With the current Job market at a standstill, retailers are becoming more and more concerned about sales as the holidays are quickly approaching. People just simply do not have to money to spend on holiday shopping. I was in the Halloween store just yesterday and was very surprised to see that there was not a swarm of people in their rushing to get their costumes for this upcoming Saturday. The amount of costumes that were not sold out, was much less than I have seen in previous years when the economy was at a good place. I overheard the gentleman that works there saying that he was even surprised that so many costumes were still left so close to Halloween. It seems that during this season, people are making costumes or recycling them from previous years.
We keep seeing the economy going up and down over the past few months, which doesn’t give consumers and retailers much hope that the economy is going to improve anytime soon. Having a steady economy depends mostly on people pumping money into retailers and even larger purchases. People don’t have the income, in turn causing them not to be able to spend. Is this vicious cycle ever going to end?
Consumers and retailers don’t have a bright outlook on the future, especially those retailers who thrive on the holidays to make the majority of their money for the year. Bigger retailers, which make large amounts of money throughout the year don’t seem to be as concerned with this issue. Seasonal places such a Christmas tress lots or stores that sell holiday decorations and seasonal stuff are more concerned, since that is where all or most of the income for the year comes from.
The spenders or consumers do not feel that spending is going to get better. Most of these people are out of work, with really no hope of anything promising happening in the near future, or working but not able to get a pay increase because employers cannot afford it. Some companies are even giving salary cuts.
Experts have said that seeing the Real Estate market pick up over the last few months, leaves hope on that front. Which boggles my mind a little bit; how are people not able to afford to spend money on Holiday shopping or to pump the retail economy, but they have these large amounts of money to buy big purchases on homes? A lot is due in part to the first time buyer tax credit, but if the government can give a perk to improve housing market, why can they not give a perk when spending money on the rest of the economy? As a consumer, it doesn’t seem that prices on normally shopping is low, in fact it is higher than I have ever seen it in my life.
If consumer spending is so important to stimulate the economy, then why hasn’t the Obama administration come up with something to help these people to afford to put money into it?
When I was just 6 years old, my mom began selling Real Estate. I can remember going on her appointments with her and just thinking she had the BEST job in the world. She had no set hours, and her day seemed to consist of driving clients around and showing them houses. That sounded good to me, even at 6-years old. The older I got, the more appealing her career looked. She constantly had extra time to spend with my brothers and I and the money seemed to be good.
At the young age of 18, straight out of High school I decided to follow in the “family business” and immediately enrolled in the courses needed to become a licensed agent. I also began working for top producing agents to get hands on learning. After working very hard to get my license, I finally passed and became a licensed Realtor.
I never in my life realized that being an agent takes some actual work and it isn’t just made up of driving clients around and finding them houses. I never in my life thought that I would have to actually seek out people who wanted to buy a home; I assumed they came and found you. Boy was I wrong. It always looked so easy for the agents that I worked for. They constantly had clients calling them and were constantly closing deals. What I didn’t know was prior to their success they actual had to put in countless hours and efforts.
Most agents will spend their time marketing themselves, trying to get name recognition in a certain area. While others may get out and prospect and meet people, by holding open houses or door knocking. Everyone has a different way of doing things and whatever your method maybe, you have to make sure you have a plan of action. Your broker can assist you in this.
If you plan on getting into the market full time, and using it as your sole source of income, you may want to set a savings and a budget before you get into it full force. This will save you in a case in which you don’t sell anything for the first couple of months.
Just like with any business, timing is everything. When I say timing is everything, I don’t mean the timing of how the market is doing; I mean your personal timing. Are you ready to put in a lot more hours than you imagined? Are you willing and able to sacrifice your nights and maybe even weekends to show prospective buyers or hold open houses? Real Estate can be a very profitable business for you, if you put in the effort.
Ive realized during this “tough market” that the more work you put in now, the more it will benefit you when the market picks up. I believe for the agents that you see in the office every day, the ones who are sticking to it and not giving up, will become tremendously successful when the market picks up.
It has been brought to the Craigslist and internet world that there is a scam going around by frauds who are acting as homeowners trying to rent out their properties. These fraudulent people are getting information from listed rentals on other sites and auctioning sites, in turn advertising them on Craigslist and other sites as their own. They ask the prospect for money to give information on the home and in turn the keys will be given after the money is received. But low and behold, the keys are never received by the prospect and they are out of a possibly large amount of money. In some cases, the homes that are being listed were never being rented to begin with.
This issue is something that is going on all around the country. The scammers are not only targeting homes that have been on the rental market previously, but they are also going after homes that are listed on Auction sites. In a lot of cases, the prospects have been smart enough to actually go look at the property before they give any money to the “renter”. It has even been reported that the prospect gets to the property and there are people living in the home. Others have not been so fortunate, just falling into the scam.
How can you be sure it’s a scam ad and not a real rental? There are a few red flags to avoid when looking for rental properties on Craigslist. These ads are usually place by people overseas and I have noticed that the ad is often times misspelled or doesn’t have proper grammar. Another thing that is a key that it is a scam, there is usually a foreign contact phone number also.
These types of ads are pretty obvious as long as you are aware that they are out there. You need to be very careful of every rental ad you look at, and make sure to ask for the physical address so that you can go make sure it is a legitimate rental before you fork over any info such as social security number and driver license, as they can perform identity theft against you, in turn costing you thousands of dollars and stress. Another thing experts are suggesting is that you only deal with agents or sellers and the renters directly. If you don’t feel 100% safe using craigslist, consult an agent for all of your rental needs. This way they can search prorperties that are legitimate and listed in the MLS system. This can save you countless hours of stress and money issues.
If you are someone who has experienced this type of scam already, report it to your local law enforcement agency to assure that it doesn’t happen again and most importantly so you won’t be held liable for any damage done to your credit. Knowing that these scammers are out there, is your first step in preventing this from happening to you and educated people you know on it too. The more people that know, the better off we will all be.
On October 13, Governor Swartzenegger passed assembly bill 957 also known as the buyers choice act. This bill gives the consumers the option of choosing who they want to use when they decide to buy foreclosed homes. It also allows them to chose their own title, escrow and any other vendor needed during the real estate transaction.
This bill was passed in hopes that it will save money out of the homebuyers pocket, as well as help out smaller privately owned companies who our really hurting since lenders are using bigger names companies for these services, which causes the homeowner more money in their purchase.
Homebuyers should be aware of this new bill and know that they now have options when purchasing their foreclosure. I mean why shouldn’t you? Its ultimately your purchase. The reason you weren’t able to before is because these lenders and banks probably have some sort of “referral” thing going on with these other big name companies. I mean, why else would they feel the need to rob these homebuyers of more money? Because that’s what they do!
If for some reason this new bill is not disclosed to you during your time of purchase, it is very crucial that you tell someone. The seller will be subject to penalty.
The bill is highly supported by the Escrow Institute of California, probably because they see that it is not fair for these privately owned escrow companies are suffering because these sellers are not allowing them to open these foreclosure sales. Foreclosures are more common sales on the market today, than traditional sales, leaving the said escrow companies practically out of business.
I believe that this act will help to bring the other entities in the Real Estate industry back up to par. By allowing them to take advantage of foreclosure deals, they will be given the opportunity to get their businesses back up to par, leaving less people without jobs. When there is no work to distribute and no money coming in, escrow companies simply cannot afford to keep some of their employees and this in turn causes the unemployment rate to continue to rise. If we can continue to have laws placed on these lenders, banks and sellers then we can continue to work towards improving our economy and real estate market. Everything in general will seem to get better. When people have no rules, they tend to run wild and do what they want. Now that there are repercussions, these parties will be scared to act sneaky because they will face legal consequences.
New and seasoned homebuyers should always be schooled on the laws and bills that are being passed in your area. This will always assure a smooth transaction and purchase for you. Don’t let these people fool you into paying unnecessary money for unnecessary things. Just make sure to do your research and know that you do in fact have options and you will be good to go. Consult your Real Estate Professional with any questions or if you feel you have had the wool pulled over your eyes.
Since August, home prices have shown large improvements giving hope that the Real Estate market is taking a turn for the better. During the month of August, prices of homes went up 1.2 percent from July. Could we be seeing Nationwide prices that are similar to that of 6 years ago? If so this could be great news for the market picking up.
Although most major cities in the U.S. are seeing the prices of homes improving, California has made some of the biggest improvements. This is great news, considering California seemed to be hit the hardest by the crash of the Real Estate market. Major California cities like, Los Angeles and San Francisco have seen the greatest improvements, Los Angeles improving by 1.6 percent and San Francisco by 2.8 percent. This gives the State a bit of relief from the current situation we were seeing.
It seems that the Obama Administration knew what they were doing when they implemented the first time homebuyer tax credit. Helping new homebuyers qualify for tax credits to help them with their down payments, seemed to benefit the potential homebuyers and the Real Estate market as a whole seemed to stimulate the market and bring prices back to a good place, compared to previous years. Many are concerned though, that once the credit expires, it may cause this momentum to decrease, causing us to see a repeat of passed years. I am pretty sure that is the last thing any of us want to see
You have to remember, that most people are still in the financial situations they were in over a year ago, and for them this is all irrelevant. Not everyone is able to take advantage of the tax credit, leaving them still in a bind, possibly even facing losing their home. The ideal thing would be to help everyone; distressed homeowners, unemployed individuals and anyone else who needs assistance, but realistically there just isn’t the means of doing that with all the foreclosures and people losing their homes and jobs and so forth.
In order to assure that we can keep the market at a steady level, the unemployment rate needs to decrease immensely. Without an income, one cannot even fathom the idea of owning a home. And these days jobs and income are very hard to come by. This still leaves people on edge, because the housing market is tied in with employment. I wonder what the Obama administration will come up with for that one. Another thing that could help keep the housing market at a good level , would be to decrease the amounts of foreclosures we have on the market. With so many foreclosures out there, many of the homes out there that aren’t being foreclosed are suffering because they have so many foreclosed homes bringing down their property value.
The improvement of home prices gives us some hope that the market is picking up. It gives us more hope that this can only mean good things for the economy and employment factors.
Im a real estate agent from coldwell banker. these days I do lots of short sales, foreclosures and many other real estate sales and purchases. I love to write on the internet and give people some of
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