Steadfast Finances

 Real Estate         4 comments

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For some time now, I’ve been considering becoming a real estate investor (>1 property) once again. Even though real estate prices haven’t found their absolute bottom yet (my non-professional opinion only), I’m thinking that 2010 might be a decent time to test the waters, do some bottom fishing, and see …

 Business Trends, Investing 101, Real Estate         4 comments

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Earlier today, I stumbled across one of Google’s many data mining gadgets called “Insights for Search” and before I knew it, two hours of my day were gone.
Basically, Insights For Search is just like Google Trends with few more bells and whistles, where it quantifies the number of times various …

 Business Trends, Consumer Education, Market Themes, Strategic Planning         8 comments

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Now that the Greater Fool Decade is over, I thought I would dust off my prognosticator hat and do a little strategic planning since we just experienced the stock market’s second worst performing decade ever.
Here are a few of my top, and relatively simple, investing themes for 2010 that will …

 Banking, Business Trends, Entrepreneurship, Investing 101, Peer to Peer Lending, Personal Finance Tips, Saving Money         14 comments

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I’m not an expert in business trends by any means, but it really seems like the disintermediation opportunities the Internet provides is beginning to replace, well… almost everything.
Think about this for a moment.
Where do you check the morning news? Where do you get your music? Manage your money? Place phone …

 Financial Planning, Real Estate         6 comments

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Being one that is easily fascinated by consumer psychology and social trends, I noticed a few interesting correlations that appears to exist in the latest round of foreclosure numbers.
It would appear that foreclosure rates are substantially lower in states with a blue collar image, share a border with Canada, or …

 Commodities, Investing 101, Investor Psychology         39 comments

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The majority of the investing world, like countless times throughout history, has once again found itself spellbound by gold’s luster and I’m here to tell you why I think gold is a bad investment.
I’m feeling another black sheep moment coming on.
Truth is, gold has had a heck of …

 Investing 101, Real Estate         5 comments

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This post is a summary of a private discussion I’ve had with reader Josh regarding my post on spotting investment bubbles. He asks:
When could I reasonably expect my Atlanta condo to be worth what it was 4 years ago when I bought it?
I thought the discussion …

 Mortgages, Real Estate         2 comments

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According to Deutsche Bank’s research, nearly 50 percent of American homeowners with a mortgage will be underwater by 2011. Pretty scary stuff considering 66% of American’s (or 51.6 million people) have a mortgage on their home.
And you would think we would have this problem solved considering the stock market is …

 Consumer Education, Green Living         2 comments

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Promoting and labeling yourself as a green manufacturer — whether you’re legit or just faking it — has really taken off now that the green living / ecofriendly / sustainable living market has gone mainstream.
It’s become so common that current research indicates that as much as 98% of North American …

 Financial Crisis, Real Estate         9 comments

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Who would have thought during the peak of the housing crisis that we would witness such a sight as this?
Brand new homes located in a suburban California neighborhood being demolished because they were costing Guaranty Bank (a TARP recipient of bailout funds) too much money in fines to allow the …

 Real Estate, Vulture Investing         4 comments

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The NY Times recently published a very powerful interactive graphic comparing median income vs. median home prices from a wide selection of American cities dating back to 1979.
At first glance, it really does appear all that sensational.  However, as a personal finance blogger, the conclusions I’ve drawn from this graphic …

 Real Estate, Vulture Investing         3 comments

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Several readers have emailed me over the past few weeks asking my opinion on the current state of the real estate market after my post on mark-to-market accounting practices.
The gist of these questions went something like this:
Is now the time to buy a house?
Have we hit a bottom in the …