The app called LightTrac is touted as an excellent one for realtors, but this is an app that many professions will find useful. It provides the direction of the sun at sunrise, sunset and at the exact time that you happen to be looking at the app. It uses GPS to determine your location and displays the sunrise as a yellow line, the sunset as a blue line and the current direction of the sun as a white line, all displayed over a satellite map of your location. Use the slide bar to move forward in time and see where the sun will be on any given day at any hour. Read more »

My apologies for the time away from writing but my family suffered a tremendous loss over the holidays and I am just now getting back to a routine.This morning's Austin American-Statesman article on the front page of the Business section also made me just want to get out and share.  Angelos Angelou, a highly respected local economist who offers annual outlooks on the Austin economy states that we will be at a 6% unemployment rate within the next two years.  If you look back at the graphs I posted last month on the local unemployment trends, you will see that Austin has alr Read more »

Below is news from the Real Estate Center Online News describing home sales for November throughout Texas was down 24%, prices were up.  Expect a change in December numbers.  I expect our sales numbers, especially for the Austin market will be about even.  From July through November in 2010 Austin sales were at 10 year lows after the build up to the May deadline for the $8,000 home owner tax credit incentive.  Although our numbers per month were low, on an annual basis we were ahead of 2009 by 10% when I checked in August.  December will l Read more »

Now would be a great time to consider, or reconsider, investing in single family homes as a “passive” income investment opportunity in your retirement strategy.   For the second time in a row, my same young clients have missed an opportunity to put an application on a lease house because another lease application was submitted first. Not only were we beaten to the punch, but the first submitted application actually looked acceptable. Both leases were for $1195 / mo, both houses were in great condition, and both went Pending approval status in days.