This just out: an article I wrote for Black Enterprise Magazine featuring my ever-so-savvy clients, Earl Davis + Tarita Whittingham, offering a step-by-step guide to lowering your property taxes. Earl + Tarita saved over $3,500 with about 30 minutes’ work. That’s what I call a major return on investment!

Click here for the article and the simple steps to lower your property taxes.

AOL real estate has a great article with 10 very detailed credit card moves buyers and sellers should consider making in 2010. This is especially timely because lending guidelines are tightening (again) and the new Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act (CARD) takes effect on February 22, 2010.

There are a number of provisions in the CARD Act with significant implications and action points for homebuyers and sellers (most of the latter of which will also be homebuyers soon). One, in particular, is to request credit limit increases – if you qualify for them and need a boost to your FICO score – before the act takes place. Afterwards, the CARD Act will make it harder to obtain an increase.

If you’re applying for a mortgage soon, you might also want to use any accounts you have that have been inactive. Credit card companies are highly likely to close those accounts, in this marketplace, which reduces your debt-to-available credit ratio – a major component of your FICO score. I know this seems like a penalty for being responsible, and it is to some extent, but fair or not, it makes sense to avoid inactive accounts being closed by simply using them and paying the balance off ASAP.

Homebuyers wanting to jump into the dawning Era of Conspicuous Frugality might want to look at the free spending and credit management tools referenced in the article.

Check it out! Get the article, here.

lending guidelines are tightening (again) and the new Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act (CARD) takes effect on February 22, 2010.

Over the past month or so, the most frequently asked questions I’ve received from readers have had to do with when it makes sense to abandon their home and “walk away” from their mortgages.

I have watched and worked closely with a number of smart women homeowners as they grapple with their priorities and the financial, credit, ethical and emotional implications of leaving – or staying. I’ve also been up hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I’ve been underwater hundreds of thousands of dollars on my own homes.

So, better than most experts, I know firsthand – there is no black-and-white, wrong or right answer that applies to everyone.

To help you process and consider the whole-life implications of walking away from a home, I’ve put together a 13-page white paper called REThinking the Walk Away.

This white paper drills down into:

• what ‘walking away’ actually means (and doesn’t mean),
• the pros and cons of walking away,
• alternatives to walking away,
• the implications of walking away and, finally,
• the decision points that every smart homeowner must take into account when deciding whether or not to walk away from their mortgage.

Click here to download.

The Big REThink

In my world, the biggest news story of 2009 had zero to do with Michael Jackson, Jon and/or Kate, or even the literally and figuratively overexposed Tiger Woods.

Instead, the biggest story of the year — maybe even the decade — in my real-estate-fixated consciousness was The Big Rethink: Americans’ wholesale reconsideration of whether homeownership still belongs in “The American Dream.”

You see, in my business I rethink, therefore I am. My company, my Web site, this column, my book series, my “brand” — all are called REThink Real Estate. Since 2006, I have literally traveled coast to coast and back again (and again) hollering “REThink real estate!” from the rooftops and satellite media tours.

This, all because I became convinced through personal experience that real estate presented the purest opportunities ever to consciously design and upgrade our lifestyles.

What I didn’t fully appreciate at the beginning of the decade was that if real estate decisions were made unconsciously, there were lifestyle consequences in store that were just as extreme — in the opposite direction. But I learned this, both through personal experience and through those of my clients and readers.

By the end of 2009, we had all become painfully aware of the collective disaster that the unconscious, unsustainable and unwise real estate and mortgage decisions of even a relatively small chunk of the population could wreak on the entire nation — actually, on the entire globe.

And it was this revelation, this apocalypse (in the sense intended by the original Greek definition: “lifting of the veil”) that might have sparked The Big Rethink. It led many Americans to question whether owning a home was even a good thing to do anymore.

I heard stirrings of this, to me, earth-shattering concept that it might be OK, or even desirable, to rent in perpetuity among the same old disgruntled contrarians (sorry, guys — my perception only) who were cranky (“you’d have to be nuts to pay ‘X’ for a house!”), committed renters for years.

But the vast majority of people who opt in to my life experience, both personally and professionally, are and have always been confirmed homeowners and real estate investors.

As such, I first realized that the national tide of opinion on homeownership was choppy in a non-isolated way while reading an article in the New York Times in August, entitled “A Reluctance to Spend Might be This Recession’s Legacy.” I was expecting the article to chronicle the slowdown in consumer spending, rediscovery of simple pleasures and increase in the savings rate — which it did.

What I wasn’t expecting was a quote from a laid-off patent attorney in her early 30s to the effect that she would be happy as a clam if she never owned a home. That, to me, was a real estate rethink of epic proportions.

Maybe it was simply that the swell of The Big Rethink coincided with my reading of that article. Or perhaps such a bold statement from a member of my real-estate-fixated peer group (young, female, professional, attorney, etc.) was my own personal lifting of the veil. But around the end of the summer, the stirrings of homeownership being reconsidered deeply penetrated my consciousness, and I tweeted: “Homeownership needs to step its game up.”

Owning a home had lost the lure of fast appreciation, though it continues to hold its less-sexy wealth-building characteristics (tax advantages and slow-and-steady value increase). And, on top of that, ownership had become newly associated with the traumas of adjustable-rate mortgages, upside-down indebtedness, foreclosure and even eviction.

I wondered — in the aftermath of this crisis, would homeownership be retrained out of the American palate? You know, like when you go on a whole foods eating plan. No matter how much you loved Doritos, Kit Kats and root beer when you started, after your palate has been retrained to Jack LaLanne’s “if man made it, don’t eat it” standard, the thrill of your former faves is gone.

Would homeownership forever after seem like a trans-fat-laden, illusory thrill that, in fact, threatened the wellness of personal economies of all but the wealthiest Americans?

For some homebuyers, the affordability spawned by the deep decline in value was motivation enough, but that would only be temporary. So, what would motivate Americans to want to own homes once they weren’t dirt cheap to buy?

The answer recently came to me: desire. It’s the wish to own the place you live in and, thereby, gain that much more control over the design of your life.

The National Association of Realtors’ recently released 2009 Profile of Buyers and Sellers revealed that overall, homebuyers cited the desire to own their home as the most common, primary reason for buying.

When it came to first-time homebuyers, the number was even more staggering, giving an indication of how non-homeowners are coming out on The Big Rethink: 62 percent of first-timers said that their primary reason for buying was that they plain old wanted to own the place where they live.

But, after The Big Rethink, the desire to own is no longer that voracious-for-square-feet, grasping, by-any-means-necessary, sign-no-matter-what-the-mortgage-papers-say desperation to own before prices go any higher that motivated buyers during the subprime era. The people who go through The Big Rethink and decide to own are motivated by a holistic desire to be the masters (and mistresses) of their own domain.

An article I read at year’s end chronicled the post-layoff lifestyle of creative executive Catherine Goerz, who is now currently, to quote the title, living “happily on 75 percent less” than what she made before she was downsized. Goerz has intentionally eschewed full-time employment to focus on her newly discovered calling as a documentary producer.

Her new 10-minute short, “RE:Invention” tells the tales of several people who were forced by the recession to do their own big rethink, and did so creatively and to life-transforming effect.

As content as she is with her current trajectory, working temp jobs while aiming to parlay the full-length version of “RE:Invention” into a film industry position, according to the article, Goerz’ financial plans have one primary aim: she “craves her own place.”

” ‘I have this niggling fear that I’m screwed,’ she says. ‘Will I ever be able to buy a home or a car? That’s my biggest motivation to succeed financially: to get my own place.’ ”

If 2009 was the year of The Big Rethink, homeownership has been vindicated, at least in the hearts and minds of those who simply desire it. But when “frugalistas” like Goerz finally do buy, they’ll do as 47 percent of buyers this year did, according to the NAR Profile: make sacrifices. Homeownership might still be in style, but overextending oneself to take part is decidedly passé.

As I wrote in a recent column, 2009 was the year of The Big Rethink. With our household finances whittled away by the recession and our collective consumeristic, over-debting behavior called into question, Americans reexamined everything we formerly held dear, from how we spend our time, to how we spend our money, including whether homeownership is even inherently desirable or good. {Hint: it is, but we need to rethink our approach.}

It’s as though we spent the year collectively asking the question: What Matters Now?

As we Americans are wont to do, we are all emerging from the year with our own individual responses to this question. Some have decided to chuck it all, live austerely on as little possible, and enjoy the free things in life. Others of us have decided that money and the things and experiences it funds are important enough for us to start new businesses, take control of our real estate decision-making, heal our wounded relationship with money and commit to incorporating prosperity practices into our lives on an ongoing basis.

Wherever you came out on this spectrum – whether at either of these ends or at any point in between, your thoughts and your spirit will get a lovely inspirational power-tweak from the collection of declarations of  “What Matters Now” that marketing sage Seth Godin has put together with his luminary friends, including such brilliant women thought leaders as Martha Beck, Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) and Arianna Huffington, the visionary behind the Huffington Post.

This thing is packed with darn near a year’s worth of bite-sized morsels that are both pithy and profound.

Read and re-read it as you envision and plan your 2010 and begin to execute your vision for the year. (I’m already on my third reading!) If you have real estate and prosperity aims high on your priority list, comment and let me know which of these values particularly resonates with your personal Vision of Home, i.e., your vision for how you plan to use your real estate decisions to consciously, intentionally design your life.

What do you get the smart woman who already has everything she wants? $8,000 (or $6,500, if one of the things she already has is a house)!

These are the Obama Administration’s gifts to first-time and move-up homebuyers via the Extended 2009-2010 tax credit. This credit, the 3^rd (and likely final) extension of the first-time buyer’s credit originally implemented in 2008 has gotten better with every iteration, and this extension/expansion is no exception.

The 2008 version was a $7500 tax credit for first-time buyers earning under $75K per year, but it was also a loan that had to be repaid. Bleh.

The original 2009 version was an improvement, expanding the amount of the first-time buyer’s credit to $8,000 and, more importantly, removing the repayment requirement, rendering it a true tax credit. If you bought a home and closed escrow between January 1 and November 6, 2009, that’s your credit – click here for a fuller explanation of the credit itself, and here for a complete 2009 First-Time Buyer’s Credit Resource Center.

But the Expanded/Extended 2009-2010 credit trumps all previous versions, in several respects. At its core, it’s still an $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. However, it also offers:

• An extension of the $8,000 first timer credit through April 30, 2010 (the deadline to get into contract to buy your first home)
• A new, $6,500 credit for current or previous homeowners who buy a new or existing home by April 30, 2010 – so long as their current/previous home was their primary residence for at least 5 of the past 8 years, and
• Expanded income limits – you’re eligible for the whole credit if you make less than $125,000 a year (single buyers) or $225,000 (married couples). You might be eligible for a prorated credit (less than the full $8,000 or $6,500) if your income exceeds these limits, but if you make more than $145,000 (single) or $245,000 (married) – sorry, you’re out of luck (but you have other reasons to be happy, so get over yourself).

We’ve put together an entire 2009-2010 Tax Credit Resource Center, here.

The extended/expanded credit also imposes a new purchase price limit of $800,000 (i.e., you can’t get the credit if the home you’re buying costs more than that). The vast majority of people who fall into the program’s income guidelines aren’t buying homes more pricey than this anyway, so it’s not really a hardship.

Key Timelines & Deadlines.

• This credit doesn’t have to be repaid, so long as you live in your home for at least 3 years.
• To get it, you have to be in contract (meaning, have a purchase agreement signed by both buyer and seller) on or before April 30, 2010, and you must close escrow between November 7, 2009 and June 30, 2010.
• If you bought between January 1 and November 7, 2009, your credit is the 2009 Tax Credit, more here and here.
• If you bought in 2008, your credit is the 2008 Tax Credit, see here.

To collect the credit,you have a couple of options:

• If you close escrow before December 31, 2009, you can claim it on your 2009 tax return.
• If you close escrow after you’ve filed your 2009 tax return, you can file an amended 2009 return, or you can claim it on your 2010 tax return – your choice.
• Whenever you claim it, you need to include documentation of your purchase (like your HUD-1 settlement statement) and Form 5405 with that return.

If you’re just thinking about whether you might be able to qualify for the new tax credit, visit our 2009-2010 Tax Credit Resource Center, here.

Resolutions are usually tasks or goals we either don’t really want to do (but think we ‘should’ do) or have struggled to do in the past. That’s why we think we have to ‘resolve’ ourselves to get them done every year. Perhaps this is why most of us FAIL at the New Year’s Resolutions we set every year.

How about for 2010 we stop doing what isn’t working for most of us anyway?  Deal?  Good.  Let’s take a more powerful approach and set ourselves up for success at the real estate-related endeavors we’d like to pull off in 2010 by rethinking resolutions at their most basic level.

What if our resolutions weren’t these out-there goals that we’ve already tried and failed at fourteen times?  What if we surgically excised the connotation of struggle and difficulty that requires ‘resolve,’ threw it out and, instead, got down to business?! At work, with your family, and in your business, you have deliverables – things you are responsible and accountable for, well, delivering. And you do them, most of them, with ease.  Some of them, with joy! You don’t struggle to do your job or to get your kids where they need to be.

In that spirit, let’s plan a set of resolutions deliverables for 2010, and set ourselves up to deliver them with ease and with joy. Because I said so.

The fabulosity of rethinking your 2010 resolutions into deliverables is that you are responsible and accountable only to yourself, for delivering to yourself things that you decided you wanted to accomplish – for yourself! Rethink your resolutions this year as gifts you plan to deliver to yourself all year long, as you execute them.  Some of them will be little gifts of order, others will be gifts that foster and foment (I love that word!) your long-term prosperity, financially and otherwise.

Even the most real estate-obsessed rethinker will should have resolutions deliverables that are non-real estate related, and I urge you to really rethink the way you envision them in your self-talk. Rethink “lose 20 pounds” into the specific ways you’ll change your behavior (and reward your behavior changes): “cardio X times/week, yoga @ 7 am Monday, Wednesday & Friday, eat veg and lean proteins, 1 carrot cupcake/week, etc.”  Yes, I said it – calendar your carrot cupcakes (or lemon ricotta pancakes, or Haawaiian barbecue potato chips – you get the gist). It’s the key to sustainable, lifelong wellness. Take my word for it.

When it comes to your real estate-related deliverables for 2010, though, I want to inspire you to think beyond the basic “buy a house,” “get a bigger house,” etc.   So, I’ve put together lists of Smart Real Estate Resolutions Deliverables for 2010 – whether you’re currently buying, selling, or just being a smart homeowner, see if any of these spark your own vision of home.

Suggested 2010 Real Estate Deliverables

for Smart Women:

Universal List

Home Buyers

Home Sellers

Home Owners

And every rethinker needs to take the affirmative first step of rethinking real estate – declare your financial responsibility.

. . .but that’s not all!

I’ve also put together two guides to take you from your plan for 2010 through executing that plan:

The REThink Real Estate Resolution Deliverable Setting Guide

- this one has actionable strategies and need-to-knows to help you et yourself up for success from the beginning

and

The REThink Real Estate Guide to Getting Unstuck

- this one is especially for those rethinkers who just plain old get stuck on their path to giving themselves their 2010 deliverables – real estate-related or otherwise.