Personal Finance: Refinancing a Residential Mortgage for 2011

One of my “To Do” list items for the end of 2010 was to investigate refinancing the mortgage on our house in Sunnyvale, CA.  As a sign of the decade, this actually is the third time we’ve looked to refinance our mortgage in about seven and a half years.  I was actually a bit surprised [...]

The Tower of Babel 2008: Burj Dubai

Remakes are all the rage in Hollywood, and what better original material is there than the Old Testament? If you are not familiar with the Burj Dubai, it’s the tallest building in the world, and the construction isn’t even finished yet.  It currently stands about 2,275 feet tall, but they are keeping the final height [...]

Do You Know Where to Buy/Sell S&P/Case-Shiller Housing Index Derivatives?

This shouldn’t be a hard question to answer, but I’m having trouble with it. I’m looking for an online brokerage where I can buy and sell futures and options contracts based on the the S&P/Case-Shiller Housing Index. The S&P/Case-Shiller Housing Indexes are one of the newest innovations in tracking the value of home prices across [...]

The New Downtown Sunnyvale Is Under Construction

There has been heavy construction at the site of the old “Sunnyvale Six” mall all summer. Demolition, really, as they raze everything and put the new downtown in. There have been delays for the past few years, due to some contractual difficulties with previous contractors, but things seem to be really moving now.  Of course, [...]

Tough Choice: Picking an International REIT ETF

Tough choices tonight on the personal finance front. I recently rolled over my 401k from eBay into an IRA. As a result, I now have the ability to better balance out my retirement portfolio across different asset classes. In a previous post here, I discussed the launch of the first international REIT index ETF, the [...]

An International REIT ETF is Born, and a Note on Why I Love ETFs.

For the first time, individual investors have access to an international real estate (REIT) index fund in an exchange-traded fund (ETF).  The StreetTracks Dow Jones Wilshire International Real Estate ETF began trading on the American Stock Exchange on December 19th, under the Ticker: RWX. Details on the new ETF can be found on the StreetTracks [...]

Saving Energy: Installing New Windows & Doors

I have now received the first empirical evidence that replacing your old windows & doors can have an impact on your utility bill. Our house is one of the standard, ranch-style houses that were popular in the SF Bay Area in the late 1960s. It had the original, single-pane aluminum windows, and hollow-core doors. We [...]

Why I love Timber as an Asset Class

I found this article on the Motley Fool this week called “Is Lumber the New Gold“, and it reminded me why Timber might be my favorite asset class of all. I was first introduced to Timber as an asset class at Harvard Business School, in one of my classes on Venture Capital & Private Equity. [...]

Blogs I Read: 2Million

This is another personal finance blog that I’ve started reading. It was references on My Open Wallet. I found it through this recent post on calculating the benefit from renting out an old property instead of selling it: The Real Return on My Rental Property Here is the link to the blog itself: 2Million – [...]

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