Continual Vigilance

Although the Property Index online service is seen as a recent business, (they were registered only in March 2007), they were very quick to establish expert reputation. De facto, they are a pretty accessible business focusing on offering experienced guidance to any person striving to let, sell, rent or buy land across the world. Their pledge: to assist you light on just what’s looked for very swiftly not to mention without hassle.

Property is all over the place in our times, unquestionably the fanciest area being property on the market in Italy. It’s quite easy to list a slew of the tremendous property for sale in Italy, the rationale for picking realty here is the houses and apartments available and the fun opportunity of being able to live amongst such a spirited people. It’s one of the truly fashionable countries in our times, and with the scenic splendor and wonderful weather that surrounds you night and day, how could you be wrong! Property in Italy is steeped in history, art and culture, this part of the world is home to a good number of sophisticated cultures.

Property Index have a range of properties for sale in Italy, from villas to apartments.

Only one generation ago there was a mere dribble of Britons keen on property in Italy. Ask everyone who has emigrated to Italy and they’re likely to tell you the same. Well, some would are tagging it a passing vogue and others are tagging it a near to an addiction! People intending to move here extend from young urban couples in search of a life perspective to older generations planning to have a break. Do bear in mind, though, that there might be hindrances when acquiring property abroad; expectably there will be hundreds of disparate, not entirely logical, procedures whether budgeting, popping in or completing. Even if one single minute action is missed that can kick up wide-ranging hindrances not to forget, even more important, loss of money.

Obviously, as is to be counted on with this popular place, property might well be costly in this region and this, of course, is only on account of the wide spread market pressure. Notwithstanding buyers are patently spoiled in such a location so determined by mega cool site. It’s truly got everything any of us may need, and plenty more.

Upgrading a bathroom is one of the more popular home improvement projects. Handling the plumbing for draining your shower can be exceedingly simple unless you go overboard.

Handling Your Own Shower Drain Installation Project

Whether you are a bathtub or shower person, most people look for shower only options when buying a home. This simple fact means more than a few homeowners spend a weekend upgrading or installing showers in their bathrooms. Fortunately for you, it is a fairly simple process.

A collector or pan refers to the horizontal surface located at the bottom of the shower. The collector typically consists of a non-slip surface slightly banked towards the center or wherever the drain is located. Combined with three to four inch walls around the side, the goal of your shower drainage plumbing is to get the water to flow to and down the drain.

You can physically build a collector for your new shower, but you really need to think about it. Do you really want to get into the complications of getting the sloping correct, not to mention making sure every aspect of it is waterproof? And I mean every aspect! It is much easier to simply buy a pre-cast collector online or at your local Lowes, Home Depot or hardware store. Building one might sound like a great idea, but you will probably feel differently after a couple of hours.

Regardless of how you go about getting a pan, you should make every effort to use one that has the drain located in the same spot as the original pan. Moving the drain pipes can be a task, particularly if the builder used a unique framing structure. If you are determined to move the drain, you are going to have to cut back the pipe or lengthen it, which may mean ripping up large chunks of the floor. Put another way, you are going to be looking at a multiple weekend project.

Assuming we have our drain lined up, the actual hook up is fairly simple. The drainage pipe should be facing vertical up to the collector. It will often look like a “U”, which means it acts as a cleanout to keep nasty smells from coming back up from the drain. To connect the drain, you are going to create a water tight connection between a drain cap on the top of the pan and the drainage pipe. Systems vary, but you are typically going to do this by putting a coupling piece on the top of the drainage pipe. This is then covered with gaskets and literally screwed into the drain cap. The drain cap should act as a locknut, to wit, it screws directly onto the coupling.

The tricky part of this process is getting your drain cap to fit into a watertight position in the pan. This is accomplished by backing off the drain cap once you are sure everything fits together. At that point, you put plumbers putty around the underside of the cap and then screw it back on. The putty should form a tight seal between the cap and the shower pan, which keeps water from trickling under it and into the framing under the shower.

Obviously, bathroom showers come in a wide variety of styles these days. If you purchase a collector, they almost always come with plumbing instructions or the store can note anything unusual you should know. It sounds complex, but is typically pretty straight forward. Have fun!

Rick Chapo is with SolarCompanies.com, a directory of solar energy companies. Visit us to read more solar power articles.

Lying at the foothills of the mighty Rocky Mountains, the state of Colorado with an average elevation of 6,800 feet is the state with the highest elevation in the United States. Its capital and largest city, Denver, is nicknamed “The Mile-High City” because its official elevation, measured on the fifteenth step of the state capitol building’s west side, is one statute mile (5,280 feet or 1,609 meters) above sea level. Colorado Springs is the second largest city in Colorado, while Boulder and Fort Collins are two other hot spots.

The entire state offers landscapes of striking beauty with mountains and plateaus and is rich in gold, silver, and other minerals. Once primarily a mining and agricultural state, Colorado’s economy is even now driven by mining and energy industries, telecommunications, defense and other service industries. It is also a large employer of federal workers with many federal government offices located in Denver.

From a real estate point of view all four cities have been witnessing a developmental boom for several years now. While Denver has witnessed an explosion of development downtown in recent years with the Downtown Denver Partnership estimating that 13,760 residential units have been built in the city’s center since 1990, there is still a strong demand for high-priced properties in the area with a spate of new projects coming up. Museum Residences and Art House Projects are two such developments designed and built by top-notch architects. While Museum Residences is coming up next to the Denver Museum of Art, the Art House Project is coming up next to the Museum of Contemporary Art. Both projects have been designed to make “Home is Where the Art is”.

Colorado Springs on the other hand is going through a phase of urban renewal. The city has set up a Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority which has designated four areas as urban renewal sites since 2001: downtown’s southwest side; the City Auditorium block in the heart of downtown; the North Nevada Avenue corridor in the center of the city; and the Gold Hill Mesa property on the Springs’ west side. As a result there is now a development boom going on in the area and many new residential properties are coming up in a planned manner with good architecture and amenities.

In Boulder a change in demographics has triggered a similar real estate boom. Boulder County’s median family income has doubled over the past 13 years from $47,800 in 1992 to over $90,000 now. Similarly real estate values have also more than doubled during the same period - medians from around $122,000 in 1990 to over $300,000 now. The median rent has also shot up from $480 in 1990 to over $900 now. Boulder, therefore, is today a very hot real estate market.

In Fort Collins the emphasis is on second-home and resort ventures. Demographically, Fort Collins is presently witnessing an increase in health worker and medical worker populations with many new health offices, medical centers and hospitals are coming up in the area. These workers, however, do not have very high median incomes, so homes in the lower end of the market will find more takers than up-market, high value properties. So, from an investment point of view, Fort Collins is ideal for investment in second homes, resort ventures and homes for the middle class.

Colorado as a whole is on the upswing. In 2004, the state had the 10th highest job growth in the country, with a healthy chunk of that coming in the professional and business services sector. The bottom line is that Colorado has many job opportunities and is a pleasant place to live, which has led to an increasing number of people calling it home.

Drew Hodges recommends that you visit http://www.cohomefinder.com for more information on Colorado real estate.

Once you have decided in principle that you are interested in buying a property in Florida, the next step is to decide how you are going to identify the right property for you, arrange finance and close the deal.

Florida is proving to be an extremely magnetic area for Brits like you, and a whole industry has grown up with the sole purpose of selling Florida property to British citizens. This means you can view property listings in magazines, browse property details on the internet, and attend one of many seminars that are arranged around the UK for British buyers.

Now, it’s always a good idea to do as much research as you can, and immersing yourself in publications and listings, and picking up useful information at seminars all help to make you a better-informed buyer - as long as you do enough research to develop a snake-oil radar that will prevent you being misled by the smoother seminar operators.

Selling property at a distance is always a high-risk business, and “Florida swampland” is a cliché in America for property that is sold as highly desirable but turns out to be a mosquito-infested swamp. Although you are unlikely to end up buying swampland at a London property seminar these days (unless that’s what you really, really want!), there are modern equivalents that can leave you not getting the best property, mortgage or value for money.

The first thing to consider is exactly who is travelling all the way to the UK to sell property? In the main, these seminars are based around selling property in one or two specific developments. They may be dressed up to look like general-purpose information-driven Florida property seminars, but in reality the agents you are talking to can only sell you property in their own developments.

What does that mean to you?

Well, the main problem it creates is that they have no reason to be anything other than highly biased about the attractiveness of their developments. These developments have probably been designed and built specifically with this kind of sales model in mind, so although they look like an attractive proposition to a nave foreign buyer, they may be a very poor candidate for resale - either to better educated foreign buyers or to local families.

Too many British buyers are blinded by the photographs and videos showing beautiful new American-style houses and nicely landscaped plots all in a pristine setting in the “Sunshine State”. They forget what the golden rule of property buying - location, location, location - really means. Sitting at a seminar in the dismal UK winter, they think the “location” is Florida, and that everything - anything - in Florida is an attractive alternative.

They forget that Florida is a massive state, and there are the same regional variations within the state as there are in the UK. The decision to buy a property in Miami or Florida, on the Gulf coast, the Atlantic coast, or in central Florida can be critically important - especially if some or the entire mortgage is to be paid by holiday rentals. You wouldn’t think that buying a property in Liverpool was interchangeable with buying in the Lake District, so don’t make the same mistake with Florida.

You may be quite happy about the idea of moving into a purpose-built development with no local shops or schools, but you have to think about how that will affect the future resale value. Local families are unlikely to find such developments attractive - not only do they have few amenities, but Florida families do not enjoy living in the middle of rental properties with a constant flow of holidaymakers moving in and out. Yes, the property may be attractive to other British buyers like you, but bear in mind that the same company may have built three new developments in the same area by the time you are trying to sell.

Even at a very local level, there are zoning restrictions in Florida that can influence all kinds of things, from the number, size and style of houses in the area - to what you can do with them. For example, you can’t buy a property as a primary or secondary home (that is - where only you will live in it) and assume you can later decide to start renting it out, as there may be zoning restrictions that prevent this. There may even be local zoning restrictions that apply to swimming pools - so you really do need to dig right into the detail before committing to a Florida property.

Bear in mind also that it is relatively expensive for Florida-based companies to bring a seminar team to the UK, a fact that influences a few aspects of what they sell. Firstly, it is only economic for agents from the most popular parts of Florida to make the trip - so you may find out about properties in and around Orlando (and get a heavy sales pitch about why Orlando is the right place for you), but you won’t get anyone representing other areas, or recommending places to consider based on your exact requirements.

Basically, they will sell what they have rather than sell what you need.

The next economic factor about buying at a property seminar is that you may well pay over the odds. Partly to cover the additional costs of travelling to the UK, and partly because they have a captive market with little access to competitive information, the commissions being paid to agents selling these properties can easily be twice as high as the commissions being paid to agents in Florida.

Agents selling at seminars will try to tell you that buying property in Florida is easy - and that may be true if you are willing to pay the price they ask for the property they offer and use only their financing, and only the agents and officials on their payroll.

Buying property in Florida can be easy - and you can get the best deal on exactly the right property for you with a finance package that is right for your circumstances and needs. But the way to do this is by working with specialists based in Florida who understand all the issues that face British people buying property there. Virtually every property in Florida is listed in a central database that can be accessed by all agents - and the services of a buyer’s agent are paid from the seller’s commission, so they don’t cost you a penny. Deal with the specialists and you will have the pick of Florida properties at the right price and you will avoid the pitfalls that lie in wait for the unwary.

Stephen Parnell relocated to Florida with his family fourteen years ago and was headhunted by one of the largest US mortgage companies managing mortgage offices throughout the state before becoming an independent mortgage advisor in 1999.

Stephen is a State of Florida licensed Mortgage Broker and Real Estate Broker.

He offers independent advice to British clients on mortgage programs and trends in Florida and can also recommend qualified and experienced local Real Estate Agents throughout Florida.

Stephen has advised hundreds of British residents on relocating, investing and buying a home in Florida. He can be reached by email at sparnell@lynxbanc.com or through his company web site at http://www.lynxbanc.co.uk.

Dubai is fast emerging as an attractive investment for real estate, and not without reason. Today many asset managers are rushing in to take advantage of the extraordinary growth in Dubai. Companies are also finding it lucrative to expand in areas like the Cayman Islands. Also with the region being mainly Islamic, Shariah-compliant investment funds have gained more significance. The private equity market has grown too, reporting a rise of 41 percent since 1998 with investments totaling $1 billion.

Moreover, things are only going to get better as the investment level is expected to more than double to $2.1 to $2.6 billion by 2007. Till now the scenario was different as most Middle East companies were investing outside the Middle East for over two decades. However with the Islamic religion becoming more tolerant of investment vehicles and the West becoming more versant with Islamic markets, things have improved.

All this has reflected results in the real estate market, with a phenomenal increase in infrastructure financing and a huge amount of real estate development in Dubai and other parts of the Middle East, particularly in the United Arab Emirates. Today over 30% of the world’s tower cranes are put on construction projects in Dubai, a statistic that says much about constructions here. Over 30 asset managers have opened shop in Dubai and most are recruiting lawyers too.

Mooow.com is a major player in the field of real estate and property, both private (homes for sale by owner)and commercial (office space, property investment), offering solutions for general public (private property listings) to brokers and agents (database imports). http://www.mooow.com has an international multilingual reach, yet offers regional focusing.

Over the last two weeks, events have unfolded that have reminded
me of an important truism in real estate investing.

“Always have a back-up!”

This was played out in dramatic form with a deal I’m closing
tomorrow. A wholesaler friend of mine brought me this great
little three bedroom one bath home tucked away on a dead end
street where pride in ownership is alive and well. The electric
and plumbing is already upgraded and this rehab is cosmetic with
the exception of adding a bath.

I’m buying it for $52,500 and the as-repaired appraisal came in
at $86,000. Not a bad spread. This is the kind of deal I like!

When I called my hard money broker, she was delighted and we
moved quickly toward closing. I was only waiting on the closing
time…

That’s when the wheels fell off.

It seems my broker’s money source decided he was only going to
invest in property valued at $250,000 or more. Yikes!

So, I went to back-up hard money broker number 1.

The broker took his time…about 5 days…to finally tell me
that he only wanted to loan about 60% of the as-repair value. No
way. Not when I can do better (70%) with back-up hard money
broker number 2.

Back-up broker number 2 is probably who I should have went with
in the first place. I’ve borrowed from this source before. It
took one phone call, and the money is there and I close in a
couple of days. Wham-bam, the deal is arranged.

It looks like it’s time to shift around the players in my core
team a bit. Back-up number 2 is now my starter. Back-up number 1
(foot-dragger, doesn’t-loan-the-70%-he-said-he-would) is benched.

I tell this story to illustrate that it’s absolutely CENTRAL to
your business to have back-up plans in all aspects of the
business.

I strongly recommend having two or three:

- Hard money brokers - Appraisers for quick value assessments -
Rehab crew leaders - Plumbers - Electricians - Roofers - HVAC
techs - Realtors

In fact, have two or three of any trade or profession lined up,
ready to spring into action as a moment’s notice. Sure, I have
my favorites in each of these areas, but I am striving to have
3-deep hot back-ups in each. Thing happen. Life happens! Be
prepared for it.

Don’t stop there. Have back-ups when you rent or sell a
property. A property isn’t rented until the rent and deposit (or
lease/option fee) is paid and the keys are in the hands of the
new tenant. So, encourage back-ups until the money is in your
hands (in cash).

I’ve had appointments set up to sign leases, and the potential
tenants never show up, no call, and they quit answering their
phone. This is despite being hot for the house an hour earlier!
If you are in this business long, you will learn that people
will disappoint you and they will fool you. So, establish
policies and make one of them “it ain’t rented until it’s paid
for!”

Encourage back-up offers to purchase. Deals fall through all the
time! Take as many back-up offers as you can.

Having back-ups is a mental frame of mind that fits within being
a big-picture thinker portion of the Mind of the Real Estate
Investor. In addition, rearranging your core team is thinking
big and long term. It’s a constant process of improvement and
adjustment. This approach is crucial to your business! Apply
this principle and profit!

With people living longer and longer, funding retirement can become a stressful situation. Reverse mortgages can help home owners avoid worries about cash flow.

Reverse Mortgages

Reverse mortgages are essentially a method for turning the equity in your home into cash. Although there are various options, a typical reverse mortgage will provide you with a lump sum, monthly payments or a credit line based on the equity in your home. The mortgage will have a term of a certain number of years. Instead of making payments on the loan, the bank will become the owner of the percentage of your equity applied for the loan at the end of the term.

Reverse mortgages are only available to older applicants. Every person listed on the deed of the home must be 62 years of age or older. You must also use the home as your primary residence.

The decision to pursue a reverse mortgage can be a tricky one. The biggest issue is an emotional one. We are all mentally trained to buy a home and try to build equity over the years. With a reverse mortgage, we are making the mental leap to actually reduce the equity in our homes. While this may sound like a sensible method for using the nest egg equity, it makes you, me and everyone very nervous.

For some seniors, the reverse mortgage decision makes sense while it doesn’t for others. To limit the potential for problems and scams, banks are required to have senior applicants meet with unbiased third parties to determine the benefits and downside of using reverse mortgages.

If you or your parents have reached retirement age and are facing cash flow problems, you need to become flexible in dealing with finances. Reverse mortgages may be one flexible option that makes sense for your particular situation. After all, you can’t take the equity in a home with you.

Sergio Haros is with Great Western Mortgage - San Diego Mortgage Brokers - providing San Diego home loans. Great Western Mortgage is a San Diego mortgage company writing San Diego mortgages and San Diego refinance and home equity loan.

Using the Internet to shop for a mortgage lender will save you a lot of time and frustration.

When shopping for a mortgage loan contact as many lenders and mortgage brokers at possible. It is important when you are doing this that you do not let the lenders or brokers access your credit. Do this by asking lenders for a “No Obligation Quote.” You will need to provide an accurate assessment of your credit rating to receive the quote.

Before you start shopping for a lender you need to make certain your credit report is accurate. You can order a free copy from each of the three credit reporting agencies every year. There is no need to purchase a credit report from Internet sites; the credit agencies are now required by law to provide one free copy of their report to you. To access your credit report free of charge, visit the website annualcreditreport.com. Ordering this credit report will not count as a lender inquiry; remember you want to limit the number of lenders accessing your credit as this could negatively influence your interest rate. If you find any discrepancies on these credit reports you will need to dispute the errors with the corresponding credit agency prior to applying for your new mortgage loan.

When applying for a mortgage online be careful that information you provide for the no obligation quotes is accurate. If this information, including the credit history, is inaccurate you may be disappointed when the lender comes back with different terms or a higher interest rate because of the discrepancy. Do not inflate your income or credit standing when shopping for a lender; this will only serve to waste your time and disappoint you when you cannot qualify for the loan.

Be a smart online consumer. Look for mortgage sites that offer SSL encryption, have an online privacy policy, and are endorsed by the better business bureau online. Reputable online lenders prominently display these logos on their sites.

Louie Latour has twenty years of experience in the mortgage industry as a mortgage broker. He is the owner of Mortgage Refinance Advisor, a mortgage resource site devoted to saving homeowners money with a free guidebook “Five Things You Need to Know Before Refinancing a Mortgage.” http://www.refiadvisor.com