Life, Real Estate And The Week In Review

This TED talk features Alain de Botton, a writer and philosopher: his main focus is everyday life. In this video he studies our society’s ideas of success and failure, covering a variety of topics including envy, career snobbery and meritocracy.

When you don't own your owner success, you become a victim of societies pressures and even more importantly it's rules. I think this is part of the reason low income people are against raising taxes even for the rich, because despite the reality that it's not going to happen, people believe they will be rich and don't want to be subjected to higher taxes should they be in that position.

Visit Poland

I'm Polish and love both the U.S.A and Poland so I want to share with you this promotional video I found on Youtube.

It really is like this and more. Poland is as modern as can be, young, vibrant, but you still get a sense of its long history, a history reaching back to the christening in 966 and really even further back and it has not been ruined yet by turirism <- made up word.  Next year the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship will be held in various places in Poland and the Ukraine, it will be a blast.

Back to Real Estate

The post - Home Prices Fell Through The Floor. Mortgage Debt Didn't, looks at how mortgage debt fell in relation to housing prices. Basically there is a delay and, "...de-leveraging — is a long, painful process. It's a key part of the bust in the boom-and-bust cycle, and it's often characterized by slow economic growth and high unemployment.", which may last 10 years from the end of the credit boom which according to the article ended in 2007: so 2017.  

An article like this should give people pause about buying real estate. We've had some interest from home buyers who want to buy and live in a home for 2-3 years before moving on: moving to a different state or home or lifestyle. In such a case it's difficult to recommend one buy a home. 

The process of buying and selling real estate is a costly one and it take time to recoup those costs before making any headway to building equity.

Sure there are opportunities in real estate, ones that even in a short time can prove to be financially advantageous, but those are rare and they don't happen without some effort like making extensive repairs etc.

In other words be careful about buying real estate if you're not planning to put down roots and stay or at least keep the property for a minimum of 5 years if not more, otherwise renting may be a better option.

By keeping it, I mean, that if you do decide to leave and you can't or don't want to sell, turning it into an investment property.

Modern contemporary homes section.

A new edition to this site is the modern contemporary section which is updated multiple times a week with new contemporary properties for sale in Tempe, Phoenix, Scottsdale and Paradise Valley.