BloodhoudRealty.com is your ideal Realtor in the Phoenix / Scottsdale area, whether you're buying, selling, relocating or investing in a home.
BloodhoudRealty.com is devoted, dedicated and determined in serving your home buying, selling or investing needs in the Phoenix / Scottsdale area.
Find your perfect home in the Phoenix / Scottsdale area with The Bloohound Realty Group! Find the perfect neighborhood in the Phoenix / Scottsdale area with The Bloohound Realty Group! Homes in the Phoenix / Scottdale area served by BloodhoudRealty.com feature dramatic floorplans. To complete the experience of owning an Arizona home, BloodhoudRealty.com can help you find a great house in the Phoenix / Scottsdale area with a great pool like ths one!
Sell your home on your schedule at your price with BloodhoundRealty.com. Buy a home with the expert advice and negotiating skills of BloodhoundRealty.com. Invest in an income property with BloodhoundRealty.com, saving time, aggravation and money. Relocate to The Valley of the Sun. BloodhoundRealty.com makes it easy. Homes currently listed by BloodhoundRealty.com. Visit our news pages for real estate news and views. Meet the people behind BloodhoundRealty.com and discover what we stand for.
Use this form to tell us all about your dream home. Request a free Comparative Market Analysis of your home's value. Search the full Phoenix-area MLS listings. Tell your trusted friends and neighbors about BloodhoundRealty.com--and get a great gift! Make an appointment to meet in your home, in our offices or by telephone to discuss your real estate needs.

Building wealth through
real estate investment...

As discussed in last week's newsletter, I went to a high-powered real estate class in Las Vegas last week. The topic was "Building Wealth Through Real Estate," and it was an eye-opener. Everyone knows that real estate is the best and most reliable long-term investment -- whether you're buying your own residence or an income property. But once you've crunched every last one of the numbers, the superiority of housing over securities or commodities becomes very clear -- and very dramatic.

Because I'm so terribly, terribly shy, I gave a presentation on an investment home I am working on right now. A number of my classmates, fellow Realtors from all over the country, asked for follow-up information, so I prepared this page, which goes into everything in immense detail. This serves as a supplement to my investments page, and ultimately much of the class information will make it onto that page.

Here's the Reader's Digest version: With a cash outlay of about $30,000, an investor can gain control of a $130,000 asset that can produce a total after-tax yield of 14.27%. That comes out to 19.82% before taxes, which is how you should compare it to competing investments. Because leverage is power, a smaller down payment can produce even more impressive results. At 5% down, the initial outlay would be about $10,000. Even allowing for Private Mortgage Insurance, the after-tax yield could be 23.10%, a before-tax equivalent yield of 32.08%. No one can promise future results, but there is simply no other investment that can produce these high and highly-reliable results.

On the other hand...

It wouldn't be Phoenix without the Arizona Republic crying that the sky is falling. In its June 16, 2004, edition, the paper casts doubts on investment trends in the Phoenix area. But the previous day's paper highlights all the commercial development going on in just the areas under discussion. And on the same day, the paper laments an incipient housing shortage, which, if it happens, cannot be anything but good for investors and developers.

The fact is, rental housing in general has been fairly soft while interest rates have been so low. It is reasonable to surmise that as interest rates rise, rental housing should firm up. And rental homes in predominantly owner-occupied neighborhoods should continue to appreciate along with their owner-occupied neighbors at impressive but not astounding rates.

In-state or out, if you can afford to add one or more rental homes to your investment portfolio, you should see very impressive long-term results. Not short-term results, though. While some real estate investments throw off substantial amounts of cash, much of the benefit in residential investing will come in the form of tax savings through depreciation and long-term wealth-building through appreciation.

We are all investors now...

But even if your own residence is your only property, you're still a savvy, profit-seeking real estate investor. And the chances are excellent that your home in the Phoenix area is producing great wealth for you as you undertake the daily chores of living. Your home is probably appreciating at impressive if not astounding rates. (If you're curious, you can request a Comparative Market Analysis of your home's value.) But more importantly, the IRS really, really wants for you to own your home. In addition to that mortgage interest deduction that is your reward for filing long-form, your capital gain in your home, when you sell it, is excluded from taxation up to $250,000 per person, $500,000 per couple. You can take advantage of this exclusion every two years, so handy homeowners can use it to pursue a "quick flip" investment strategy slowly, with the profit on their refurbishing coming to them income-tax free. But if even all you do is live in your home, your wealth is very probably growing all around you.

Blowing bubbles at the news...

The other favorite lament of professional crybabies, right now, is that we're surfing on a "housing bubble." The claim is that home prices are artificially high, like internet stocks before the crash, and they will return to some idealized "normal" level when the bubble bursts and people come to their senses.

There are good reasons to doubt this is so, at least in the Phoenix market. There is no artificial demand, as there was with dot.com stocks with absurd price-to-earnings ratios. No houses are sitting empty, for example. Certainly the historic lows in mortgage rates will not continue. They were caused by the flight from securities after the dot.com bomb, and the current rate creep is evidence that this formerly "scared" money is tip-toeing back into the securities markets. Government deficit spending is soaking up investment capital, as well, which argues that rates will continue to creep upward. During the refinance boom, a great many people over-encumbered their homes, and this surely will come back to haunt some of them. Bad news for those people, and it is sure incite much professional crybabyism. But the value of the affected homes will not collapse to zero, like a faded Wall Street Darling. Investors and other bargain-hunters will buy each of these homes at some very large fraction of its fair market value and life will go on.

The differences between housing and securities are decisive: Housing is fixed capital investment, not a thing of hopes and dreams. Investment in housing, whether by owner-occupants or landlords, is often accompanied by valuable capital improvement, and almost always by capital maintenance. And people will always need a place to live. It's possible to over-build or to build badly, which can depress prices. It's possible for governmental or natural catastrophes to induce a hiccough in the steady upward trend in home values. But until people resolve to stand outside all night in the rain, I expect that the only bubble in housing will be the temporary bubble in the number of housing bubble crybabies.

-- Greg Swann

Working like dogs
to build your wealth...

Whether it's your home or an income property, real estate is the best arrow in your investment quiver. Higher potential yields, more reliable yields, huge tax benefits and incredible long-term wealth-building potential. All that and you get a place to park your car! If you're ready to explore real estate as an investment -- as a landlord or an owner-occupant -- let's get started. You can make an appointment to meet in your home or our offices. Or you can request a Comparative Market Analysis of your home's value. You can fill out our detailed questionnaire to find your ideal new home. Or you can just pick up the phone and dial 602-740-7531. (Outside of Arizona? Dial 1-800-508-5430.) Either way, we're at your command, devoutly loyal, smart, frisky and eager to please...


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BloodhoudRealty.com is a member of the Arizona Association of Realtors and the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service – the MLS in the Phoenix / Scottsdale area.    BloodhoudRealty.com is a member of the National Association of Realtors, the ethical standards-setting body of the real estate industry.    BloodhoudRealty.com is an Equal Housing Realtor. We have had supplemtal classes in Fair Housing issues and have earned the At Home With Diversity designation.

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Thursday, March 28, 2024


Success Stories...

"The world of real estate is changing rapidly, and no one pushes for postivie consumer-centric changes harder than BloodhoundRealty.com. Don't believe me? Take this quote from their blog:
     "Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity -- welcome home."
     Greg and Cathy push Realtors on a national level, but they put their best practices to use in their own backyard, right where their clients can benefit the most." – Teri L


"If it were the beginning of the 20th century, and you wanted to get from here to there, would you give a listen to a guy named Ford trying to sell you a Model T instead of that year's latest, greatest buggy on wheels?
     What Ford did for automobiles, Greg Swann of BloodhoundRealty.com is doing for real estate. Reinventing the idea. Using the latest technology. And creating a truly new and better, practical and "duh!"-obvious way to get from here to there.
     If you are selling, you'll get a higher price. And a quicker sale. If you are buying, you'll get better property for your money. And you won't spend the first night in your new house awake sick with regret in a cold sweat over what you just did.
     Now there are a few things to know before you visit BloodhoundRealty.com. You'll immediately notice nobody is doing real estate this way. Given the stakes involved, it's only natural to wonder why. So you have to do a little reading. You need to check out Bloodhound's common sense methods against your own experience. And you should pay close attention to the documented and verifiable results Bloodhound gets. Un-fudge-able facts like average days on market. Percentage of asking price attained. Sold-for versus appraisal.
     If you are like most, at some point you just won't care why everyone else in real estate doesn't get it. You'll just want to use all the cards Bloodhound puts in your hand to win every pot in this particular game of real estate poker.
     Of course there is the anxiety of being first and among the vanguard. Traditional brokers will tut-tut you and say "now-now, this is not how real estate works around here." And skeptical neighbors and friends may raise doubts by calling Bloodhound "a little gimmicky." Or "too risky." Or "untested."
     Right, just like that thing Henry invented.
     The fact that the rest of the real estate industry hasn't yet caught on creates an overwhelming asymmetry that so favors BloodhoundRealty.com's clients--you--that it's actually unfair. It's like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark--YOU are the one bringing a gun to a knife fight.
     This advantage will not last. Eventually realtors will get up to speed and move to the Model T. But they haven't yet. And in the meantime, BloodhoundRealty.com has built something closer to a Lamborghini. Hop in. The road ahead is free and clear." – Richard R


"We feel that you and Bloodhound Realty did an excellent job and we are extremely happy that you selected us as one of your clients. Your diligence and hard work were both refreshing and somewhat unexpected given our previous experience with 'traditional' real estate marketing." – Ken G


Click here for more testimonials
or submit your own success story.


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