Recent Articles

They have names like "Capital City Wealth Builders" and "Millionaire Real Estate Investor," and they may offer you the best chance in these still uncertain economy times to get involved in the buying and selling of real estate. They are real estate investment clubs and they are dotted all across...

A new online poll indicates that we have a ways to go before the residential real estate market in this country returns to anything resembling "normal" because the vast majority of those polled -- 69% -- don't even believe we have hit the bottom in home sales. That means that if you are looking...

Reports from around the country seem to indicate that lots of people rushed to take advantage of the end of the government home-buyer tax credit. "It's gone nuts," one real estate agent in Plano, Texas, tells the Wall Street Journal. But it turns out the end of government incentives to buy a...

Seems like most important consumer-oriented legislation of late in this country comes back to the argument that is just about as old as the American republic: are the best remedies to be found under federal or state laws? So, it probably should not come as a surprise that solutions to the ongoing...

We are all used to the April 15 income tax deadline, which has come and gone. But many are now bracing for a brand new deadline: the planned termination April 30 of the government's popular tax credit for first-time home buyers. In a news release from the National Association of Realtors, NAR...

A few weeks ago, I reported for WalletPop on the wave of foreclosures striking California hotels -- a 27% increase in the first quarter of 2010. Some large hotels changed ownership because of the continuing weakness of the real estate/hotel market here. Now comes word from the Los Angeles Times...

Californians are so used to bad economic news of late (the state's budget is, again, down a giant, black hole; Los Angeles is asking city employees to take 26 unpaid days off this year; and L.A. County is actually thinking about cutting back the "untouchable" County Sheriff's Department) that when...

You just had to know there would be a downside to any recovery in the housing market -- even the beginnings of one. And, sure enough, there is: the price of lumber is going through the roof, up some 65% in just the past year. "Prices are going up and they will continue to go up, and it's going to...

A survey just out from Fannie Mae paints a picture of a post-recession America where the overwhelming majority of Americans--despite the real estate downturn and sub-prime mortgage-caused housing market crash--still want to own a home, but are far more cautious than they once were. Fannie Mae's...

California is already cursed with an unemployment rate -- 12.5% -- that is much higher than the national average. It is one of a handful of states (Nevada, Florida, Arizona are the others) that has been considered ground zero for the housing and real estate crisis. Now, you can add one more notch...