I never owned a home or anything, I only had one auto loan and I paid it off. I have / had credit cards too (no late payments at all etc). No collections or nothing negative at all, credit history for 6 years.

It is difficult, but if you find a private seller, who will do AN AGREEMENT OF SALE", then you will have a chance. Possibly someone in financial difficulty or some one with several homes to unload.

Since Las Vegas is so dependent on gambling, you might look at some casino stocks as a proxy for the local economy. There is probably a decent correlation with real estate prices.

I figured it would be easiest to do this in list format. Here are the details:

- We rent our primary residence in California (we’ve been renting for the past 10 yrs).
- We purchased our 2nd home in Las Vegas - plans fell through to move there so we’ve been renting it to tenants the past 3 years (now an investment property although rent barely covers 1/2 the mortgage).
- Our tenants just moved out so now we have to cover the $1,200.00 rent plus start paying electric and water bills.
- We’re being forced out of where we’re living now because the owners are doing a short sale. The new place we’re renting is $300.00 more a month.
- We are current on our payments but fear we’ll have to miss payments soon since we have to come up with $1,500.00 more a month (we’ve been notified by our property management group that it’s been hard finding new renters unless we significantly lower the rent).
- I was just told that I may be put on part-time again due to the slow business.
- Do we have to be completely out of savings, etc, in order to qualify for anything?

Many thanks in advance…
The house we are living in right now we are renting from our landlord (we don’t own our primary residence). We were supposed to move to the Vegas house but was unable to due to personal reasons. My husband did try to look for a job there but the tech positions there don’t pay as much as they do here in Silicon Valley (I’d be working as well). And unfortunately, my sister and her family are living with us right now so whatever they can repay us is all that we can get from them. We definitely didn’t buy the Vegas house as a means to make a quick buck. It’s been five years and the rent didn’t cover half the mortgage.
Ibu: We did it as a secondary residence since we couldn’t move in right away. After a year, we started renting it out. It was never claimed as a primary residence.

Honestly even being broke will not help you with investment property. People make bad investments all the time, with real estate, commodities, stocks, you simply eat your loss, the tax payers are not going to eat it for you.

The best you can hope for would be a deed in lui of foreclosure.

I have recently moved to Las Vegas.

I immediately found out that the HOA (Home owners Association) is harassing the residents by giving them hard time and fining for smallest problems and no one dares to challenge them.

And it not often to the benefit of any other residents.
It seems that HOA in Las Vegas is corrupt and is always harassing the residents.

The HOA fee is only $10 /m but they fined the previous owner of my house almost 8000$ for not cleaning the front yard. I had to pay that $ 8000 because I had already put a deposit of the house and bought it through short-sale.
The previous owner had given up on the property like many millions of Americans who have defaulted on their mortgage.
But the HOA, instead of a simple clean up of the yard and charging the owner a cleaning fee , kept fining them.
I am not kidding…. $ 8000 fine..

These people are a corrupt group of people and do not do anything for the resdients except giving them fines.
They seem to have more power than the police.

Now that I am in the house I see that many people are being harassed by the HOA and people are scared of them and no one wants to stand up .

Where is the authority where we can make a complaint?

Is there an agency that regulates and controls Home Owners Association?

Thanks for help

The Commission for Common-Interest Communities and Condominium Hotels regulates HOAs in Las Vegas. If you wish to file a complaint, see this page: http://www.red.state.nv.us/compliance/compliance.htm

Scroll down for instructions on filing a complaint against a HOA.

The online gambling market has seen almost exponential growth since its humble beginnings in the mid 1990’s. Online casino games and slots have had an explosive development since they first hit the internet in the late 1990’s. Where do they go from here and will the current financial situation be a test for the many brands out there?

Since the beginnings of slot machines in the Las Vegas in the 1950’s, where they were initially used to entertain the girlfriends and spouses of the rich gamblers while they spent their money on the roulette and blackjack tables, slots have risen to become the main source of income for casinos worldwide, both offline and online. In online casinos, slot games account for more than 80% of income.

When the gambling industry first went online it was not, as many would suspect, the established land based operators that made the move. It was in fact young entrepreneurs who saw the possibility and grabbed it with both hands. Today you can find all kinds of online casino games, from the classic single-line casino slots to impressive 3D poker rooms, and even see live dealers on the roulette table as if you were in a real casino.

With so many markets suffering a sort of domino effect from the busting of the housing bubble, and with the horizon not looking very positive, how will the online gambling industry be impacted? With ever-increasing levels of debt, obviously there will be less players willing to risk their valued savings, and those fortunate enough to still have surplus cash to spend will have less of it.

Online gambling is often frowned upon by mainstream commentators and analysts, but, in practical terms, gambling on the Internet does not differ much from speculating in the stock market, bond market, derivatives market or other financial markets. It can be argued that online gambling is in fact less dangerous than other forms of financial speculation, as it only affects the speculator (gambler) and, possibly, his family, but not the larger economy. Irresponsible gamblers seeking to make a quick profit would be better off playing Internet casino games than trading credit default swaps and other risky derivatives that are tearing down the world economy.

While the banking sector, real estate, automakers and other markets are experiencing grave difficulties, the online gambling market is surviving so far. The financial crisis will decrease the number of online gamblers playing in their spare time for leisure reasons, but at the same time, sadly, it will increase the amount of players desperate to make a buck in these difficult times. Driven by the slim chance of winning a fortune, some regular gamblers will go beyond their usual gambling expenditure and will bet more than they can afford, while some new players will gamble their hard-earned cash away in the hopes of being able to alleviate their financial situation in the face of unsurmountable debt.

It is indeed a sad situation when online casinos and gambling sites will benefit from those who can not really afford it, but it is also a cold, hard reality that should not be ignored.

What the future of the online gambling industry will be like is uncertain (as with most other markets), but the rapid growth that we have seen in this sector over the last 10 years will undoubltely slow down — that much is certain. Many of the smaller companies will probably merge with or be absorbed by bigger companies and new games will not be launched that often. But in the end this is one of the newer businesses that will likely survive the current credit crunch and ensuing financial crisis.

Afshin Rifat
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-gambling-articles/the-past-and-future-of-the-online-gambling-market-678054.html

There are a few professionals in the Las Vegas area that can assist your sister-in-law in deciding what the best options are, and help her implement her plan. (There are tons of people advertising that they can help, but only a few that I would actually trust.) The first thing she will need is a real estate agent who is experienced with situations like hers. She may also need a lawyer to help her negotiate with the mortgage company.

My best advice is to have her seek legal/real estate agent advice in the Las Vegas area.

Good luck!