Realtor Thursday

A conversation with “Carolina Joe” Idleman, Realtor with AgentOwned Realty Charleston Group, Charleston South Carolina.

Kiawah Island is a barrier island along the southern Atlantic coast with ten miles of a wide, flat, sandy beach.  With an average of 207 sunny days, Kiawah Island has a semitropical climate in which the average January temperature is 48 degrees and the average July temperature is 88 degrees.  This island encompasses 10,000 acres, including nearly 45 miles of waterfront highlands overlooking lagoons, marshes, ponds, tidal creeks, the Kiawah River, and the Atlantic Ocean.  The centuries old maritime forest throughout Kiawah Island consists of pines, palms, magnolias, and ancient live oaks.

Mortgage Monday

Realtor Thursday

A conversation with Debe Maxwell, Realtor®/Broker, from Savvy + Company Real Estate, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Our Downtown, now known as ‘Uptown,’ is home to two of the largest banks in America, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, making Charlotte second only to New York City in the financial arena. Charlotte is the 25th largest Television and Radio market in the nation, the 9th largest new home market and 5th largest city with regards to the number of Fortune 500 Companies headquartered right here in our Queen City. Although we are known as a financial center, we are quickly rising in status as one of the nation’s top energy hubs, yet our largest employer of over 50,000 Charlotteans, is Carolinas Healthcare System.

An Author Wednesday Interview with Jennifer Ford Berry, author of “Organize Now! Your Money, Business & Career”

Get Organized and Get Ahead!

Do you find yourself struggling to keep up with your life at work and at home? Well, organizing expert Jennifer Ford Berry is here to show you how to get ahead in your career and personal finances by getting organized. She is the author of the best-selling book Organize Now! A Week-by-Week Guide to Simplify Your Space and Your Life.She's thoroughly researched the following topics: checklists, time-management tips, organizational tools for your resume, work space, job search and career goals.

And, if you need help with work space clutter, she has her own organizing ideas that will help tame that area. If it’s your finances that need upkeep, there are techniques for organizing your goals and records as well. Filled with expert tips from financial advisors, CPAs and human resource specialists—Jennifer has left no stone unturned!

Read more for the rest of this great author interview and to learn how you can grab a free copy of Jennifer’s book!

Mortgage Monday

What are the experts predicting for mortgage rates in 2012? We were curious, so we set out to speak to as many as we could.

We surveys dozens of economists, financial wizards and leading scholars. Our questions included issues such as the global banking system, pulling out of Iraq, the election year and consumer confidence. After hours of conversations and research, this is what we got:

A conversation with Frank O'Mahony, qualifying broker at Evolve Santa Fe Real Estate, in Santa Fe New Mexico.

Santa Fe is the oldest continually occupied capital in the US.  We just celebrated our 400th anniversary last year, although New Mexico didn't become a state until 1912.  This historic town of 90,000 is a unique blend of Native Americans whose pueblos surround the town, Hispanics who came up from Mexico along the Camino Real, Anglos who came to trade along the Santa Fe Trail, and the odd Irishman!

This loan type is called a “cash out refinance”, even though you are not paying off a mortgage. If you take a new mortgage out on a home you already own, regardless of whether a lien exists, it is still considered a refinance. 

As always if you buy your home for all cash within twelve months, the lender will base the loan to value ratio on the purchase price, regardless of current value. If you got a very good deal on the home and can produce a new appraisal that is much higher, the lenders will not allow the mortgage to be based on that higher appraisal until you have owned the home for over twelve months. This is called “ownership seasoning”.

Realtor Thursday

A conversation with  Traci Shulkin, realtor at Benoit Mizner Simon & Co., located in Wellesley and Weston, MA.

Are you looking for a town that perfectly combines old New England charm with the sophistication of the City of Boston?  If so, Wellesley may be the ideal fit.  The town of Wellesley covers approximately 10.2 square miles with a population of approximately 27,000.

Wellesley is a highly sought after town for several different reasons: a strong school system, beautiful neighborhoods and of course, proximity to Boston (~ 11 miles).  The town center has always been a big selling point for young families as there exists a strong sense of community, embodying the famous line from the theme song to the ‘80s TV hit Cheers “where everybody knows your name....”

Growing up in a neighboring town of Wellesley, I spent many days after school in Wellesley Center going shopping, eating and hanging out (for lack of a better word).  You can actually spend your whole day in the town of Wellesley doing your shopping, grabbing your Starbucks for your morning caffeine fix, going on hikes and going to the grocery stores.  The town has its share of national “staples” like Starbucks, Whole Foods, Pinkberry, National Jean Company and GAP, but also has the local specialty shops and restaurants like Hudson, Paper & Presents, Wasik’s Cheese Shop and Blue Ginger.

Source: www.saltirefoundation.com

Technology Tuesday

Influxes of graduates are entering the work force and are in need of assistance when figuring out where to live in a foreign city. Whether a person is in there for a long haul or strictly for their first job, the rental process is always a tedious and stressful part of life that not many want to deal with. But in the beginning of 2010, Blair Brandt and Belton Baker founded a real estate network called TheNextStepRealty which provided the younger generations with an opportunity to share in a network and discuss how to make the process simpler.

This website enables users to completely skip the process of house or apartment searching and matches newly graduated workers with emerging real estate brokers. These brokers are highly qualified and their focus is mainly in leasing and will actually take the entire purchase under their wing so the customer will not have to stress about it.

A few years ago the federal government initiated a plan to weed out the bad mortgage brokers. All mortgage loan originators who work for mortgage brokers and bankers now need to be licensed through a program called the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System (NMLS). Those that work at banks and credit unions only need to be registered. This license is renewed annually on December 31^st.