InTheNumbers

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

InTheNumbers Makes Finding Out About Foreclosure Investments Easy as 1,2,3

The Q3 2006 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report indicates that 318, 355 properties nationwide entered some stage of foreclosure during the third quarter of 2006, which represents a 43% increase in just one year. North Carolina alone boasts nearly 5,500 foreclosed properties, which is a 56% increase from Q3 2005. The report also indicated that NC, ranked #26 nationally, had a foreclosure rate of one foreclosure filing for every 649 households. The data from this Q3 report confirms that foreclosures are definitely trending upward, placing more investors and buyers in control when it comes to negotiating their home purchases.

Today, those interested in riding the foreclosure wave and building their wealth through the purchase of foreclosed properties have a new and superior resource right at their finger-tips thanks to Beau Dawkins, president and founder of InTheNumbers, Inc. The new Raleigh based company is an online destination for real estate investors, providing powerful technologies, tools and resources to identify and evaluate pre-foreclosed and foreclosed properties.

While employed at IBM, Dawkins purchased, remodeled and sold numerous single-family homes and mid-size, multi-family apartment communities. After realizing the potential of the foreclosure market and the lack of resources available to people interested in pre-foreclosure and foreclosure properties, Dawkins decided to pursue a full time career in real estate investment and hence, InTheNumbers was formed.

InTheNumbers will initially focus on providing an easy-to-use, interactive website that features pre-foreclosure and foreclosure data that is collected from county courthouses and updated daily. This feature allows the customer to get a comprehensive view of the financial and physical description of the subject property.

"Our mission is to help others realize their financial dreams by providing superior real estate investment resources, tools and education," commented Dawkins. "We are committed to making it easier for experienced and novice real estate investors to obtain the information they need to succeed in the real estate industry."

Along with daily updated pre-foreclosure and foreclosure data, InTheNumbers offers 24/7 data access, investment and training seminars, webinars, guides to local investment groups and the latest industry trends. InTheNumbers has also created a platform where customers can network with other real estate and investment professionals.

"InTheNumbers is a time and cost efficient alternative to the traditional method of compiling pre-foreclosure and foreclosure data," said Dawkins. "By utilizing our technologies and services, investors can make quicker and better decisions, saving time and money."

posted by Beau Dawkins @ 11:58 PM 2 comments

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Always Do Your Homework Before Buying Pre-Foreclosure Properties

Due Diligence is defined as: the care that a prudent person might be expected to exercise in the examination and evaluation of risks affecting a business transaction.

Before you purchase a pre-foreclosure property, you should conduct a thorough property inspection. If you do not have or know someone that has a construction background, then you should hire a property inspector. In order to find a certified inspector, you can visit the American Society of Home Inspectors at www.ashi.org/find to find members located in your area. An inspector checks the safety of your potential new home. Home Inspectors focus especially on the structure, construction, and mechanical systems of the house and will make you aware of only repairs that are needed.

The website http://www.dspinspections.com/home.htm provides a pretty good checklist that you can utilize for this type of inspection. You should always focus on potential major defects, to include:

Roof Damage
Structural Damage
Signs of Mold
Dry Rot
Water Damage
Electrical Problems
HVAC Problems
Signs of Termites
Environmental Contamination
Lead-Based Paint Hazard (if house was built before 1978)

It's a good idea to have an inspection before you sign a written offer since, once the deal is closed, you've bought the house "as is." Or, you may want to include an inspection clause in the offer when negotiating for a home. An inspection clause gives you an out on buying the house if serious problems are found, or gives you the ability to renegotiate the purchase price if repairs are needed. An inspection clause can also specify that the seller must fix the problems before you purchase the house.

posted by Beau Dawkins @ 12:06 AM 3 comments

Monday, November 13, 2006

Carnival of Real Estate #18 Has Been Posted and We Made the Cut!

The 18th Edition of the Carnival of Real Estate has been posted at True Gotham. The top 11 posts from last week have been highlighted and I am excited to say that our article--Most Residential Properties in Foreclosure Are Not Worth Pursuing was selected as one of the feature articles!

A Blog Carnival is a weekly summary of the best blogging posts on a given subject that appeared in someone's blog during the previous week. A different blog hosts the carnival each week, so it brings bloggers writing on a given subject together.

The Carnival of Real Estate's next host will be Ubertor. Please submit your best post by Sunday, November 19, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in carnival administration? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

posted by Beau Dawkins @ 3:50 PM 0 comments

Great Real Estate Blogs

One of the most exciting things about real estate and technology is the ever-expanding blog community. I am always amazed to find new real estate blogs popping up every day. One of my favorite things to do is add a new blog feed to my Netvibes page. This has really helped us keep up to date with news and trends taking place in the industry. I have over 20 blogs that I check out on a daily basis. I though that I would share some of my favorites. I recommend that you check out the sites that we have linked into our blogroll. Here are some of my picks:

1. The Real Estate Tomato
2. Grow-a-brain
3. biggerpockets
4. sellsius
5. Real Estate 2.0
6. Landlord Shmandlord
7. The Housing Bubble
8. WordStreamZ

posted by Beau Dawkins @ 1:04 AM 0 comments

Friday, November 10, 2006

Most Residential Properties in Foreclosure Are Not Worth Pursuing

It seems to me that a lot of gurus and websites that advocate foreclosure investing, act like every foreclosure property is a good investment. This is simply not true. In fact, very few foreclosure properties are worth pursuing. Most property owners that are facing foreclosure have refinanced their loans in order to use their home equity to pay off other debt like credit cards.

Your first step after identifying which properties might be worth your time will be to determine if a pre-foreclosure property has enough equity to make it worth pursuing. Once you make contact with a property owner, you will need to find out as much information as possible about their loan. You will need to make sure that you get this information directly from the lender. DO NOT rely on the loan information that is published in foreclosure lawsuits, notice of lis pendens, notices of default or what the owner in foreclosure tells you about their loan.

The best way to obtain loan information from foreclosing lenders is to have the property owner contact the loan loss mitigation department and request the information personally. If the property owner has a computer, you can have him/her obtain the information online. Once you have this information, you need to have the owner sign a release of loan information authorization letter, so that you can verify the information directly with the lender.

The only way to truly verify the loan information is for the lender to provide the owner with a mortgage or deed of trust estoppel letter verifying the type of loan, unpaid principal loan balance, interest rate, total monthly payment and the total amount need to cure the default and reinstate the loan. Make sure that you have the owner sign this letter and instruct the owner to tell the lender to send this information directly to you.

Once you have all of this information, you should be able to quickly figure out how much equity is actually in the property. Remember, the main purpose of this initial meeting with a property owner in foreclosure is to obtain as much information as you can about the loan in default. This will help you to make a faster decision about whether the owner has enough equity in the property to make it worth pursuing.

posted by Beau Dawkins @ 2:32 PM 0 comments

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Site Selection Ranks North Carolina #1

Site Selection magizine has named North Carolina the "Top Business Climate" state for the fifth time in the last six years. Site Selection, is one of the nations premier magazines for economic develop.

A Massachusetts-based corporate real estate manager stated that North Carolina's; "labor supply, economic incentives, universities and intellectual resources, fast permitting, climate and access to capital" are very accommodating to new and expanding businesses. Governor Easley added:

"Providing a work force with the knowledge, talent and skill employers need to
compete in the global economy brings high quality jobs to hard working North
Carolina families," noted the governor at the announcement of other
business-climate accolades on September 28th. "It is no surprise that since
2001, our state has successfully recruited more than 163,400 jobs and $26.2
billion in investment."

North Carolina and Wake County also received numerous other awards this year.

#5 Most Wired Cities (Raleigh, NC) Forbes.com
#3 Best City for Entrepreneurs (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC) Entrepreneur.com
Top 10 Projected Home Appreciation Market (Raleigh, NC) MSN.com
#4 Greatest Home Price Appreciation Market (Raleigh-Durham, NC) Veros
5-Star Business Metro for Business Expansion (Raleigh, NC) Expansion Management
#13 Fastest Growing City in the Nation (Raleigh, NC) US Census Bureau
#6 Brainiest Mid-sized Metro (Raleigh, NC) Bizjournal.com
#2 Best Place for Business & Careers (Raleigh, NC) Forbes
#13 Boom Town (Raleigh, NC) Inc. Magazine
#1 Highest Growth County in NC (Wake County, NC) US Census Bureau
#3 Most Educated City (Raleigh, NC) American Community Survey

posted by Beau Dawkins @ 2:08 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Carnival of Real Estate #17

The 17th Edition of the Carnival of Real Estate is posted on Landlord Schmandlord. This week's edition features 5 top posts in addition to 11 other quality posts. I found "A Revolt on the Revolt of the Fairly Rich" to be a great article about what it means to truly attain financial freedom. Please take a look at the other articles!

The Carnival of Real Estate's next host will be True Gotham. Please submit your best post by Sunday, November 12, to be considered. Are you a real estate blogger and would you like to host a future edition or take a more active role in carnival administration? If so, get instructions on how to do so here. Please check the complete FAQ list if you have other questions as to how to participate.

posted by Beau Dawkins @ 12:55 PM 0 comments

InTheNumbers Website Re-Launch is 4 Days Away!

The last few weeks have been very hectic for us here at InTheNumbers. We are scheduled to re-launch our new and much-improved website on November 12th. Feel free to join our InTheNumbers Network for free once we go live at www.inthenumbers.com. For those of you not familiar with us, here is some information about our company:

InTheNumbers helps you make smart foreclosure investment decisions. Unlike alternative foreclosure websites, we provide our customers and business partners with the most up-to-date pre-foreclosure property on the web. Our extensive inventory of properties, educational tools and links to real estate resources enable investors to quickly locate and evaluate property ahead of the competition so that they can buy properties below market value and earn profits.

Our technologies help alleviate the time-consuming and labor-intensive, yet critical job of compiling data in one centralized location, so that experienced real estate investors can focus on identifying the best foreclosure and pre-foreclosure properties. While novice investors can utilize our educational tools, webinars and training seminars to quickly gain an appreciation of the benefits of our services.

Whether you are an experienced or first-time investor, I am sure that you realize that it takes time to build up the education, tools and resources it takes to become a successful real estate investor. We are here to tell you that, contrary to what the "get rich quick" gurus say; real estate investing is not easy.

We at InTheNumbers believe that your challenge is not finding the resources with which to make informed decisions. Rather, the challenge is to identify the "quality" resources that are available. Our job is to identify and narrow the vast amount of real estate resources that are available into one location that will facilitate better decision-making. With the arrival of the Internet and the related explosion of resources, it is now easy to gather mounds and mounds of information on virtually every real estate topic. Yet, where can you go to help you figure out what resources are worth your time and money? InTheNumbers.

We will apply the time and energy toward providing the very best services to our customers. If you afford us the opportunity to serve you, please know we will apply every effort to help you succeed.

posted by Beau Dawkins @ 1:38 AM 0 comments

Monday, November 06, 2006

Technorati Releases Their Latest State of the Blogosphere

Technorati just released their State of the Blogosphere report. There are over 57 million Blogs and counting, according to the report. Over 55% of all blogs are currently active. 100,000 new blogs are created each day! That is really amazing.

One of the trends that is currently taking place is the integration of blogs into traditional media sites. This is clear evidence that the media is finally recognizing the power of the blogging community. Even regional and local newspapers now have blogs.

I have also noticed that more and more real estate blogs are appearing. I mentioned in a previous posting that there were very few real estate blogs as recently as 2005. Now there are thousands created every day. Agent websites, blogging, market research and other online tools are providing new channels to reach home buying consumers. In spite of declining real estate activity (maybe because of it), online real estate spending will continue to go through the roof.

This all points to some exciting times for real estate investors. More information than ever is available for investors to use. Now it is up to you. You have the power of the Internet at your fingertips. Use this knowledge to take charge of your financial future. There is no better time than now to learn how to invest in real estate.

posted by Beau Dawkins @ 1:00 PM 0 comments