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

December 27, 2011

Holiday Housing Cheer!

Hi Folks,
   I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a very Happy Holiday!

   Last week the New Residential Construction figures were released for November, and for two out of the three components, there was a pretty solid move upward.

   The two components that were on the rise were both Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits, and Privately-owned housing starts. The building permits for these Privately-owned housing units were up 5.7% over October 2011, but almost 21% from November 2010. The housing starts for these Privately-owned projects were up 9.3% over October 2011, but 24.3% over November 2010.

   The sole component that was down was for Housing Completions (for Privately-owned Housing), and the drop off was 5.6% from October 2011, and just 1.6% from November 2010. This should be reflective of a lower pipeline earlier in the year of both building permits and housing starts. If that is the case, however, let's just imagine for a second how promising the housing completions should be a few months down the road when these elevated building permits and housing starts come to fruition.

   As for Existing Homes Sales, these figures experienced a healthy bounce as well, with the completed transactions for single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, climbed 4% from October 2011, and 12.2% over November 2010. At a continued pace, we can only hope that the Shadow Inventory of homes can be devoured, so that we can truly experience the long-awaited Housing Recovery.

   What are your thoughts?

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Have a Great Week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !
Regards,
Rob Eisenstein
HomeRun Homes Blog: http://blogging.lease2buy.com
HomeRun Homes Websites: http://www.lease2buy.com and http://www.homerunhomes.com

TAGS: #ResidentialConstruction #ExistingHomesSales #buildingpermits #housingstarts #HousingCompletions #ShadowInventory #housingrecovery

December 19, 2011

How The Heck Did I Become A Landlord?

Hi Folks,
   Hope all is well, and your Holiday spirit is brimming over the top!
   OK, I certainly agree, the title of this post may be silly, but the topic is anything but silly.

   Amy Hoak did a great job addressing the "Accidental Landlords" in her story for the WSJ. Hoak defined one such landlord as "a landlord not by choice but because of circumstances beyond control", namely, the real-estate crash, in which this particular homeowner was suddenly faced with a choice: "sell for $100,000 less than what she paid, or hold on and hope that prices recover." She chose to hold on, rent the property, and thus, became an "Accidental Landlord". The chaos that ensued was a nightmare, that was harassing neighbors, and made complaints about everything from loud music to dust on her mailbox.

   "Becoming a landlord when a property proves difficult to sell is also a gamble that housing prices will rebound fairly soon, and that the ultimate sale price will more than cover expenses incurred in the meantime.", says Hoak, but with that gamble also comes legal responsibilities, expenses, and "unforeseen headaches"

   Lisa Eckert, a property manager for Coldwell Banker Bain, in Kirkland, Wash, commented in Hoak's article that she thinks we will see "a lot more owners becoming landlords" due to the economy, and says that people are "turning to renting out as the last-ditch effort". For example, Rick Sharga, executive vice president of Santa Ana, Calif.-based Carrington Mortgage Holdings LLC, says that rents are rising and there are millions of potential home buyers who are unable to qualify for mortgages.

   If you find yourself at the threshold of becoming an "Accidental Landlord", there are some tips that were shared that can help you survive, such as high costs (such as taxes, insurance, possible homeowner association dues, maintenance, etc.). For some landlords, Hoak writes that they might be better off hiring a Property Manager. Basically, a Project Manager, who will handle the maintenance, along with collecting the rent and other related services to managing the property, all for a fee that varies regionally and locally.

   Some of the additional tips that will help both new and seasoned landlords survive, include having a strong and enforceable contract, as well as full documentation of all correspondence, expenses, etc, should they ever need paperwork to bolster the reason for an eviction.

   My favorite quote from Hoak's piece came from Jerry Arnold, who has been renting out a condo he owns in Seattle since 2009, and he said the following about renters; "Nobody treats a property like an owner".

   Mr. Arnold, you are correct. However, there is one other group of people out there that also will treat a property like an owner; tenant-buyers, who are signed on to a Rent to Own contract. Basically, why just rent out a home that you can't sell? Why not rent it out with an option to buy, or Rent to Own?

   Does that make sense? What do you think about that statement?

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Have a Great Week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !
Regards,
Rob Eisenstein
HomeRun Homes Blog: http://blogging.lease2buy.com
HomeRun Homes Websites: http://www.lease2buy.com and http://www.homerunhomes.com

TAGS: #landlord #realestatecrash #rentproperty #risingrent #housingprices #PropertyManager #eviction #RenttoOwn #contract #renter #tenant

December 15, 2011

Real Estate Can Make You Do Crazy Things

Hi Folks,
   Hope you're having a great week.

   It's nothing new to any of you reading this that Real Estate is a great way to make a lot of money, if done right with a cooperating market. However, there is also an under-current of those that use fraud, manipulation, and other schemes to scrape funds from people with blatant disregard for the law.

   For example, there were 4 such incidents that popped up in the news this past week, one involving a Real Estate Broker, one involving an Internet Scam, another involving some Real Estate Investors, and yet another one overseas, just to show how far-reaching this issue goes.

   To be specific, a Real Estate Broker in Phoenix was convicted for evading over $3 Million in taxes from land sales and broker commissions, while some guy sold property in Alabama...property he didn't own and never gave up the Title for once he was paid! The story involving the Real Estate Investors was related to fraud and bid-rigging at Public Real Estate Foreclosure Auctions in California. The overseas one that I referred to above was in New Zealand, where a real estate salesman misled a buyer and failed to pass on an offer made by another buyer.

   I'm going to assume that overall, people are "good", however, with the markets the way they are right now, there are a lot of desperate folks out there, and a lot of people waiting to pounce on them like prey. Of course, everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but the sheer spike in these stories tells me that this is a trend that will continue in tandem with the market woes.

   The lesson here: Caveat Emptor, or "Buyer Beware". Do you have any similar stories to share with our readers?

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Have a Great Week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !
Regards,
Rob Eisenstein
HomeRun Homes Blog: http://blogging.lease2buy.com
HomeRun Homes Websites: http://www.lease2buy.com and http://www.homerunhomes.com

TAGS: #RealEstateBroker #RealEstateInvestors #taxes #landsales #bidrigging #RealEstateForeclosureAuction #California #NewZealand

December 12, 2011

Occupy Foreclosure Homes Hits Multiple Cities

Hi Folks,
   It's been a short while since we spoke, as I have had some unforeseen personal issues develop in my life over the past few weeks, but things are clearing up and the posts will start getting back on track for you!

   Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few months, I'm sure that when you turn on your TV, you keep hearing the same word over and over; "Occupy". Just slip a location after it, and you have Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Oakland, etc. Up to this point, the Occupy movement has been done in a Public fashion (Public Parks, etc), however, as it was recently discussed in a Newsday article from The Associated Press ("Occupy protests move to foreclosed homes"), Occupy protesters across the country are "reclaiming foreclosed homes and boarded-up properties", which they write, is "signaling a tactical shift for the movement against wealth inequality".

   These are not isolated incidents.

   Apparently, in excess of 25 cities were "occupied" by these groups who were protesting "on behalf of homeowners facing evictions". Jeff Ordower, one of the organizers of Occupy Homes, was quoted as saying that "It's pretty clear that the fight is against the banks, and the Occupy movement is about occupying spaces. So occupying a space that should belong to homeowners but belongs to the banks seems like the logical next step for the Occupy movement".

Some of the areas that the groups were protesting in were:
* Seattle: The article says that Seattle "has become a leader in the anti-foreclosure movement as protesters took over a formerly boarded-up duplex last month. They painted the bare wood sidings with green, black and red paint, and strung up a banner that says "Occupy Everything - No Banks No Landlords."

* Atlanta: At a Foreclosure Auction at a county courthouse, what was called a "boisterous rally", took place, along with "whistles and sirens to disrupt an auction of seized houses", per the story. The Occupy Atlanta spokesman, Tim Franzen, said that "We don't know how many homes we saved for one more month during the holiday season", and added that, "It was kind of a Christmas gift to the people."

* New York: Protesters marched through a residential neighborhood in Brooklyn carrying signs that read "Foreclose on banks, not people", per the Story.

* Southern California: In another familiar protest, the "protesters rallied around a family of six that reclaimed the home they lost six months ago in foreclosure".

* Portland: The home of a woman that was defiant about leaving that home, Deb Austin, was the site of a press conference. Austin, who's is facing foreclosure next March, per the AP Story, vowed to stay in her house until authorities take her out. The reason she fell behind was the result of both her cancer diagnosis, and also job loss.

   It appears that these protests will keep regenerating across the country, and perhaps the upcoming Election year will fan the flames even more. One such "desired result" could potentially be the use of abandoned foreclosed houses "that could be housing people", say the protesters.

   This will all remain to be seen, but it certainly is not a headline that will be dropping off the radar any time soon. What do you think?

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Have a Great Week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !
Regards,
Rob Eisenstein
HomeRun Homes Blog: http://blogging.lease2buy.com
HomeRun Homes Websites: http://www.lease2buy.com and http://www.homerunhomes.com

TAGS: #OccupyWallStreet #foreclosedhomes #homeownersfacingevictions #ForeclosureAuction #residentialneighborhood #banks #Seattle #Atlanta #NewYork #Portland #Elections #California

December 5, 2011

Property Managers Thrive as Rentals Soar

Hi Folks,

   Hope you all had a great weekend, whether you were doing Holiday shopping or anything else to relax this past weekend.

   For quite some time, many honest and hard working Property Managers were being grouped into the same category as some bad apples in their field. However, since people are having difficulties purchasing homes due to mortgage rules, etc, rentals are soaring, and in conjunction, Property Managers are flourishing.

   If you are not sure of what the functions of a Rental Property Manager are, they "handle such tasks as screening tenants, helping landlords set rents, resolving disputes and ensuring lawns get mowed. They charge homeowners about 8 percent to 14 percent of the monthly rent, depending on the manager and city", as told by Hui-yong Yu on businessweek.com.

   Time for some hard facts from Yu in the article, "Once ‘Ugly’ Property Management Grows as U.S. Home Rentals Surge", Renter household formation "surpassed new owner-occupied homes in 2007 for the first time since 1985 and has held the lead since", per the U.S. Census Bureau data". Additionally, U.S. apartment vacancies fell to a five-year low in the third quarter, according to Reis Inc., a New York-based real estate research company. Supply and Demand - less vacancies means less apartments available, and thus, higher rents. Diane Castanes, a partner at Phillips Real Estate Services in Seattle, mentioned that “When rents go up, that gives people enough cash flow to hire professional management,”

   “There has been a dramatic shift toward renting,” Chris Herbert, research director of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and as Yu said, services for rental properties are thriving "following a surge in foreclosures and stiffening of mortgage standards". This led to an explosion in membership in the National Association of Residential Property Managers over the past five years, according to the Chesapeake, Virginia-based trade group".

   This is where this story becomes extremely interesting.

   "Property management may have a role to play in fixing the housing crisis", said Reggie Brown, chief executive officer of All Property Management LLC, a Seattle-based Web service, in a segment of Yu's article. A few months back, the FHFA, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was looking for ideas on "handling foreclosed homes held by the government", to the tune of about 248,000 as of June.

   Brown "filed a suggestion with the FHFA that the homes be put up for rent with property managers hired to oversee them", which was a fantastic idea. "What’s going to change is the percentage of U.S. households that are rental versus owner-occupied,” he said. “It’s now almost 40 percent, but that number is definitely going to grow.”

   From our standpoint, this is a great idea on many levels. With the proposal from Brown, coupled with our proposal to Rent to Own these homes (to generate immediate revenue), I definitely feel this would make a large impact on the Housing Market.

What are your thoughts on this?

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Have a Great Week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !
Regards,
Rob Eisenstein
HomeRun Homes Blog: http://blogging.lease2buy.com
HomeRun Homes Websites: http://www.lease2buy.com and http://www.homerunhomes.com

TAGS: #PropertyManager #rentalproperties #foreclosures #RenttoOwn #screeningtenants #homeowners #owneroccupiedhomes #apartmentvacancies #FHFA #Rentals #mortgagerules