May 19, 2010 by Chris.

Obviously this was going to happen! Anyone stuck with a property to sell right now (including me) is in for a long wait. I guess I’ll need to continue to rent my old condo for at least another year. The next few months should give us very little demand from buyers. This lack of demand should be fairly uniform whether you’re in Chicago or elsewhere.

Of course there’s a flip-side to everything. If you’re a buyer right now, you may be able to snag a better deal now, even without the tax credit, than you could have before April 30th.

Mortgage Applications Plummet To 13-Year Low As Tax Cuts Expire - Yahoo Finance

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May 12, 2010 by Chris.

This isn’t real estate related, but it’s too cool not to share. You can sign up for Square for free, and they send you a free reader that plugs-in to your iPhone headset jack. You can then swipe someone’s credit card on the go anywhere your phone works, and automatically charge their credit card, with the proceeds sent to you! The only fee you pay is the normal payment processing fee that is charged by all credit card processors. The fee is very reasonable and this service allows you to do this all without setting up a merchant account, which can be very time-consuming.

Just thought of the real estate application for this: you could use this app to charge a delinquent tenant for rent while you’re standing with them at their unit! No more, my check is in the mail, or bouncing checks!

Check out their site: About Square

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August 26, 2009 by Chris.

Please let me know if you’re interested in helping out! More details to come later. Send me an email at info@cnacapital.com if you’re interested.

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July 17, 2009 by Chris.

I realize this is a real estate blog, but I can’t help but post links to articles that analyze over-arching world issues that affect everything, including real estate.

The author to the article that I link to below, Jon Markman, suggests that the financial activities of US and China have become so commingled that neither have any way, even if they would want, to divorce this dysfunctional financial marriage.

On one hand, you have the US that is drunk off of China’s cheap exports but has no means to settle up the tab. All the US does is issue IOU’s (Treasury bonds) for these cheap products - IOU’s which may not even be worth the paper they’re written on.

On the other hand, you have China that owns $2 trillion (yes with a  ‘T’) of these IOU’s but can’t cash them in. China’s options?

1. If they were to sell these bonds, the increase in supply of Treasuries would send the price into a nose-dive; this would cause China’s remaining Treasuries to be worth much less.
2. China could stop buying future Treasuries so that the US’s tab doesn’t get larger - this would cause the US to have to pay higher interest rates on the Treasuries to attract other investors to buy future Treasuries (i.e. debt) instead of China. This would cause the Treasuries that China holds to become worth much less as well because China’s IOU’s are at a much lower interest rate than what these new investors would be getting. The only way to compensate would be for China to sell their IOU’s at a discount.
3. Or, China could hold their existing IOU’s to maturity to receive full payment (to avoid the problem in #2). Unfortunately, the full payment will also be worth much less at that time because of higher inflation in the US - the US dollars that China would receive later would be worth less than today’s US dollars.

Of course, the US could slowly start climbing out from under this mountain of debt and solve the problem for everyone. But let’s be honest, the spending in the past six months doesn’t look too promising.
The US-China Ponzi scheme - MSN Money

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July 15, 2009 by Chris.

See the link below for an interesting (and long) article regarding how banks could essentially control the real estate market and manufacture a quicker, albeit fake, real estate recovery.

The author discusses a program that is being currently considered by the government that keeps jobless homeowners in their house. They would do this by allowing homeowners not capable of paying their mortgage on a house that is underwater, to give up control of their house to the bank, but be able to remain in the house afterward. The old homeowner would now be a renter, paying a rent to the bank much lower than what the old mortgage payments were.

Of course this causes all sorts of problems, which the author highlights (read article Housing Bubble, The Sequel — Seeking Alpha)

I am especially impressed with the author’s comment regarding the deflationary effect on CPI. He says that the CPI would be artificially low as it would be affected by these below market rents being charged to the new renters. The government would continue to provide easy money to counter-act this “deflation” that appears from the reduced CPI number.

Of course, the government loves to report that inflation is much lower than actual so that they can keep interest rates on Treasuries low.  This way they can pay back everyone’s debts later on using dollars that are worth less (because inflation really is present) and still keep borrowing costs low because of the artificially low CPI!

Housing Bubble, The Sequel — Seeking Alpha

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June 30, 2009 by Chris.

EveryBlock is a great site that was funded through a grant from the Knight Foundation. You can view crime activity (and other things) down to the street block level. Their mission is to provide ultra-local street block level news.

Today is a big day for EveryBlock as their grant period is now finished with the Knight Foundation. As part of the grant, they promised to release their source code to the public. This will allow programmers to build more functionality on top of the EveryBlock data, kind of like how Apple allows programmers to build apps for the iPhone.

CNA Capital is all over this source code. We plan on overlaying this crime data with MLS listings data to find cheap properties, on good streets (i.e. low crime), in areas where other investors may overlook (i.e. bad zip codes). Distressed properties in Chicago offer a HUGE opportunity right now and this just gave us an extra tool!

Link to EB source code: The EveryBlock source code

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June 21, 2009 by Chris.

CNA Capital was formed to give investors a good return on their money while investing in Chicago real estate. For example, let’s say you have $40k in cash (or in an IRA) that you want to invest, but that you don’t want in the volatile stock market. You would tell us that you’re willing to invest that amount, then tell us if you’re interested in a short-term flip or a longer-term buy/hold/rent investment. We then pool your investment with others who are looking for the same thing and we get a property under contract. We then oversee the investment (either rental or rehab) and report to you periodically to let you know how things are going. The investment then liquidates after a certain pre-set time period and we return your money and profit. CNA Capital takes a small cut of the deal for arranging everything and can also make a performance fee if we beat the benchmark return that we set for you upfront (this aligns our interest with yours - we make more money by making you more money).

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June 15, 2009 by Chris.

Below is a link to an interesting article on CNN.com about a new type of search engine (the founder doesn’t agree that it’s a search engine - probably so she’s not directly competing with Google!). This engine asks you a bunch of ideological questions when you create your account to create your profile, and then it tailors your online searches to best meet the type of person you are based upon your profile. In theory, your research should be quicker.

If I may make a stretch, this is similar to the services that CNA Capital is here to provide for you. Once you contact us, we establish a profile of the type of real estate investments you want to make (e.g. higher risk/higher return vs. lower risk/lower return; short-term vs. long-term; rehab and flip vs rentral; etc) and we then inform you when we have an opportunity that fits your needs. In essence, we have a ‘hunch’ of what you’re looking for. We feel that you’ll love the fact that you can make a great real estate investment through us without taking up so much of your precious time.

Just like searching on the new site ‘Hunch’ in the article below, we help you make decisions on where to invest your money.

‘Hunch’ Web site will make decisions for you - CNN.com

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June 5, 2009 by Chris.

We’re meaning to add meaning to this site, but right now we’re too busy treasure-hunting for bargain investment properties. Please send an email to info@cnacapital.com if you’re interested in hearing about current and future investment opportunities.

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