Realty Pupil - Secrets of Real Estate

WRONG. Legitimate businesses don’t recruit distributors with the prospect of selling to, or recruiting other distributors. Instead, they focus on the prospect of selling to retail customers.

If you find yourself invited to a ‘Free Real Estate Seminar’ or have a friend pushing you to attend with him or her, fake a major illness, run to Mexico, or just plain say no. Real friends don’t let friends attend real estate seminars.

Why? Chances are you’re familiar with Timeshare presentations. You get a free hotel room, or a discounted trip in return for agreeing to attend a ‘90′ minute course that quickly spins into an all day full court press in which sales agents do everything imaginable to persuade you to buy a highly inflated timeshare.

Who in their right mind would fall for something so incredible wasteful? Everyone. They give those free hotel rooms because people are easily suckered. The same applies for the ‘free’ real estate seminars. You’re really attending a long sales pitch aimed at persuading you to spend thousands of dollars to ‘learn more’ in further seminars. Most people find that the ‘free’ vacations, trips, and seminars they attend end up being by far the most expensive.

If you ever find yourself being pushed to join up with a company that operates via referrals and multi-level commissions, RUN.

The urban myth that one can just send a lender the keys to their home in order to escape any further obligation to the lender is entirely false. Sending the keys to the lender is the single most expensive and stupid thing you can possibly do when you find yourself with an asset worth less than you owe on it.

Why?
Because the lender is going to sell the asset (your home, car, boat etc) for less than you could have likely sold it for, then proceed to charge you an array of fees for having done so, as well as go after you for the balance of what is owed minus the paltry sum they were able to sell your property for.

You should instead try to sell the property on Craigslist, eBay, local classifieds, or via a discount/low commission broker or auction house. Yes you may be selling the item at a loss, but you’ll be far better off than you would have been after the lender hit you with repo fees, bad credit marks, and a possible lawsuit.

If you seriously value happiness, then this decision should be an easy one. Buy the smaller home inside of the city. Research has shown that people adapt to various sized living spaces (and after living in my 400 sq. foot studio in Los Angeles I can vouch for this). People never truly adapt to long commutes however. In fact, most people find themselves increasingly frustrated at the time their commute robs from them keeping them from being with their family or pursuing other leisures.

Getting the smaller home will buy you something the large suburban one cannot provide. More free time.

One of the prerequisites to being able to buy a home via a lender, or even rent in most states is to have some form of insurance covering the replacement cost of the residence, and often the items inside of it.

If the unthinkable were to occur and you were to lose your home to fire, you may find yourself left with hardly any assets, and worse yet, roofless.

For this reason it is often a good idea to carefully document everything you own, and find out just what exactly your insurance covers. This should be common sense, as your insurance is increasingly useless if you are unable to document anything you’d hope to have covered should disaster strike.

Often homeowners, in an attempt to decrease premiums, may lie and claim they do not have a trampoline, or any other number of small white lies. This can be a huge mistake, as your insurer can and WILL deny your claim should you ever attempt to file one. Imagine your potential frustration when you find that the entire home will not be covered as a result of an unreported trampoline in your backyard.

While this may seem like an unrealistic scenario, I personally had a childhood friend who lost her home to fire, and had their homeowner’s policy denied when they made their claim. They found themselves left without anything.

For this reason, take a moment and call your insurance agent and request a copy of your policy. Look it over, and fix any problems now. You’ll be glad you did should disaster ever strike.

Often when buying homes, people encourage each other to buy the most land possible. While there is certainly some value to buying the largest lot in a nice suburban area that you feel will grow in value, you should always opt for actually being in that nice suburban area regardless of the size vs owning several acres in a completely undesirable area (Look on eBay, people can’t GIVE AWAY plots of land in Box Elder County).

The ample supply of inaccessible acreage in the Florida swampland or locked in the Rockies should be a warning sign to buyers that size should never be the primary deciding factor. Location, particularly neighborhood, is generally a better benchmark for finding a good deal.

Of course if the land happens to be filled with Oil you may strike it rich…but there are cheaper lottery tickets out there.