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Gerald’s Article Insights: “Your Credit Score Needs to be This Good to Get a Mortgage”

Your credit score has an enormous influence on your ability to borrow money to buy a home or even to qualify to rent an apartment.  Your credit score also has a profound impact on many other aspects of your life like the qualifying to get a job, qualifying to get student loans, car loans or credit cards as well as the amount of interest you’ll ultimately pay on those loans.  There’s only one true credit score that is used by lenders to decide whether you qualify for a home loan, a car loan or some other kind of credit–that one true credit score is your FICO score; FICO stands for Fair Isaac  Corporation.  Proof of the fact that your FICO […]

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Gerald’s Article Insights: “Why Real Estate Could Be the Next Hot Investment, Even Now”

Real estate is always a good investment if you know what you are doing regardless of whether the writer of this article says it’s the next hottest investment or not. Also, you should not use averages and macro trends like # of housing starts or # of new permits to make an individual real estate buying decision. There are people who make money and people who lose money in EVERY real estate market–you just want to make sure you are one of the former. The writer does give two good pieces of advice: 1) “Investors should should filter opportunities based on the project partner and project’s ability to generate yield & 2) investors should come in with an understanding that […]

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Short Sales: 4 Proven Ways To Speed Up The Process

By Gerald Lucas One of the biggest complaints people have about short sales is how long they take to complete.  Here are 4 specific tips proven to speed up the short sale process: Tip #1: Continue to pay all property-related expenses that are not wrapped into your regular mortgage payment–expenses like HOA fees or condo fees as well as water, sewer or other utility bills (basically any expense that is not included in your regular mortgage payment).  In most cases, you have to be behind on your mortgage payments before your lender will consider discounting your mortgage loan.

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Short Sales – How Long Does it Take to Complete Them?

There are many factors that affect the amount of time required to complete a short sale. More importantly, there are concrete steps you can take to significantly shorten the time required to complete a short sale. The following actions affect the duration of the process:

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