The real estate blog.

Many Australian residents and those interested in Australian Real Estate Investing have found Tasmania.

A safe retreat from the metropolitan areas with temperate climate and plenty of waterfront properties, Tasmania is the next big market in the years to come.

Tasmania isn’t the first place that comes to mind when you think of Australia, but is proving to be an overlooked wealth. As the high demand and growing supply for residential and commercial property floods over expensive metropolitan areas in the rest of Australia, Tasmania offers a vast amount of less costly options to live the Australian quality of life.

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The normally laser-focused Pat Kitano showed me yesterday that it’s actually okay to write the occasional off-topic post. So here’s mine: a word of warning to you unsuspecting consumers who might be considering purchasing a Gateway (soon to be Acer) product.

The customer experience when you’re buying something from Gateway is brilliant. Smooth, efficient, friendly – my representative had me whipping out my credit card in a jiffy.

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Real estate investing is all about relationships and dealing with people. In this column I’ve written about the need for trust in order to build long term symbiotic relationships. I’ve also written about using contracts to build a solid legal safety net.

So…which is it? Back in the ‘60s a management theorist Douglas McGregor originally wrote about two theories about managing relationships: Theory X, which is a negative view that assumes that people are inherently lazy, dislike work, and need (want) to be controlled, and Theory Y which argues the opposite – that people are self-motivated and will choose to seek responsibility and do good work.

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In a swift, one-two punch the U.S. government knocked out the housing crisis yesterday. Punch one came from the Federal Reserve Board as they lowered short term interest rates by half a point. Later in the day punch two landed when the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1852, known as the Expanding American Homeownership Act of 2007 which allows more borrowers to qualify for government guaranteed mortgages.

Wall Street cheered and the stock indexes responded with huge gains. Stocks have added to the gains today. H.R. 1852 goes before the Senate today and we should have word that it passed by the end of the day. President Bush should sign it into law by next week.

Why do I think this combination will be effective? First of all, a rate cut by itself won’t necessarily prevent
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The Senate Banking Committee has approved its version of the FHA reform bill passed earlier this week by the House of Representatives. Passing by a vote of 20-1, the legislation must now go to a vote of the full Senate before it can be signed into law.

“These changes will help make FHA a more effective and fiscally sound tool for homeownership,” said Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Some of the key provisions of the House bill, HR 1852, include:

On Tuesday, the House passed legislation that would increase the maximum term of FHA-insured mortgages to 40 years from 35 years, raise the agency’s loan limit to $730,000 from $362,000 and reduce the minimum down payment and credit score required of borrowers.

Additionally,
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It’s been my experience over the years to observe that Utah is behind the times of national trends by about two years. Whether the trend is music, fashion, or whatever else, the time frame is always about two years. The same is true with real estate. 2005 marked the year housing prices really took off in Utah…about two years behind the rest of the country.

Could our coming late to the party actually prevent a major downturn? Just as Utah’s home builders are beginning to feel some pain and time to sale has increased, Government steps in deus ex machina style lowering rates and easing loan standards in a tightening credit landscape. These actions were intended to help the deeply troubled areas of the country avoid disaster. In Utah, it could help us avoid even a pinch of pain.
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The Federal Reserve Board has just announced it cut the key short term interest rate by half a percent, pushing the rate down to 4.75%. As a result, the prime rate has dropped as well to 7.75%. While the rate cut was widely anticipated, the degree to which it dropped is a bit surprising to some.

This key rate affects the cost of borrowed money for adjustable rate mortgages, credit cards and car loans. It also affects the rate of return for cash investors who are now seeing their yields drop by the same amount.

A full wrap up along with reactions from the blogosphere will appear at Easy Mortgages later today.

Key legislation in changing the face of the FHA loan program cleared a major hurdle today when it passed a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.

H.R. 1852, the Expanding American Homeownership Act of 2007, passed by a vote of 348 - 72. The Senate must pass it next before President Bush can sign it into law.

A number of provisions are built into this Act. Key among them are payment affordability provisions, expanded credit qualification and higher loan limits. For a full list of the changes, click here. Section three of the Act carries the most punch:

Amends the National Housing Act to: (1) modify requirements governing the maximum principal loan obligation; (2) extend the mortgage term from 35 to 40 years; and (3) revise requirements for cash downpayment
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6,000 average unique monthly visitors…

380 Technorati links…

262 article posts…

Hundreds of phone calls…

Fifty new blogs…

Dozens of Utah real estate mortgage leads…

One mortgage meltdown…

One most hated brouhaha…

One USA Today interview…

One closed loan…

One year of blogging about Salt Lake real estate…

Happy 1st Birthday!

I found an interesting article in yesterday’s Salt Lake Tribune about schools treating 9/11 memorials with little fanfare, if at all.

As a business person, I try to keep politics separate from business because I don’t want to offend anyone. However, on this anniversary of the attacks, I think it would be tragic for Americans to forget what happened that autumn morning.

East Layton Elementary School is one Utah school that doesn’t do anything to remember 9/11 -

She said her school teaches respect for the U.S., but does not commemorate Sept. 11.

“We don’t want our kids thinking about that. We want them to move on,” Johnston said. “It might be age appropriate for older students to acknowledge and talk about it, but for our younger kids, we don’t want them to dwell on violence.”
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