If you’ve ever seen those real estate infomercials promising untold riches just waiting to be tapped in the real estate market, Wesley Barney has a message for you: It’s not quite that easy.Some 18 years ago, Barney, age 48, saw those commercials, too. According to the ads, a person could make a small fortune buying and selling real estate in foreclosure—in other words, property seized by a bank because the owner couldn’t pay the mortgage or property taxes.

Barney was intrigued. Then a New York City firefighter, he moonlighted as a security guard to help pay the bills and dreamed of owning real estate.

“Watching those late-night TV programs, I thought, ‘Maybe I can do this,’” Barney said, who now runs his own real estate investing business.

Six months later, he landed a small one-family home in Central Islip, N.Y., at an auction where foreclosed properties were sold. More deals followed, and by 1996 he was buying and selling foreclosed property full time. Now, he owns property in New York City and upstate, and as far away as Kansas City. He runs Ultimate Investors Real Estate Club, a group for real estate investors.

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Ready to buy or sell Palm Beach real estate? Consult with licensed agent Caesar Parisi. Caesar has assisted hundreds of buyers and sellers, giving sound advice on how to most effectively buy and sell property.

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The potential for real estate fraud has soared, driven by a surge in default notices sent to thousands of struggling California homeowners during the past several months.

There are an increased number of scammers posing as “foreclosure consultants,” said Phillip Ihde, manager of the southern region of the state Department of Real Estate, in charge of investigative operations.

Real estate scams prey on the trust of people in desperate situations. These so-called foreclosure consultants make false promises, giving homeowners the impression that they can improve their credit or pay off their properties in full, with the intent to swindle homeowners out of large amounts of money or, in some cases, their homes.

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Buying a foreclosed property isn’t very easy. Keep in mind there are some serious drawbacks to investing in this type of property. For example, the tenant may still be in property or you may not be able to see the condition of the property. And there may be other liens against the house that you may inherit as the new owner.

So, first brush up on the laws in your state by going to the county clerk’s office. To find out what properties are available, you can check the listings in your local newspaper.

Or, you can do your research online. Yahoo! has just launched a site for foreclosed property. There are also places online that list foreclosed properties, like foreclosure.net and realtytrak.com.

The reason you buy long term care insurance is to protect your assets in case you need to pay for assisted living, home care or a nursing home stay. Right now there are about 5 or 6 big insurance players in the market. To learn more about long term health insurance, go to Federal Citizen Information Center at www.pueblo.gsa.gov.

If you’re found a company you’re comfortable with, make sure you find out just how strong the company is financially at Moodys.com, standardandpoors.com, or at fitchratings.com. Remember, you want a company that’s going to be around for a while.

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For more information on this and other real estate matters, your first source for Palm Beach real estate should be licensed agent and long-time resident Caesar Parisi.

I just purchased a home and the lender said that when you first purchase a home your credit score will go down and then it will go back up. Is this true and if so, how long before your score goes back up? Does your score change dramatically?

The lender is right. The reason for the drop in the credit score is that you just added a new account, the mortgage, to the mix of accounts on your credit report. It’s no doubt the largest account on your report and it has no payment history attached to it. Once a payment history is established, your credit score will rise.

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Ready to buy or sell Les Jardins neighborhood community real estate? Consult with licensed agent Caesar Parisi. Caesar has assisted hundreds of buyers and sellers, giving sound advice on how to most effectively buy and sell property.

When Rick Denniston was designing his ocean-view vacation home in Gualala, Calif., 113 miles north of San Francisco, he knew he wanted to build a deck or two to watch gray whales and their calves migrate along the northern California coast each winter and spring.

For the interior of his two-bedroom Craftsman-style house, he used sustainably harvested Brazilian cherry hardwood floors. But, he said, he felt there was only one way to go for his outdoor space: decks made of composite materials.

He built two decks, including a 400-square-foot space off the master bedroom. Both were made of WeatherBest, a composite-deck material manufactured by Louisiana-Pacific in Nashville. The decks’ planks, a light cedar color, are part wood and part plastic, and require little care.

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Ready to buy or sell Palm Beach real estate? Consult with licensed agent Caesar Parisi. Caesar has assisted hundreds of buyers and sellers, giving sound advice on how to most effectively buy and sell property.

The National Association of Realtors said today that sales of existing homes, which account for about 80 percent of all home sales, fell 8.4 percent in March. That was the steepest decline since 1989.

At the same time, prices also dropped. The median price of an existing single-family home decreased 0.9 percent last month, to $215,300, compared with a year earlier.

This fresh data on home sales, which followed two relatively upbeat reports in January and February, came as a closely watched gauge of consumer confidence showed that Americans were growing more pessimistic about the economy. The Conference Board’s index of consumer confidence for April fell for the second consecutive month.

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Looking for a condo in Atlantic Grove? Realtor® Caesar Parisi is ready to help you buy your dream property.

Csilla and Tim Clark like to regularly go out for dinner and a show. But these days the show is their own living room—beamed remotely onto their cellphones. From their home in Wenham, Mass., cameras send the couple live images and monitors send text messages when the house gets too chilly.

Home-monitoring technology is coming to your cellphone. And your BlackBerry. And your computer. The technology is pitched mostly as a safety and security measure. But it’s also creating some obsessives who can’t stop checking on everything from indoor thermostats to whether the lights are on in the kitchen.

In October, AT&T launched a $9.95 monthly service called Remote Monitor that beams streaming video from homecams to cellphones, and can send customized text-message alerts whenever there’s movement in particular rooms. Companies such as QuietCare are capitalizing on the market for senior monitoring, creating elaborate programs that can email customers with updates on how many times their elderly relative visits the bathroom each day. Electronics retailer Best Buy is now selling a $15,000 home-monitoring system, ConnectedLife.Home, with features that include the ability to remotely turn on sprinklers or a washing machine.

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For more information on this and other real estate matters, your first source for Palm Beach real estate should be licensed agent and long-time resident Caesar Parisi.

Question: My wife and I are in the 33 percent tax bracket. We’re getting the standard tax breaks for owning our home, having a child and making charitable contributions, but we’re getting hit hard with taxes. Do you think we should buy a bigger home to get a bigger tax break?

Yes, buying a larger and more expensive home can lead to bigger tax breaks. A larger mortgage can translate into a larger mortgage interest deduction. If you pay points for your mortgage – and pay them in cash – you can deduct them. And, who knows, maybe you’ll be really lucky and your property taxes will go up and you’ll get a bigger deduction there as well.

But, remember, the deduction doesn’t eliminate these costs. It just lowers them. So by buying a larger and more costly house you are increasing the amount of money you spend on housing, even after the deductions.

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Ready to buy or sell Les Jardins neighborhood community real estate? Consult with licensed agent Caesar Parisi. Caesar has assisted hundreds of buyers and sellers, giving sound advice on how to most effectively buy and sell property.

When applying for a mortgage, how do you know whether to go to a mortgage broker or a direct lender? What’s the difference between the two and which is better? Well, the decision on which one to go to is ultimately up to you. Direct lenders and mortgage brokers have quite a bit in common, but they are also different in some fundamental ways.

Many people believe that mortgage brokers are able to offer lower rates than direct lenders. The truth is that all mortgage rates are based on what happens in the secondary market—basically that means every lender gets their rates from the same place. Therefore, interest rates may be just as competitive whether you go with a direct lender or a broker. Even if there is some difference in rates, say an eighth or a quarter of a percentage point, that’s not significant enough to affect your monthly payment all that much.

Plus, brokers are subject to the guidelines of the lenders they work with, so may not necessarily be easier to go with a broker over a direct lender. In fact, a direct lender may be a bit more flexible since they are the ones who set their own guidelines—they may be able to waive certain guidelines at their discretion in order to gain your business. A broker cannot do this without permission from the lender.

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The real estate market will likely remain strong for investors until early 2009, real estate magnate Sam Zell told a symposium yesterday, even as he conceded that the greatest financial opportunities lie outside of the United States’ “mature market.”

Zell, the presumptive buyer of Newsday’s parent company Tribune, told the 12th annual New York University REIT Symposium that his $39-billion sale this year of Equity Office Properties Trust to Blackstone Investors – the largest leveraged buyout ever – did not mean he had lost faith in the market. “We’ve never seen numbers as big as the numbers being bought and sold for in today’s environment,” he said.

REIT stands for real estate investment trust, a tax-beneficial structure that has surged in popularity in recent years. Zell, an early success in the field, received the Visionary Award at the ceremony. Speaking from notes and sporting his trademark business casual attire – a corduroy jacket over a striped shirt with the top two buttons open – Zell leaned over the podium as he walked listeners through 20 years of real estate market history. He opened with an anecdote about a 1984 Texas bumper sticker: “Please, God, give us one more oil boom. We won’t screw it up this time.”

He said the real estate market might as well have printed similar stickers – and that the industry did get its hoped-for boom. And though prognosticators have suggested that the market has peaked, he said the short-term outlook remains strong.

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Real estate agent Caesar Parisi stands ready with effective advice on buying or selling a Royal Palm Yacht Club single family home. Visiting the Boca Raton FL community? Contact Realtor® Caesar Parisi for information on buying or selling an The Oaks in Boca Ratonal Estate.