #3 ("Proximity to Family") - my Mother-in-Law lives overseas - so I am living outside that particular rule (wonderful lady - but space is good, universally).


OK, this week, we have been syndicating our Blog across may more Social Media sites, and, we are very proud to announce:
Our Podcasts are now available on ITunes for Free Download. The exact link to our ITunes Store is:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=373351426.

We will try to make at least 1 or more Podcasts per week, coupled with our 3 +/- Blog Posts per week.


A few reminders: We offer very generous referral fees (contact us here for more information). Also, the Pending Home Sales index will be released next Wednesday, June 2nd, and it will cover the month of April. Keep your eyes peeled for that one.


May you have a fantastic Holiday Weekend.
And as always, Happy Rent-to-Owning !

May 26, 2010

Ambivalent Housing Market, Secrets of Rent to Own, etc...

Hi Everyone,

I hope you are having a great week. We are already half-way through, and chugging along towards the long Holiday weekend !

Today, I wanted to return to the ambivalent topic of the housing market, and I wanted to cite two very interesting pieces. The first article is about the rise in New Home Sales in April. This is very interesting, but as we know, the tax credit expired on April 30th, and to see if the mad rush to buy new homes continued after that date, I want to see the numbers for May ! Am I never satisfied? Well, that brings us to the second article, which says, "After increasing last summer, U.S. home prices are drifting lower again". "Clashing, Contradictory, Uncertain, Undecided"? These are all synonyms from Thesaurus.com that describe this ambivalent condition. One would have to argue that as the old cliche dictates, "only time will tell".

On the Website side of things, we have been working hard to get our site to render/appear well on your IPhone, Droid, etc. We will be entering the mobile testing phase in the next few weeks and will post our results for some of the most common mobile devices after that time.

Be sure to check out our "Secrets of Rent to Own" Guide Here. This is a handy guide for anyone that is Looking to Buy a Rent to Own a Home or is Selling a Rent to Own Home. It's a great first step in the direction of a Rent to Own agreement, if that is indeed what is of interest to you.


What else would you like to hear us Blog About? We have been taking your opinions and surveys and responding to them. Keep it coming, as we truly value your input and suggestions. Comment below or E-mail us Here.


Have a Great Week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !!

May 24, 2010

Blogging from the heart...

Hi Everyone,

We hope you had a great weekend, whether you were looking for a home or selling a home, or whether you just chose to take it easy and unwind. Summer is definitely in the air, and the humidity is creeping up.

This entry today brings us one step close to the summer, a time for vacations and fun, but also a time where people who are looking for and selling a home begin to feel some desperation. Perhaps they have children that they would like to have situated in a new school district before the school year begins. Perhaps you have children who just graduated or are moving to college, and you want to down-size. The summer stirs up all of these different situations, and it is on it's way. We hope that the new data coming out this week supports a stronger housing market, so a lot of people are taking a "wait and see" attitude.

Of course, there are those in desperation that are only looking straight ahead towards their immediate and urgently pressing goal of buying or selling. Those that are potentially in serious trouble and face imminent problems. To those people, we say to you, albeit hopefully of some comfort to you, that, "in darkness shineth light". This is from a Latin phrase roughly translated into English, but if you read it over, it will make you realize that little rays and sparks of hope will appear. It's all about perspective. If your family and children are healthy, monetary issues are worries over lack of paper - literally. These are problems that cannot kill you, if you conquer the stress that you impose on yourself during those times. Often, it's literally, "You against You". Realize this, stay strong, and you will make it through.

You do have options, and you do have choices. We founded our company on the principles of a desperate need back in 2002, when the market was in a good position. Regardless of the market, needs and desperation are always present, just to varying degrees. Keep your head up and be strong.

Blogging from the heart !
Have a great week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !

May 21, 2010

Confusing Housing Market, Residential Sales, Prices, Mobile Devices...

Hi Everyone,

We have all made it through another exciting week, with traffic to our website up another 10% from last week, and Ad-responses have been gaining further momentum. This is great news for anyone who has an Ad on our website.

Well, if you've kept an eye on the news this week, you know that there have been several mixed signals from the market and the housing sector. We have heard that mortgage delinquencies were still happening at a rapid clip through the end of March, loan demands/requests from people looking to buy homes are at a 13-Year Low, and for the people who did seek Obama's Loan Modification HAMP program, an astonishing amount of them had their trial mortgages canceled...yes, you heard me right...canceled. True, there is a lot of uncertainty now, due to the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit (which expired on 4/30). This past week, an article on CNN was aptly named, "Housing market diagnosis: Bipolar".

OK, so doom and gloom. Is there a bright side? Of course there is. There are still options for homeowners who cannot find a loan the conventional way. The possibility always exists for you to negotiate a Rent to Own with a homeowner. Ask them. Inform them of how it works, and get your attorneys involved. Homeowners, please take note as well. If you're trying to sell your home, you might be going through potential buyers faster than a termite goes through wood. One after the other drops off since they cannot get a bank loan. Be creative and look into Rent to Own.

A few changes to the site this week, outside of what we mentioned earlier in the week. We have spruced up our "Top Spot" Featured Ad pages with some images of what an actual Top Spot promoted Ad will look like.

You can check out the page for upgrading a "Home Wanted" Ad here: http://www.lease2buy.com/top_homeswanted.php

You can check out the page for upgrading a "Home Available" Ad here: https://www.lease2buy.com/top_homesavailable.php

A look ahead to the economic news for next week shows us some very important numbers coming out: Existing-Home Sales. S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, FHFA Quarterly House Price Index, and New Residential Sales. These numbers should set the tone for the summer months, and they are worth watching.

Looking ahead for our website, we will be working on "mobile-enabling" our site for the most popular mobile devices now, like the IPhone, Android, etc, and we'll keep you posted on how this is going. We have seen a significant increase in traffic to our site from Mobile Devices, and we want to capitalize on every potential buyer and seller...any one of them can be "the one" who can Rent to Own your home !!


We value your feedback; Please tell us what creative options you have been considering to buy or sell a home? Let us know



Have a Great Weekend, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !

May 19, 2010

Commercial Real Estate Market, Multiple Properties, Charleston visit...

Hi Everyone,

Hope your week is going well. We are glad to be with you here and to make a few announcements and give you some information on the markets around us.

We just returned back from Charleston (South Carolina) for a quick 2-day conference, and we had a chance to visit the downtown waterfront area. Since this was my first time down there, I was very impressed by the way the Civil War era homes are mixed in amongst the modern architecture. Charleston is a very quaint little city, and we actually learned about the "Widow's Porch", that is standard on all homes along the waterfront, and which is an homage to the bygone era, where women would wait on the top part of their homes for their husbands to return home from sea. Of course, some never made it back, thus the name of the porch. How times have changed, as nowadays, it could also be referred to as a "Widower's Porch", had it been the wife out at sea and the husband was at home waiting for her. Nevertheless, it is a very nice city to visit, with good cuisine, fantastic architecture, and a market that is evidently strengthening.

Since we are on the topic of markets, there was a very interesting article on Inc.com, titled, "Norm Brodsky on Why Real Estate Still Rules". A construction service owner was curious as to whether he should buy or rent office space, and Norm responded along with the comment that, "I expect that the commercial real estate market will bottom out in 18 months to 24 months". Yes, we all had a feeling about this, and his respected opinion only bolsters this feeling. This is truly a valid concern. We have seen a very large part of the Commercial Real Estate market make inquiries to us regarding the potential to do a hybrid of renting and purchasing stores, buildings, lands, or lots...thus, Rent to Own. In response to these requests, we have implemented the Commercial Real Estate section, where Commercial Properties can be listed, or Commercial Properties can be viewed. We are hoping that this gives some owners and potential buyers of Commercial Real Estate another option, and hopefully, this will help them in their endeavors.

We have made a few changes on the site this week, primarily linking to this Blog from the footer on all pages of our website. Additionally, when a quote is requested for Selling Multiple Properties, we have made the E-mail that comes to the requester into a much more detailed quote format. Once again, all of these changes are being made to simplify the experience for people who are buying or selling a Rent to Own Home or other property.

We have some more improvements in the pipeline, and we will keep you updated as the week continues. Please feel free to comment here and let us know what improvements you would like to see !


NOTE: The Podcast for this Post is available at: http://www.box.net/shared/ngq38qsv5u


Have a Great Week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !

May 17, 2010

Flipping, Homes Available, Mortgages, Tip of the Day...

Hi Everyone,

Hope everyone had a great weekend. It was a really warm weekend here in New York, and of course, that means, "Daddy, I want ice cream", and of course, my personal favorite, the resulting sugar rush !

A few business partners/investors and I went looking at some local properties this past weekend to get a better sense of the underlying market conditions, and to potentially make some offers on some of them in order to flip/rehab, and then Rent to Own them afterwards. The funny thing is that we have actually made contact with a customer who placed an Ad on our site and we are going to see their property this week. When they heard that it was members of HomeRun Homes who are actually coming to see their home, they had a good laugh, due to the irony. We had wanted to see their home this past weekend, however, they were showing the property to people who contacted them via their Ad on our site (their "Home Available" Ad).

We have been receiving a lot of E-mails from people asking us about certain properties or homes that they desire to have, so we wanted to clarify here, that you can always check out homes and contact the owners (for free !) via the "Homes Available" link on the side of our website (www.lease2buy.com). If you do not see the property you are looking for, you can let "the world" know what you need by clicking the "Find a Rent to Own" Home link on any page of our website, and following the prompts to create your own, "Home Wanted" Ad.

Tip of the Day: When we originally purchased our primary residence, our mortgage broker quoted us a specific rate. When we got to closing, there was a 1/8 point discrepancy above the quoted rate. After some yelling and screaming during the closing (of course), the broker agreed to compensate us by cutting a check to hedge the "loss" for us. All worked out well, and this kind of thing does happen from time to time, and it may not be malicious on their part - it could just be an oversight. But the tip of the day is 2 words: "In Writing". Make sure you get every single quote, whether it's a mortgage interest rate, a home price...anything...in writing, on the letterhead of the broker, seller, etc, along with the date and their signature.


We will be doing some cool structural work on our site this week, and we'll let you know.

As always, remember to "Follow" our Blog (see the left-side of the page), so you can be notified when a new post is made, and as always, we welcome your valuable comments and insights!

Have a great week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !

May 14, 2010

New Residential Construction, Loans, Referrals and Affiliates, Free Book...

Hi Everyone,

A Happy Friday to All.

Things have been simmering here at HomeRun Homes, with traffic to our website at all-time highs, and we are proud to say that we have received the most "Thank You" E-mails from our customers within one week since we began doing business 8 years ago.

OK, some important news coming out next week:

Tuesday the 18th brings the newest figures for New Residential Construction - Building Permits, Housing Starts, and Housing Completions

Friday the 21st brings the Loan Performance Housing Price Index


These are both very important numbers. The announcement of New Construction, coupled with Housing Prices, should paint a better picture of where things have been over the past few months, and if they are positive, they can hopefully continue throughout the summer and beyond.

Now, we usually like to throw some exciting promo on the table at least once a week, so we are letting everyone know that we offer a generous Referral and Affiliate program. If you are interested in learning more, please leave comments here, or you can send an E-mail to homebuyer@lease2buy.com with the subject line of "Referrals/Affiliates", and we'll send you more details. It's a great way to earn some extra money and some free months on your Ads.

As a final note, we are responding to a question from one of the buyers who has received a large amount of responses from sellers this past week. Our best advice is to make a document or spreadsheet with the name and contact info of each seller, along with the details (prices, etc) of their homes. Once you have it all down visually, it's much easier for you to make a decision and make further reminder notes once you have viewed their properties. Good luck, and we hope you found your new castle !

Remember, we are offering a Free Copy of "Secrets of Rent to Own", when you purchase an Ad of 3-Months or longer.

If you're Looking for a Rent to Own Home, you can get your very own "Home Wanted" Ad at http://www.lease2buy.com/prospectivetenants.php

If you're Selling a Rent to Own Home, you can get your very own "Home Available" Ad at http://www.lease2buy.com/prospectivesellers.php


Have a Great Weekend, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !!

May 12, 2010

Great Real Estate Deals, Home Staging, Rehabbing....

Hi All,

Happy Wednesday to everyone.

It's been an exciting week at the HomeRun Homes campus, and to all of you who have thanked us for bringing you such a deluge of quality responses to your Ads...you are quite welcome. Our goal is to bring traffic to our website so buyers or sellers can find you, and you can Find a Rent to Own Home or Sell a Rent to Own Home. Basically, we are just doing our job, since we work for you!

We wanted to re-emphasize a fantastic article, called: "7 Cities With Great Real Estate Deals", which runs down some of the hottest returning markets. If you read through the article, you'll see that there are a lot of unpolished gems out there. Further, you will see our name mentioned in the article for Atlanta, and also for Orlando, Florida (and Central Florida), since we believe that these are two of the hottest markets right now.

This leads me to the next item, which is that our 8-Year anniversary is around the corner. We originally got our start buying and rehabbing homes in Central Florida (Read our full background here: http://www.lease2buy.com/rent-to-own-homes.php). One of the first homes we renovated is this one:



We will tell you more about this in the coming weeks, as our June anniversary approaches, along with some fantastic offers...stay tuned for your exclusive opportunities to be announced here in our company Blog!

The last item that we wanted to discuss is Home-Staging, which has gained quite a bit of momentum in the recent market. For example, I have a neighbor who was stuck in his home for 8 months, he could not sell, and he was not in a position to Rent to Own the home. I had a Home-Staging company get in touch with him, and they came in and revamped his entire home. During his next Open House, he got a few offers, and he is actually in contract now. This is a handy service. Are you a Home Stager? If so, please tell us more about your work.


Have a Great Day, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !

May 10, 2010

Silly Real Estate Sayings, Huge Traffic, Featured Ads...

Happy Monday to Everyone,

A taste of fall is in the air here on the East Coast, but as we all know...not for long!

We have a very exciting week ahead, as many of you who already have Ads on our website can imagine. We have had a humongous surge in traffic on the website over the past few days, and a lot of you have been deluged with responses to your Ads.

Please always respond to them as quickly as possible to show them you are serious, and that you want to rent to own your home or find a rent to own home fast ! With the end of the FHA Tax Credit, people are realizing the benefits of rent to own more and more each day.

Website tip of the week: With all of this huge additional traffic, this could be a great time to put your Ad on top of the State page where you have the Ad, so these visitors see you before anyone else! (We described this feature in detail in the following blog post: http://www.blogging.lease2buy.com/2010/04/lease2buycom-updates-featured-free.html

One of our customers suggested this to us over the weekend: "Get more Sellers selling lower priced properties.". The short answer is that we can't control the values of the properties that are posted on our site. Now, that being said, price is relative, and by that, I mean that a price that is high for one potential buyer might be just right for another. A quick glance through our site will show prices on the very low end numerically, on up to a few mega-mansions with high-end numbers. It's all a matter of taste and preference. A seller of a "low-priced property" may be in just as much of a need to sell their property as a seller with a "high-priced property". Again, "relative" sums it up.

Some food for thought on a very interesting article on Yahoo Finance, titled, "4 Biggest Lies in Real Estate". To summarize, they listed them as: Phony Photos and Videos, Valuations Lacking Value, Mortgage Rates You Can't Get, and Unreal Property Descriptions, plus, they also tossed in a "Euphemism Alert".

The interesting thing about the Euphemism alert is that all of you have probably read these types of Ad descriptions, for example, "Handyman's Special" (you have to gut the whole property first), and "Great View" (you'll break your neck twisting your head out the window to see the water). Some of these just go with the territory, and the old rule of "Caveat Emptor", or Buyer Beware, applies here.

Either way, this makes a great educational read for those of you on either side of the table, as a buyer or a seller.


We will check in with you during the week with more information.


Have a great day, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !

May 7, 2010

Facebook, Twitter, Podcast...

Hi All,

Hope you had a great week!

We just finished up with an interview for a new website focusing on home buyers in the 20-35 year old range, and that article should be out late month (or early June), so we will keep you posted.

It's been a really quiet week in terms of Economic News for the Real Estate/Rent to Own Market. We are just watching the market and that horrendous spill in the Gulf.
We pray that they cap it before it damages the wildlife and the local Gulf businesses. As a side/personal note - Gulf Shrimp and Gulf Oysters have always been my weakness.

We have just had our Facebook profile shortened to a much prettier address:
http://www.facebook.com/homerunhomes, and as some of you already know, our Twitter Address is: http://www.twitter.com/homerunhomes

Do you see a pattern emerging in the naming?


OK, so a News Flash: We are boldly looking to endeavor into the world of Podcasting, which for those of you who are not aware of them, they are basically Blog Posts, but in a voice recording that you can download and play on your Ipod or MP3 player.

Now, I am not crazy about my recorded voice, however, a lot of you have spoken and asked me to do this. So the answer is, "Yes", I will give it a try.

If our team is able to successfully organize the techie side of it, I will post the Podcast here on the Blog. Apparently, this saves a lot of time when you can listen to the Blog as opposed to reading it. Please be patient as we try to figure this one out - I'm off to do some voice exercises now (kidding).

Please check back Monday for more news!
Have a great weekend, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !




My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-820fd66e75f39e338c13a2a4fd033585}

May 5, 2010

Expansion regardless of Economic Conditions

Hi All,
Hope your week is going well so far.

We have been letting people know about our newsletter, and we have many new subscribers, so we welcome them!

We also know that once they are visiting our site, they will be seeing and contacting both Buyers and Sellers of Rent to Own Homes, so the snowball effect occurs. Let me explain - you are offering a home, they need a home, they see your Ad, they contact you, you make a deal, and everyone is happy. If they have a home they are offering, they see your Ad, they contact you, you make a deal and have a new home! The circle of life; happy visitors make happy customers.

On to another topic:

We live in what was a small town out in Eastern Long Island. We moved back in 2005at the high point of the market, however, the traffic has exploded as new subdivisions have sprung up everywhere, and the influx of people coming "out East" has been so dramatic, that they recently began expansion of our main road from 2 lanes to a 4-lane highway.

This is another sign of "Sprawl", but most importantly, it's a sign of flourishing during a difficult market. The empty stores and shops with the whitewashed windows has slowed, and new businesses have moved in. It's incredible how communities spark back to life, and this should be happening all across the country. Would it be too much to ask for a Starbucks near me?

I hope everyone has a great week, and we'll check in with you later in the week to give you some more updates.

Have a great day, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !

May 3, 2010

Free Quarterly Rent to Own Newsletter

Hi All,
Hope you had a great weekend !

We have a lot of ongoing projects this week, but we just finished our most recent one, which is a quarterly Rent to Own Newsletter.

Some more information below (This is our Press Release that just went out regarding the Newsletter):

********************
For Immediate Release:

HomeRun Homes
(631) 676-3609
(631) 574-2420
homebuyer@lease2buy.com
http://www.Lease2Buy.com

Free Quarterly Rent to Own Newsletter Offered by HomeRun Homes

Ronkonkoma, New York, May 3, 2010 - HomeRun Homes (www.Lease2Buy.com) is now offering a free Newsletter regarding Rent to Own Homes. This quarterly Ezine will cover the topics of Buying or Selling a Rent to Own Home, along with tips, hints, and other news and information from the Real Estate and Rental Home markets.


FHA Tax Credit Expiration and the Real Estate Market

With the expiration of the FHA Tax Credit on April 30th, Rent to Own will become an even more popular option for purchasing a home. Since the popularity of Rent to Own has increased dramatically over the past few years, HomeRun Homes has added new services to help those seeking these type of Creative Real Estate deals. This free Newsletter is one of a series of benefits that the company has offered, along with providing a place for Home Service providers and Commercial Real Estate owners to offer their services or their properties to the vast amount of visitors that the website attracts.


Accessing the Rent to Own Newsletter

HomeRun Homes suggests that both potential Buyers and Sellers should educate themselves on the Rent to Own/Lease Purchase/Lease Option market before pursuing it as an option to buy, and these interested parties can download their copy of the Rent to Own Newsletter at: http://www.lease2buy.com/rent_to_own_homes_mailer.php


For additional information on the topic, "Free Quarterly Rent to Own Newsletter Offered by HomeRun Homes", please visit www.Lease2Buy.com


ABOUT HOMERUN HOMES

HomeRun Homes is a Centralized Marketplace which helps people Find or Sell a Rent to Own Home, or offer Home Services nationwide and globally to the thriving Rent to Own market.

- END -
********************


OK, we have a lot of cool stuff coming up this week, so keep an eye here, and have a fantastic and productive week!

Happy Rent-to-Owning !