Travis A Martinez, Real Estate Consultant

As many of you may be aware, the President signed the Housing Stimulus Package last week.  What does this mean for you? Well if you are a first time homebuyer this could mean that you get a $7,500 tax credit.  If you are a FHA buyer this increases your loan limits.  If you are in Foreclosure this new law could provide for some ...

The House of Representatives passed the Housing Stimulus Package.  What happens next? The Senate will need to confirm it, which is expected to happen; the President will need to sign it into law, which is also expected to happen.  What does this all mean? Here is a great list from an article in the Wall Street Journal:Key points of ...

As college approaches parents everywhere are making preparations for sending their kids off to the big scary world of higher education.  Many decisions must be made before college starts in September.  What major will I have?Will I have a job?How do I make friends?Where will I live?Much much more........I want to address just one of ...

The prevailing interest rate is often referred to as the "cost of money."  Or more simply put the amount that you have to pay to use someone else's money.  Typically long tern money (30 year mortgages) is more expensive then short term (10 or 15 year mortgages) money.  Another way of looking at this is as an ...

Every time I turn on the TV I see the gloom and doom about our country.  So we might be in a recession......So what?!?! There are opportunities around every corner.  If you want to be engrossed by the negative of the situation then you will not be able to see the opportunities that exist.  What opportunities you might ask.  If ...

On January 29th RealtyTrac® published U.S. Foreclosure Activity Increases 75 Percent in 2007.  This report highlighted the worst states for foreclosure filings and foreclosure rates.  At the end of the report there was a list of all of the states and their foreclosure stats.  Montana ranked 36th in the nation with 1,378 ...

Buying homes at foreclosure auction can make you very large profits. Some investors earn more then $75K on one transaction or you can buy the property for you and your family to live in and save the money. Conditions have to be right and the situation ideal of course to profit this much on a single property, it is possible though to make a ...

Last Friday the U.S. Senate passed the FHA Modernization Act of 2007.  The vote was 93-1 in the Senate.  The FHA Modernization Act is similar to another act passed by the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this year.  Both the Senate and House of Representatives will have to hammer out the differences between the ...

I was a little appalled this morning when watching the Today show that they had a gentleman that said "Don't you dare buy now!"  He was a TV personality that you often see on shows like CNBC's Mad Money,  he was also the co-founder of TheStreet.com, Jim Cramer.  He obviously has a background in investing in Wall ...

I constantly get asked, "what is the real estate market doing?" Well, there is how the market is doing in Ravalli County: In the first quarter of 2007, 170 properties were sold that compares to 192 in the first quarter of 2006. There were 588 new listings put on the market in the first quarter of 2007.  The average days on ...