Foreclosure investment

Some individuals and companies are engaged in the business of purchasing properties at foreclosure sales. According to the legal foreclosure stages when the process is completed, the lender may sell the property and keep the proceeds to satisfy its mortgage and any legal costs. The foreclosing bank has the right to continue to honor the client’s lease, but customary as a rule the bank wants the property vacant, in order to sell it easier.^[1] Thus distressed assets (such as foreclosed property or equipment) are considered by some to be worthwhile investments because the bank or mortgage company is not motivated to sell the property for more than is pledged against it.

[edit] Foreclosure statistics

The number of households in foreclosure increased 79 percent in 2007, with about one of every 100 U.S. households at some stage of the foreclosure process, according to the latest numbers from data aggregator RealtyTrac. ^[2]

Sources and Management of Cash Flows

A typical investment property generates cash flows to an investor in four general ways:

• net operating income (NOI)
• tax shelter offsets
• equity build-up
• capital appreciation

Net operating income, or NOI, is the sum of all positive cash flows from rents and other sources of ordinary income generated by a property, minus the sum of ongoing expenses, such as maintenance, utilities, fees, taxes, debt service payments, and other items of that nature. The ratio of NOI to the asset purchase price, expressed as a percentage, is called the capitalization rate, and is a common measure of the performance of an investment property.

Tax shelter offsets occur in one of three ways: depreciation (which may sometimes be accelerated), tax credits, and carryover losses which reduce tax liability charged against income from other sources. Some tax shelter benefits can be transferable, depending on the laws governing tax liability in the jurisdiction where the property is located. These can be sold to others for a cash return or other benefit.

Equity build-up is the increase in the investor's equity ratio as the portion of debt service payments devoted to principal accrue over time. Equity build-up counts as a positive cash flow from the asset where the debt service payment is made out of income from the property, rather than from independent income sources.

Capital appreciation is the increase in market value of the asset over time, realized as a cash flow when the property is sold. Capital appreciation can be very unpredictable unless it is part of a development and improvement strategy. Purchase of a property for which the majority of the projected cash flows are expected from capital appreciation (prices going up) rather than other sources is considered speculation rather than investment.

Sources of Investment Capital and Leverage

Real estate assets are typically very expensive in comparison to other widely-available investment instruments (such as stocks or bonds). Only rarely will real estate investors pay the entire amount of the purchase price of a property in cash. Usually, a large portion of the purchase price will be financed using some sort of financial instrument or debt, such as a mortgage loan collateralized by the property itself. The amount of the purchase price financed by debt is referred to as leverage. The amount financed by the investor's own capital, through cash or other asset transfers, is referred to as equity. The ratio of leverage to equity (often referred to as "LTV", or loan to value for a conventional mortgage) is one mathematical measure of the risk an investor is taking by using leverage to finance the purchase of a property. Investors usually seek to decrease their equity requirements and increase their leverage, so that their return on investment (ROI) is maximized. Lenders and other financial institutions usually have minimum equity requirements for real estate investments they are being asked to finance, typically on the order of 20% of appraised value. Investors seeking low equity requirements may explore alternate financing arrangements as part of the purchase of a property (for instance, seller financing, seller subordination, private equity sources, etc.)

Some real estate investment organizations, such as real estate investment trusts (REITs) and some pension funds, have large enough capital reserves and investment strategies to allow 100% equity in the properties they purchase. This minimizes the risk which comes from leverage, but also limits potential ROI.

By leveraging the purchase of an investment property, the required periodic payments to service the debt create an ongoing (and sometimes large) negative cash flow beginning from the time of purchase. This is sometimes referred to as the carry cost or "carry" of the investment. To be successful, real estate investors must manage their cash flows to create enough positive income from the property to at least offset the carry costs.

Sources and Acquisition of Investment Property

Real estate markets in most countries are not as organized or efficient as markets for other, more liquid investment instruments. Individual properties are unique to themselves and not directly interchangeable, which presents a major challenge to an investor seeking to evaluate prices and investment opportunities. For this reason, locating properties in which to invest can involve substantial work and competition among investors to purchase individual properties may be highly variable depending on knowledge of availability. Information asymmetries are commonplace in real estate markets. This increases transactional risk, but also provides many opportunities for investors to obtain properties at bargain prices. Real estate investors typically use a variety of appraisal techniques to determine the value of properties prior to purchase.

Typical sources of investment properties include:

• Market listings (through, for instance, a multiple listing service)
• Real estate agents
• Wholesalers (such as bank real estate owned departments and public agencies)
• Public auction (foreclosure sales, estate sales, etc.)
• Private sales

Once an investment property has been located, and preliminary due diligence (investigation and verification of the condition and status of the property) completed, the investor will have to negotiate a sale price and sale terms with the seller, then execute a contract for sale. Most investors employ real estate agents and real estate attorneys to assist with the acquisition process, as it can be quite complex and improperly executed transactions can be very costly. During the acquisition of a property, an investor will typically make a formal offer to buy including payment of "earnest money" to the seller at the start of negotiation to reserve the investor's rights to complete the transaction if price and terms can be satisfactorily negotiated. This earnest money may or many not be refundable, and is considered to be a signal of the seriousness of the investor to purchase. The terms of the offer will also usually include a number of contingencies which allow the investor time to complete due diligence and obtain financing among other requirements prior to final purchase. Within the contingency period, the investor usually has the right to rescind the offer with no penalty and obtain a refund of earnest money deposits. Once contingencies have expired, rescinding the offer will usually require forfeit of earnest money deposits and may involve other penalties as well.

Real Estate Investment

Real estate investing involves the purchase, ownership, management, rental and/or sale of real estate for profit. Improvement of realty property as part of a real estate investment strategy is generally considered to be a sub-specialty of real estate investing called real estate development. Real estate is an asset form with limited liquidity relative to other investments, it is also capital intensive (although capital may be gained through mortgage leverage) and is highly cash flow dependent. If these factors are not well understood and managed by the investor, real estate becomes a risky investment. The primary cause of investment failure for real estate is that the investor goes into negative cash flow for a period of time that is not sustainable, often forcing them to resell the property at a loss or go into insolvency.

Legal systems have evolved to cover the transactions and disputes which arise over the possession, use, transfer and disposal of property, most particularly involving contracts. Positive law defines such rights, and a judiciary is used to adjudicate and to enforce.
In his classic text, "The Common Law", Oliver Wendell Holmes describes property as having two fundamental aspects. The first is possession, which can be defined as control over a resource based on the practical inability of another to contradict the ends of the possessor. The second is title, which is the expectation that others will recognize rights to control resource, even when it is not in possession. He elaborates the differences between these two concepts, and proposes a history of how they came to be attached to individuals, as opposed to families or entities such as the church.
According to Adam Smith, the expectation of profit from "improving one's stock of capital" rests on private property rights, and the belief that property rights encourage the property holders to develop the property, generate wealth, and efficiently allocate resources based on the operation of the market is central to capitalism. From this evolved the modern conception of property as a right which is enforced by positive law, in the expectation that this would produce more wealth and better standards of living.

Modern property rights conceive of ownership and possession as belonging to legal individuals, even if the legal individual is not a real person. Corporations, for example, have legal rights similar to American citizens, including many of their constitutional rights. Therefore, the corporation is a juristic person or artificial legal entity, which some refer to as "corporate personhood".
Property rights are protected in the current laws of states usually found in the form of a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. The fifth and the fourteenth amendments to the United States constitution, for example, provide explicitly for the protection of private property:
The Fifth Amendment states:
Nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
The Fourteenth Amendment states:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
Protection is also found in the United Nations's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 17, and in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Article XVII, and in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), Protocol 1.
Property is usually thought of in terms of a bundle of rights as defined and protected by the local sovereignty. Ownership, however, does not necessarily equate with sovereignty. If ownership gave supreme authority it would be sovereignty, not ownership. These are two different concepts.
Traditional principles of property rights includes:
control of the use of the property
the right to any benefit from the property (examples: mining rights and rent)
a right to transfer or sell the property
a right to exclude others from the property.
Traditional property rights do not include:
uses that unreasonably interfere with the property rights of another private party (the right of quiet enjoyment). [See Nuisance]
uses that unreasonably interfere with public property rights, including uses that interfere with public health, safety, peace or convenience. [See Public Nuisance, Police Power]

Market sector value
According to The Economist, "developed economies'" assets at the end of 2002 was
Residential property: $48 trillion
Commercial property: $14 trillion
Equities: $20 trillion
Government bonds: $20 trillion
Corporate bonds: $13 trillion
Total: $115 trillion
That makes real estate assets 54% and financial assets 46% of total stocks, bonds, and real estate assets. Assets not counted here are bank deposits, insurance "reserve" assets, and human assets; also it is not clear if all debt and equity investments are counted in the categories equities and bonds. For U.S. asset levels see FRB: Z.1 Release- Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States.

Residential real estate
The legal arrangement for the right to occupy a dwelling is known as the housing tenure. Types of housing tenure include owner occupancy, Tenancy, housing cooperative, condominiums (individually parceled properties in a single building), public housing, and squatting. Variants include timeshares and cohousing.
Residences can be classified by if and how they are connected to neighboring residences and land. Different types of housing tenure can be used for the same physical type. For example, connected residents might be owned by a single entity and leased out, or owned separately with an agreement covering the relationship between units and common areas and concerns.
Major physical categories in North America and Europe include:
Attached / multi-unit dwellings
Apartment ("flat" outside North America) - An individual unit in a multi-unit building. The boundaries of the apartment are generally defined by a perimeter of locked or lockable doors. Often seen in multi-story apartment buildings.
Multi-family house - Often seen in multi-story detached buildings, where each floor is a separate apartment or unit.
Terraced house (a.k.a. townhouse or rowhouse) - A number of single or multi-unit buildings in a continuous row with shared walls and no intervening space.
Condominium - Building or complex, similar to apartments, owned by individuals. Common grounds are owned and shared jointly. There are townhouse or rowhouse style condominiums as well.
Semi-detached dwellings
Duplex - Two units with one shared wall.
Single-family detached home
Portable dwellings
Mobile homes - Potentially a full-time residence which can be (might not in practice be) movable on wheels.
Houseboats - A floating home
Tents - Usually very temporary, with roof and walls consisting only of fabric-like material.
The size of an apartment or house can be described in square feet or meters. In the United States this includes the area of "living space", excluding the garage and other non-living spaces. The "square meters" figure of a house in Europe reports the area of the walls enclosing the home, and thus includes any attached garage and non-living spaces.
It can also be described more roughly by the number of rooms. A studio apartment has a single bedroom with no living room (possibly a separate kitchen). A one-bedroom apartment has a living or dining room, separate from the bedroom. Two bedroom, three bedroom, and larger units are also common. (A bedroom is defined as a room with a closet for clothes storage.)
See List of house types for a complete listing of housing types and layouts, real estate trends for shifts in the market and house or home for more general information.

Real estate as "real property" in the U.K.
In British usage, “real property”, often shortened to just “property”, generally refers to land and fixtures as such while the term “real estate” is used mostly in the context of probate law, and means all interests in land held by a deceased person at death excluding interests in money arising under a trust for sale of or charged on land.[4]
See Real property for a definition and Estate agent for a description of the practice in the UK.

[edit] French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and German usages of the term
In French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and German, real estate is called "immovables" (French: immobilier, Italian: immobiliare, Spanish: inmueble Portuguese: imóvel, Romanian: imobiliare and German: Immobilie); other property is called "movables" (French: mobilier, Spanish: mueble, and German: Bewegliche Sachen).

[edit] Real estate in Mexico and Central America
The real estate business in Mexico and Central America is different from the way that it is conducted in the United States.
Some similarities include a variety of legal formalities (with professionals such as real estate agents generally employed to assist the buyer); taxes need to be paid (but typically less than those in U.S.); legal paperwork will ensure title; and a neutral party such as a title company will handle documentation and monies in order to smoothly make the exchange between the parties. Increasingly, U.S. title companies are doing work for U.S. buyers in Mexico and Central America.
Prices are often much cheaper than most areas of the U.S., but in many locations prices of houses and lots are as expensive as the U.S., one example being Mexico City. U.S. banks have begun to give home loans for properties in Mexico, but, so far, not for other Latin American countries.
One important difference from the United States is that each country has rules regarding where foreigners can buy. For example, in Mexico, foreigners cannot buy land or homes within 50km of the coast or 100km from a border, while, in Honduras, they may buy beach front property. There are also different special rules regarding certain types of property: ejidos—communally held farm property—cannot be sold to anyone, but that does not prevent them from being offered for sale.
Many websites advertising and selling Mexican and Central American real estate exist, but they may need to be researched.
In Costa Rica, real estate agents do not need a license to operate, but the transfer of property

Etymology
In law, the word real means relating to a thing (res/rei, thing, from O.Fr. reel, from L.L. realis "actual," from Latin. res, "matter, thing"[2]), as distinguished from a person. Thus the law broadly distinguishes between "real" property (land and anything affixed to it) and "personal" property (everything else, e.g., clothing, furniture, money). The conceptual difference was between immovable property, which would transfer title along with the land, and movable property, which a person would retain title to. The oldest use of the term "Real Estate" that has been preserved in historical records was in 1666 .[2]
The use of "real" to refer to land also reflects the ancient preference for land, and the ownership thereof (and the owners thereof). This, in turn reflects the values of the medieval feudal system, which is the ultimate root of the common law.
It has been argued that the word Real is derived from "royal" (The word royal—and its Spanish cognate real—come from the related Latin word rex-regis, meaning king. For hundreds of years the Royal family / King owned the land, and the peasants paid rent or property taxes to be on the Royal's land. The word "Real" in Spanish is "Royal". Similar to El Camino Real, or Royal street. Today, just like hundreds of years in the past, we pay property taxes, or rent to be on the government's land or the Royal Estate). However, the "real" in "real property" is derived from the Latin for "thing"[3