Zing Property Managment

Empty properties don’t make money!

Mike Levitin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:49:28 +0000

Zing Property Management has been providing property management services for hundreds of out of state investor owners. Our property management services include:

Finding qualified tenants for the properties we manage;
Handling repairs and maintenance for vacant and occupied investment properties;
Collecting rental monies from our residential and commercial tenants;
Providing monthly and annual accounting services for our clients’ properties; and
Depositing monthly rental income directly into clients’ bank accounts safely and securely so they get their money quickly.

Need qualified tenants? Zing Property Management uses today’s updated services to expose our properties to find a new tenant. We use a number of ways to expose our properties to the market, including dozens of marketing websites, the Multiple Listing Services and thousands of our fellow locating Realtors. This way our properties are marketed to minimize our vacancies.

Does your property need to be repaired? No problem. Zing Property Management can handle any repairs or maintenance in a timely manner. We use licensed independent contractors to handle anything from painting your property, installing a new roof, plumbing, heating and air conditioning repairs and anything else that might be needed. Zing Property Management makes sure the property owner is involved in any decisions that might be needed to keep the properties in excellent condition.

Want your rental income faster? Using our safe and secure online payment system, money from tenants is deposited directly into clients’ bank accounts. No more waiting more checks to arrive by mail. No more delivery delays. Investors get their payments in real-time. Plus, clients can keep track of their rental income 24/7.

Contact us today for more details and see for yourself why hundreds of investors choose Zing Property Management to manage their investment properties in a professional, efficient manner.

How will the foreclosure settlement actually affect the housing market?

Mike Levitin — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:07:34 +0000

Excerpts from an article posted on Forbes.com titled How The $25 Billion Foreclosure Settlement Will Really Affect The Housing Market:

The Department of Justice announced that its 16 month-long investigation into bank-related foreclosure abuses, following the robo-signing debacle of fall 2010, has culminated in a $25 billion mortgage relief plan aimed at helping homeowners.

The largest joint federal-state settlement ever, the deal was struck between the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 49 state attorneys general, and the country’s five largest mortgage loan servicers: Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Company and Ally Financial Inc.

The settlement promises to aid underwater homeowners who are behind on payments in getting their principal balances negotiated down; to enable homeowners who are not behind to get refinanced on their mortgages; and to award former homeowners who were improperly foreclosed upon between 2008 and 2011 one-time restitution payments of about $1,500 to $2,000.

Foreclosure has become a common term in the past several years as millions of American homeowners have faced the process since the housing bubble burst. More than three million homes have been fully foreclosed upon since 2007. In 2011 alone, nearly 1.9 million homes had one or more foreclosure filings attached to them, according to RealtyTrac. CoreLogic estimates that nearly 11 million homeowners are “underwater” on their mortgages, or paying off loans that are worth more than the value of their homes.

Looking at these numbers, a $25 billion settlement that reaches only two million homeowners, despite the fact that this deal is the largest of its kind ever, seems likely to fall short of reaching all of the homeowners in need. So how will the foreclosure settlement actually affect the housing market as a whole?

Read the entire article here

American Dream vs American Reality

Mike Levitin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:17:25 +0000

Buying a house will still always be the American dream, but rentals are the American reality right now,” said Phillip Lee, co-founder and CEO of Seattle-based rental startup RentMatch. Lee spoke at a panel called “Innovation in the Rental Market.”

“Though the commission is lower with rentals, the average transaction frequency is a lot higher,” Lee said.

Handling rentals is also a way for real estate agents to keep potential buyers “in the pipeline,” said Chris Smith, the panel’s moderator and Inman News’ chief evangelist.

“(It) nurtures that relationship until maybe you don’t do a ‘rent match,’ but a ‘buy match,’ ” Smith said.

Rentals may not be for everybody and that’s OK, said Caren Maio, co-founder and CEO of Nestio, a real estate startup that helps consumers organize their rental search in one place.

Economic uncertainly, credit histories marred by foreclosures and short sales, and strict lending standards have helped keep many potential homebuyers off the market, contributing to a rental boom.

The median rent for a two-bedroom home jumped 3.75 percent across the top 20 most-populated U.S. metro areas in 2011, according to a report from HotPads released Monday. At the same time, the median listing price of a for-sale two-bedroom home fell 1.83 percent, HotPads reported. The report is based on rental and for-sale listings on the HotPads site.

“While we expect demand for rental properties to remain high throughout 2012, we anticipate a slower growth compared to last year. As the price of homes for sale continues to decline, we believe more home shoppers will consider buying over renting,” HotPads said.

“We also predict more foreclosed and longstanding for-sale properties will re-enter the market as rentals in 2012, which should increase the rental supply and help ease prices. However, if economic conditions extend consumer uncertainty, we may continue seeing would-be homeowners continue to rent.”

Source: Inman News and HotPads

Investors Clear Out Oversupply of Existing Housing

Mike Levitin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:03:28 +0000

Back in the boom days, investor was considered a bad word because flippers helped pump up new home demand. Their propensity to buy the cheapest homes available and their short-term horizons were seen as a downside. Many argue even today that these homes are considered shadow inventory, waiting to reenter the market at some other point leaving them marked as undesirable. However, in 2011 the investor share (which includes second and vacation homes whose buyers do not live there full time) of all purchases was higher than in 2005. It has also served in clearing much of the existing housing oversupply. 2011 could have fared much worse if 40 percent of all bank sales of foreclosed homes, 28 percent of resales, and 13 percent of new-home sales hadn’t been purchased by investors.

One type of home has not been as appealing to investors in 2011, new home construction. Investors share of new-home closings has been much lower than that of REO sales and resales. What markets for investors wishing to buy new homes in 2011 proved to be most attractive? Markets where investment activity is high for all home-sale types, for example Michigan who suffered significant distress, Hawaii and Florida who offered second-home destinations, and New York with its urban market and condominiums at relatively low prices.

As you can see by the NAR graph below, Investors preferred existing homes.

This trend is healthy because it is only investors buying homes they will fix and rent who can provide the buying capacity to absorb the present supply (which was down to 6.2 months from 7.2 months at the end of November 2011) as well as the shadow inventory of distressed sales which will be created by foreclosures this year. The folks who buy, repair and rent out these homes are helping stabilize values and also creating cash flow for themselves which will be a plus for the economy.

U.S. top property investment pick

Mike Levitin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:31:51 +0000

The United States will remain the top choice of most global commercial real estate investors in 2012 according to Reuters.

While the United States offers the most stable and secure option in commercial real estate, investors said improvement in rent and occupancy growth and the repeal of a 1980 foreign investment tax would have the strongest impact on their investment decisions, according to the 20th annual survey of Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE) members.

For about the past year or so, investors in U.S. commercial real estate have focused on gateway cities such as New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles, driving prices up and yields down.

Sixty 60 percent of respondents said they plan to increase their investment in U.S. real estate in 2012, down from a record 72 percent last year, according to the 20th annual survey.

Some 42.2 percent said they believed the United States in 2012 would offer the best opportunity for the price of their commercial real estate investments to increase, down from 64.7 percent last year’s survey.

Read the entire article here

10 reasons why you should be optimistic about the real estate market in 2012

Mike Levitin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:18:43 +0000

If you are a looking to perfectly time a long-term purchase of real estate, then this might well be the year to do it.

Top 10 reasons from PropertyManager.com why you should be optimistic about the real estate market in 2012.

1.According to Case Shiller in 2012, 372 of the 384 real estate markets they track are projected to have housing prices appreciate, while only 12 markets are expected to see prices decline.

2.In markets that have had the largest price drops, those markets now have the most significant increases in affordability.

3.Apartment move outs to buy homes are escalating. Currently, measured at a six-quarter high of 13.5% by Zelman and Associates. That means that 13 out of every 100 renters moving out of apartments are doing so to buy a new home.

4.Low prices combined with historically low interest rates make 2012 a once-in-a-generation opportunity to buy real estate and build wealth. Look for this trend to continue only through 2012.

5.Wall Street wants in! That’s right. Hedge fund managers are trying to figure out how to capitalize on the opportunities in the single family home market. There is some irony here. Wall Street is trying to occupy us. You should know that they are going to do it, charge some fees, and then ask your fund manager to buy in with your money. Why not cut out at least two middlemen?

6.This month’s headline from Credit Suisse monthly survey of real estate agents is a telling sign of things to come. “Affordability Slowly Pulls Wary Buyers back!”

7.2012 is when CNBC’s Jim Kramer originally forecasted the housing crisis to end. I know he has revised this but the two things you need to remember are that Wall Street generally worries more about new home starts and builder stocks then the existing housing market. Then just remember what your old SAT test prep instructor preached, “Always stick with your first answer!”

8.According to local mortgage guru Mike Jones at Alarion Mortgage, “Rates look to continue to decline as the fed works to reduce rate in the commercial backed securities(CMBS) market as part of QE3.” Can rates drop below 4%? It’s possible. While I’m not qualified to say there is a bubble that is going to burst, it sure looks like irrational behavior is driving long-term rates that low. That’s behavior that real estate buyers should capitalize on with long-term fixed rates.

9.Job Growth looks strong as retailers and small business entrepreneurs now lean from the recession look to take on new locations and bring new jobs into our communities.

10.Of course ultimately you have heard it over and over that real estate markets are local.

Rental Housing Marketing Trends for 2012

Mike Levitin — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:49:26 +0000

According to PropertyManager.com, the year 2011 will go down in history as the year when the rental housing markets began to tip in favor of owners and landlords. In many areas in the U.S. like Los Angeles, Dallas, Phoenix, Chicago and Miami, the vacancy rates lowered compared to 2010.

Other areas like Cleveland, Ohio, Denver, Colorado, Houston, Texas, Atlanta, Georgia as well as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Areas of California saw vacancy rates flatten out or improve somewhat during 2011, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

How Rental Housing is Being Advertised and Vacancies Filled

The article goes on to state that 2012 will see the expansion of rental housing being advertised online or via sites that correlate to the explosive growth in the usage of Smart Phones and tablets such as the Apple’s iPad. Property managers are also finding that social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter, can be another great channel to market vacancies. Specialty websites like RentVine.com have been used by an increasing number of owners and property managers to expand their advertising of vacancies online. That trend should continue and grow in 2012.

The number of houses going into foreclosure increased exponentially in 2011. As a result, the number of displaced former homeowners looking for rentals increased to record levels. The good news is that the year 2012 looks very bright and promising for the property management industry and for both single and multifamily rental housing owners.

Mammoth backlog of foreclosures restarting

Mike Levitin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:10:21 +0000

According to CNBC, the Obama administration, in conjunction with federal regulators and led by the overseer of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is very close to announcing a pilot program to sell government-owned foreclosures in bulk to investors as rentals, according to administration officials.

The article goes on to state, the foreclosure processing delays of last year created a mammoth backlog of properties yet to be processed, which are just now being re-started. One of the initiatives of this program is for the federal government to be in the position to mitigate and manage any new wave of foreclosures, sources say.

Late-stage delinquencies still in the pipeline number close to two million, according to a new report from Lender Processing Services.

The Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, HUD, FDIC, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with their conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) at the helm, are engaged in a collaborative effort to face this new wave of foreclosures head on and figure out a way to keep these properties from sitting on the books of the government and sitting empty in the nation’s neighborhoods.

Read the entire article here on CNBC

Funding Flips Will Continue

Mike Levitin — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:44:41 +0000

FHA instituted the anti-flipping rule in 2003 to protect its mutual mortgage insurance program from losses on homes that were merely flipped, rather than rehabbed. Homes repossessed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and state- and federally chartered financial institutions were exempt from the rule.

In February 2010, the Obama administration waived the waiting period for resales — including homes purchased and rehabbed by private investors — in the hopes of stabilizing home prices and revitalizing communities hit by foreclosures.

It often takes less than 90 days to acquire, rehabilitate and sell properties, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said at the time. Some sellers of rehabbed properties had been reluctant to enter into contracts with FHA buyers because of the cost of holding a property for 90 days, HUD said.

Does something need fixing?

Mike Levitin — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:14:40 +0000

Always ask residents if something needs fixing!

When I first started in the property management industry, someone told me to always ask my residents if there was anything that needed fixing. Now, at the time, I thought that was kind of odd. Why would we ask if there was something WRONG with our rental home? That seemed…I don’t know…almost as if we had no confidence in our own homes. But because I was instructed to do it, I did it. And guess what? It worked.

Every time a resident either called our leasing office or came in to the office in person, I always said, “Is there anything in your home that needs some attention?” OR “Are there any outstanding maintenance issues in your home that we can take care of?” OR “Do you need us to come in to your home to repair anything” OR “Is everything working all right in your home?” And almost every single resident had something that needed attention. It might have been a leaky faucet. Or a loud blower motor on the furnace. Or maybe even a bi-fold door off the track. But there was almost always something. And they were all very grateful that I had taken the time to ask if there was anything they needed.

Yes, it creates work. But it does so much more. It keeps the small problem, like the leak, from becoming a big problem. And it lets your residents know that you care about keeping their home repaired, safe and something they can be proud of. So remember to always ask. And you’ll reap the benefits immediately.