Real estate in Vermont has been affected by the national recession.  Things have gotten so bad that here has been only two sales in all of Killington for the whole year in 2009, for example.  But brokers now report a cautious and mild upturn in home showings and purchasing contracts.  No one, however, expects to see the high levels of sales from previous years any time soon.  Thus, prices have been falling.  But be that as it may, all available data indicate that residential realty in Vermont have not experienced the same dramatic degree of decline as other parts of the country did, in places such as Florida and Nevada, most notoriously.

The oversupply of residential realty in Vermont is temporary, though expected to exist for a few years more.  Never a real estate dynamo, neither does Vermont suffer as dramatically in this recession as other places, most notoriously the perennial bywords of Florida and Nevada.  For a relatively stable state like Vermont, housing is relatively balanced between supply and demand as there are no sudden population spikes.  Commercial real estate in Vermont can be said to follow a pattern different only in that it is even more steady.  The federal stimulus program has been welcome but it is unclear whether the money will be sufficient to force a reversal of economic fortunes.

Vermont real estate prices have been falling, though not as precipitously as elsewhere, in places like Florida and Nevada, most notoriously.  For example, while the National Association of Realtors believe that the 2009 national median value for existing single-family homes was 15.5% below that of last year’s, the Federal Housing Price Index reports that Vermont home prices, including both primary and secondary vacation homes, fell only 3.2% in about the same time period.  Still, there is no doubt that our current economic malaise does affect Vermont negatively, a case in point being Killington, where only two homes had been sold in all of 2009!

The content of this article has been posted strictly for informational and human interest purposes only, not for advisory purposes, and should not be relied upon in any way by any person or institution.  The reader should not rely on the validity of any of the information contained herein.  The reader is urged to consult a variety of professionals when making business or any other significant decision, including accountants, lawyers, investment advisors, insurance companies and the like.  Again, this article has been posted merely for human interest and informational purposes, not for advisory purposes.

In fact, real estate investment completed after proper research into and evaluation of the property (to determine actual and future value), can lead to tremendous profit.

This is one reason many people choose real estate investment as their full time job.

Discussions about real estate tend to focus on residential real estate; commercial real estate, except to seasoned investors, is often overlooked.

However, commercial real estate presents a great option for investing in real estate.

Commercial real estate includes a large variety of property types.

To a majority of people, commercial real estate is only office buildings or factories or industrial units.

However, that is not all of commercial real estate. There is far more to commercial real estate.

Strip malls, health care centers, retail units and warehouse are all good examples of commercial real estate as is vacant land.

Even residential properties like apartments (or any property that consists of more than four residential units) are considered commercial real estate. In fact, such commercial real estate is very much in demand.

So, is commercial real estate really profitable?

Absolutely, in fact if it were not profitable I would not be writing about commercial real estate at all!!

However, with commercial real estate recognizing the opportunity is a bit more difficult when compared to residential real estate.

But commercial real estate profits can be huge in fact, often much bigger than you might realize from a residential real estate transaction of the same size.

There are many reasons to delve into commercial real estate investment.

For example you might purchase to resell after a certain appreciation level has occured or to generate a substantial income by leasing the property out to retailers or other business types or both.

In fact, commercial real estate development is treated as a preliminary indicator of the impending growth of the residential real estate market.

Therefore, once you recognize the probability of significant commercial growth within a region (whatever the reason i.e. municipal tax concessions), you should begin to evaluate the potential for appreciation in commercial real estate prices and implement your investment strategy quickly.

Regarding commercial real estate investment strategies it is important that you identify and set investment goals (i.e. immediate income through rental vs later investment income through resale) and that you know what you can afford and how you will effect the purchase.

It would be wise to determine your goals then meet with your banker (or financier) prior to viewing and selecting your commercial real estate.

Also remain open minded and understand that should the right (perfect) opportunity present itself, your investment strategy might need to be revisited and altered, sometimes considerably.

For example: If you find a commercial real estate property too expensive for you to buy alone but represents tremendous opportunity, you could look at forming a small investor group (i.e. with friends or family) and buy it together (splitting the profits later).

Or in another case (i.e. when a retail boom is expected in a region), though your commercial real estate investment strategy was devised around purchasing vacant land, you might find it more profitable to buy a property such as a strip mall or small plaza that you can lease to retailers or a property that you can convert into a warehouse for the purpose of renting to small businesses.

In a nutshell, commercial real estate presents a huge variety of and tremendous investing opportunities, you just need to recognize them and go for it.

Dave Jarvis is Broker and Owner of Realty Concepts, Inc. a Florida Real Estate Corporation. For Florida Real Estate See: http://www.rciflorida.com For More Free Real Estate Information See: http://www.realestateseekerusa.com For Free Mortgage Information See: http://www.mortgageseekerusa.com.

What is the difference between people who get rich and people who don’t? It is a very simple question that many people simply forget to ask. The first time you are truly confronted with this question, you will probably reach for an easy answer, such as, “Being born into a rich family” or “Getting lucky with the lotto” or even “Having a good career that pays a lot of money.” And you might indeed be considered lucky if any of those things had happened to you.

The bad news for those lucky people is that being in those circumstances is no guarantee of wealth. In fact, according to Robert Kiyosaki, author of the Rich Dad book series, it isn’t about how much money you bring in, but how much money you keep that determines how wealthy you are.

For instance, his father, the highly educated man to whom he refers in his books as his “poor dad,” always had a good salary. Yet, Kiyosaki said, at the end of every quarter, he was practically penniless.

The good news for you, is that becoming rich has less to do with external factors like your job or whether you were born a Rockefeller, which you can’t control, and more to do with internal factors which you can.

Whether you ever become rich or not is determined, in large part, by nothing more than how you think.

The man Kiyosaki dubbed his “rich dad” broke people down into four types and set them on a graph he called the Cash Flow Quadrant. On one side of the quadrant are the E’s and S’s, or the Employees and the Self-employed. On the other side are the B’s and I’s, or the Businesspeople and the Investors. According to Kiyosaki, each of those quadrants represents which sector a person’s money comes from. It also represents the way that person thinks.

Are you beginning to see? The people in the four quadrants are not there by chance–they are there because they experience life in fundamentally different ways.

“The four people in the four quadrants are four totally different people,” Kiyosaki says in his book “Cash Flow Quadrant.” “The four people found in the four different quadrants are different mentally as well as emotionally.”

What’s more, Kiyosaki says, it is that emotional difference that determines to which quadrant a person is drawn. And, he says, you can always tell which quadrant a person is coming from simply by listening to what they say. If you hear a person talking primarily about their benefits and job security, then that person is coming from Kiyosaki’s E or employee quadrant. He also goes on to say that it is perfectly all right to live your life in the E quadrant if security is indeed the most important thing to you. But, he adds, the E quadrant is the most difficult quadrant from which to become rich.

It sounds a little scary at first, but this is actually good news for you. It’s good news because it means that, if you want to get rich, all you have to do is start thinking more like the people who live in the I, or investors, quadrant.

One of the best things you can invest in is real estate. That is what Kiyosaki’s rich dad did, and it made him…well, rich. In order to think like a real estate investor, simply tell your money that you are through working for it. It is time for your money to get to work for you.

Alex Anderson Connects Investors With Appreciating Minnesota Real Estate Investment Property and South Florida Investment Properties.

A Real Estate Agent Is A Spy

Let’s suppose you make an offer on a home, and mention that if the seller says no, you’ll probably offer $5,000 more. The sales agent now has an obligation to tell the seller what you said. That’s an expensive comment, isn’t it? An agent may spend all his time with you, showing you houses and helping you write offers, but his allegiance is legally with the seller, unless he is hired by you.

An agent, even if she is a seller’s agent, can be a great help when you are buying, but remember that she is a sales-person, and you’re not the boss. Be careful what you say, and be careful with anything she says. You may want to work with a buyer’s agent. In that case the agent can work for YOUR best interests, but even here remember that she will usually get paid only when you buy something, so her objectivity is suspect.

Some real estate agents work under “dual-agency” rules, meaning they’re supposed to work for both the buyer’s and seller’s interests. Of course, they only get paid when a property is sold, so they may be more helpful to the sellers. In any case, how can someone really be on both sides of a negotiation? It is probable they’ll work harder for whoever they like more. Do you want a popularity contest that can cost you thousands of dollars?

Things Real Estate Agents Won’t Tell You

An agent will often let you assume things, to get the sale closed. They’ll tell you that the seller and buyer always split the closing fee, for example, or let you assume it. They’ll say they can’t change the commission after it has been set. They’ll say you have to write a big check for a “good faith” deposit when you make an offer.

I’ve seen realtors take $4,000 off a commission to get a sale closed at a lower price. I’ve seen the buyer or the seller pay the entire closing fee. Buyers sometimes put less than $1000 down as a deposit with an offer, and sometimes nothing – agreeing to deposit something when the offer is accepted. Little is set in stone when it comes to real estate.

Don’t think real estate agents are all experts. My first time making an offer on a house, the agent didn’t understand when I told him that I wanted to get a 90% first mortgage and have the seller carry a second for 5%, so I could get in with only 5% down. Many years into his career, he still had only dealt with conventional deals.

What do you look for in an agent when you are a buyer? Agents will often be knowledgeable about a certain type of real estate, or a certain neighborhood, but know little else. Just like other professionals, they specialize, so when you want to find a particular type of property, look through listings online until you find a real estate agent that already has several of that type listed.

Steve Gillman has invested in real estate for years. To learn more, get a free real estate investing course, and see a photo of a beautiful house he and his wife bought for $17,500, visit http://www.HousesUnderFiftyThousand.com

To succeed in commercial real estate, you need to have a cash flow position that works in your favor. There are several criteria to consider in this. You need to have a realistic assessment of both the initial costs to purchase the property, and what needs to be done to “keep the lights on” in a functional context.

In acquiring the property, it’s all too easy to look at the “down payment” as the initial cash outlay, without factoring in other expenses required to acquire it. First, look into the due diligence costs of getting the property – the legal assessments, the zoning checks, the residential and fire inspections. These will all act as a hidden source of initial expenses in acquiring the property. If you’re buying an option on a lot for further improvement with no existing structure, you’ll have to put down a deposit, and pay for engineering assessments and similar plans. Thus, the initial payment may be higher than the “down payment value”.

When you’ve paid for the property, you’ll also have monthly attendant costs. These range from construction costs for improving a vacant lot (ranging from materials, architect fees and labor) to monthly insurance premiums for fire and flood insurance, to interest on the initial payment to get the plot, to labor costs for running a leasing office. Regardless, to get your investment to pay out, there will be incidental and attendant monthly expenses to running your property.

This makes it critically important to have a healthy cash flow to make this commercial real estate investment work for you, and this cash flow has to be stable in the long term – even in the “buy, improve, and turn” market, it can take over a year, and often two or more to re-sell a property you’ve improved. To determine how much cash flow you’re going to need, look at the following:

How much is the monthly finance fee? This is the check you write each month to the bank for the commercial mortgage. If you’re part of an investment group, look at what your percentage share of the monthly income will be instead. In general, you want rental income to at least double your monthly payment on the property; most commercial properties run at 75% occupancy as a baseline, so set your rents accordingly.

Second, how much monthly labor and insurance costs are tied into maintaining the property? You may need to have an office on site to handle leasing, customer move-in/move-out, maintenance issues and light construction. This also needs to be debited from the account.

Ultimately, you want the property to generate some income for you in excess of its expenses each month to be worth holding on to, and it has to do this consistently, with less than complete occupancy. There are several strategies you can take on with this.

In the short term, look for immediate profit centers – if you’re renovating the property, and know it’s going to be a year long project, look to rent out the unrenovated sections as storage units to local businesses, or temporary warehouse spaces. Lots of small businesses in the midst of moving need month to month storage, and an apartment that’s due to be renovated (but isn’t rentable now) can serve as such – particularly as it’s climate control. Another place to look into rental income and short-term profit centers are by converting volume in the building to rental office space, particularly if you can get good Internet connectivity set up, or have a ramp suitable for bringing office equipment into the facility.

If, in assessing the property, you can’t make either of these short term revenue sources, consider bringing in multiple investors to share the risk and the profit centers. In particular, multiple investors can result in a solid cash cushion for the “buy and re-sell” strategy, particularly in the rapidly turning residential market.

If you have any success at this business, consider the revenue source of selling yourself; you have a rare and valuable knowledge and skill set if you’ve successfully developed commercial retail property, and can make a decent amount of money as a consultant. The best part about consulting jobs is that they can be fairly short term commitments – paid consultations and evaluations – which means that when your property needs your full attention (such as selling it, or preparing to sell it, after a renovation), that you’re free to do so. In a lesser light, if you have a knack for writing, consider an email newsletter, or an e-book, or even one you sell on Amazon.com through Lightning Source.

If you have properties with high occupancy rates and good net turn on rents, consider holding on to them to provide a cash flow for financing renovations and future acquisitions. Even if your commercial real estate strategy is to buy and turn quickly, having some revenue producing properties can really help to smooth out the ups and downs of an investment driven cash flow.

Tony Seruga, Yolanda Seruga and Yolanda Bishop of http://www.maverickrei.com specialize in commercial and investment real estate. As of May, 2006, they and their partners are managing over $600 million dollars worth of new projects.

Or is it?

If you screwed up on this one (didn’t sign a contract at all, or lost your only copy), a good lawyer might be able to help you get around the Statute of Frauds. The purpose of the Statute of Frauds is, as the name indicates, to prevent fraud. The idea is that since it’s unlikely that anyone would sell something as important as real estate without even bothering with a written contract, then an oral contract doesn’t provide enough evidence for the court to conclude that a sale was intended, no matter what the plaintiff might say. So if there is some other evidence that an actual agreement to sell real estate did exist, then you might be able to enforce the sale (known as “specific performance”) or collect damages (based on something called “estoppel”) for the failure of the sale. If one of the parties to the alleged real estate sales contract performed a sufficient part of the alleged terms, that might be enough to convince a court that there really was a contract and to enforce it.

Ah, but that word “sufficient” is a tricky one – after all, how much is enough? Courts don’t always agree on this one, but some of the factors tat they will likely consider are payment of the purchase price, delivery of possession to the buyer, and any improvements made by the buyer to the property.

Keep in mind that if you can prove that you paid the seller of real estate $25,000 and the court decides that that’s not enough to establish the existence of a real estate sales contract, they’re not likely to just tell you to go away – assuming that the seller cannot establish that you gave him a large cash donation or that he gave you something in return for your money, you’ll likely get your money back. It’s just that they won’t force the seller to transfer the real estate to you (and you won’t be required to pay the remainder of the purchase price). As well, if the market value of the house is more than what you agreed to pay for it, they won’t make the seller pay the difference, as they likely would if they found that a real estate contract did indeed exist and decided to grant you damages instead of specific performance.

DISCLAIMER: The following is intended for reference only and not as legal advice.

Real Estate Law in Plain English explains real estate law without the legalese.

Imagine moving mountains to make money in real estate! Selling land, selling houses, listing houses for sale and determining the value of homes are a sampling of the exciting professions available in real estate. Distance learning courses are offered online in several areas of the real estate profession, such as:

Real Estate salesperson or brokers license.

To sell houses, land or other real property, you need a real estate license. This course will prepare you for the licensing exam with courses in forms of ownership, recordation, rights and interests in land, license law, agency, rules and regulations, contracts, closings and closing costs, seller’s net, leases, title transfer, finance, appraisal, Fair Housing and taxes. At the end of the required course, you can take the final exam with a proctor, such as a librarian. A student who passes the final exam is qualified to take the State Real Estate Licensing Examination to work in real estate sales. Students may also pursue a brokers license after performed as a salesperson. A real estate broker is allowed to transact business for their own company and employ other people who hold a real estate license.

Real Estate courses to prepare for exams.

If you are anxious about taking state examinations to become a real estate salesperson or a real estate broker, you can take preparation courses online prior to the big test. Preparation courses traditionally offer practice questions, activities to help you remember the material covered in the course, a list of relevant real estate terms and basic tips for taking an exam. These courses are not a requirement to take the real estate examination but they help to put many students at ease about taking the test.

Real Estate courses to meet continuing education requirements.

When you earn you real estate license, continuing education is required to maintain the license and qualify for renewal. Distance learning gives busy real estate professionals a chance to fulfill these necessary continuing education requirements while they continue to earn money.

Real Estate courses in home inspection

Real estate inspectors educate buyers about the physical condition of a perspective home to assist them in making a wise decision. Inspectors ensure a home is suitable to reside in and does not violate local laws according to the guidelines of the National Association of Home Inspectors (NAHITM). The online course in real estate inspection teaches you the basic standards of performance for a residential home inspection written report.

Real Estate courses in appraisal.

Requirements for appraisers vary from state to state but all students basically have to complete certain courses and pass a state licensing examination. Real estate appraisers decide the value of a home based on its condition, amenities and the current market value of similar homes in the area.

Distance learning gives you an accessible way to learn how to become real estate professionals. For current realtors, online courses are a flexible way to fit continuing education into your hectic schedules. With online education, you can land that long-awaited, lucrative position in real estate you always dreamed of.

M. Jackson is a web contributor for http://www.distance-learning-college-guide.com where you find answers, information and advice on distance learning colleges, accredited online degrees and online courses.