The Ingleside Chamber of Commerce is proud to announce that Steve and Paula Bonilla and their wonderful staff at Blackbeard’s Too are the recipients of the February Business of the month Award!! Blackbeard’s was kind enough to hold a reception with their wonderful appetizers (try the Seafood Queso, it’s AWESOME!) and beer, wine and sodas. It was a great event so be sure to go to Blackbeard’s Too located at 2753 West Main Street in Ingleside!

For those living in the Rockport, TX area….looks like there is some free tax prep. available! Thanks to the Rockport Pilot for this valuable information!

AARP tax counselors will be available to assist taxpayers with low- and middle-income, particularly those age 60 and older, in the preparation of their 2008 taxes. Volunteers will be available Feb. 3 though April 15, each Tuesday from 8:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m., and each Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. at Rockport School RCUG lab, 619 N. Live Oak St.

This service is free, including e-filing, and is provided by trained and certified counselors. The taxpayer does not have to be an AARP member to take advantage of this service. For additional information, please call Pat McKelvey at 729-7003, or visit www.aarp.org/taxaide.

This sounds like a lot of fun! What a great idea! Here is the story courtesy of the Rockport Pilot:

http://rockportpilot.com/articles/2009/01/28/news/news00.txt

–Lisa

Looks like the Aransas Pass City Manager asked the City Council their thoughts on possibly hiring a part time Economic Development Manager. Certainly the fact that neighboring Ingleside is now in the process of hiring a full time Economic Development Manager spurred this conversation. Here is the latest from Phil Reynolds, staff writer with the Aransas Pass Progress:

Aransas Pass city council members are looking at another step into economic development after a suggestion by City Manager Kandi Hubert at the Monday, Jan. 19 meeting.

Hubert asked council members how they felt about hiring a part-time economic development director who will work on a project-by-project basis to promote the city.

“Neighboring communities are talking economic development directors,” Hubert said, apparently referring to a recent Ingleside advertisement for someone to be that city’s director.“You’ve got a civic center that’s coming and a chamber (of commerce) that’s working like crazy,” she pointed out. If it’s created, the economic development director’s job would be to “promote the town, go to the shows and programs and advertise the city.”

Councilman Jay Attaway liked the idea of having a project-by-project budget instead of a full-time city employee, but Mayor Tommy Knight questioned whether economic development wasn’t “more in the chamber’s realm.”

The council will consider the idea and bring it up again at a later meeting.

She emphasized that the matter was only a discussion item on the council’s agenda, saying she wanted to hear what the council thought about the question.

Here is the latest from the Ingleside Index on the new corridor in Ingleside:

http://theinglesideindex.com/articles/2009/01/21/news/news01.txt

–Lisa

This is a great article I found on MSN.com about common mistakes people make when shopping online for real estate. This is nothing we haven’t told our clients but it shows that buyers ARE still using the internet to shop, more than ever in fact! It’s an incredible tool for both buyers and sellers and us Realtors too! Check it out:

5 top blunders of Internet home buying

Here’s some advice to help you avoid the common pitfalls of online real-estate searching.

By U.S. News & World Report

While the painful real-estate swoon appears likely to extend well into 2009 — at least — the number of Americans using the Internet to find the home of their dreams is poised to keep on climbing.

According to the 2008 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 87% of homebuyers used the Internet to search for homes last year. That’s up steadily from 84% in 2007 and 80% in 2006.

But despite its mounting popularity, the Internet home-buying process can present a host of pitfalls. To help make your online real-estate searching more effective, here’s a look at the top five Internet home-buying blunders and what you can do to avoid them.

1. Assuming you can do it all yourself
The Internet allows users to handle for themselves many of the tasks that could once only be performed by real-estate agents. The NAR profile, for example, found that the number of homebuyers who first learned of their homes on the Internet has been rising in recent years, to 32% in 2008, up from a tiny 2% in 1997. Accordingly, the number of homebuyers who first learned of their homes through agents has been declining, to 34% in 2008, down from 50% in 1997.

But although the Internet can provide heaps of helpful tips and research, it would be a mistake to assume that the Web is all you need to buy a house — unless you are an experienced real-estate investor. Purchasing real estate can be extremely complicated from a legal standpoint, and it’s easy to make a mistake if you don’t have an expert advising you. And when it comes to something as expensive as real estate, those mistakes could cost you thousands of dollars.

“Doing all the paperwork yourself is a huge mistake,” says Joshua Dorkin, chief executive officer of BiggerPockets.com, a real-estate networking and information site. “There are so many things you can miss on a contract.”

2. Looking too narrowly
The sheer amount of information about the real-estate market online can be overwhelming. As a result, buyers can be tempted to stick to just one or two popular real-estate search engines, such as Realtor.com, for their research. The problem with doing that, however, is that you’re missing out on the biggest advantages that the Internet offers. [Realtor.com is a partner of MSN Real Estate.]

First, you’re closing yourself off to a smaller cross section of the homes that are out there. “A lot of the sites aren’t comprehensive and don’t have all of the new listings,” says Pat Kitano, a co-founder of Domus Consulting Group, which works with real-estate brokerage firms on technology marketing strategies.

Don’t assume that because a house is on one real-estate Web site, it is on all of them, says Greg Healy, vice president of operations at ForSaleByOwner.com. “It’s still very fragmented,” he says. Healy recommends using several Web sites to get a more complete picture.

Second, you miss all the breaking, up-to-the-minute information on the housing market that can make you a smarter consumer. Blogs have become a popular resource for real-estate agents and others to post information as it happens. “If consumers are interested in a local area, they should find local real-estate bloggers who know this breaking information,” Kitano says.

3. Ignoring the independents
One area that major real-estate search engines often overlook is the market for homes sold by the owners. “A lot of people forget to think how many homes are sold without agents,” Healy says. The current estimate is that 20% to 25% of homes are listed by owner, he says.

Your dream house could easily fall into that 20% to 25%. So how do you bring homes sold independently into your online searches? “Craigslist is one of the best resources,” Dorkin says.

4. Falling for fake listings
Remember, the Internet is a giant playground for scammers, and unfortunately they have penetrated the world of online home buying as well. Combine big dollars for online advertising and a lot of people searching for homes, and the result is a proliferation of fake home listings. There are a number of red flags to look out for.

“If there are no photos [of the house], that’s a big warning sign. That’s just people trying to collect page views,” Healy says.

But even if the listing has photos, it’s not guaranteed to be legitimate. Legitimate Web sites will put watermarks on their home photos to brand those photos as their own. If a home’s photos have several different watermarks on it, then you can guess you are looking at the work of a scammer.

5. Putting too much stock in home-valuation Web sites
Sites such as Zillow.com and Cyberhomes.com have changed the way people buy homes by putting pricing information at buyers’ fingertips. But they’re not infallible.

Don’t assume to know what the value of a home should be based on what these sites tell you about the neighborhood. There are many elements of a home’s value that home-valuation sites cannot incorporate.

“Take their values with a grain of salt,” Dorkin says. He recommends using this information merely as a range. Conduct other research to narrow that range. For example, walkscore.com can tell you the number of amenities within walking distance of a location — those are some of the factors that can raise or lower the value of a home.

By Matthew Bandyk, U.S. News & World Report

I know I’ve said this over and over, but it bears saying again:  The first axiom of investing is “Buy Low, Sell High.”  Simple enough, isn’t it?  We’ve heard this repeated our entire lives, yet the average investor won’t abide by this.  Let me give you an example.

Early on in our careers, Lisa and I started working in a Subdivision about 8 miles north of Rockport, Texas.  Holiday Beach is a deed restricted, waterfront community that was developed in the 1960’s back when there was practically no civilization in the area.  A couple of years ago, Holiday Beach looked like the land that time forgot.

When Lisa and I started working there, quite by accident, we were selling interior (non-waterfront) 50×100 lots for $4,500 – $5,000 each.  Little by little we started working the area harder.  After a while we had a huge inventory of listings.  Within about 2 years the price per lot had made it all the way to about $9,000 each.  I even saw a few go for $12,000 each. 

The oddest thing was, the higher the price got, the more people wanted to buy.  There was a time when we would drive out there in the evening to plant our signs on our new listings and in the morning we would have offers on them.  Lisa and I were contacting everyone trying to get them to list their lots with us.

I can’t pinpoint the exact top of the market, but like everywhere else, the market crashed in Holiday Beach.  Once it was obvious that the market was in decline, people that had bought their lots as an investment flooded the market, trying to dump their lots.

Today the market is just dismal.  There have been a total of 15 (lot) sales in Holiday Beach within the past 12 months.  That averages out to 1.25 sales per month.  There are (as of this morning) 57 lots listed in Holiday Beach.  In other words, there is a 3.8 year supply of listings.

At our high-water mark, lots were selling for $9.000 each.  Today the median price for a lot is $7,300 with an average of 187 days on the market.  That’s almost a 20% decline in market value.  Despite the decline, the market is flooded.

Now, let’s get back to the original idea; Buy low, Sell high.  Unless you really like to buy and hold land, I wouldn’t recommend Holiday Beach right now.  There are some great investments though.

My favorite investment is Multi Family Housing.  I really like the idea of apartments.  Each month you receive an income from your property and at some point in the future you’ll have the opportunity to sell at an appreciated value. 

The reason I have always preferred Multi Family is because you will at some point or another have vacancies.  In Multi Family you’re income is reduced when you have a vacancy.  If you rent a single family home out and have a vacancy, your income stops.

That being said, I have changed my mind a little about single family residential lately.  There are some great bargains out there.  Even here in South Texas we are seeing more foreclosures than normal.  Some of these homes are being sold dirt cheap. 

Here’s what I would do…  I’d buy a foreclosure or two.  It’s going to need some renovating (they always do).  Make very minimal renovations; just enough to make it habitable.  Then rent it out.  For a couple of years you should receive an income that will at least pay your expenses.  Once the market has recovered, make the real renovations so you can sell the home at the new (appreciated) price.

I’ve developed a contrarian attitude towards investments over the past few years.  I’ll admit it’s not for the faint of heart.  If you stop and take the emotion out of the purchase it all makes a lot of sense though, doesn’t it?

Here’s my shameless plug…  If you’re interested in learning a little more about this, drop me an e-mail (paul@calltheklemms.com) or go to my website www.calltheklemms.com

I have to confess, I am very excited about this development coming to Ingleside. I really believe this is going to mean big (and welcomed) changes to this community. If you would like the latest on the now NFL Alumni endorsed development, check out this great article courtesy of the Ingleside Index!

http://theinglesideindex.com/articles/2009/01/15/news/news04.txt

–Lisa

Looks like the Port of Corpus Christi is wanting to expand! I have been watching wind farm equipment going through there all year so none of this surprises me. All good news in my opinion! Check out the latest from the Caller Times!

http://www.caller.com/news/2009/jan/14/31-acre-storage-area-planned-for-port/

–Lisa

Looks like sales tax revenues are up for most of our local areas. Here is the latest from the Ingleside Index!

http://theinglesideindex.com/articles/2009/01/15/news/news01.txt

-Lisa