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I recently  read an article in the Boston Business Journal about a foreclosure prevention workshop being held at Gillette Stadium on Tuesday August 12. This workshop allows distressed homeowners concerned about foreclosure to meet with their lenders face-to-face and learn what they can do to avoid foreclosure, if possible.
This important event is being hosted by The New England Patriots Charitable Foundation and The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. 
The Hope NOW Alliance and the NeighborWorks America are playing key organizing roles in the event. The Hope NOW Alliance is an organization I have written about in a previous post. They play a major role for homeowners in distress to help them stay in their homes and creates a unified, coordinated plan to reach and help as many homeowners as possible.
This event is so long overdue. Why did it the credit crisis to build to such a magnitude until for this to come about? I am talking to and reading about homeowners every day who pick up the phone to try to find from their lenders how they can possibly work something out until they get back on their feet. Lenders are telling these people there is no alternative. They will no accept partial payments. One homeowner actually showed me the check and letter from the lender that accompanied it explaining that partial payment would not be considered, and oh, by the way, we will be working to foreclosure on your house. I mean, come on ... Such short-sightedness. Everybody loses.
So, I urge anyone reading this who may know of someone in trouble to spread the word a bout this informative, and hopefully helpful, event. There are many reasons why people are unable to keep their home. It is an embarrassing and humiliating experience for most to have to admit they are in trouble. Some of us may know several people on the brink of financial disaster and not know it. After all, it's not a great conversation starter!
If you are reading this and are one of the millions of Americans in this terrible situation, please ask for help. It is now there in many forms with organizations initiating efforts to not only avoid foreclosure, but to help you keep your home.
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I h ad read a Robert Kiyosaki book (I don't remember which one) quite some time ago about investing in real estate with IRA money. I didn't know how it worked and frankly, forgot about it. Until, that is, I read the book he wrote with Donald Trump, "Why We Want You To Be Rich" .
I began investigating how to go about leveraging IRA money and how it worked. This was a personal interest I had because my husband and I had gone through 2 downturns in the economy and saw our IRA balances dwindling.
Of course, they rebound, but we felt to out of control and frustrated with what was happening to our future. We decided we no longer wanted to play the "blame game" and bemoan our fate.
If there was a way to be in the driver's seat, I wanted to be there.
Anyone who drives/rides with me knows I don't make a wonderful passenger.
To the point that when my teenage sons began to drive, one of them tactfully told me that it helps him to be in the back seat when he is not driving. "You don't get freaked out by what you don't see" he told me. Ahhh...Sadly, I see my IRA balances every month.
Additionally, I knew if there was a way to do this, then as a business owner who advises clients and investors on building wealth through real estate, I needed to know as much as I could about this particular strategy.
As I dug a little deeper I found a company called Pensco Trust and my education was off and running!! They are a custodial company whose sole business is self directed IRAs. I attended a class they gave and was overwhelmed with the depth and complexity of this area.
I guess to say "complex" is a little misleading, because there are some very basic rules that need to be followed. It's the layers beyond each basic rule that boggled my mind.
And then, I realized that I don't need to know all the specifics by heart. I need to know enough to seek out the professionals who know the other questions to ask and be able to advise me accordingly.
After attending this class, I happened to see an article that was picked up by the Associated Press. I am not even able to properly credit the date or writer, but it was eye opening because it said,
"Despite extensive efforts to educate workers about saving for retirement, many employees are not doing a good job of managing their company-sponsored 401(k) accounts, a new study indicates.
The analysis of nearly 1 million retirement portfolios found that 69 percent have inappropriate risk or diversification of holdings and 36 percent have worrisome concentrations of company stock. In addition, one-third of savers aren't putting enough aside to qualify for the full company matching contribution."
Yikes!! That is really frightening. The article continues but those are the first 2 sentences. It bears thinking about at the very least.
So, if you have an interest in how this works, let me know. I will be happy to discuss it with you and be able to direct you to the right advisers to assist you in making a decision about your IRA money. If there is a real estate market ripe for this type of investment, this is it!
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 I just returned from spending 2 glorious days of R&R in Newport, Rhode Island with a few friends. What a great time of year. The trees and flowers were in bloom and budding and the weather was spectacular. It did not feel like mid-April, and it was a wonderful change of pace. Ocean Drive was beautiful, The Inn at Castle Hill provided an unforgettable setting for cocktails on the lawn at sunset, the food at Scales and Shells and
The Rhode Island Quahog Company, as always, was amazing, and the company was superb. WOW!! It was a taste of the good times to come this spring and summer.
There is a sense of rebirth in the air in the spring real estate market, causing a nice change of pace there too. The media is continuing to strike a more positive chord (albeit occasional) in reporting about the market.
Buyers right now have an incredible opportunity and the reason lies in a previous post of mine. The cut in interest rates that is being reported is not reaching the purchase market. The rates for mortgages are vacillating, but the prediction is that the overall trend will be to rise. So, while prices may continue to fall a little more before stabilizing (and then begin the upward rise), the impact of 1/2-1% increase in the interest rate will end up costing the buyer's monthly mortgage payment to be higher in the long run.
Many local communities are seeing enough inventory to last 9-12 months, and sellers are being negotiable.
Buyers are definitely out buying and in some cases competing with multiple offers on the right property. In a spring market with so many buyers looking, a house that has been on the market for 6 months may lead buyers to think they have ample time to see "how low it will go" only to have it snatched away from them.
New concerns for sellers are being fueled by daily reporting about the increasingly stringent lending standards. One tool the buyer can put into their tool belt to give them a competitive edge is to have an approval subject to appraisal ready and waiting. This strategy alone can compel a seller to possibly consider a lower offer (especially if they are reviewing more than one offer).
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