Rob Viglione
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Wealth Is Temporary
January 13, 2012
The Wall Street Journal published an article called “The Truth About Money” that struck me as extremely relevant for affluent homeowners, and real estate investors. The total income of the top 1%—or those earning more than $343,000 in 2009—fell by more than 30% from 2007, according to the most recent Internal Revenue Service data. By …
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If Mortgage Rates Go Up, What Happens To Housing?
December 20, 2011
Conventional wisdom maintains that home prices and mortgage rates go hand-in-hand—rates go lower means mortgages are cheaper and there’s higher demand for housing. At first glance this makes perfect sense, but how have real estate prices behaved in the past with respect to mortgage rates? History tells a comforting story: The world doesn’t end when …
If Mortgage Rates Go Up, What Happens To Housing? Read More »
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Will Obamacare Really Effect Real Estate
November 23, 2011
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly known as “Obamacare,” was signed into law last year amidst a good deal of controversy. The Left sees it as the turning point in decades of health care prices skyrocketing, while the Right sees Big Brother taking over all of medicine. What’s not quite as obvious …
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How The Stock Market Effects Home Prices
October 18, 2011
Conventional wisdom holds that stocks and home prices are independent. Tuning into CNBC in the morning to watch the S&P 500 chart wiggle around should have nothing to do with the price of the home in which you’re sitting in pajamas doing the watching. It turns out that if you’re the kind of person who …
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Financial Factors In Renting vs. Buying
October 03, 2011
Rent vs. Buy. The fundamental housing decision is whether to rent, or to buy. Buying is a big deal; it comes with high upfront and recurring costs, and can lock you down to a specific property for years. Renting, on the other hand, only ties you to a location for as little as one month, …
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Buy And Hold Makes Sense When Rents Rise
September 16, 2011
Markets have a funny way of evening out over time, wiggling up and down to eventually find some sort of equilibrium. One way this happens in real estate is when the tradeoff between renting and buying hits a sweet spot, e.g. when rental rates increase and property values decrease—at some point the scales get tipped …