The Realty Geeks Team-we care!

Foreclosures drop in D.C. and Northern Virginia Home foreclosures dropped in the majority of the Washington, D.C. area and across the country, from January to February. The one-month decrease comes at the start of the spring season, when real estate activity tends to pick up. The number of properties with foreclosure filings fell 32.5 percent in ...

Who cares? It seems IRS does! Wall Street Journal had this recent story about how some real estate professionals, who also are real estate investors, are being scrutinized. The distinction is important for IRS, because full-time real-estate professionals, defined as someone who spends more than half of his working hours in real estate and ...

Wall Street Journal did an analysis of some 1,000 properties, those for that Zillow has "estimate" and then they were sold. The analysis shows Zillow has been off on average by 7%, which is not very bad for a computer software that never visits a house for which it estimates the price. However, what is problematic is the fact that it has ...

The idea of Option ARM is to give borrower the option to defer the interest payable to lender on the money borrowed, till assets exceed the debts. The Option ARMs have start rate (sometimes called teaser rate) that is very low, sometimes as low as 1%, while the general market rate for ARMs is, say 6%. So, how come a lender gives you money at 1%? ...

1. If you already have high speed Internet, dump your traditional land line phone where you are paying $30+ for basic service with no features, and sign up for Internet phone (VOIP). SunRocket offers VOIP service for $200 a YEAR plus a three month free. In all, it comes down to $13 per month! That would save you over $200 in one year. Of course ...

Any Realtor that you work with would tell you this, "when you write an offer on a house, a mortgage pre-approval letter in your hands makes the seller feel comfortable". Generally, a Realtor would politely refuse to work with you, because (s)he thinks that you are either not serious or not capable. So, you talk to the first loan officer ...

A recent study by Wharton real estate professors Peter Linneman and Albert Saiz, "Forcasting 2020 U.S. Country and MSA Populations", predicts the greatest future growth in places that are sunny and bright. Their findings indicate that people are leaving cold and damp areas for sunny places. Most of the drop is expected to occur (if ...

Northern Virginia continues to lead the growth of population in Virginia. And that means more kids in schools as well. University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for public service collects socio-economic data on Virginia, from where I picked the following data about school enrollment projections. What was interesting to note (historically ...

Wall Street has this list of places to retire for less. Hot Springs, Ark. is #1 in terms of value, and is also famous for its spa resort. Of course, most of the towns are suburbs or are small towns, but the surprise to me on the list was Pittsburg, PA. The city has been improving its economy over the years, and also boasts of Carnegie Mellon ...