Mecklenburg Times: News for Mecklenburg, Union and Iredell counties Real Estate, Development, Construction, and Community News in the Charlotte area and throughout Mecklenburg, Union and Iredell counties

  Balloon payments occur when your loan has a maturity date before it is completely amortized.  For example, your loan could amortize over 30 years, but your lender could require you to pay the outstanding balance at the end of ...

Tagged with: beware balloon payments

Dear Mr. Berko: Every three months, I receive patent royalties. Last year, I received $3,877, $3,206, $2,135 and $3,440. I’ve had to buy low-paying certificates of deposit because the minimum corporate bond purchase is $5,000 and I never seem to ...

Tagged with: Berko

      It happens in pretty much every economic up-cycle when it comes to real estate. As more people have a degree of success in real estate, they feel empowered to want to share their information, knowledge and training ...

Tagged with: guru

Dear Mr. Berko: I have four original oil paintings by Thomas Kinkade. I bought them about 25 years ago and paid over $6,000 for each of them. I love them, and it gives me great pleasure to look at them, ...

Tagged with: Berko

For the past few years, one of my main passions has been to educate and elevate the “wholesaling real estate” industry. It’s gratifying to see that more and more individuals are understanding the distinction between marketing contracts and marketing properties. Fundamental knowledge ...

Tagged with: wholesale

Dear Mr. Berko: Blue Apron is $1.01 a share. Do you think there’s any life left in the company that might warrant a purchase as a speculation? I may buy 25,000 shares if you think I could net a profit ...

Tagged with: Blue Apron

Craigslist.com is the big daddy of online classified ad sites. It is categorized by country, then state, then either city or general area for example, Charlotte, Monroe, Gastonia etc. In some areas, you can just post a classified; in other ...

Tagged with: rentals

Dear Mr. Berko: In 2007, my stockbroker had me buy 100 shares of J.C. Penney at $73. Months later, he had me buy another 100 shares at $62. And because he was very certain it would recover, he had me ...

Tagged with: Penny

One of the best ways to learn is from the experiences of others, thus the topic of today’s email. If you have one or more mortgages with escrow accounts, when was the last time you really looked at the statements showing ...

Tagged with: lenders

Dear Mr. Berko: Please don’t use my initials or city, because my comments might encourage the local school board to fire me. A dear aunt passed away last March, leaving me two pieces of property, which I sold for $620,000. ...

Tagged with: Financial Adviser