Archive for December, 2009
The Lesser Known Inspection The Draw Inspection
The Lesser Known Inspection The Draw Inspection
Most people know that the home inspector inspects homes for buyers and sellers. A lesser known inspection is called the draw inspection. This type of inspection is provided as part of a construction loan for banks and other financial institutions.
If you have never heard the term draw inspection here is a brief description. The draw inspection is one type of inspection that is frequently performed by a home inspector. While not as common as residential home inspections for buyers or sellers the draw inspection is done for the benefit of a lender. When banks and other lenders make construction loans they need to confirm that funds are being paid out and the work is being completed in a timely manner.
To protect themselves and their investors money these institutions will contract with inspection firms to give usually on a monthly basis updates on the progress of the project. It works like this: The builder turns in to the lender paperwork stating what work has been completed and requesting the funds that he or she expects to have released to the company account. The draw inspector is then called in on the banks behalf as an impartial party to see that said work was really completed by the builder. The draw inspector will assess the progress and take photos of various systems and components: footings foundation power hookups landscaping siding roofing trusses floors etc. Really if you can name it and the bank has budgeted for it then the inspector will probably be asked to look at it during one or more of the draw inspections that takes place over the usually several months that the home is being built from the ground up.
About the writer: This article was produced by the writing team of Eric Badgley Angee Gardner; specializing in Ferndale Real Estate and Bellingham Real Estate along with Alger WA home inspectors. Making sure buyers are protected.
The Future Of Real Estate
The Future Of Real Estate
The future of real estate is changing at high speed. In the future Realtors who form teams and design build and run their business like a business will continue to thrive and prosper while individuals doing it on their own will be left behind.
The shift from being a Sole Proprietor SP to Business Owner BO is in full swing. In the future more and more transactions will be done by fewer and fewer agents as synergetic teams outperform highly skilled individuals. The reason is because Business Owners are Generalists and Sole Proprietors are Specialists.
And Specialization leads to extinction.
The transition from SP to BO begins with a change in thinking and viewing the world. BOs do not have the same thought process as SPs.
The SP has thoughts that sound like this: If it is to be it is up to me. If you want it done right you have to do it yourself. Nobody does it better than me. My clients only want to hear from me. While they may close many transactions receive awards do lots of volume and are highly respected these thoughts keep them at the beck and call of every client and customer. They cannot turn off the phone they have no personal life and worst of all if they stop working their income stops.
The BO has a very different point of view. The BO has thoughts that sound like this: Who is on my team? Thats it. They know they are better off on a team than by themselves. They know that a synergetic team of amateurs will outperform a misaligned team of pros every time not to mention an individual performing all the tasks in a business by themselves! This does not mean they all become brokers and leave their current broker. It simply means that they understand the value of teamwork and that business is the ultimate team sport.
The BO also knows that Build your business is probably the most misused phrase in all of real estate. The reason is because when most trainers say Build your business what they really mean is Increase the AMOUNT of your business. They are referring to either Marketing or Sales or both.
The BO has a plan they use to build their business much like a plan used to build a home. It is called The Business Blueprint and it shows the six components of a business the definition and goal of each component and how they function and fit together to form a unified synergetic whole see it at http://www.buildmybusiness.com
The BO knows that real estate has evolved. Real estate is a business and it needs to be designed built and run like a business or they will be out of business. They also know the future is herenow.
This article was written by Wayne Morgan coowner of The Austin Institute of Real Estate The Business School for Real Estate Pros and Author of How to Get Rich in Real Estate AND Have a Life!
About the writer: The Austin Institute of Real Estate provides online real estate classes correspondence real estate classes and live real estate classes for credit towards a Texas real estate license. Not just a licensing school AIRE also provides MCE and SAE renewal courses Austin real estate appraisal as well as the education required for real estate brokers.
The Cost Of Living The Cost Of New York
The Cost Of Living The Cost Of New York
Economists in the government are some of the most callous people in the world. When calculating inflation they take out changes in food and fuel in order to stabilize the monthly and annual inflation numbers. The numbers in this core index are then bandied about across the media as the true inflation rate.
That may work well and fine for your favorite international corporation operating out the local Death Star but for regular people food and fuel are some of the biggest parts of their budget. Hence the disconnect between the low inflation numbers in the media and your wallet that seems to magically eat a few extra twenty dollar bills each week.
The situation in the country as a whole is getting pretty crazy especially as oil prices start to nip at the heels of the embargolevel prices of the 1970s. But here in New York City the cost of living is getting almost surreal.
Another quick lesson in inflation: Like unemployment it is an incredibly regionalized phenomenon. Not only will prices vary from region to region but from city to city. There will even be large variances in the inflation rate of different neighborhoods of a city.
So as real estate prices food prices subway prices basically every type of price besides the prices it costs to employ someone… also known as wages continues to go up more and more people are getting priced out of the parts of New York City they want to live in. Indeed census data indicates that the cost of living in New York City has gone up an incredibly painful 90 in the last twenty years.
The largest part of that jump has come from housing which has increased 106 during that same time frame. With spending on residential building up about 14 this year alone more apartments are being built this year than last year but not nearly at a rate fast enough to keep up with the increase in demand especially in Manhattan.
So what’s going to happen? One is inclined to think that people will continue to get by like they always have. People might have to work a bit longer and commute just a bit longer but the city will look basically the same in thirty years as it does now.
It’s a funny difference:In most American cities the term inner city is associated with the poorest parts of an urban area. In Paris though the poorest parts are the outer suburbs that ring around the city. There are numerous reasons for this but one of the more important is simply that Paris has been around a whole lot longer than any American city.
The poor and even middle class are often priced out of the center of cities until that city center becomes the whole city and workers are
relegated to long commutes into the city and back out again at night.
My suggestion? It may be expensive now but it’s only going to get more expensive. So if you want to live in Manhattan or any other central part of New York City as crazy as it sounds now is as good as it is going to get. New websites like CityCribs.com makes the process of finding a New York apartment much easier than it used to be.
About the writer: Lance Mohr is your Tampa real estate expert with over 10 years of experience and 15 years of investing. Please visit our Tampa Real Estate website and add our Tampa real estate blog to your favorites section of your browser.
