Active Real Estate

What Makes This Place Special – The Property Owner’s Perspective

Each LandVest listing is more than real estate, it is the realization of a vision of property owners, often over centuries. One such property is North Mowing, in Springfield Vermont. Set at the end of a ¾ mile drive on 230 acres the property has superb views of Mount Ascutney. This beautifully renovated c. 1795 expanded main house, guest house, barns and outbuildings are set around a series of terraced gardens. The

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If youve been following my past few articles on direct mail campaigns and the use of databases to help manage thee campaigns, youre probably asking how exactly to set up such a database. Once you have decided on a database for your real estate business, the next thing you need to do is set it up.  I gave this a considerable amount of thought before I dove into this process.  Your database needs to be easy to use; in the end, I decided it would be much easier to manage if I had everyone in groups.

I have a number of different groups and sub-groups in my database, but I am just going to talk about two of them; absentee owners and probates. T

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Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shawn Donovan testified before a hearing of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on the current implementation and efficacy of HARP 2.0 and on several bills that have been introduced to expand it or remedy some of its flaws.  This is a summary of the transcript of that hearing and will be covered in two parts.

Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-SD) opened the hearing by saying that, despite changes made to the HARP program last year, he continues to hear from his constituents and the housing industry that more could be done to encourage competition in the refinancing market and give homeowners more options.  Robert Menendez (D-NJ) said there was a need to attack the problems in the housing market from different angles including refinancing, particularly for borrowers who are making payments but who have interest rates on their mortgages well above the 4 to 5 percent available now.  Menendez said he would be introducing a bill called the Responsible Homeowner Refinancing Act of 2012 which would help 17.5 million borrowers with loans through the GSEs but who are trapped in high interest loans because of barriers to refinancing.  His bill, however, does not include any proposal to refinance private loans through FHA or to pay closing costs of borrowers who agree to shorter loan terms.

Donovan said that the housing market appears to be turning a corner and, with interest rates at historic lows, more than 14 million homeowners have refinanced and put nearly $27 billion a year back into the economy.  There is still, however, a range of barriers keeping struggling borrowers from getting the relief they need. 

HARP 2.0 followed the president’s call to identify barriers that were keeping people from refinancing.  Four

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Get out your Ouija boards and crystal balls. Thats what it might take to solve the double past lives of  these unique homes.

On the outside, they all have the appearance of single-family homes. But upon closer investigation, its pretty clear these interesting structures were originally designed for different purposes, and were home to other sorts of tenants like school kids, congregants and even missiles!

Dont believe us? Step inside!

Missile Silo Home

127 Standish Rd, Saranac NY (below) For sale: $750,000

Want the ultimate conversation piece?

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