Ludovic Kohler's (ludo) Blog

QUOTE OF THE WEEK..."To a journalist, good news is often not news at all."--Phil Donahue INFO THAT HITS US WHERE WE LIVE...Well, journalists had plenty of their kind of news to write about with last week's housing reports. The bad stuff began with February Housing Starts dropping 22.5% to a level...

QUOTE OF THE WEEK..."An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's."--Will Rogers INFO THAT HITS US WHERE WE LIVE...Last week there was no guessing involved in the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) report that applications for purchase mortgages hit their highest level of the ye...

QUOTE OF THE WEEK..."There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect."--Ronald Reagan INFO THAT HITS US WHERE WE LIVE...We should be especially careful to not erect barriers to our progress just because of a...

Everyone knows kitchens and baths are often the deciding factor that sells a property, but without traffic your chances of selling go way down. Kitchens and baths will generate sales, but the “curb appeal” is what generates traffic and interest   When buying a property to flip you are looking for...

QUOTE OF THE WEEK..."We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it."--John F. Kennedy INFO THAT HITS US WHERE WE LIVE...Things do keep changing, but we all hope that by and large those changes mean progress. We certainly saw evidence of that in the housing market last wee...

Ok, we have been alluding to this for a few weeks, but here it is. The first installment of everything you need to know about making money flipping properties and we are starting with the second most important subject that will quickly become the most important subject AFTER you get the potential...

This is not a secrete in the world of making money, you want to buy low and sell high. Stocks, bonds, commodities or even real estate, it is all the same. The difference is with real estate, cycles can take time. Often the cycles run in years and are evaluated and studied by the decade. That is w...

Quote of the week... "I've been blamed for just about everything that's wrong with this country."--Elvis Presley INFO THAT HITS US WHERE WE LIVE... We who work in the real estate and mortgage industries know exactly how Elvis felt. The same people who unfairly blamed us totally for the recession ...

 Many older homeowners in the Pasadena area want to figure out a way to tap into the equity value of their home without having to sell it or take out a potentially hazardous home equity loan. One way is to use a reverse mortgage. Although many people misunderstand how these unique mortgages work ...

The advance fee ban under the FTC’s Mortgage Assistance Relief Services (MARS) Rule is designed to protect financially distressed homeowners from mortgage relief scams that have sprung up during the mortgage crisis.   “Banning the collection of up-front fees will protect homeowners from being vic...