News about properties and real estate
It is sandwiched between England and France, yet it is not part of the European Union. Its expat community is mostly made up of seniors looking for an old-fashioned way of life. And it expects foreigners to pay at least twice as much as locals for the privilege of living on its 30-or-so square miles. …
Continue reading “Guernsey: Where Home Buyers Find Shelter (From Taxes)”
Soon after Judy Stephens, of Lafayette, La., lost her husband in January, she got hit with more bad news, this time from the mortgage company. She needed to come up with $107,000 — the amount of principal, accrued interest and fees racked up by the reverse mortgage on the home she owned with her husband …
Continue reading “Reverse-mortgage change saves homes for surviving spouses”
Zombie houses. Abandoned by their owners and stuck in the foreclosure process, they are a blight on neighborhoods rich and poor. Some have been vacant for years, so long that people like Lee Randall can’t even remember the last time they saw the normal signs of life. Randall lives a few doors away from a …
Continue reading “Beware the zombie (houses) still menacing Tampa Bay neighborhoods”
With institutional capital pulling back from the single-family rental market in recent months, the question of its future in this market remains. RealtyTrac has released a new report that studies the markets where Wall Street has invested the most in single-family rentals and predicts in which of those markets institutional investors are likely to remain …
Diversification is essential since real estate can be just as volatile as stocks and other assets. Remember the housing bust when the market peaked in 2006 and declined for years? In my book The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome I wrote about a southwest Florida couple who loaded up on real estate at the height of the housing …
Continue reading “Managing Real Estate Assets in Your Retirement Portfolio”
Luxury-home prices in 33 major cities around the world—from Los Angeles to Monaco—are up 36% since 2009, according to data from real-estate firm Knight Frank. The taxman has noticed. To bolster public coffers or to curb rampant growth, a number of cities, including Singapore, Hong Kong and San Francisco, have imposed or increased taxes on …
Continue reading “How a Mansion Tax Could Affect Wealthy Neighborhoods”