I have decided to take a few minutes and promote a few "no-brainers" as I call them. A "no-brainer" is what I have affectionately nicknamed any property for sale that screams PROFIT! Some of these might fall into the rental category, but mostly they are rehab-able properties that a begging to be bought, improved and resold for a profit. I will feature only one at a time, and sporadically. These will not necessarily always be my own listings, or even listings within ChangingStreets.com...just good deals.

As a side note for those of you that might not know this. One of the services I provide is a thorough REHAB ANALYSIS. This is where I advise potential investors on whether a property has the potential to be a profitable and successful rehab investment. I have a team of contractors, lenders and over 16 years market experience to provide very accurate opinions. As a result of my REPO dealings, there has developed a need for "silent investors" to fund these rehab projects, some of which already have an end-buyer. Recent projects have netted participating investors an astounding 18-40% return for a 120 day investment. All they do is write a check and collect a larger one. No research, no nail pounding, no nail biting involved.

Todays "NO-BRAINER" is located at 3217 Clairmont St. in Flint.
The appeal with this property is this:
Current asking price of $21,900 in an area of similar homes selling between $30,000 in need or work to &75,000 in immaculate condition!
This area has rental income potential of $450 to $500 per month.
It offers three "true" bedrooms (meaning, not a large closet being falsely called a bedroom) in a neighborhood of mostly 2 bedroom homes.
It offers a fenced-in DOUBLE lot in an area of mostly smaller single lots.
Condition-wise, it needs roughly $5,000 in improvements to make it marketable in the mid to upper $50,000 range...conservatively.
Lets look at the potential profit numbers for this property, shall we...lets assume the investor ends with a final purchase price of $20,000 and repair/improvement costs of $5,000. Also lets consider carrying costs for the 90 day seasoning period most lenders will require between the investors purchase date and the end buyers. I have generously figured that between insurance, heating, water/sewer, taxes, closing costs and my consulting and marketing fees that the final figure invested should be around $32,000. Using $55,000 as a conservative end sale price to the end-buyer, nets the investor $23,000 profit (or 71.8% return). Sound too good to be true? Ok then, lets use an aggressive sale price of $49,900 offering a 3% concession to a buyer....that still nets the investor $16,403 or 51.3% return on investment. What do you currently make on your investments annually? How about quarterly, which is the average time I can successfully find, improve and successfully market a well-thought out rehab project.

This is something for all of you investor-minded individuals to consider. This is the market to invest...as long as you do not make the mistakes a lot of investors have. These include: not doing enough research, buying the property at too high of a price, over improving the property and over pricing it as a result.

Contact me for more information!

I spent a lot of time going through posts from the last two years on this blog.

Over 200 posts about the economy, local real estate facts and trends, rants, you name it.

Really good stuff and I would bet if you go back you will find a lot of posts from 18-24 months ago that point out issues you are hearing about in the main stream media today.

Buddy Kane was one of the first to call MLS listing "content" and preach the value of this content to fellow brokers, Buddy pitched a book to publishers about the upcoming mortgage problem in 2001, no takers, they called it "hyperbolly".

Word On The Street, has typos, crazy rants, a lot of attitude and no fluff. But it takes guts to put this out there, and we put it out there to get people to think, to show we care, to stick up for the little guy.

Highlights have been many, we have been contacted by the legal counsil of one of the largest corporations in America to remove a blog that scolded his company for picking on one of our clients. We were right they admitted it and took care of our client. Total time to fix problem? 48 hours. It turns out that this and many Fortune 100 companies pay to people to surf the internet and look over RRS feeds for their names, copy right infrigment and problems. One of these employees found our blog and was upset they company they worked for would do such a thing. In four hours the email chain made it to the CEO's inbox, with in four hours the lawyers where calling, with in 48 a wronged homebuyer was made taken care of fairly.

We have written about some not so great things in an effort help people and taken a lot of heat for it, stuff the mass media in Flint would never touch. Unfortunately our predictions on these topics were correct, they have started investigations by authorities and regulators into the activities of these people and we have helped motivate them and helped them with fact finding.

We are finishing up some good investigative peices now, some are better than fiction. The problem is this is a small town, and a lot of the "bad guys" are not bad guys, a lot of people like them, they just made stupid decisions or at least uneducated ones. Tough call on whether to call them out to tell the story.

What is in the archives is great, it shows ChangingStreets.com cares and is not all fluff in an industry full of self serving puffery. We stand up for what is right, we are accountable to our actions and we call out those that are not. We also make very educated predictions that are historically pretty darn ahead of their time.

Take some time and check out the different catagories and archives.

Buddy is a stats junkie and need a fix.

Thinking out loud here, a 3 bedroom, 2 bath ranch in Flushing sold for $112 a square foot in first quarter of 2005 (three years ago).

Now that same type of house is on the market for $105 a square foot. Rates are probably 1% lower.

Buyer gets the same house now, in an equally as strong community ( Flushing is Flushing, it will be solid forever) for around $200 a month less or 15% off.

Now come on! One house of this type is for sale in Flushing for $86 a Square Foot or $139,000. It sold in 2001 for $141 dollars a sq ft or $233,000. A very nice house in a great location in a very stable community.

I hate to go out on limb, but the bottom in most markets is here. Sellers of overpriced listings will not agree and will feel pain, I am sorry but it is reality. But if I am a buyer, now is the time, period.

If I was buying I would get a free pre-approval through a reputable lender, the pre-approval should hold up, I think mortgage origination market has stabilized enough, and go shopping. Find a great agent that will dig out the best deal, not the nicest paint color, you can save thousands by being willing to repaint that pink kitchen. Buy less than you qualify for and do a 15 or 20 year mortgage. 15 year mortgage rates are in the 4.875% range or lower.

Do this now, settle in, and in 9 years thank Buddy big time as you will end up selling for $180,000 and owing $55,000.

Good, Fundamental investing in your future.

What a great day! Mortgage rates are low, the market is picking up in responce & past clients are saving money by refinancing there homes! I could not have been happier, then I got home.

Waiting for me at the house was five pounds of happiness, my long awaited Tootie Pie! A huge heavy cardboard pie box with a picture of Ruby Lorraine "Tootie" Feagan and instructions in bold print to "Share with Others"!

I felt like the Dad from Christmas Story! FRAGILE! This was no leg lamp, it was something exponentially sexier...a Coconut Supreme Tootie Pie!

I rarely get this fired up about food, but this is seriously the best darn pie I have ever eaten. I am not knocking Pestos Coconut Creme pie at all, that stands pretty tall as well. But the whole Tootie Pie experience is just cool and the Pie is outstanding.

I met one of the initial investors in Tootie Pie Co. through Scott Hoyt. His name is John. John owns a Real Living Franchise in Austin, the countries second best real estate market. He was joking with Hoyt and myself about life after real estate and mentioned he would just deliver pies, I was picturing Tucker from Something About Mary, but he told us about his investment, the story behind the recipes, and tell us the name. We almost spilled our Lone Stars.

John maybe the nicest and most genuine guys I have ever met, but by far one of the funniest (his 10 minute rant about the disadvantages of Cheeto's fingers is off the charts). He also has a Championship Belt Buckle from his leg wrestling days. Anyway, enough about the guy, lets talk pie!

The Original Apple is called the five pounder by John. The reason? It has five pounds of apples in every pie! Seriously, a darn good pie. Blackberry , yesssss! Chocolate Pecan
reminds of Pearls in Elk Rapids, throw some Vanilla Bean ice cream on it and go to town!

Alright I am done typing, my third piece of Tootie Pie awaits.

Hey ya'all! I know it's not time to vote yet but just in case there is one person out there who doesn't know... we have a local going to Hollywood. Watch for her!

It has been too darn cold for house showing, can I get a second? I was out Sunday, sinus infection and all, and I still have wind rash on my face. There was a foreclosure seminar today that I missed. I wonder if anyone asked why the houses have to be so cold. I mean dang! I felt bad about complaining though, while I watched poor Bret Favre get pounded by little Eli. I like both teams but would like to have seen it turn out the other way. Gotta give them credit for doing it under those conditions. Can anybody get me one of those big ol' no sleeve warm up jackets they were wearing? Mama could get real cozy in one of those, curled up on the couch watching IDOL.

Interest rates for home loans are as low as I have ever seen them. For top tier buyers and owners looking to refinance 30 year mortgage rates are around 5.5%! I have seen 15 year home loans for 4.875%.

If you have an adjustable rate mortgage, now is the time to get out. I have been around the mortgage business my whole life and can only remember home mortgage interest rates this low once.

It is the best time to buy or refinance you will see for a while, rates will go up as soon as the fed lowers rates. The biggest myth regarding home mortgage rates: they go in the same direction as the Federal Reserve rates. Mortgage rates are market driven and almost always act in anticipation of the fed, so when the fed lowers mortgage rates will trend upwards at least short term. The reverse is also true.

I also tracked the range rates over the calender year for a 12 year period and found rates are at the lowest in December/January and peak in June/July, yes I do have too much time on my hands.

Todays free advice on how to make your life better! Contact a Lender and look into a mortgage.

It is hard to find a guy who loves Flint more than Peter Banwell. He has opened business in the City, he lives in the City, he cares.

He is also maybe the smartest real estate person I have ever met. I am not talking about Realtor Smart (although he is very much that) I am talking about that level that hardly anyone is smart enough to know exists. The laws governing land use, the government and developers right to take it...everything.

Peter is has a new project that deals with...you guessed it Flint.

FlintGoodStuff.com, a really fun site, visit it and contribute to it.

August? Really? I haven't been here in so long it took me ten minutes to remember how to post!

Here is what I am fired up about today. What is up with the foreclosure listings?!?! The remarks are lame and when you call for clarification no one knows ANYTHING! It seems to me that the standards for listing foreclosures has dropped. (let me add here that Trina Forystek's team over at redwhiteandblue are the exception to that, in my experience) At least last year when I showed the house with the large poos spread about the upstairs I was warned ahead of time. The attitude I get when I try and get information these days is like "hey, it's a 20k house on an acre, what do you want?" Well what I want to know is what kind of repairs we are looking at before my Buyers and I spend an hour and a fortune in gas driving to the site. Different Buyers have different areas and levels of comfort in the rehab department. We should be able to weed out some of the projects that don't suit us before we head out shopping.

No kidding... I showed a house this week that got our attention by boasting 2000 sf, but only 2 bedrooms and one bathroom. Doesn't that sound odd? So I called for clarification because it was a 30 mile each way drive for both of us. The listing office didn't know anything about the house. They referred to a prior listing when another agent had it for sale and reported that it had no interior walls. That someone had bought it and started some remodeling that they never finished. The remarks, I am NOT KIDDING said "TLC"... "handyman's project". They should have said, "THIS HOUSE NEEDS TO BE LEVELED AND MARKETED FOR LAND ONLY" "BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU STEP, EVERY STEP" "DON'T JUDGE THE DELAPIDATED BARN TOO QUICKLY BECAUSE BY THE TIME YOU LEAVE YOU'LL THINK IT LOOKS PRETTY GOOD" "BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID". It was ridiculous and I was angry.

Talk about wanting to be reimbursed for your valuable time.

Repo Agents... don't forget that we're losing sunlight very early these days and your houses are cold and dark. We are entering them with people we hardly know. We have responsibilities, obligations, and families to be with. Every time we head out to show your properties we are taking time away from those things and putting gas in our tanks to go to work. This is the nature of my job, I am not complaining. I love it. But I don't love wasting my time on misrepresented or poorly described listings.

Don't even get me started on the phantom buyers that "appear" after I submit my offers.

There are so many great things happening in American Commerce.

Check out this article from Fast Company .

What could a similar company do in Flint? We have the Automotive Background. We have the facilities. We have people with the skill set!

This type of innovation is amazing!

This bump in the national housing market is creating a lot of fantastic opportunity for innovation. Consumers are driving the way as they let the Real Estate and Building industries how they want to shop, how they want to buy and what they want in terms of service and product. This is truly an amazing time in this space. Real Estate sales alone was a $55 Billion dollar industry in 2006 (I am guessing lower in 2007 LOL).

Working in a market that big that is in a critical stage is amazing, much like media and advertising adapting to change is not enough, creating change is critical. (Now you know how the name ChangingStreets.com came to be!)

Homebuilding is going in an amazing direction as well. I think FlatPak may be the coolest thing in a long time. The website is a little difficult so scroll over the numbers and letters, the pictures and info are amazing. They remind me of the old Mies Van der Rohe panel homes, great lines and simplicity. When I was a kid I had a freind who lived in one off Miller Road west of Swartz Creek and I know there is another off Dye Road just south of Beecher. I remember someone telling me you could take it apart with a screwdriver! I don't know if that is true, but it sounds cool!

Container homes and offices are also very interesting. Watch this video about the Berkley Shipyards .

There are also many other intersting innovations in the "Green Living" catagory, check out Inhabitat.com.

Really cool and fun stuff.