In an effort to keep ProAPOD real estate investing software customers and subscribers to this real estate investing blog informed, we have created a new page on our ProAPOD website filled with real estate industry links to helpful real estate resources.

Here is what we’ve included thus far.

Real Estate News
Inman News
RIS Media
Realty Times
Real Estate Forum
…and MORE

Trade Associations
American Real Estate Society
National Association of Realtors
California Association of Realtors
Illinois Association of Realtors
…and MORE

Real Estate Research & Education
Real Estate Center at Texas A&M
Council of Residential Specialists
…and MORE

Loan Underwriters
Fannie Mae
Freddie Mac
…and MORE

Real Estate Consumer News
Real Estate Journal from Wall Street Journal
New York Times Real Estate
…and MORE

Government Sites
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Federal Housing Authority
Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight
Federal Cititizens Information Center on Housing
Federal Home Sales
…and MORE

Real Estate Information
Wikipedia Article on Real Estate
DMOZ Open Directory Real Estate
…and MORE

You can navigate to this page from our home page at ProAPOD Real Estate Investment Software, then clicking Real Estate Industry Links at the bottom of the page. Please feel free to suggest others, and report back to me if you find any broken links.

All ProAPOD® Real Estate Investment Software reports can be emailed. This does, however, require a third-party software program capable of creating a PDF document.

Adobe Acrobat is a PDF software program, but it is rather expensive (several hundred dollars). PDFCreator is a free PDF software program and in my opinion works just as well as Adobe Acrobat. For this reason ProAPOD® Real Estate Investment Software does include a link in its menu that will take you to the PDFCreator download page.

This link is provided in all ProAPOD® real estate investment software solutions as a convenience to our users. We are not connected with PDFCreator in any way and receive no compensation for referring their software to our real estate software users.

To access PDFCreator from our toolbar, click Help > Online > PDFCreator. This will take you to their download page. Simply follow the online instructions.

There are no other investments available to the average investor that offers the combination of outstanding benefits that are available to real estate investors who invest in real estate.

In this article, let’s look at what makes real estate such a good investment and consider the four different ways to make money (returns) it offers real estate investors.

1. Cash Flow This is the gross spendable income (money before tax consequences) you have to spend at the end of the year after all the operating expenses and mortgage payments have been made.
2. Equity Income This is income derived from the principal reduction on the mortgage. Each time a mortgage payment is made, a portion is for the interest charged by the lender and the remainder reduces the balance on the loan. This income cannot be spent annually, but in a real estate investment this equity income can become a sizable amount you will receive when you sell the property. It’s like putting money in the bank.
3. Tax Shelter The advantage of owning an investment that produces a “paper loss” which the IRS may allow you to write off against other real estate income is a real advantage to making a real estate investment.
4. Appreciation The ability for real estate to become more valuable over time is why real estate has been dubbed “the only hedge against inflation”. Why does real estate appreciate? Because the supply of land is becoming limited and demand for investment real estate, whether single-family homes, apartment buildings, commercial or industrial, is on the rise.

Is real estate a good investment, absolutely. In fact, it’s because banks and life insurance companies recognize this fact that they invest in real estate (with your money) and are making 10 to 20 percent on it.