Owner: Financial Ambition URL:http://www.financialambition.com Join Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 16:04:03 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: The purpose of this blog is to provide essential real estate and financial guidance to Bay Area homeowner’s whose ambitions are to live in the home that is right for their family while at the same time fully funding their retirement, their children’s coll Site statistics:Click here
Foreclosures hitting investment properties hardest 2007-09-06 09:38:11 This sounds right from my own experience listening to people’s financial strategies over the past few years. More than a handful of people told me their strategy was to buy many investment
properties in Nevada, central California and even Tennessee. They had pretty graphs and intricate Excel spreadsheets showing how a 10% annual appreciation with increasing rents would make them rich. When I asked them ‘what if’ questions, they told me I was just being a downer and that they were sure it would all work out given how housing prices had been rising so dramatically.
click here to read article
Read more:Foreclosures
This is cool 2007-09-05 16:55:26 Starbucks to Offer iTunes Access
By JANET ADAMY
September 5, 2007 4:12 p.m.
Starbucks Corp.’s agreement to offer a special Apple Inc. music downloading service helps the Seattle coffee giant tap into the fastest-growing part of the music business.
The new service, which Starbucks announced at an Apple media event in San Francisco on Wednesday, will let customers buy music using iPods in several hundred Starbucks cafes before the end of the year.
The service will allow customers with iPods that have wireless Internet access, such as the new iPod Touch or iPhone, to browse, search and preview for free, as well as buy, millions of songs on Apple’s iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. Customers with PCs or Macs will be able to use the service too. Users won’t have to pay a wireless connection fee to shop in the iTunes store like they currently do when they access iTunes from a Starbucks.
(Read more1 on Apple’s new iPods.)
One aspect of the service will answer a question that
The Randy Pausch Lecture 2007-09-27 11:54:03 Randy Pausch is a professor who has only a few months to live. Listen to his “Last Lecture”, it is inspiring and moving.
See the Randy Pausch Story on Google video
Read more:Randy
Intaxication 2007-09-26 12:17:56 Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a refund from the IRS, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
~From a Washington Post word contest
Can We Talk? 2007-09-24 12:52:43
Thanks d_b_Solis for the Photo
This is a powerful essay mostly for providing us the opportunity to notice if we are in conversation with our spouse or not about such an important issue. If you are not married, then get into conversation with someone such as a financial planner, your folks, a good friend, etc. Design and action will come through engaging in conversations with others about your specific situation and concerns.
‘Can We Talk?’
The 10 most important questions you and your spouse should ask each other about retirement — and probably haven’t
By GLENN RUFFENACH
September 22, 2007; Page R1, Wall Street Journal
Presumably, most wives and husbands take time to discuss the big issues in their lives: whether to have children, which career paths to follow, and who gets to control the TV remote. Presumably, most wives and husbands take time to discuss the big issues in their lives: whether to have children, which career paths to follow, and who gets t
San Francisco Magazine Introduces Oakland California! 2007-10-02 10:30:23
Thank you Decaf for this photo of Oakland
’s city lights.
Looking for information on Oakland’s development, art scene, politics, restaurants, neighborhoods, education, nightlife, retail shopping or crime reports? San Francisco
magazine has a great feature article on Oakland in this month’s issue. But… thanks to the power of our computers, you do not have to buy the magazine to enjoy it! Check out the article online and enjoy all that Oakland California
has to offer.
Read more:Magazine
, San Francisco
Real Estate is the #1 Investment 2007-10-09 18:40:18
Thanks PBO31 for this photo of the Oakland Tribune at night.
It looks like the public still has real estate on their minds. A recent study done by Guidant Financial Group polled 1,000 self directed IRA holders and uncovered that 65% of them are considering real estate as a part of their retirement strategy. See more on this story at Business Journal.
Often in hot and cool markets I find that people tend to lose track of the fundamental reasons behind why real estate is a great investment. First, it gives you income through rents. Second, it appreciates in value over time. Third, it shelters income with tax benefits. Real estate is the only investment that gives you all three of these benefits.
Thus, it is not surprising that self directed investors look to real estate for their retirement returns. Just take a look at the Bay Area’s average residential real estate returns over the last 28 years. You can see that residential Bay Area real estate has a higher average appreciat Read more:Estate
, Real Estate
A New Free Web Finance Tool That Rivals Quicken and Microsoft Money! 2007-10-05 14:35:02
I often keep track of new tech innovations by reading Robert Scoble’s Scobleizer blog. Robert used to work for Microsoft
’s channel 9 web site and he now works as the Vice President of Media Development at Podtech.net. He has written a fantastic book called Naked Conversations, which chronicles blogging as a transparent tool for companies to reach their customers. It is an interesting read for those of you that are interested in blogging.
In his current position Robert travels the world uncovering exciting new innovations. The video below is an interview Robert made with Arron Patzer who created a new financial web tool called mint.com that was unveiled at the TechCrunch 40 conference on September 17th in San Francisco. The video shows how this online application could rival Quicken
. I always recommend that my clients keep track of their finances as a powerful way for them to keep tabs on their financial goals. This looks like a new low cost way to do it. The video makes it Read more:Money
The World is a Better Place 2007-10-05 13:10:14 The media’s job is to sell their product and they know that bad news sells. If you listen to enough bad news, you will believe that everything is getting worse all around you. But that’s just not true, things are getting better in almost every way.
Clear-Eyed Optimists
By STEPHEN MOORE
October 5, 2007; Page W11, Wall Street Journal
I’m old enough to recall the days in the late 1960s when people wore those trendy buttons that read: “Stop the Planet I Want to Get Off.” And I will never forget that era’s “educational” films of what life would be like in the year 2000. Played on clanky 16-millimeter projectors, they showed images of people walking down the streets of Manhattan with masks on, so they could avoid breathing the poison gases our industrial society was spewing.
The future seemed mighty bleak back then, and you merely had to open the newspapers for the latest story confirming how the human species was speeding down a con Read more:World
, Place
Nation Wide the Bay Area is one of the Strongest Real Estate Markets! 2007-10-05 12:40:23
Thanks Martapiqs for this areal photo.
I am often asked to speculate about the strength of the Bay Area real estate markets. My mantra is that in past down markets properties have transacted and the markets have continued to move inventory. A long term hold approach to real estate is always best assuming you believe in California real estate. There is no doubt that the credit crisis has slowed the markets, but where do we stand next to the rest of the nation?
I often find that the rest of the nation’s news of depreciation is counterintuitive common thinking that becomes false representations of our Bay Area markets. For instance many buyers in our current market believe that the Bay Area’s home prices have fallen everywhere. This is false! It is my belief that this rhetoric enters the market through the national news, which often sets a tone for all of real estate even though we know that there are individual micro-climates in the Bay Area that have increased in value t Read more:Estate
, Real Estate
, Markets
Buy Against The Herd 2007-10-04 15:43:11 By Curt Van Emon
The opportunity to move against the herd is in front of us right now.
Common sense tells us to buy when rates are low. Sounds reasonable, right? But let’s take that thought further and see where it leads.
If we accept that common sense tells us to buy when rates are low, then:
Common sense tells us to buy when there are the most competitors because common sense by definition means that most everyone will arrive at the same conclusion.
Common sense tells us that if we are to get the house we want, then we must outbid every competitor who is bidding on that house.
Remembering the principles of supply and demand, we know that this will drive the price higher. This must sound familiar to those who have been in the Bay Area real estate market over the past few years and who have routinely witnessed 10 to 15 offers on homes for sale.
Now that rates are higher relative to the last five years, common sense is that maybe buying right now is not such a great idea.
Did You Know! 2007-10-19 14:42:24
I watched this presentation for the first time several months ago. At first it put me in a mood of sadness. It is a powerful presentation that shows how our world is ever changing. In this sea of change we must navigate our family, lifestyle, and financial ambitions. In the last week I have spoken with several clients that have asked for assistance with finance, trusts, and real estate. I have found that life is a balancing act where we attempt to create harmony. When we act without considering our concerns we create future breakdowns. This presentation illustrates that none of us make desicions in issolation. The endless change that we encounter in the world is always knocking us off balance. We then act to balance ourselves once again. After watching this presentation for a second time, just 5 minutes ago, I felt a rush of happiness and exhilaration. There is great opportunity in constant change!
Is Our Bay Area Real Estate Economy Right Side Up or Upside Down? 2007-10-22 12:06:41
Thanks Manuel for a photo of this cow moving against the herd.
I just looked at the San Jose Mercury News’s real estate blog, Square Feet. It appears they, like many news outlets, are having an identity crisis with the current condition of the real estate economy. Below are 2 postings that were posted on the Square Feet blog, by the same writer. They were posted on consecutive days, the 18th and 19th of October 2007.
Take a look at this story they posted on October 18th entitled Bay Area Home Sales at a Two-Decade Low In September.
… And in Santa Clara County, again for all types of homes (new and resale, houses and condos), the rock-bottom month was Feb. 1991, when 997 homes sold. For sales of just resale houses, the lowest month was Feb. 95, with 684 houses changing hands. Let’s bear in mind, though, that there were a lot fewer homes to sell in the Bay Area back in the early 1990s, so it’s possible that last month’s numbers are in fact scraping near re Read more:Estate
, Right
There Is A New Real Estate Game In Town! Its Name Is Realius. 2007-11-09 13:57:30 There have been several interesting tech articles recently written about Realius. Realius is a real life real estate game. Currently they are getting ready to release their first game called, “Price Me Now”. Players of the game look at photos and MLS data on properties and try to guess their pricing. Their beta release has been made in conjunction with Red Oak Realty the firm where I work.
Our first game, a home pricing game, meets Jason’s requests. Players will see what the community thinks homes are going to sell for and how they fit into that community. Take a look at a partial screenshot from the game:
Players will also see what realtors think and will be scored on how close their guess is to the ‘crowd guess’.
Realius was recently featured on Tech Crunch and was shown in the Tech Crunch 40 demo pit. See the video below.
Below is link to play Realius’s first beta game! Enjoy playing and feel free to sign up under your own account and play!
http://redoakrea Read more:Estate
Credit card debt - is that the next subprime debacle? 2007-11-07 08:42:11 The bad financial news isn’t over on a national scale. On an individual basis, we advise clients to clean up their credit card debt. Credit card debt is a wealth killer as it saps real money from a borrower and it does so quietly when one only pays the minimum each month. At an interest rate of 18%, a credit card balance will double in 4 years.
U.S. Credit Card Debt Seen As Next Nightmare
2007-11-07 06:44am
Americans now owe nearly as much on their credit cards as the estimated $1 trillion subprime loan debt that has sapped the housing industry and put a squeeze on the U.S. economy.
Newsmax.com reported Wednesday now owe a record $915 billion on their credit cards alone. Worse, defaults and delinquencies in the credit card industry are beginning to mount.
Credit card companies wrote off 4.58 percent in payments between January and May, almost a third more than in the same period in 2006, according to Moody’s Investors Service.
As a result of that action lenders li
Reverse Mortgage Product Line is Expanding 2007-11-15 03:49:18 The first line of this is curious as anyone who is studying the finances of the baby boomers would not be surprised that the reverse mortgage market is hot. The vast majority of boomers simply have not saved enough to pay for their retirement so they will be looking anywhere and everywhere for help to continue to pay for even their most basic needs. Their home equity is one of those obvious places. Also, lenders have seen a dramatic drop in their loan volume so they have every incentive to offer products to the baby boomers who need to use home equity. This is no surprise at all if you know how to look at it.
November 13, 2007 Wall Street Journal
ReverseMortgage
s:
The Choices Expand
By KELLY GREENE and VALERIE BAUERLEIN
November 13, 2007; Page D1
It may sound hard to believe, but one part of the mortgage market is hot: reverse mortgages. And that’s giving older homeowners more options to tap the equity in their homes — bu Read more:Reverse Mortgage
, Product Line
Realius Is Offering Prizes! 2007-11-20 11:34:38
We recently introduced you to Realius the fantasy real estate game. Because, Red Oak Realty is beta testing this new game, we were able to make an offering of the free beta in our previous posting. Now, Realius is offering prizes to play!
Play and win! Price homes between November 21 and November 30 and you will be entered into Realius’s first Sweepstakes to win a $250 gift certificate to amazon.com. For every 25,000 points you score, you’ll earn one chance to win (up to 5 entries). The more you play, the better your chances to win - and bragging rights within the Realius community! The winner will be announced in December.
Click the link below for a free trial of the Beta version of the game. Click the Sign Up tab in the top right corner of the screen and register to enter yourself in the sweepstakes.
http://redoakrealty.realius.com/invite/ngz9g
NO PURCHASE IS NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. Must be 18 or older and a U.S. resident. Begins November 21, 2007 at 12:0 Read more:Prizes
Politics and Real Estate: Does a 2008 United States Presidential Election Year Change Our Real Estate Market? 2007-11-17 12:55:33
Thanks Pete Southwood for this flag photo.
Lately, I have been hearing many realtor’s and other industry insiders speak about how the 2008 UnitedStates
presidential elections are affecting the real estate markets. So, how will our pending presidential elections affect our struggling markets in the coming year? Will politics shift the tides in the real estate markets?
It is obvious that real estate will be a topic of conversation in the 2008 political elections. Just take a look at the Boston Globes article entitled, Democrats Offer Fixes to Foreclosure Crisis.
The more the crisis ripples through the economy, the more it will help Democrats make the case that Republican economic policies have spurned middle- and lower-income families, some campaign watchers said. - Marcella Bombardieri at the Boston Globe
Why so much attention you may ask? Because our real estate markets have slowed from the bottom up. This leaves some areas like the Bay Area’s high end real estate marke Read more:Estate
, Presidential
, Election
, Change
, Market
, Real Estate
Interesting commentary on the top one percent 2007-11-27 16:17:52 November 27, 2007
That ‘Top One Percent’
By Thomas Sowell
People who are in the top one percent in income receive far more than one percent of the attention in the media. Even aside from miscellaneous celebrity bimbos, the top one percent attract all sorts of hand-wringing and finger-pointing.
A recent column by Anna Quindlen in Newsweek (or is that Newsweak?) laments that “the share of the nation’s income going to the top 1 percent is at its highest level since 1928.”
Who are those top one percent? For those who would like to join them, the question is: How can you do that?
The second question is easy to answer. Virtually anyone who owns a home in San Francisco, no matter how modest that person’s income may be, can join the top one percent instantly just by selling their house.
But that’s only good for one year, you may say. What if they don’t have another house to sell next year?
Well, they won’t be in the top one percent aga Read more:commentary
Boomer 411: The Baby Boomers Guide to living a good life! 2007-11-27 10:00:40 In the real estate industry, there has been much talk and interest in the Baby Boomer
s that are now coming to retirement age. The Baby Boomers
are approximately 78 million people that were born from 1946 to 1964. To put the Baby Boomers in perspective one only needs to look at the basic statistics that illustrate the immense size and power of this demographic. For instance, approximately 7,918 people in the US turned 60 each day in 2006.
The Bureau of the Census estimates that there will be twice as many persons age 65 or older in 2030 as there are today: 69 million (20 percent of the population) versus 34 million (13 percent of the population). Likewise, the Bureau’s population projection, from its middle series, shows 18 million persons age 85 or older in 2050 (4 1/2 percent of the U.S. population); now, there are less than 4 million persons in that age group (1 1/2 percent of the U.S. population).
- “Retirement Prospects of Baby Boomers - Statistical Data Included&ldq Read more:Guide
The Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich 2007-12-03 14:24:26 Dear Readers,
I didn’t comment on this when it came out in August as I was on vacation when it was published and I just never circled back to it. The author of this article is a journalist. Remember this. He’s writing to sell newspapers, not educate you. His job is to entertain you.
There is an assumption here that those that already have a few million are working to keep up with their neighbors but this is not how I see it. For example, if Celeste were to retire today with $5M capital at work, current accepted financial thinking is that she could safely withdraw 4% of her money to live on. This is a $200,000 gross income annually to support her current lifestyle. I am very sure that this is not enough. So Celeste is probably not hustling to work to keep up with her neighbors, she and her husband need more capital at work to produce a higher income so she can sustain her standard of living through a long period of unemployment (commonly called retirement) Read more:Millionaires
Check your 401(k) fees - they matter over the long run 2007-12-03 13:24:52 The fees you pay matter
over the long run so you may want to take a look at what is happening with your 401(k). If the fees are too high, send an email to your human resources department and make a complaint. It may help if they hear from enough employees.
December 3, 2007
Editorial
Better Savings Plans
Take two savers, one at Company A and one at Company B. They each have $20,000 in the same investments in their respective 401(k) plans, which they leave untouched for 30 years, earning 7 percent. But the employee at Company A ends up with $132,000 and the employee at Company B ends up with $99,600.
The difference is the result of fees paid along the way, which reduce an employee’s return. At Company A, the annual cost for the 401(k) comes to 0.5 percent of assets. The cost at Company B is 1.5 percent.
Is the employee at Company B paying too much? Probably. As a personal finance rule of thumb, an employee should not pay more than 1 percent for a given fund in a plan. But when it c Read more:Check
200 2007-12-10 09:26:47 200 is the number of financial institutions that have gone out of business since the “credit crunch” of early August. Many, many more have gone out of business but they are too small to make this list. Losses at the major financial institutions are expected to top $100B. Although this seems like a lot of money, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the US GDP of over $13 trillion in 2007. See Source.Â
The problem as I see it is the real cost in financial losses and suffering for American families who will lose their homes to foreclosure. No government program or loan alteration plan is going to save most of these people, they will have to suffer the consequences of the loans they took. Yes, I believe many were steered into loans they could not afford and who is responsible for this is a hotly debated topic. The reality is that the borrower is going to suffer the negative consequences in the vast majority of these situations. The plans I am hearing
Christmas Tax Gift From Uncle Sam 2007-12-22 14:20:12 First, I must say sorry for the lack of my writing as we get closer to the end of December. It has been a busy season for us, which is counter intuitive to what the media is saying about the marketplace. Don’t believe all of the hype. There are many areas in the East Bay that are still transacting fairly smoothly. As the year closes, I would say that pricing is the name of the game. This implies that buyers are still in the Bay Area marketplace. They are just looking for reduced prices. This is in correlation with the mood that the media has instilled in this market. Don’t get me wrong, there are many California cities that are currently at a standstill. One only has to drive through places like Antioch or Stockton to see the rows of for sale signs.
Well it appears that just in the nick of time for the Holidays, the US government has issued a tax reprieve for those that will be trying to endure short sales in 2008. The California Association of Realtors stated it best.
Unde Read more:Christmas
, Uncle
, Uncle Sam
Should move up buyers make a move in this market? 2008-03-11 12:02:28 Recently, past clients have asked me if this is a good market to sell their homes and move into better homes in better neighborhoods. This is an uncommon thought as compared to the typical national market sentiment that sellers should stay put in the current market turmoil. In working with these clients I have found [...]
FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - New Loan Limits Released 2008-03-06 12:46:47 I know, alphabet soup… Welcome to the world of government acronyms and abbreviation. In lay terms, the 2008 Economic Stimulus Bill has cleared the way for three channels of mortgages (FHA, Fannie Mae & Freddie
Mac) to increase their loan limits. Good news for most of California because these three types of loans generally have [...] Read more:Limits
The City of Kensington Illustrates the Many Different Supply and Demand Trends of the Bay Area 2008-02-25 23:00:30 Click Photo to Enlarge
I recently reviewed some new Bay Area supply and demand graphs we are now following. They are generated from a data mining and graphing software we are now utilizing. One of the interesting graphs it produces gives us a nice look at the supply and demand trends of the many different Bay [...] Read more:Supply
, Trends
The future for many boomers 2008-02-15 13:59:48 This article on MSN Money illustrates a situation that we all should get used to reading about as there will be millions upon millions of boomers who will have some variation of this happen to them. The article still doesn’t really talk about what it means to be too old with too little money. They kind of [...]
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