Managing Your Home Listing After the Offer

In this market, I suspect that both the listing agent and the seller take a big sigh of relief once they get an accepted offer on their home.  Who wouldn’t!    The real estate market has been very unstable lately following the government tax incentives.  Price points that previously were sweet spots to sell homes at [...]

Update on the MN MLS Adding Rental Properties

I reported a couple weeks ago that the NorthstarMLS had announced that they are targeting a September 1 launch of the ability for agents to put rental properties into the MN MLS.  This could be a fantastic centralized location for all landlords to advertise and for tenants to see what is available.  While I don’t [...]

Improving Your Odds of Getting Your Offer Accepted

I am going to let you in on a couple things that I do to improve my odds at getting my buyer’s offer accepted.  I was about to write “tricks to getting it accepted”, but these are completely legit ways to do your research and put your best offer forward.  You can do this also [...]

Minnesota MLS to Add Rental Property Listings

This is a very exciting announcement.  Many other cities and states already have rental property listings available on their MLS.  This allows both the consumer and the real estate agent the ability to search one place for rentals. With so many people not forced to rent because of a foreclosure or short sale in their [...]

Sellers: How to Maximize Your MLS Exposure

Selling your home is one of the largest financial decisions you will do.  Even if you have sold a home in the past, with the market and technology changing so fast, what you may have learned back then, is irrelevant now.  Since you don’t do it frequently, you are relying on your real estate agent [...]

Weeding Out the Junk Listings On the MN MLS

Maybe I am skeptic (of you could maybe even call me a cynic), I have learned over the years to take everything that I see on the Minnesota MLS with a cautious optimism.  I am forever surprised at how many times an agent either through incompetency, error, or maybe a little snake oil has incorrect [...]

Tips to Using the MN MLS to Buy a Foreclosure

Foreclosure are all the talk right now.  Regardless if you are an investor or owner occupant, everyone wants to get that good deal and they think it comes from buying a foreclosed home.  They are probably right, but there are lots of gotchas when buying them.  Here are some tips on how you can use [...]

Fannie Mae Implements 7 Year Lockout for Defaulters

I guess we had to expect this sometime, but it is surprising it took this long.  Fannie Mae announced a new policy that will lockout defaulting borrowers from getting a Fannie Mae loan for up to 7 years.  This will affect just borrowers that have chosen to let their properties go into foreclosure and ones [...]

Blog Carnival of Investing

A blog carnival is where you take the best articles from the submissions that you are given and choose which posts you like best.  Here is our first Carnival of Investing edition.

Jeff writes that investment property is picking up momentum as investors move money from the stock market to more tangible assets [...]

Comparing Government Loan Programs

For many families, meeting the strict criteria for conventional loans makes the idea of ever owning a home almost bleak. But thanks to the ever-increasing popularity of three very popular government-backed mortgage programs, more low to middle income families are finally able to set goals towards home ownership.
What are these three much loved programs? [...]