Intown Insider readers - take note of the name Bernard Markstein - he’s the VP of Forecasting and Analysis for the National Association of Home Builders, and he knows his stuff. Bernard Markstein is looking for the bottom…

“We have yet to see the bottom of the current housing downturn, and the recovery will be slow and steady and heavily dependant on local economic conditions, affordability factors and level of exposure to poorly performing subprime loans, economists told a group of real estate reporters last year.

The recovery will take longer than first anticipated, said Bernard Markstein. Many analysts and observers previously were expecting housing markets to perk up later this year, he said, but then the subprime market began showing signs of weakness in early 2007.

“We’re not going back to a party, but rather a nice simple diet of bread and some chicken broth,” he said.

Markstein and others expected the market to reach bottom sometime in the Fall of 2007. That hasn’t happened yet in many, many markets around the USA. Read the rest of this entry »

So, the biggest and best real estate investment that I’ve made so far was the 1998 purchase of a 3 bedroom, 3 bath, beautiful home built in 1907 with a studio apartment downstairs that generated $850 per month income, about 200 feet from the Variety Playhouse. My wife at the time found us a great buy we were looking at Intown property for a year, ready to get out of Duluth. Intown living began for me when we mortgaged about $300,000.00 or so for the purchase of that property in 1998.

So, I got the article from the astute forecaster Mr. Laing in April 2002. I got it. I was a true believer. I tried to get the point across to my ex-wife, who agreed to divorce in 2002 in the month of May. The biggest asset that we shared was the piece of real property at 1059 Euclid Avenue (some of you may remember this house as the one with the motorcycle cop in the window “ if you don’t, then you had to be there.

In the divorce agreement, I agreed to let her be the real estate agent. I was not a practicing agent at the time, and if you believed my ex-wife at the time, then you would think that I was one of the worst human beings on the face of the earth.

I’m not, for the record. Read the rest of this entry »