Newsday.com Offers An Easy Way To Find Real Estate Properties in Long Island

The Long Island Newspaper Newsday.com now offers a comprehensive and detailed directory of the communities on Long Island. Visitors can fin information about Real Estate, school information, recent housing sales and much more.

If you would like to give the directory a try go ahead and look for the great properties in Long Island Real Estate market. One of the outstanding features of the website is integrative maps- these show you the location of properties. After performing the search for a particular property , the website gives you a comprehensive rundown of “median prices” in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Website offers you to search for properties all over Long Island but we believe that the visitors of our website can benefit greatly from having an opportunity to search Hampton Real Estate as well as North Fork Real Estate.

Disclosure: The above is a sponsored review. While we accept sponsored reviews, we always put relevance of what we write about on our website above everything else. If you liked this review and have a Real Estate related website, please consider to have a review on our website. For more details click here.

Review: BiggerPockets Real Estate Investment Community

biggerpocketslogo.jpgReal Estate investing challenging yet very rewarding at the same time. But surely it is not for every one. If you think about investing in real estate be it buying, selling, flipping, rehabbing or even becoming a landlord, you may already be looking for good place or website where you can learn about in and outs of real estate investing. BiggerPockets Real Estate Investment Community is definitely one of the websites where you can find information just about any real estate related subject.

 

Founded by an entrepreneur and real estate investor Joshua Reed Dorkin in 2004, who was not satisfied by the online offerings of other real estate websites, BiggerPockets Real Estate Investment community offers all of their services and resources for free.

 

While many of the services, like the one fro property look up by Zillow, were not originated by BiggerPockets Real Estate Investment Community, the website indeed can point you to such services where you can check credit reports and even your FICO score, real estate forms and contracts, mortgage calculators and many other tolls. One part of the website that you definitely do not want to miss is the Real Estate Investment Forums with about 6400 active users and way over 30,000 discussion articles- a great place to connect with other real estate investors and professionals.

 

Are You Making 5 Most Common Mistakes in Refinancing?

Peak Home Loans announcing a limited time home refinance loan program for the people with less-than-perfect credit, listed 5 most common mistake people make when they refinance their homes:

  1. Choosing a home loan lender for the wrong reason (i.e., the lowest rate, your existing lender.) People choose home loan lenders for all the wrong reasons. Getting a low rate is important, but it’s not the only consideration. Lenders may offer the lowest rate but charge extra fees (loan fees, origination fees, copy fees) so that in the end you’ll pay more for the refinanced home loan even though your rate may be lower. The only way to protect yourself is to wait for the Good-Faith Estimate which should list all the closing costs. Compare the Good-Faith Estimates from a number of home loan lenders. But comparing Good-Faith Estimates is not the only story when you want to refinance your home. If time is important, you want to choose a mortgage company that is capable of acting quickly. Ask each company to give you their average closing time for loans similar to yours. Ask around among your trusted friends. Find out who refinanced lately and ask them what they thought of the company. Don’t assume that your existing home loan lender is any better than a new lender. Since most home loans are sold in the secondary market, everyone has to meet certain criteria, and your existing lender will probably require the same documentation as a new lender. However, once you have a commitment from a new lender, it doesn’t hurt to ask your existing lender to beat it. Often times they will.
  2. Not getting everything in writing about refinancing your home loan. Get everything in writing. No matter what the Loan Officer tells you, ask him to confirm it in writing. Don’t believe someone when they tell you that your refinance rate is guaranteed. Get it in writing.
  3. Not knowing the appraised value of your home. Many people go ahead and try to refinance their home without knowing the true value. There are many places you can get an estimate of the true value of your home for purposes of refinancing. Many Realtor sites have home value estimators on their site. For the price of listening to a mortgage company try to sell you a mortgage, you can get an approximate value for your home. Check the recent sales in your neighborhood and try to find a comparable house in a comparable location. Or you can ask the appraiser to do a drive by and give you a verbal estimate of the value of your home. If it’s in the right ballpark, you can order a thorough appraisal. Know the value of your home before you seek to refinance your home loan.
  4. Not doing the math when refinancing your home loan. Do the math. Refinancing your home has a cost. You need to see what the cost is, and then determine how long you are going to stay in your home. For example, if you are going to stay in your home for 5 more years, and the cost of refinancing your home is $5000, you need to save at least $1000 a year in order for the deal to make sense. If you only save $50 a month as a result of refinancing (that’s $600 a year), you’ll be loosing money.
  5. Not considering a 2nd Mortgage. When you refinance your home, you are refinancing the total amount. Suppose you have a home that is now worth $400,000, and you only owe $250,000 on the home and you want to take out $50,000. If you refinance and take out $50,000 in cash your new loan may be for $310,000, ($250,000 owed + $50,000 cash out + a total refinance cost of 3% or $10,000). It may be better to take out a 2nd mortgage for $50,000 and pay a slightly higher interest rate and slightly higher points, but only have a basis of $50,000 instead of the $310,000.

Have you ever made these mistakes?

Review: Automated Home Finder

If you decide to ever move to Colorado, Automated Home Finder might be that tool you need to have at your fingertips to find your new home. The service is free and it takes just few minutes to register in order to begin searching for properties.

In the attempt to understand better how the website works our team has decided to use the system to search for Fort Collins CO Real Estate properties, Denver Real Estate properties and Boulder Real Estate properties.

How Does Automated Home Finder Works?

In order to use Automated Home Finder, a person searching for a new property is required to create a user account by filling out a simple form:

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After creating an account you are now ready to search properties. Just login into your account and proceed to conduct a search.

The searches you have made in the past are automatically saved in your account for the future reference or modification. One of the great features of the websites is that it helps you to narrow down the results to a manageable number. The website will ask you to modify your search in such a way that you will end up with no more than 50 properties:

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After you have managed to reduce your search results to 50 or less properties an e-mail is automatically sent to the e-mail address associated with your account listing your properties:

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You also have an opportunity to go back to your account and access this information from the “history” option.

Automated Home Finder has also integrated leading Internet technology in maps. You have a choice of viewing your results on Google Maps or even on Google Earth, this in turn allows you to lookup driving discretions to your new home for your new place of work or maybe from your friends and family.

Whether you are looking to move a moth or a year form now Automated Home Finder will help you to make an informed and educated decision.

Will AgentBoost Bring Some Heat To Competition Among Realtors?

The new website AgentBoost allows users to find a Realtor who will help you to sell your property for lower commission. In reality this is is nothing new. Many home owners before placing their properties on the market interview several Realtors before making their final decision on whom to use as their agent. The website may potential simplify the process of finding a Realtor. The service is free to use, at least if your are a seller or buyer.

agentboost.jpgThe website says that after you have submitted the property, Realtors will be able to place their bids which include commission percentage that the Realtor is willing to work for. According to the information on the website this commission is often below standard 3%.

In a press release the owner and CEO of the website Chris Cole says:

“This is a great opportunity for home buyers and sellers to get the most bang for their buck. Users fill out a short form with information about their property. Five days later, they are able to look at bids from several different agents in their area. Each bid includes the percentage of the home’s final sale price the agent has agreed to work for. Traditionally, the seller paid a 6% real estate commission: 3% to the selling agent and 3% to the buying agent. With house prices at all time highs, these commissions are really adding up. Our site makes it very easy for someone to find an agent that is willing to work for less. We’re talking about saving thousands of dollars by filling out one simple, no-obligation form.

The website is new and only time will show how successful it will prove to be. But it has a big potential to attract homeowners who would not use a Realtor otherwise.

It is not heard to predict the reaction of well established real estate agencies to a website like this- they will not like it.

Even if this website proves to successful among sellers, buyers agents may simply avoid properties listed for such a low commission.

For more information about this website visit them at http://agentboost.com. Website also has a blog, where you are likely to find even more information about this new service.