Home Equity – Is it Time to Cash Out and Move?Written by Charles Essmeier
During last five years, home prices have increased nationwide. In some parts of country, notably California, home prices have doubled or even tripled. The median price of a home in Los Angeles area is now nearly $450,000 and in San Francisco area, price is approaching $600,000. As economy continues to improve, price of housing continues to rise in California and elsewhere. Many people who have owned their homes for more than three years are suddenly finding themselves with hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity. Of course, equity is only a theoretical gain, and if price of housing goes down, equity can go away. You only get to keep your equity as cash if you sell your home. Many homeowners are doing just that.
Home equity loans are increasingly popular these days, and many people with large amounts of equity in their homes are borrowing against it and using money for home improvements, dream vacations or other luxury items. Others are simply cashing out and moving elsewhere. While prices on both coasts are rising at a breathtaking rate, price increases in most of country are still more modest. A homeowner in California who bought a home five years ago for $200,000 may have a home worth $500,000 today. If that homeowner were to sell that home and move to Texas, or Iowa or even parts of Florida,
| | Commercial Collections: Business Finance Booster ShotWritten by Steve Austin
If commercial collections is not part of your B2B business plan, you're losing money. Get your cash flowing again with these commercial collections secrets. Commercial collections: fixture of new B2B culture If you're in business-to-business field, or even if you're a consumer products business that works through third-party distribution channels, you probably know what it's like to check your mail anxiously each day, sifting through all bills for that payment that was supposed to have been in months ago. It wasn't supposed to be like this. If you were a good, honest businessperson who dealt with other good, honest businesspeople, "commercial collections" wasn't supposed to be part of your vocabulary.Back in good old days, an invoice or purchase order that had an established company listed in "bill to" field was almost as good as a cashier's check. Nowadays, if you're in business of serving other businesses you may find that your cash flow is less reliable than a small-time bookie's. Commercial Collections: A Personal Story This past April I finally got $2,000 a client owed me for work done in December, after spending almost as much money's worth of my time reminding them to pay. No, this wasn't one of those hand-shake deals-we had a 5-page contract specifying net-30 payment terms. Nor was this some guy with a lemonade stand. It was media division of one of largest retailers in United States. The worst part was, I trusted this client based on my experience working with them a few years before. I actually spent money on Christmas presents, fully expecting payment to come in before my credit card statement. Avoiding Outstanding Invoices Of course, you can nip this problem in bud by cultivating strong relationships with clients who pay on time. But those clients are getting few and far between-and, as I found, good can go pretty bad pretty fast. Worse, it seems that larger business, less likely they are to pay on time. "Net 10 days" might as well be a foreign language in Fortune 500 land. The long-standing advice given to B2B businesses and self-employed people is that money is in big corporations. But good luck getting it from them before your rent is due.
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