Mike Sackman, Beaufort County SC Real Estate, Military Relocation, REO

Well this will be a welcomed addition!! Hopefully now that access will be outsourced, we won't have to worry about downtime, but I'm sure accuracy and timeliness of information will still be a concern.

The new sites are available through www.bcgov.net and are titled "Property Max" and "Collect Max". This will give access to property tax and property assessment records. GOOD LUCK and happy surfing!

Well this will be a welcomed addition!! Hopefully now that access will be outsourced, we won't have to worry about downtime, but I'm sure accuracy and timeliness of information will still be a concern.

"COUNTY TO PROVIDE NEW ACCESS TO RECORDS"

The new sites are available through www.bcgov.net and are titled "Property Max" and "Collect Max". This will give access to property tax and property assessment records. GOOD LUCK and happy surfing!

Lessons learned on what TO DO and what NOT TO DO!

First of all, don't do it! Now that was the easy part. Second of all, DON'T DO IT!

Always do the due diligence prior to submitting a contract and don't use RD for the loan. I knew better then trying to get a foreclosed, as is, property to close with an RD loan. But trust me, it wasn't my idea nor my guidance.

An RD loan is the most difficult to use when dealing with repairs on a home in good shape, let alone a property that needs some TLC. Even though the home appraised well above the sale price, RD continued to be the beast of burden and the APPRAISER was no help. The first appraisal made no mention of some items, so when we thought we were finished, in comes another appraiser from the same company and rips the house a new ars and acted like a contractor. Lesson learned, if you don't think it needs to be repaired, REPAIR IT!

DO use a good lender that knows the "finer" details of an RD loan and has the CLIENTS best interest in mind and not be so focused on getting a loan, but the best loan for the entire deal. RD wasn't and isn't the loan of choice and to top it off, the client even turned around and said, "Jeez Mike, if I knew it was like this, I would have done FHA or something else".

Foreclosures and Short Sales require the buyers to be prepared to come out of pocket for repairs, no matter what the loan product is and they also need to be aware that there is a heavy risk involved with spending money on something that's never guaranteed to close.

Sitting here writing my 2009 business plan, I did the numbers for 2008 and came up with a pretty interesting FACT......approximately 70% of our solds were MILITARY personal!!!!

As a retired Navy guy, I know what it's like to deploy and save money, having a nice stash when I came back from a 6 month deployment to spend it all on some pretty crazy "stuff"; like surfboards, a cool jeep, a nice tag watch, and least I forget about NOT investing in Microsoft in 1988 upon a recommendation of a friend....hmmm 8k in 1988 at about $3 per, ok you get the rest.

Back to the plan....I have been in contact with a few military transfers coming in over the next few months and when the conversation turned to finances, almost all had BIG TIME cash saved up and I'm talking tens of thousands.....but was I surprised? Not really, considering these folks are transferring from Camp Lejeune, Camp Pendelton and some various other "deployable" duty stations, they all deployed for a year to 18 months and some did 2 tours. How can you not save a bundle, even if your loved ones are here.

People are reenlisting and receiving huge bonuses, some in excess of 60 or 70k as an incentive to stay in. I spoke to a client on recruiting duty and he said the military hit their marks for total people in by July of this year, he further stated that the people that do their homework on the economy and figure out it's not all roses as a civilian, decide to stay in and continue to take advantage of the free medical, dental, and steady pay.

If you're in a "Military Town", it doesn't only pay to help these brave men and women, it's an honor!

As the number of Realtors continue to decline, will local boards need a bucket to bail them out?? It's estimated as our local dues come due in December, that there will be another drastic reduction in the amount of renewals. My fellow Realtors feel this is needed to increase our market share and weed out the "part timers" that take business. As a result, will the die hard's have to pay more to keep the boards afloat?