This weekend, Lydia and I got a chance to check out a concert at Chene Park.  The performers were Musiq Soulchild and Raheem Devaughn.  Now to put this in perspective since the title of this entry is "best concert", the last time we were at Chene Park was to see the Isley Brothers (this was back in the late 90s).  More recently, we (me, Lydia and Austin) saw Earth, Wind & Fire and DTE (formerly Pine Knob) last year.

It was nice to get out, but I must be spoiled, because seeing two of the greatest bands, in my opinion, has the level of expectations at concerts way HIGH.  The Isley Brother concert still sticks out in my mind as GREAT.  It was different seeing EWF, watching Austin enjoy himself and getting a chance to see live musicians.  He still will sing some of the songs in the car (even if it isn't on the radio).

Who have you seen that makes you want to put them in the best concert category?

Sounds like the easiest and most simple principle to understand.  That is, until you are looking to execute it.  Imagine this, you see a stock you like that is getting some bad PR and subsequently, the stock value is beginning to drop.  A stock that was once $50 is now $25.  The question to ask yourself, do I buy now, or wait for the price to keep dropping??  Let's just assume you buy it at $25 and it continues to sink on more bad news, which might just turn out to be rumors.  Now the $25 stock is trading at $20.  Should you have waited to buy?  Do you sell now and look to buy more when it drops even lower?  Do you like it more at $20 than $25 and decide to purchase more?  Buy low, sell HIGH right.  When do you buy?  When do you sell?

When I find the perfect answer, you'll be able to buy it in my book, for $19.95!

Taxes, taxes, taxes.  The one thing in common to everyone in Michigan is dealing with the "pop-up tax."  This is a very interesting topic, because it will or has been a silent impact on our Real Estate market.  As property values rise, so to do property taxes.  I doubt many people were prepared for seeing the tax value adjust, but in some cases the taxes do not double, they triple or quadruple.

To understand it more, we must first talk about SEV (State Equalized Value) and Taxable Value (TV).  SEV is initially determined to be half of the property's market value.  So if a home sold for $10,000, then the SEV would most likely be $5,000.  Taxable Value is the amount that is used to calculate how much taxes you will pay and it used to be about half of your SEV.  Still using the house that sold for $10,000, the SEV was $50,000 and the TV would be capped at $2,500.  In this example, I'm using $10,000 to represent a home purchased in 1950.  Over the years, TV can rise with the rate of inflation, so taxes would rise as well.  Things changed with Proposal A (1994).

Proposal A removed the cap that was used, making SEV and TV equal.  So if our $10,000 home from 1950 sold in 2000 for $100,000, the SEV and TV would now be $50,000 for the new home owner.  That's a big difference.  What can be more dramatic is if the taxes are being escrowed and paid by the mortgage company.  Now you have a potential deficient tax escrow account that must be addressed.  There will be a big one-time amount paid to satisfy the deficient account and a monthly adjustment for the new taxes.  If you don't pay the one-time adjustment, then you going to see a big change to your monthly payment until your account can be balanced.  Imagine, your $1,000 PITI payment is now $1,800.

There was a bill by the House to temporarily pause the "popup tax", given the rough Michigan real estate market.  The issue is recent home owners and long time home owners who may be neighbors and are competing to sell the house.  Clearly if the houses are the same, then the long time home owner will have a major advantage if they can pass on the same cap that they currently have on the property.  The bill has not been passed by Senate yet.

Sunday, July 1 turned out to be a pretty productive day.  It was a good day in the sense that I was able to host an open house (nice property located on the lake), get the blog site up and running (an ongoing task from now on), and assist in getting a little house work done (house chores never seem to go away).

It's is funny how just getting some of the simpler things done in life can seem so rewarding.