Financial Solution News

With the housing market in one of the biggest slump in decades, I’m contemplating the possibility of buying an investment property.  Those who know me will probably think that I’m nuts because I don’t even own a primary residence but let me explain the reasons why I haven’t bought a house in more detail.
Current Living Environment
I just got married in February and moved into a gorgeous apartment.  There are lots of free amenities and activities for residences that we truly enjoy.  The rent is not cheap but at least it is still affordable and we decided when we moved that it was worth the extra cost.  In fact, the apartment turned out better than we originally thought.  After we moved here, we were both happier and found ourselves enjoying life much more.
It is impossible for Emma and me to afford buying a house with all these amenities in our current […]

Original post by MoneyNing

How will sunsetting zero down and fourty year mortgages affect Canadians? Neilson, the animating blogger behind No Communism, is sharing his views from a mortgage broker’s perspective. Thank you for the guest post. I appreciate it.
Let’s all take a minute to wave bye bye to zero down and forty year amortization mortgages. So long pals! It was nice for you to come by, even if you only stayed for a little while, stayed on our couch and drank our beer! Tootle-loo!
All kidding aside, this is absolutely huge for the mortgage market. And not in a good way.
In the real world, I’m a mortgage broker. For those of you unfamiliar with a broker, I work as a liaison between the borrower and the financial institutions. I take the application, pick which lender and product would best suit the borrower, then submit the deal to the lender, and […]

Original post by Financial Jungle Guy

This is a guest post by Kent E. Irwin. Kent is the founder of eFinPLAN, an online comprehensive financial planning for software for consumers. He is also a Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC), a Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy (CAP) and a Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU).

Money Merge Accounts Promote a System to Pay Mortgage off Early
What Are They and Do They Work?
Several firms promote home mortgage payment systems commonly known as Money Merge Accounts which assist in early mortgage payoff. I have been approached socially, professionally and at church by individuals marketing these programs, therefore I wanted to learn more about them. This article reports what I found out about them. I feel it is important to note that I have never marketed such programs and have tried to keep this article as informative and free of bias as possible.
The Money Merge Account Overview:
Money merge accounts originated in Australia and […]

Original post by bob

In his new book, Retire Rich From Real Estate, Dr. Marc Andersen doesn’t teach you how to flip your way to overnight sensational success. Get-rich-schemes only enrich those authors, who otherwise, couldn’t score big in the tortuous world of real estate investing. Marc is none of that. Rather, he advocates the safe and steady approach to real estate riches by using tips and tricks stemming from 2 decades worth of investing experience.
In his introduction, Marc highlights a dire U.S. Census finding where just 4 out of 10 private landlords were profitable in the year surveyed. In another study, 1 in 3 owners would not buy the same property again if given the chance, and less than half reported a profit on their investments. “The average investor in real estate is not successful and continues to make the wrong investment decisions,” Marc warns, because unrealistic assumptions […]

Original post by Financial Jungle Guy

This has been a lot topic among bloggers, so I’ll throw in my 2-cents.
Every asset you own can be classified into 3 broad categories: necessities, luxuries and investments.
Examples include:

Necessities: electricity, gasoline, food, water, clothing, banking, medicine and *shelters*.
Luxuries: Tag Heuer watches, iPods, Coach bags, Ferraris and sailboats.
Investments: stocks, bonds and rental properties.

No. That’s not a typo. I did place “shelter” as one of the necessities, but I believe the crux of the misunderstanding centers around what exactly do we consume: is it the warmth provided by the shelter, or the ownership of the shelter itself? Let’s clarify by drawing parallels from my dividend-paying stocks.
I consume electricity, but also consider my ownership of Fortis as an investment. Similarly, I’m a part-owner of Saputo, Canadian Oil Sand, Reitmans, Royal Bank and Johnson & Johnson, which all provide essential products and services […]

Original post by Financial Jungle Guy

Sure, you can invest in this 3-bedroom Vancouver old timer yielding a meager 3.5% to 4% CAP, but why torment yourself? Instead, you can indulge yourself with an 8.2% yield by owning these sexy office towers within H&R REIT’s portfolio:

As you may recall, the market has been punishing the Real Estate Income Trust (REIT) sector for much of 2007 and into early 2008, while the average yield is inching up each day. No one knows how long the spanking will persist, but as of this moment, the whole sector is roaming into a bargain territory as many REITs are yielding above 7%. That is far more attractive than the 3.74% offered by Canada 10-year bond, a popular yardstick to judge how attractive the REIT sector is relative to a guaranteed income investment.
I have taken an interest in H&R REIT - the largest Canadian office REIT […]

Original post by Financial Jungle Guy

My parents called the other day reminding me to cut back on dividend investing and start securing a house for our future. A house is a hard asset that always go up, they reasoned, but stocks are just pieces of paper which can vapourize into thin air.
Predictably after the call, I was in no hurry to scamper to the real estate parade and satiate realtors with fat commissions. Contrary to the popular belief, hard assets do stand firm behind stock certificates: factories, equipments, pipelines, phone towers, cheese, hot water tanks, railways, trains, pills, hydroelectric plants, customers, revenues, profits, bank accounts and many more. Moreover, real estate doesn’t always go up. Suppose you bought a home in Vancouver during the peak of 1980, it would have taken 26 years to recover your money.
However, I must concede that our net worth is running dangerously low on […]

Original post by Financial Jungle Guy

I have a confession to make. I’m a pretty nosey fellow. If you’re an over-achiever flourishing in an unforgiving world, you better watch out. Financial Jungle just might drag you into an interview, grilling you on all your financial philosophies.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure to meet Mike through a mutual friend of ours. The tall, slim-built, self-employed software solution consultant from Britain was half-jokingly proclaiming to be retired at a tender age of 30. And why not? He has accumulated enough net worth to sustain a modest retirement, but more importantly, he’s living the job of his dream. You see, Mike has a knack for solving corporate pains and sufferings, and he loves it. Stories of process improvements flared the initial 20-minutes of the conversation. In particular, Mike rejoiced at the time when his simple Excel Spreadsheet consistently salvaged 10 unproductive hours each week in […]

Original post by Financial Jungle Guy

The following is a guest post written by Terry Sprouse, author of “Fix em Up, Rent em Out: How to Start Your Own House Fix-up and Rental Business in Your Spare Time” - Find out more at Fixemup.org
In my opinion, the two safest ways to get started in real estate, are: 1) buy a home, rent it, then do it again, and/or 2) buy a home, live in it 2 years, then sell it without paying any federal taxes using the “homeowner’s tax break.” Over the past six years, my wife and I have used both techniques. We have several properties that we keep as rental properties and provide us with cash flow. In addition, we also buy houses in need of repair with the intention of selling them and utilizing the “homeowners tax break” to pay no federal taxes.
Turn Your Residence into a Rental Instead of Selling It
A […]

Original post by bob