Real Estate References

The Mexican coastline from Baja California to Cancun is dotted with beautiful developments and spectacular development proposals that offer in-house financing to real estate buyers.

This type of financing can be attractive for buyers when they are dealing with reputable developers who are financially sound. Yet in the sometimes shaky world of Mexico real estate there are risks involved to some in-house financing, but those risks can be managed.

Rent to Own is simply as it says: a piece of property is rented to a person, and if the person completes the period of rent, the ownership of the piece of property is turned over to him or her.

Rent to own is applied differently in the Philippines, as living spaces can be leased under this type of agreement. Apartments are offered on a very long-term lease to qualified tenants, and if they complete the contract – 20-30 years or so – the deed for the apartment can be turned over to them, making them the owners of the property.

Cheonse / Jeonse is a means of leasing out apartments unique to South Korea. A tenant makes a lump-sum deposit on the rental space, valued at anywhere from 50-100% of the actual market value of the space.

The tenant then pays no rent for the duration of the contract, usually two or three years. At the end of the contract, the landlord returns the entire deposit to the tenant.

Cheonse is most often used during times of high interest rates. The landlord is free to use the deposit, as long as the same amount is returned to the tenant.

This term simply refers to a property that’s being offered for sale at a lower price than what it should normally get, because the property needs a number of repairs to be restored to its best condition.

A house with a large floor area and significant improvements may still be called a fixer-upper if, for example, the house has been neglected or abandoned for several years, needing to be remodeled to be fit to live in again.

This allows the seller of a property to accept a buyer’s offer for that property, which the seller continues to sell. If the seller gets another offer, he or she can also accept that offer, and then activate the clause by notifying the original buyer of the second offer.

The original buyer now has a specific period of time – which can be more or less than the stated 72 hours – to complete the requirements to buy the property. Failure to do so will mean the original buyer loses the property, and the second buyer can purchase it.

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Closing includes all the pertinent final steps involved in buying a property. The terms frequently used in such a process are:

• Offer to purchase. Once you like what you see, you need to move swiftly. Make an offer that is 8%-10% lower than the list price to provide elbow room for you to haggle. But never go beyond the price within your reach.
• Deposit is the goodwill money as a sign of the buyer’s covenant with the seller. It is normally 1% of the purchase price and is included in the offer to purchase.
• Contingencies are certain obligations detailed in a contract before the buyer is required to close the deal, the most common of these are: the buyer’s securing of financing and a walk through of the property. Home Inspection is done by a professional to determine the structural and mechanical condition of a property.
• Contract is a legal and binding obligation of a buyer to purchase the property. It details the transaction including the selling price, description of the property, date of closing and possession date.

Image source: www.propertyforeclosureprofits.com
Here’s a simple method of getting to know your real estate investing market, which is VITALLY IMPORTANT before you can know if a property/price is worthy of calling a ‘deal’ or not…

This ‘LAZY’ method of market research reveals some amazing facts about the real estate investing market in your area and it works for any area there is….

Take a local newspaper (you can get many of them online, for free, nowadays) and simply count the number of ‘For Sale’ and ‘For Rent’ ads, keeping track of them for later reference.

Usually, Sunday and Wednesday papers are the ‘biggest real estate investing days’, so, for now, just watch these.

Keep track of the number of ads for a few weeks and watch what is happening to your market (hold on, now, we’re coming to the part about you turning all this research into a really great real estate investment).

Keeping more detailed records (what price for a 3/2/2 in the SW part of town is being offered for sale and rent wise, etc.) will yield tremendous knowledge, but, for now, just to get started in your real estate investing, stick with the basic ‘total ads’ research.

After a few weeks, you’ll start to see ‘trends’ in the real estate investing potential of your area – maybe the number of For Sale is going way up and the number of For Rent is going way down…