The Lancaster Life

President Bush signed the Housing Rescue Bill this morning. The bill is designed to bring some relief to people who are at risk of losing their house. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has been saying that the goal is not to save everyone who is in way over their head or got burned while speculating during the real estate bubble. Rather, the goal is to help those who could afford their house with a reduced payment.

The bill authorizes FHA to release $300 billion in new loans, provided that lenders agree to write down the loan to 90% of the home's current appraised value. This is designed to save people who bought at inflated valuations and now hold loans for more than the current value of their house.

One of the highlights of the bill is that it provides an interest free loan for first time home buyers. The loan is in the form of a tax break up to $7500. The amount taken will be paid back over the next 15 years. If you are in the market for your first home, be sure that your real estate agent and lender are completely familiar with this new law.

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Dean Rock is a full-service real estate professional at Coldwell Banker in Lancaster. Dean's professional and volunteer interests relate to the long term health of Lancaster County's economy and society. Dean's areas of interest include historic homes, land preservation, low-income home ownership, education and youth social work. Click here to learn more about Lancaster PA real estate.

Buying an investment property may seem like a daunting proposition. Many people are afraid that they will hate the responsibility of being a landlord. Some are intimidated because they think they won't be able to understand the economics of investing in real estate.

It is true that making an investment in an apartment building should not be done lightly. However, in Lancaster, it is possible to do quite well in the long run without having to put down a lot of cash or take on a lot of headaches.

Two-unit apartment buildings that are in decent shape are surprisingly low priced. It's possible to find a building that has low maintenance requirements and the rents cover the costs of the building and your mortgage.

The real payoff is down the road as rents gradually rise with the cost of living and any improvements you make to the property. Because your mortgage payments remains constant for the term of the mortgage, your building will eventually provide you a nice amount of cash every month. Over the years your down payment will turn into substantial equity as the mortgage is paid off.

If you are interested in this kind of long term investment, talk to people you know who have experienced real estate investment. Choose a real estate professional who has experience in investment properties and can help you understand all of the ins and outs of managing the property. You will find that owning a building is not to be taken lightly, but that the responsibilities and difficulties may not be as great as you fear.  

Dean Rock is a full-service real estate professional at Coldwell Banker in Lancaster. Dean's professional and volunteer interests relate to the long term health of Lancaster County's economy and society. Dean's areas of interest include historic homes, land preservation, low-income home ownership, education and youth social work. Click here to learn more about Lancaster PA real estate.

If you are interested in learning more about historic homes in Lancaster, you might want to pick up a copy of A Field Guide to American Houses. This is one of the sources I use when helping people to understand the historic value of a home they are buying or selling.

The field guide traces the history of architectural styles in the United States. It gives descriptions and pictures of each style and includes lots of diagrams that will help you learn the architectural terms.

In this picture, you can see an example of what is known as Second Empire Victorian. This roof style, with the vertical face, is called a mansard roof. Mansard roofs are a signature feature of Victorian architecture.

In this picture, you can see an example of what is known as Second Empire Victorian. This roof style, with the vertical face, is called a mansard roof. Mansard roofs are a signature feature of Victorian architecture. The double window style and symmetrical frame are also common attributes of Victorian houses.

Lancaster City is particularly rich in examples of the Victorian style. Learning some of the common features of Victorian houses, such as the mansard roof and window styles, is a good place to start learning about historic architecture.

Dean Rock is a full-service real estate professional at Coldwell Banker in Lancaster. Dean's professional and volunteer interests relate to the long term health of Lancaster County's economy and society. Dean's areas of interest include historic homes, land preservation, low-income home ownership, education and youth social work. Click here to learn more about Lancaster PA real estate.

Whether your a new home buyer or a repeat buyer, there are a handful of topics that you need to pay attention to in order to insure that your decision making is based on solid ground.

The location, the feel, and the price of your home are the most important considerations. Finding the right house and thinking about how much the house is worth tend to dominate the decision making process. And rightfully so.

But there is another important component of the decision to watch: mortgage interest rates.

Most everyone knows that getting a good rate is important. But most people tend to see the mortgage rate as something that they can't control, so they go on with the other considerations and leave the mortgage rate to take care of itself.

While it's true that you ultimately have to accept the rate that the market provides when you're ready to buy, it is worth your while to pay attention to rates. I recommend that you start to follow mortgage rates at least six months before you plan to buy. Depending on other circumstances, you may be able to get a better rate by postponing or accelerating when you lock in your mortgage rate.

Most importantly, I'm a strong believer in the value of educating yourself. Even if you can't get the rate you want, knowing more about how rates fluctuate and what rates have been in the past will give you more confidence when making your decision.

Buying a house is a complex decision and a major investment. Knowing the basics about mortgages and mortgage rates will increase your appreciation of how your investment in real estate works. When dealing with a large and important decision, it's better to err on the side of learning too much. Ask your real estate agent or lender to help you learn more about rates and watch the newspapers or websites to track the ups and downs of mortgage rates.  

Dean Rock is a full-service real estate professional at Coldwell Banker in Lancaster. Dean's professional and volunteer activities are focused on long term health of Lancaster County's economy and society.  Dean's areas of interest include historic homes, land preservation, low-income home ownership, education and youth social work. Click here to learn more about Lancaster PA real estate.

Nowadays it's common to hear that the market is not rational. This statement is primarily a reaction to the old rational market paradigm that economists followed for decades. Economists tend to think reality is as nuanced as the mathematical tools they have for measuring it. As the tools improved, it was inevitable that the rational market theory would fall by the wayside.

However, that does not mean that the market is irrational. Leave it to an economist to claim that if the market is not perfectly rational according to the parameters of their model -- such as price, supply, demand -- that it is not rational at all. The market is rational -- it's just that there are hundreds or thousands of factors that go into the rationality. These factors lie far beyond the power of mathematical models. The toolset of economics is indeed powerful, but the complexity of the human mind -- and the collective functioning of many minds -- is practically infinite.

One case of market behavior that appears to be irrational is the panic that went with the Bear Stearns fiasco and is currently affecting Lehman Brothers, other big banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The panic may seem like an overreaction to an economist who is simply looking at the book value of the company. But there is a rationality to the individual investor who says "I don't care how low the price goes, as long as no one wants to own the stock, it's too risky for me to hold."

Only an appreciation of human psychology can fully explain the "behavior" of a stock. Quantifying this psychology and putting it in an economic model is difficult if not impossible. An excellent way to learn about economics as it happens in real life is to observe carefully when extraordinary phenomena occur in the markets. Read the news stories, watch the big picture, and try to think of the market as following normal human psychology. You might be surprised by how much you understand the "irrationality" of the market.

Dean Rock is a full-service real estate professional at Coldwell Banker in Lancaster. Dean's professional and volunteer activities are focused on long term health of Lancaster County's economy and society.  Dean's areas of interest include historic homes, land preservation, low-income home ownership, education and youth social work. Click here to learn more about Lancaster PA real estate.

There's a panic underway in the United States. It's hitting financial markets hard. Bear Stearns went under because of mismanagement and enormous mistakes in their investments, but it was not inevitable that the bank had to go bust. The difference between taking a major beating in the market and actually going bust happened because of a good old fashioned run on the bank.

A run on a bank is a kind of collective panic. Within the context of the panic, everyone's behavior appears to be rational. We say that panic spreads -- an excellent description of why it is rational to "panic" when everyone else is. It might seem that there's a similar panic in the real estate market.

Comparing and contrasting the housing market with the the market for financial companies reveals a critical difference. Like the financial sector, there are serious, structural problems in the real estate market. Both markets have increased risk these days. Both have seen prices drop dramatically. Like the financial sector, there is a crisis of confidence in the real estate market. The idea that now is a bad time for real estate becomes a self fulfilling prophecy as the idea is repeated in the media and in conversations all over the country.

On the other hand, falling prices in both markets create buying opportunities. The crucial difference is in the degree of risk that balances these potential rewards. While there is a significant chance that a bank or finanical institution might go bankrupt and the stock price fall to zero, there is no chance that a house's value will fall to zero. Housing prices may be punished by structural problems and the spreading of fear, but there will never be a total panic that causes everyone to abandon home ownership. These days, lowered risk is especially valuable.

Dean Rock is a full-service real estate professional at Coldwell Banker in Lancaster. Dean's professional and volunteer activities are focused on long term health of Lancaster County's economy and society.  Dean's areas of interest include historic homes, land preservation, low-income home ownership, education and youth social work. Click here to learn more about Lancaster PA real estate.

Every Sunday from 1 to 3 in the afternoon, real estate agents are sitting in strange living rooms all over the county. A lot of agents don't like working on Sunday, so you'll tend to find newer agents at open houses. Of course, some highly experienced agents continue to do open houses every week because they enjoy it.

Whatever real estate agents may think about open houses, they are a great opportunity for you to learn about buying or selling a house before you start working with an agent. If you think you might buy or sell a house in the next two years, you should probably go to a bunch of open houses, starting as soon as possible. My wife and I went to about 40 open houses starting 6 months before we bought our first property. The education we received through doing this made it much easier when it came time to make an actual decision to buy.

First of all, going to open houses will start to develop your knowledge of prices. When you read a listing in the paper or online, you don't get enough information to make a judgment about the listing price. You need to see the lot, get a feel for the inside, check out the quality and condition of materials. After you've gone to about ten open houses, you'll start to have a clear idea of how much a house is worth. When you eventually start seeing houses with a real estate agent, you won't have to put blind trust in the agent's opinion about the price. Even if you have a knowledgeable and trustworthy agent, it's easier to be confident when you can cross check the agent's opinion against your own knowledge.

Another benefit of going to open houses is that you can learn about the process of buying or selling. The agent at the open house will be glad to answer your questions. Spend some time talking to the agent. Even if you don't know what to ask at first, just say something simple like "what should I know about buying a house?" Listen to what they say and ask follow-up questions. This will help you learn about the issues you'll face as a buyer/seller and it will also start to give you a sense of what you like/dislike in an agent. Then, when it comes time to choose an agent, you'll have a much more solid basis for evaluating whether they can provide the service you want.

If lawyers or bankers were sitting around Sunday afternoon giving out free professional opinions, people would line up to talk to them. So take advantage of open houses. You might even get some free cookies out of it.

Dean Rock is a full-service real estate professional at Coldwell Banker in Lancaster. Dean's professional and volunteer activities are focused on long term health of Lancaster County's economy and society.  Dean's areas of interest include historic homes, land preservation, low-income home ownership, education and youth social work. Click here to learn more about Lancaster PA real estate.

There's an article in today's Intel about 55 and over communities in Lancaster("Growing old with the neighbors"). The article talks about the growing number of baby boomers who are looking for this type of community. As everyone knows, there are a lot of baby boomers reaching retirement age and the choices they make will have a huge impact on our society.

This question of what baby boomers will want in real estate first struck me several years ago when interest in buying investment properties took off. In hindsight, this was the start of the real estate bubble that we're dealing with now. Tech stocks and dot coms had crashed, and it seemed that everyone wanted to buy investment properties or get involved in flipping houses. My own father, who can hardly be described as a trendsetter when it comes to investment strategies, caught the bug in 2002. In a few short years, boomers around the country transferred a tremendous amount of wealth from stocks to real estate.

The average boomer is about 60 years old now -- either still working or newly retired. When people retire, they tend to need more liquid assets in order to replace their salary. You probably know of someone who sold a farm, sold an investment property, or downgrading their home to finance things like retirement travel or home health care. It seems likely that baby boomers are pretty much done buying real estate and will increasingly want to sell the properties they've accumulated.

The health care costs and lifestyle choices of millions of new retirees -- people who have different life style expectations than the retirees of past generations -- will shape the investment world in profound and unknowable ways. Real estate is an important part of this story. If millions of boomers want to sell real estate at the same time, things could get interesting.

If you have ideas about this or know of books/articles, please let me know.

Dean Rock is a full-service real estate professional at Coldwell Banker in Lancaster. Dean's professional and volunteer activities are focused on long term health of Lancaster County's economy and society.  Dean's areas of interest include historic homes, land preservation, low-income home ownership, education and youth social work. Click here to learn more about Lancaster PA real estate.

Prior to my real estate career, I cofounded a business services company called Integreon. During the first stage of growth, I served as the Managing Director with responsibility for all aspects of the operation.

After recruiting an experienced executive to be the new CEO, I served as the VP of Operations with over 100 employees in two countries. During this phase, I was involved in sales and customer relationships and I built and managed customer service operations for global banks, consulting firms and law firms.

During the third phase of growth, I served as the head of marketing. I managed internet and print advertising, acted as the PR spokesperson, and conducted SEO and other online marketing activities. I helped the company become known as one of the leaders in it's niche. The company's website gained top search engine results and website traffic increased from almost nothing to thousands of visits per day.

My business and marketing career lasted seven years. In addition, I've also worked as a high school math teacher and a youth social worker for approximately five years. So real estate is my third career. I don't know if my previous two careers make me a better real estate agent, but they were important in shaping who I am and, hopefully, my clients benefit from my experiences and knowledge.

Dean Rock is a full-service real estate professional at Coldwell Banker in Lancaster. Dean's professional and volunteer activities are focused on long term health of Lancaster County's economy and society.  Dean's areas of interest include historic homes, land preservation, low-income home ownership, education and youth social work. Click here to learn more about Lancaster PA real estate.

I come from a long line of farmers and preachers who first moved to Lancaster County in the early 1700s. After finishing college, I spent 15 years away from home, living and working in a number of major cities around the world. But I've never found anywhere like Lancaster. Having a successful real estate career and raising children in Lancaster is a dream come true.

My favorite part of my job is knowing the homes, land and people of Lancaster. I appreciate the natural beauty of the county and the historic beauty of Lancaster city. I still spend time on the family farm and have now seen it handed down through three generations. I grew up in a historic farm house in Bridgeport. Land conservation and the preservation of historic buildings are part of my long term view of real estate.

On a customer service level, I understand that real estate is not only a financial investment. Home and land ownership can be a deeply personal and rewarding experience. A home is one of the foundations of the family, and nothing is more valuable than family. A real estate agent should appreciate both the emotional and the financial value of real estate and help people make balanced decisions that are in their long term interest.

If you choose to work with me, here's what I'll do for you:
    • Work hard to help you accomplish those goals
    • Keep you informed and help you learn about the process of buying and selling
    • Help you understand the real estate market and how it may affect you
    • Research the historic features and value of your home
    • Help you take advantage of the power of the Coldwell Banker brand
    • Make a marketing plan for your house and keep you involved at all times

Coldwell Banker has been one of the top brands in Lancaster County for many years. I hope to be one of the top agents in Lancaster for many years to come. If you think I could be of assistance, please call or write any time. Regards, Dean Rock

717-341-0070
drock@cbselectproscom

Coldwell Banker
800-223-9690