The LMC Group Blog

• • The LMC Group Paves the way for bringing 60 New Homes into Surf City Area
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Swift Creek Plantation  Swift Creek Plantation VIDEO

Welcome to Swift Creek Plantation…a breathtaking alternative to life in a traditional subdivision. Swift Creek Plantation is a brand new waterfront and Lakefront community conveniently located 15 minutes to New Bern or Washington, NC and only a 30 minute drive to Greenville, NC. This community offers a pleasing balance of woods, water, wildlife, and natural wonders. With more than 2 miles of winding creekfront, a 20-acre lake with resident’s beach, community covered pavilion with outdoor fireplace, community, kayak, canoe, and boat launch, and nature, walking, and walking trails, Swift Creek Plantation will surely give you the county lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of. Here you can spend the days just the way you like-canoeing, fishing, exploring nature, and spending time with family and friends. We invite you to come experience the pure tranquility of country living. Now in Phase One, Swift Creek Plantation will offer 160 home sites from 1-8 acres starting in the low 40’s.

Visit http://www.swiftcreekplantation.com, or call 252-514-2007

I am happy to report that this company, The LMC Group, has been putting together workable solutions to real estate problems benefitting sellers, buyers, lenders, and the county and city municipalities generating tax dollars creating a win win for our area, finally.

While working the latter of 2008 and all of 2009 re-inventing and investing time in private and public relationships involving a great deal of research and investigation, 2010 has seen our diligent efforts come to fruition. Since the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010, we have obtained capital in the form of real estate closings for well respected Water communities that had its credit lines frozen and notes called when Cooperative and Cape Fear Bank failed. Most recently within the past 2 months, we unraveled a banking disaster that could have bankrupted a client with tens of millions of dollars of property going into foreclosure, and instead we created a multi-million dollar tax base for the municipalities involved, saved the seller from foreclosure, and are placing 30 new families into a real estate community resurging this beautiful community. In another community that has seen zero growth and at risk due to closed credit lines from banks, we integrated another multi-million dollar insurgence of private funds with 60 new homes on the board and a resurgence of construction and jobs. We have an additional 70 lots under contract due for closure and new construction by the end of the year. We have numerous tracts of land and stalled projects in negotiations for new construction with private companies in an attempt to refuel our area with money and economic recovery. So while all is not good, there is a glimmer of recovery as long as we keep trying.

The LMC Group is an “Out of the Box” real estate company that puts the heart of our local economy on our back and strives to put deals together for the benefit of all parties and do our part in generating economic recovery. While some situations are simply unattainable, we have spent the last 2 years exhausting all efforts to keep our local economy moving. Business is rough out there but we continue to strive to make it better for all. The LMC Group has been in the business of promoting Wilmington and the surrounding areas for over 5 years with its principals in the area for over 18 years. While the everyday business continues to move forward, The LMC Group is behind the scenes making the deals happen and hope that we can continue to aid and continue our part in stimulating this economy.

Federal Reserve officials cut their forecasts for growth this year and signaled they stood ready to take new steps to keep the recovery alive if the economy worsens.
A new document, released Wednesday, revealed a more cautious mood among the Fed policymakers in light of Europe’s debt crisis, a volatile Wall Street, a stalled housing market and high unemployment.
With risks growing, Fed officials at their June 22-23 meeting saw the need to explore new options for bolstering the economy. That’s a turnaround from earlier this year when they were moving to wind down crisis-era supports.
No new specific steps were disclosed or agreed upon at that time. However, if the recovery were to deteriorate, Fed policymakers have options. They could revive programs to buy mortgage securities or government debt. They could lower the rates banks pay for emergency Fed loans. The Fed also could create a new program to spark more lending to businesses and consumers in a bid to lure them to ratchet up spending and grow the economy.
The economic and political hurdles for taking such action would be high, economists said.
“If the economy takes a nasty spill, then yes, it would take new policy action. But if we continue to see kind of mediocre, ho-hum growth, then that won’t be enough for them to move,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase.
In the end, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues agreed at the June meeting to hold a key interest rate at a record low near zero to help energize the economy. And they repeated a pledge to keep rates there for an “extended period.”
At that time, Fed policymakers said they didn’t think the slowing in the economy seen thus far warranted new stimulative actions besides those already in place, according to the minutes of the June meeting.
However, Fed officials said the central bank “would need to consider whether further policy stimulus might become appropriate if the outlook were to worsen appreciably,” the document stated.
Fed officials concluded that the “economic outlook had softened somewhat.” In fact, one-half of Fed officials saw “risks to growth as having moved to the downside.”
Against this backdrop, Fed officials offered a slightly more downbeat view of the economy.
They now predict the economy will grow between 3 percent and 3.5 percent this year. That’s down from forecast of 3.2 percent to 3.7 percent made in April.
There’s little relief in sight for high unemployment. The jobless rate, now at 9.5 percent, would stay at that figure or in the best case fall to 9.2 percent this year. In the April forecast, the Fed had a slightly lower bottom number of 9.1 percent.
The weaker outlook chilled Wall Street’s recent winning streak. The Dow Jones industrial average close up only 3.70 points to 10,366.72.
Bernanke has publicly downplayed the odds of the economy sliding back into a “double-dip” recession. He will provide lawmakers in Congress with a fresh economic outlook in back-to-back appearances on Capitol Hill next week.
Economists predict the Fed will keep the key rate at a record low well into next year and possibly into 2012. The Fed has leeway to hold it at a record low because inflation isn’t a threat to the economy.
In fact, the minutes said that a few Fed officials worried about the risk of deflation. That’s a widespread and destabilizing fall in prices of goods, prices of homes and stocks, and a drop in wages. The country’s last serious bout with deflation was in the 1930s. Keeping interest rates at record lows would help combat any deflationary pressures.
If the U.S. recovery were to flash worrisome signs of a relapse, the Fed would likely take other steps to get it back on course. Its next regularly scheduled meeting is Aug. 10.
The Fed has left the door open to resume purchases of mortgage securities. It ended a $1.25 trillion mortgage-buying program in March, an initiative credited with driving down mortgage rates and bolstering the housing market earlier this year.
However, some question how much of an economic benefit would come from reviving the program now. Mortgages rates are already at record lows but that has failed to energize sales and home refinancings.
Feroli and other economists don’t think resurrecting this program would do much. “Getting interest rates down a little bit more probably won’t generate a whole lot of extra spending, ” Feroli said. “There’s too much uncertainty and caution out there, and lower interest rates probably won’t overcome those fears.”
A less likely move would be for the Fed to resume buying Treasury securities, a step it took during the crisis. Critics on Capitol Hill and elsewhere alleged the Fed was doing this to bankroll the federal government’s record high deficits. The Fed said its government-debt buying program was aimed at lowering a range of rates to help revive the economy.
Both buying more government debt and buying more mortgage securities would expand the Fed’s already swollen $2.3 trillion balance. That’s likely to cause concern among inflation hawks on Capitol Hill and inside the Fed.
“Things would have to get a lot worse before they agreed to this,” said Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics.
The Fed could cut its emergency lending rate to commercial banks, now at 0.75 percent. That rate was bumped up in February, when the Fed was started to raise the rate closer to normal. Still, the rate is considered low, and banks have scaled back on their use of the emergency Fed loans.
To foster the recovery, the Fed has left a key bank lending rate at between zero and 0.25 percent since December 2008. That has kept rates on certain credit cards, home equity loans, some adjustable-rate mortgages and other consumer loans at their lowest point in decades. But many Americans are cautious about making big-ticket purchases and businesses don’t have much of an appetite to hire — forces hobbling an energetic rebound.

I cannot understand why we as a society cannot recognize that America is a builder and that almost every facet of our economy is based on construction and production. If America does not build or manufacture tools to build and produce, we are cooked. Think about it….. It is as simple as this: If we do not build the grocery store, the house, the office building, the hotels, etc. here is the trickle down effects: the builder of the store, house, office, etc is gone, If the builder is gone, the company that makes the nails, cement, fridgeration system, Flooring products, glass company, lumber yard, shingle maker, HVAC (heating and air), down to the company that cleans the site (the cleaning lady) etc are all gone. The people that employed those workers are gone, the people and companies that feed those workers lunch are gone, the people that clothe those people are gone, the farmers that grew the food to feed and clothe are gone……. finally, there are no companies hiring workers and it is a trickle down effect all the way down until no one has a job or any money. I agreed with the government in that they had to stop a run on the banks and quiet panic, but now it is time to kill those banks and replace them with others, too big to fail is not it, the banks are stiffling the economy and making ridiculous decisions to pad their balance sheets instead of the economy. We truly need to break them up like the baby bells. The private sector will come to the rescue, private enterprise will prevail. The private sector wants to come out of the closet, but not while the banks are still killing the economy, in charge, and making the rules. The banks are killing the very same people that gave them their tax dollars to stay alive, they are the enemy and looking after themselves. The banking mentality is the same, fee to death the consumer and hoard the cash……. The very same bankers that gambled away the economy are now in charge of fixing the banking industry? That is unacceptable. The way to fix the economy is by propping up the housing and construction market, not the banks. We saw a small comeback in the economy for jobs and spending because of the housing credit, however, it refused to be universal and only applied to a lower price point and people that still had salaried jobs. It did not address the avenue for prices above $250k and commerical properties therefore creating collapsed market for anything over $250k. The folks that owned these homes, shopping centers, office buildings over this price level have been wiped out by the bank credit freeze and A&D halts, creating foreclosures and these are the people giving jobs to the $250k house buyers which will in turn no longer have a job to pay their mortgages. It is an endless cycle. We need an across the board tax incentive for the real estate industry to clean up the mess we have, allow the private sector to come in and kick the banks in the teeth if they don’t compete for business, Break these big banks down to a community level again and start over. Everyone else in business today is starting over, the world is no longer the same. And the banks are not releasing their stranglehold on the credit crunch. Get America building again and we are off to the races, but right now we are at rock bottom with the only jobs being created and paid by the government on future generation’s debts. Thanks for listening…….. Pass along to your comrads and any other person that may find this interesting.

From the NAHB: Legislation Addresses Housing Production Credit Crisis

Legislation introduced yesterday by Reps. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) and original co-sponsors Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Joe Baca (D-Calif.) would help alleviate the severe lack of credit for acquisition, development and construction (AD&C) financing that threatens to end the budding housing recovery before it has time to take root, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).

“We applaud these lawmakers for taking the lead to address the housing production credit crisis that is jeopardizing the housing and economic recovery now under way,” said NAHB Chairman Bob Jones, a home builder from Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

H.R. 5409, the Residential Construction Lending Act, would create a new residential construction loan guarantee program within the Department of Treasury to provide loans to builders with viable construction projects. Designed to unfreeze credit for small home building firms, the measure would expand the flow of credit to residential builders on competitive terms.

Under intense pressure from their bank examiners to reduce their exposure to development and construction loans to builders and curtail their outstanding portfolios of real estate loans, many lenders are refusing to make loans for viable new housing projects and cutting off the funding for performing loans, or calling them. This is causing unnecessary foreclosures and losses on these loans. Performing loans are also being reappraised, reducing the value of the collateral and forcing borrowers to come up with large amounts of cash to keep their loans current.

“H.R. 5409 will help restore the flow of credit to housing, provide jobs and give a meaningful lift to the economy,” said Jones. “We urge Congress to act quickly on this bill.”

I read an article the other day on the Social Security system that was downright scary! It said that, for the first time ever, Social Security is now paying out more than it’s receiving from taxes.

Reproduced from The Tycoon Report 03-23-2010

In fact, the funds once set aside by the government to pay back Social Security are now gone! I’m talking about billions of dollars ravaged by incompetent spendthrifts in the U.S. Congress over the last couple of decades.

So Uncle Sam is now paying Social Security back with IOUs in the form of $2.5 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds!

So this puts the entire Social Security system in jeopardy by 2037. And when I say “jeopardy”, I don’t mean this kind either:

“I’ll take ‘Idiot leaders of Congress’ for $80, Alex…”

So how old will you be in 2037?

60? 70? Maybe 80?

Think about what your retirement could be like without having any monthly Social Security check on which to rely.

Do you have a pension? Good for you if you do, but it seems like fewer and fewer workers these days have one.

So where does that leave you — with a 401(k) in a stock market that has gyrated like crazy over the last 10 years, but is basically flat to negative in all that time?

Will this be you in 2037?

“Buy real estate? Are you crazy? Why would I have done that?”

Listen, I don’t have a pension either, and even though Social Security may still be around when I reach my mid 60’s, I’m sure as heck not depending on it. Yes, I’ve got some 401(k) money and some funds in my IRA’s, but that’s the kind of money that will allow me to eat out at Bob Evans, when where I really want to go is the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.

So I’m staking the largest percentage of my future retirement on real estate.

With all of the volatility in the real estate market lately, why would I do that? Here is why:

Did you know that throughout time, the richest people in the world have all owned a great deal of real estate?

And did you know that since 1963, the real estate market has only had two down periods, those being 1989-1992 and 2007-today?

Let’s go back to 1992 for a second.

Had you invested heavily in real estate in 1992, using 15 year mortgages with 20% down, look where your investments would have been when the mortgage was paid off in 2007. The $100,000 house, for which you put down only $20,000, would have been paid off by your tenants and worth about $240,000.

That’s a 1200% gross profit in 15 years!

So ok, you got greedy and didn’t sell in 2007, and now it’s worth only $170,000, right?

That’s still an 850% profit in 18 years, or about 47% per year! But don’t forget to count the rental income, perhaps $40,000 or more you’ve made in the last three years with the mortgage all paid off!

In other words, while the value may have been dropping from the peak, your rental income was acting like a dividend to offset almost 60% of that loss.

With the rental income, the gross potential return (before taxes, insurance, repairs) climbs up to over 1000%!

You see my point?

Tycoon readers, you need to understand one important point — perhaps the most important one that I have made on these pages in months.

There is only a narrow window of opportunity in the real estate market that will last maybe another year or two at most.

During this time, foreclosure properties will be so cheap and interest rates so low that you will be able to buy properties on 15 year mortgages and have a positive cash flow every month while your tenants pay down the entire mortgage!

Come on Ethan, this sounds like 100% pure hyperbole. What proof do you have?

What proof? Well, I just did it myself. I bought a HUD home for a little over $80,000, put down $20,000, and took out a 15 year fixed loan at 5.125%. My total monthly mortgage payment, including taxes and insurance will be $621.

I just secured a lease with a tenant for $975 a month!

My latest purchase…

But already there is competition brewing all over the country, as other savvy investors are sniffing out the bargains. Cash purchases of real estate, which normally average about 10% of all sales, were at 26% last month. In the most hard hit areas, such as Las Vegas, NV and Phoenix, AZ, cash purchases were 50% and 40% respectively.

In San Diego, the number of flipped re-sale properties have doubled in recent months, as cash investors are scooping up terrific bargains and reselling them at great profits within a few months. Some of these homes are being purchased in large quantities by investor hedge fund pools.

So I’m not waiting to buy, and I don’t think you should either.

To paraphrase Warren Buffett, the most famous investor of the last 40 years, I want to be the guy who bought when others were most fearful. I want to be the guy who gets in on the good deal before others drive the prices back up again.

In fact, this is the face that I want my relatives to make when I tell them that I am once more acquiring properties:

“You bought another house?!”

When I see that face, that will confirm that I am right!

Tycoon readers, if you have ever been interested in acquiring real estate, 2010 and 2011 are going to be watershed years for doing so. Great looking foreclosure properties are ripe for both long term rentals, using leverage with fantastic interest rates, and even once again for short term flipping.

To quote the very astute Teeka Tiwari, in an article that he wrote in early 2008:

” The beauty of real estate is the LEVERAGE, the bloody LEVERAGE is MAGNIFICENT!! It allows the smart buyer to propel themselves into an economic band that they could only dream about.”

The very eloquent, “Big T”…

So how old will you be in 15 years when your rental property mortgages are all paid off by your tenants, and you have your choice of selling the property at a huge profit or using it for monthly income for the rest of your life?

60? 70? 80? How about only 45?

This week, I want you to declare your financial independence from Uncle Sam!

That means that when you hit retirement age, you can thumb your nose at Uncle Sam when he says, “Sorry, there are no more funds for Social Security”, or “Sorry, you now have to be 85 years old to collect Social Security.”

Investors should be prepared for Fed’s next move…………

Days after the Federal Reserve seemed to sound the alarm that the era of near-zero interest rates is ending, Chairman Ben Bernanke tempered those expectations a bit this week. Just because the Fed boosted the rate it charges banks, he told Congress, doesn’t mean it will move any time soon to boost broader interest rates too.

Despite what some may think, moving toward higher rates will be good news in many ways.

It’s an endorsement of the economy’s potential to soon stand on its own without the help of emergency rates. It means yields from CDs as well as savings and money-market accounts at banks won’t be minuscule much longer. It could even bode well for certain types of stocks and basement bargain real estate properties.

Overall market returns may be harder to come when the Fed determines it needs to raise interest rates to try to keep the economy from growing too fast. But stocks should still climb.

Standard & Poor’s study of what happened after past rate hikes tells the story: Stocks rose at only a modestly lower rate than the norm.

All told, the Fed has moved 13 times since 1946 to raise rates, usually in a series of increases lasting about 25 months. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index has risen a not-too-paltry 6.2 percent on average in the year following the start of the process, according to Sam Stovall, S&P’s chief investment strategist.

What’s more, some sectors have been big winners over those 12 months following the first rate hike, with technology stocks jumping an average 20 percent higher and health care stocks up 13 percent.

Tread carefully, though. Some sectors have been big laggards when rates rise, notably utilities, financials and materials.

Inflation
Bernanke professes not to be overly concerned about inflation, so you shouldn’t either.

That leaves investors to determine whether Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS, are a wise buy now or not.

Unlike with many corporate bonds, you can be fully confident that the issuer — the U.S. government — will pay you back. The return on these Treasury bonds is adjusted to eliminate the impact of inflation.

Just be aware the optimal timing for buying TIPS may have passed. So many investors piled into them last year, concerned that heavy government spending would spur inflation, that some advisers consider them too pricey now.

Saving and borrowing
Long-suffering savers can look forward to a time when their money can grow at a decent clip again while sitting in the bank. Currently, rates for one-year CDs are under 1.7 percent, savings and money-market bank accounts often below 1 percent and money-market mutual funds hovering just above zero.

At the same time, rising rates will make mortgages and other loans more expensive. If you’re thinking about buying a home or refinancing an existing mortgage, it might be time to consider locking in those low-low rates.

All these trends are likely to be gradual, and hinge on a Fed decision that still appears months away.

The economy’s still too uncertain to call, so I don’t think they can raise rates just yet. “But we know it’s coming.”

Real Estate is at an all time low, with bargains being snapped up daily, with major investors cashing in on heavily weighted bank REO’s and foreclosures. Higher interest rate costs bring yields down, and those who pounce on what is felt as the bottom end of the cycle could see big gains in the next few years. This generation of values, although painful to most investors, may very well shift major wealth to from those affected today to the capitalists investing for tomorrow.

PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. – The world’s most famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, emerged before chilly revelers in western Pennsylvania on Tuesday to see his shadow, a sign his handlers say means winter will last another six weeks.

Some 12,000 people gathered before dawn to await his weather forecast. They came from as far as Chile and the Netherlands, braving a chilly 18 degrees Fahrenheit to see the more than century-old ritual.

Bill Deeley, president of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club — and reputedly the only person in the world who can speak “groundhogese” — declared that Phil had “seen his shadow” as he has about 90 percent of the time.