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Our Reader Requested Town Review for This Week:
Mount
Pleasant, South Carolina Not
far from Charleston, Mount Pleasant is known
for its historic neighborhoods,
beautiful beaches and excellent medical
facilities. Is it also a great place to
retire?
Our
Great Retirement Spot for This
Week:
Cookeville,
Tennessee
Located
in pastoral Middle Tennessee, Cookeville
boasts lake recreation, a strong
community spirit, impressive amenities
and an affordable cost of living.
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Last
Week's Reviewed Spots: |
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| Our Great
Retirement Spot:
New
Braunfels, Texas
Nestled
along two rivers, New Braunfels boasts a
rich German heritage, affordable living
and plenty of water recreation. It
is a great retirement spot!
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| Our
Reader Requested Town:
Boise,
Idaho
Boise is a scenic, safe city with
top notch medical facilities, strong cultural amenities and
abundant outdoor recreation. Is it a great place to retire?
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Real Estate
2012 Predicitions and Trends, continued....
Appreciation is still a distant concept - being a buyers' market and the mentality that everyone wants to submit a lowball offer on an already low price is going to slow down a value recovery.
Mortgage interest rates will remain at historic lows, however home ownership rates continue to fall, due to lack of jobs stability and mortgage qualifying guidelines.
This is leaving the door open to many foreign investments. USA is seen as #1 for real estate investments worldwide, both residential and commercial.
Distressed properties actually represent the majority of housing inventory - this still includes a strong trend with short sales (lenders are improving and streamlining their short sale process, mainly due to strong government involvement) and foreclosures (REO properties - shadow inventory - are going to be released in the market more than in 2011.) Just Bank of America has claimed a 60% increase in short sales in 2011 over the previous year and they expect 2012 to be at the same level or more.
Several lenders have started offering lease option sales. Homes that have been foreclosed are leased back to the homeowner through a lease option program and eventually are allowed to purchase the house back. This trend is going to become more popular in 2012, with so many REO properties sitting in "shadow inventory."
Bulk REO Trading will be on the rise. With so many homes foreclosed, waiting to be released in the market (banks are controlling how many homes are released at one time, so not to flood the depressed market with distressed property prices and drive values down further,) banks are looking to sell these homes in packages to investors.
Home remodeling and improvements will be on the rise - owners prefer adding or remodeling their existing home instead of trading up or buying a new home. By now investors should be used to a different approach to investing: real estate has definitely evolved into a totally new way of doing business and the window of opportunity is still wide open. 2012 is reinforcing the new concepts and ideas that we have learned in the last few years: now it is a matter of thinking outside the box and capitalizing on the trends.
~Laura Al-Amery is a real estate investor and consultant with over 20 years experience in several aspects of the real estate business. She has practiced real estate in Hawaii and Missouri, and presently lives in St Louis. She has hosted real estate seminars in St Louis for over 10 years, in real estate subjects like creative financing, building wealth with multi family buildings and short sales.
For a FREE Report on "The 8 Most Profitable Real Estate Niches," which will explain in detail the type of investments and the pros and cons of each one, please visit
http://www.bestrealestateniches.com.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laura_Al-Amery.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6836370.
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