Carnival of Real Estate Investing 5th Edition

Welcome to the 5th Edition of the Carnival of Real Estate Investing. I didn't receive many posts this week, since we are in the full swing of the holidays, so I'll be able to comment on each post that I received.

The top post was a dead heat between two that I found very helpful on a practical level and in the end I chose Photo Marketing Tips To Say "Attention Buyers!" posted by Steve Burns. This is a more personal choice, since here in New York City, even for rentals, it's extremely important to have excellent photos or the ad won't even be viewed. I know that many prospects who search through Craigslist won't even look at the post unless there is a photo. So this information on how to take photos was extremely useful to me as a non-photographer who needs to learn more.

The rest of the posts were also very interesting. I very much enjoyed hosting this week's Carnival. The posts were varied enough to educate and entertain.

Anesia Springborn's New Manager Invites Excuses and Abuses was an excellent personal experience of how tenants are likely to test the waters when a new property manager takes over a rental property. I enjoy learning from others' personal experiences so this post was especially interesting to me.

In the same vein, Paul's Increasing your hourly rate in order to get rich reminds us to work smarter, not harder. I especially liked the focus on education.

Joshua Dorkin's timely post Keeping Your Tenants Happy During the Holidays was a nice reminder to keep our tenants happy and they will reward us by being timely rent paying happy tenants who may be more accepting of a new property manager in the future.

With the Fed being among the most watched bodies these days, Why The Fed Matters to Real Estate by Dan Green was helpful in putting the big picture into perspective.

In keeping with the Fed's influence on interest rates, Nick Gifford shows us some surprising conclusions that Adjustable Rate Mortgages might, in the end, be a better way to go than Fixed Rate Mortgages when historical data is taken into account in his post The ARM vs. Fixed Rate Mortgage Dilemma

Commercial Real Estate: How You Win Even If You Lose by Craig S. Higdon goes into the basics of using financing to purchase real estate even if you've put together a syndicate to provide the down payment. It shows us that when you put together all of the benefits of owning property, you can sell at a loss and still make an overall profit. A very basic primer for those interested in commercial real estate.

Praveen's post Top 10 Real Estate Books of 2006 might help in purchasing a gift for the real estate investor near and dear to your heart this year.

And lastly, Will Chen presents what is fast becoming (in my opinion at least) the "Save Karyn" of the real estate world with this video lecture Must watch video for new real estate investors. Is there a book deal in the works for this guy yet?

I had a great time reading these posts. The Carnival of Real Estate Investing is off for the next two weeks for the holidays. So check back for the next host of the Carnival of Real Estate Investing!