Rent vs. Own: Now is the time to buy!

Rents continue to climb while home prices drop

Now is the time to buy!

According to an April 14 article on Realtytimes.com, “The first quarter of 2008 makes the 24th consecutive quarter that rental prices have escalated nationwide.” Click here to read the rest of the article, “Realty Viewpoint: If You Think You’re Saving Money Renting…Think Again.”

While Your First Home, the first book in the Keller Williams Realty Guide Series, emphasized that, “If you can afford to rent, you can afford to buy,” holds true. This point appears truer now than ever before.

Below is a graph showing you how right now is the best time for new buyers to get out of rental properties and enter the housing market.

Interest rates over the last 15 months

Interest Rates over the last 15 months

Lock Bumping: Protect Your Home Now

Lock Bumping is defined as “Lock bumping is a lock picking technique for opening a pin tumbler lock using a specially-crafted bump key. One bump key will work for all locks of the same type.”

http://antibumplocks.com/ offers at least one solution.

 

Now Windows Vista users can resize their photos too

Even though I prefer to work on a Mac, some real estate work simply requires me to operate in the Windows world. One thing I have noticed is that Vista does not have a quick and easy way to resize a picture like you can when using the Image Resizer PowerToy for Windows XP.

Enter VSO Image Resizer for Windows Vista.

VSO Image Resizer for Windows Vista

With this free resize image software, you can create e-mail friendly versions of your images, load them faster, move them easily from folder to folder, change their format, edit large numbers of image files/batch image resize and thus save space on your hard drive. Using high resolution 1600×1200 for creating wallpaper or file-sharing you can save your memory. VSO Image Resizer can also change file names using a template and you can add your own watermark with transparency support.
VSO Image resizer is integrated into the Windows explorer shell, right click on your pictures and start working on your pictures !

Download

Key Features

$1 Tripod Substitute for Better Photos

Calling all real estate agents. Take note and redeem your MLS photos for less than $1 in materials.

In my last post about bad real estate photos I noted:

I can’t help but be amazed at the substandard work which agents and sellers seem to be prepared to accept when it comes to photography. If you’ve spent any amount of time looking at homes on the internet, you’re already aware that there are far too many lousy and useless images out there.

If investing in a good tripod is not on your to do list then please consider the following option - take minute to view this video and learn how to get similar results for less than $1: