Real Estate Investment Advice

Investing in real estate allows you to generate cash flow, build equity, and take advantage of home price appreciation. In addition, the federal government offers a slew of lucrative tax benefits for rental property owners—including deductions and tax breaks for depreciation, mortgage interest, insurance, state and local taxes, repairs and maintenance, insurance, like-kind exchanges, and other situations. The key, however, is knowing what tax benefits are available, how they work, and how to make the most of them. For instance, while some of these tax deductions can be claimed in the year you incur them, other tax benefits may take […]

Mortgage interest rates in Q4 2022 and beyond In the five months since data for this article were collected, rates have moved considerably. In the final week of June 2022, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hovered at roughly 5.7%. Rates declined modestly in the following five weeks. By the first week of August 2022, the 30-year mortgage rate had fallen to just under 5%—a peak-to-trough drawdown of about 0.7 percentage points. However, interest rates soared in the subsequent 12 weeks, rising by over two percentage points to notch 7.08% in the last week of October 2022. This marks a 20-year high—rivaling […]

In March 2020, the pandemic began rapidly picking up steam, causing millions of schools, businesses, and workplaces across the country to shut down—many for the final time. In an effort to contain the unintended economic consequences of the COVID-19 lockdown, Congress passed the CARES Act. The $2.2 trillion emergency assistance and economic stimulus package—then the largest economic rescue package in U.S. history—contained sweeping and generous aid measures that ranged from $300 billion in stimulus checks to the nearly trillion-dollar Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). But loans and economic assistance weren’t the only notable relief measures contained within the CARES Act. The […]

Introduction It’s no secret that the real estate markets have been blazing hot since COVID-19. Within a short span of just 24 months, the pandemic boom saw US homeowner wealth balloon by a staggering $9 trillion. To put this mind-boggling number into perspective, this means that the median homeowner gained over $56,000 in home equity in 2021 alone. Simply put, American homeowners struck gold. But why did this happen? The housing market was heading into a downturn in the early weeks of the pandemic. After all, how could the market stay buoyant amid nationwide shutdowns and record-high unemployment? In an […]