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All Forum Posts by: N/A N/A

N/A N/A has started 5 posts and replied 48 times.

Post: Are Rents Rising in Your Area?

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  • Posts 53
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Thanks for all the feedback guys. It appears that rents are indeed rising in various parts of the country and apartment REITs could be a good way to hedge against the falling housing market.

The one thing that I do not like about apartment REITs at this point is the fact that many of them have gone up a lot in the last two years and hence have low yields. Moreover the payout is not taxed like ordinary dividends at 15% but as regular income.

If I do find any interesting REITs that I plan to invest in, I will post my analysis on this thread.

Do you have any REITs in your portfolio?

Post: Are Rents Rising in Your Area?

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  • Posts 53
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Thanks for your insight Bonnie.

We now have feedback about certain areas of Oregon, California, Texas and Maryland and they all point to rising rents.

Would folks on this board from other states like to pitch in?

Post: Are Rents Rising in Your Area?

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  • Posts 53
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Thanks for your input GarGus. The two apartment REITs I got a chance to analyze yesterday are AlavonBay Communities (AYB) and its competitor Archstone-Smith Trust (ASN). AYB looks like a very well run REIT and I know folks who live in Avalon apartments and like their "garden" communities. However the valuation is higher than the average for the S&P 500 and the dividend yield at 2.8% is not very attractive for a REIT.

ASN appears to have a better dividend yield and a lower current valuation but I have not had a chance to research it further. Both could be negatively affected if the next job report is as bas as the current one or if we go into a recession later this year.

Input from other folks about apartment rents in your area is greatly appreciated.

Post: Are Rents Rising in Your Area?

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  • Posts 53
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The slowdown in the real estate market is now a reality and I am glad to see that it has been gradual until now, as a steep decline will certainly push us into a recession. I have been negative on public companies that build homes since September 2005 as you can see from this blog post titled "Housing Sector in Pain".

This MarketWatch.com article about a 67% increase in mortgage defaults in California also confirms the slowdown. In recent weeks my newsletter subscribers have asked me if it is still a good idea to "short" home builder stocks. While I was almost certain in September 2005 that their valuations were very high in the face of a declining market, I cannot say the same at this point. Moreover I personally prefer not to sell stocks short. However I would not suggest going "long" the home builders at this point either as they are likely to be dead money until the next housing cycle starts.

But there may be a way to benefit from housing as far as investors are concerned. Thanks to the large number of first time home buyers over the last five years, apartment rents have mostly stayed stagnant or have seen only modest increases. However as housing prices on the coasts have spiraled out of reach of average home buyers and mortgage defaults have risen, I can see apartment rents slowly creep back up. I see this trend continuing as more and more people give up houses they can no longer afford because they used exotic mortgages. But I can only speak for Oregon and certain parts of California.

Are apartment rents rising in your area? If they are, then investing in apartment REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) that offer a high dividend yield may be a good idea. The downside is that the negativity in the rest of the housing market may spill over to apartment REITs and drive them lower as well.

As soon as I find additional information about apartment REITs, I will post it on this thread. I look forward to your responses.

Thanks Josh. I had not seen the article that depicted your journey in vivid detail and just finished reading it. I have had a very similar experience with SINLetter and MustFeed as the time I spent building MustFeed with my team took me away from blogging on SINLetter and traffic dropped immediately.

The only reason I embarked upon building MustFeed.com was that once it is fully populated, the website will continue to maintain itself with fresh content every day.

It seems to be a constant juggling act between a great idea, good content, promotion and business development. If only all those people who buy "get rich quick on the internet" schemes knew what we know. Having a steady IT job that pays the bills has been very helpful in letting me build my websites without having to worry about making money from them.

Hi Josh,

I see that you have transformed ChartingYourWealth once again. From forums to blog to investing tools. Since you don't list investment newsletters, any chance the SINLetter Investment Blog will get listed under Stock Market Blogs category?

Under stock brokers, have you looked at TradeKing? At $4.95 per trade (limit and market), they seem to be the best deal around along with Ameritrade IZone at $5 per trade.

Post: Introduction

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SouthernCalREI, SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization, a process that is used to optimize your website in order to have it rank very high in search engine results. For a detailed explanation, check out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seo

Post: Introduction

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Its good to see fellow SEOs on this forum. I would certainly love to learn from both of you as well as share my experiences. I posted a small list of SEO tips and tricks on Chartingyourwealth.com (a sister site of biggerpockets.com) but it is no longer there as the site has been converted to a blog.

My experiences with the google sandbox are chronicled on my blog at

http://www.sinletter.com/blogComment.aspx?id=16

Post: Google Finance

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Update: Over the last few days I have been using Google Finance quite often and I have to say that some of its features are very cool. Typing in a keyword such as "Aluminium" will return all the companies that have anything to do with Aluminium.

The flash based charts are also very useful.

Post: How many deals are you going to do?

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I know. I did not take it the wrong way. I was explaining in great detail
why I was not going to take the plunge right away. :D