The State of the Market for Buyers in Orlando FL - May 2016 - by Eugene Hoffman

The State of the Market for Buyers in Orlando FL

Is it still a buyer’s market today in Orlando?

As experts in the Orlando real estate market, we get asked this question a lot.

The answer isn’t as simple as yes or no.

Median price up 12% year-over-year

First off, it really depends on the property type and location.

Single-family homes in great locations that are priced well have been flying off the shelves. There’s a lot of demand in the market for certain areas, while others can seem like ghost towns.

Buyers are often looking for the same thing – good neighborhoods, access to transportation, shopping, good schools, close to work, etc. Properties that deliver all these are definitely a hot commodity. Sellers with a highly desirable property are in control of the market.

But for condos and townhouses – especially those a little off the beaten path, or with some funky features – it can be quite a different story. Prices were down in certain areas of Orlando but seem to be rebounding as the rental market increases.

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How to Sell your House by Yourself in Orlando: A Short Guide - written by Eugene Hoffman

How to Sell your House by Yourself in Orlando: A Short Guide

The City of Orlando is nicknamed “The City Beautiful” and its symbol is the fountain at Lake Eola. Orlando is also known as “The Theme Park Capital of the World” and in 2014 its tourist attractions and events drew more than 62 million visitors

Selling your house is something you’ll have to do maybe just a few times in your life.  And unless you know a local Orlando real estate agent who will sell your house for free or a hugely discounted commission… it can be a real pain in the rear and an expensive process for you as well.

So… you landed on this page about “How to sell your house by yourself in Orlando Florida” because of a few reasons I’m guessing…

• You have no or very little equity in your house so you can’t afford to pay a real estate agents commissions
• You have equity but want to try to save money selling the house yourself before you resort to hiring an agent
• You’re in foreclosure (or heading that way) and just need to sell fast without incurring thousands in agent commissions
• You can’t wait the months and months it sometimes takes to sell a house in the Orlando area in this market so you want to try to sell it more quickly

Whatever one you land in… there are ways to sell your house yourself here in the local Orlando real estate market.

Since 2013, the housing sector has been experiencing a major recovery. Selling your house at this time will definitely be profitable if you do it right. In most cases, it is about using smart marketing strategies and being realistic about your expectations on what you want to achieve with this sale.

This article will provide some guidelines to help you sell your Orlando area house yourself.

How To Sell Your House By Yourself In Orlando Florida – Let’s Dive In

Know The Orlando Real Estate Market Well 

The first and most important step is doing a market research on your neighborhood in the Orlando Florida area. This step involves visiting various home marketing sites (Zillow,Eppraisal the Chase home value estimator, etc), calling a real estate agent or two to see what your home is worth, or reading about the various market pricing techniques.Proper homework on these issues will allow you to come up with a right price for your house and also helps you to avoid making certain selling mistakes.

If you don’t want to hassle with trying to come up with a home value yourself… give us a call at (407) 781-7312 and we’ll give you an honest fair valuation of what your house is worth on the retail market (if you’re going to wait the 3-6+ months to find the perfect retail buyer). And if you want to… we’ll make you a fair all-cash offer on your house to give you that option of selling quickly (we can close in as little as 7 days if you want to).

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Why Won’t My House Sell In Orlando? Written by Eugene Hoffman

You’re trying to sell an Orlando Florida house that just won’t sell?

And yet - the news says the real estate market is heating up. The media is practically shouting again about multiple offers, high demand, and record-setting prices.

So where’s your contract?

These tips could be just what you need to help you sell your Orlando home.

Why won’t my house sell in Orlando? - 6 Tips To Cure It

1) Get good help.

Just like before, there are novice agents and investors rushing into the booming market trumpeting that they know what they’re doing.

But they don’t. They’re getting hit hard with the nuances of financing, deal structure, and evaluation. Seriously, chances are good that real estate is your biggest investment – don’t trust just anyone’s advice. If you want great results, partner with the pros.

2) Don’t make too many improvements.

Too often we see over-improved properties – those where the owners have gone too far. Even with the best of intentions, exceptional craftsmanship, and true artistic talent, it’s incredibly challenging to exceed what the market is paying. Plus, most buyers want to add their own custom touches. Get rid of all the clutter and think “neutral”.

3) Do make necessary improvements.

Unfixed stuff scares buyers. Show that you’ve been a responsible property owner and get all the little details fixed.

Don’t leave gaps in the trim or plates off of the switches. Get it inspected by a professional home inspector, and show off the healthy home report. This goes a long way towards establishing confidence that they’re making a good purchase.

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Colorado's marijuana firms beg banks to take their cash By Kim Gittleson of BBC

The Federal Government has found a way to punish people who try and make a living growing plants for profit. They are doing in a similar way(but different) they control the gun owner's bullets. The US has contracts with all the major manufactures of ammo to sell Homeland Security 85% of their product to control supply. This has driven prices more than the 3% inflation(CPI) that is reported. In the article I have attached the BBC article that explains how the US Fed is trying to control the the Marijuana Industry. First they they need to get an idea how big the market is and then they will find a way to get their "cut". The mafia usually wants about 50- 50. We will have to see what history brings.

Look what happened in Montana and how voters changed their minds on Medical Marijuana to De-crimalized system allow people to grow pot for their own use. Other states have done this and it appears to work better in my opinion.

by Gene Hoffman

Article  By Kim Gittleson of BBC

"Let's just say we have a couple of armed staff," he says.
The owner of Pink House, a marijuana dispensary in Denver, Colorado, Mr Klug has armed his employees because he has been unable to find a bank that will accept the thousands of dollars of cash he takes in each day since recreational cannabis became legal in Colorado on 1 January.
"Even armoured cars have been told not to do business with us," says Mr Klug.

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How big is a house? Average house size by country by Lindsay Wilson

I read an article today(02/2014) in Reality Trac that the median income need to purchase a median price house in San Fransico is $228,000. That was a staggering number in my mind, but what is even worse is the median price of a house in England. I say this because the median square foot of a house in England is 884sF and the median cost has gone over $400,000. That equates to $450sf. The reason prices increase so much in 2014 is because of a loosing of loan qualifications at the beginning of 2014.

Hong Kong has the most expensive housing on Earth by income; plus their median size house is 484sf in size. The second most expensive homes by income is in Vancouver Canada. I have an article about that in my blog.

Gene Hoffman

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The Vampire Squid Strikes Again:by Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone Magazine

Call it the loophole that destroyed the world. It's 1999, the tail end of the Clinton years. While the rest of America obsesses over Monica Lewinsky, Columbine and Mark McGwire's biceps, Congress is feverishly crafting what could yet prove to be one of the most transformative laws in the history of our economy – a law that would make possible a broader concentration of financial and industrial power than we've seen in more than a century.

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Republican Party Platform of 1956

This was a viable program and at the I was born this was the direction the United states of America was heading.


President Eisenhower has given the world bold proposals for mutual arms reduction and protection against aggression through flying sentinels in an "open sky."
We support this and his further offer of United States participation in an international fund for economic development financed from the savings brought by true disarmament. We approve his determined resistance to disarmament without effective inspection.
We work and pray for the day when the domination of any people from any source will have ended, and when there will be liberation and true freedom for the hundreds of millions of individuals now held in subjugation. We shall continue to dedicate our best efforts to this lofty purpose.
We shall continue vigorously to support the United Nations.
We shall continue to oppose the seating of Communist China in the United Nations.

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LocatePLUS Announces the Next Generation Skip Trace Tools by PRWEB

LocatePLUS, the leading provider of cost effective, personally identifiable information in the US, is proud to announce the latest in affordable searches and reports in an easy to use interface. The latest data, and easy to assemble reports, empower customers to solve more cases faster like never before. An improved log-in experience features a convenient format that enables everyone to harness the full potential of the LocatePLUS proprietary data retrieval system.
Free VIP training and complimentary customer support are included with every subscription to guarantee a successful user experience. Skip trace professionals, law enforcement, collection services, attorneys, bail bondsman, financial services, repossession companies and private investigators please contact sales to find the right plan that fits a usage profile and budget.

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Housing Bubble 2.0: "More Flipping, Bigger Profits, In Less Time" With 156,862 Homes Flipped In 2013 by Tyler Durden

Late 2013 pending home sales may have been horrible, and were blamed on the weather (though as even Goldman notes "The broad-based declines by region suggest that colder-than-average weather was likely not the primary driver, given slightly warmer-than-average temperatures on the Pacific coast in December") , but it appears the weather had zero adverse impact on that other, most pernicious home "selling" activity: flipping.
The topic of home flipping is not new here ("Flip That House" In These Bubbling Cities, Housing Bubble 2.0 Edition: "25 Markets Where Flipping Homes Is Most Profitable", etc) - indeed that best-known flashback of the last housing bubble is easily one of the best indications just how fragile the current housing bubble truly is as investors gobble up real estate not with the intention of keeping it but merely to sell to the next greater fool, in the process setting marginal prices based purely on the availability of cheap money, money which has now been tapered by $20 billion in the past two months. However, to get the full picture on just how pervasive "house flipping" has become, we go to the source, RealtyTrac, which has just released its 2013 summary of this troubling trend.
In summary:

• 156,862 single family home flips — where a home is purchased and subsequently sold again within six months — in 2013, up 16 percent from 2012 and up 114 percent from 2011.
• Homes flipped in 2013 accounted for 4.6 percent of all U.S. single family home sales during the year, up from 4.2 percent in 2012 and up from 2.6 percent in 2011.

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Everyone In America Is Even More Broke Than You Think by the Huffington Post

The massive and growing gulf between rich and poor is one of the direst challenges facing the U.S. economy. Highlighting this gap, more than half of U.S. wage earners made less than $30,000 last year, according to an analysis released by the Social Security Administration on Tuesday. That's not far above the $27,010 that marked the federal poverty line for a family of five in 2012. We've created this infographic to help visualize the skewed income distribution in the country. Where do you stack up?

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The Boom And Collapse Of America's 'Subprime Generation' by Chris Porter

Talk about an amazing reversal of fortune! This may be the most amazing, underreported demographic fact today.

• 30-34 year olds in 2012 had the lowest homeownership rate of any similarly aged group before them!
• Five years prior, this exact same group had the highest homeownership rate at 25-29 years old than any group before them!

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/home-ownership-rates-by-demographic-2014-1#ixzz2rKN2PBhb

Vancouver’s housing prices 2nd most unaffordable in the world By Peter Meiszner

An urban planning think tank says Metro Vancouver has the second-highest housing prices in the world when compared to local incomes.
Demographia compared urban areas with over 1,000,000 residents in OECD countries around the world.
They say Vancouver’s “strong urban containment policies” have caused the city’s affordability to “deteriorate markedly.”

The average house price in Metro Vancouver is $670,300, which would require 80 per cent of the average median household income to service the mortgage. That’s more than 2.5 times the 32 per cent guideline set out by Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

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Built-to-Rent New Homes on the Rise by Daily Real Estate News

Thousands of single-family homes are being built to rent rather than sell, The New York Times reports. More home builders and investors see it as an income-generating investment at a time when the pool of first-time home buyers is shrinking.
The percentage of homes built specifically as rentals was 6.2 percent in 2012 — a record high, according to Census Bureau figures.
For example, in the Atlanta area, a five-bedroom, three-bathroom new home that may have sold for less than $200,000 can fetch $1,300 a month in rent.
“New homes still command a premium with renters,” the Times reports.

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| -A A +A Housing Starts Soften After Last Month’s Highs by Daily Real Estate News

New-home construction posted its largest percentage decrease since April, a big fall after last month’s surge, the Commerce Department reports. Housing starts dropped 9.8 percent in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of just under 1 million units.
The drop follows a sharp rise in November, in which new-housing starts had accelerated to the fastest pace since February 2008.
Single-family home construction, which makes up the largest segment of starts, dropped 7 percent in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 667,000 units. However, total single-family housing starts still mark the highest monthly total in 2013, except for November. Multifamily starts fell 14.9 percent for the month.

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UPDATE 2-IMF sees higher global growth, warns of deflation risks By Anna Yukhananov

WASHINGTON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund raised its global growth forecast for the first time in nearly two years on Tuesday, saying fading economic headwinds should permit advanced nations to pick up the mantle of growth from emerging markets.
But the IMF warned richer nations were still growing below full capacity, and it added the specter of deflation to its long list of risks that could derail the nascent recovery.

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Wells Fargo to stop short-term cash-advance loans by McClatchy-Tribune

In November, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency directed banks to evaluate a customer's income, expenses and ability to pay before providing a deposit advance loan.

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Bove Slams Regulators' New Payday Lending Rules

 Why should banks be allowed to lend to consumers at annual interest rates as high as 300%?

Because the alternative is far worse, according to Rafferty Capital Markets analyst Richard Bove.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency late last year issued new rules to govern "deposit advance products," which everyone else calls payday loans.  These short-term loans -- called "payday loans" by everyone else --   are made to checking account customers in anticipation of direct deposits of salary payments or other regular direct deposits.

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Sadly a lot of Homeowners are going to hear this soon.

Over the life of the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), 1.25 million homeowners have received permanent HAMP modifications, and so far 27 percent of those have later re-defaulted on their loans, according to a quarterly report to Congress from the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP).

In its report released to lawmakers last week, SIGTARP berated Treasury for not heeding the office’s previous recommendations regarding HAMP, stressing that the inspector general expressed concern in April that “the number of homeowners who have re-defaulted on HAMP permanent mortgage modifications is increasing at an alarming rate.”

About 184,000 homeowners (29 percent) who received HAMP modifications through TARP rather than through the GSEs have re-defaulted, costing taxpayers $972 million in incentives paid to servicers and investors for those workouts, according to SIGTARP. Among borrowers participating in the GSEs’ HAMP programs, just under 154,000 (26 percent) have re-defaulted (HAMP incentives on GSE loans are paid by the GSEs themselves). Additionally, about 10 percent of all active permanent HAMP modifications were one or two months delinquent as of the end of August.

“The longer a homeowner remains in HAMP, the more likely he or she is to re-default out of the program,”SIGTARP stated. The re-default rate among the oldest HAMP modifications is 48.3 percent, according to SIGTARP’s report.

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