A jewel thief in the Fort Worth area has been posing as a potential buyer for properties to make entering homes easier. The alleged thief, named Steven Breed, is suspected of many thefts over the past decade, including one recent heist in which more than $20,000 in jewelry was stolen.

Breed, a minister, prefers to be shown the insides of his potential target homes by a professional rather than going through the complicated process of breaking and entering. He provides a name and tells the agent the type of home he would like to view. Sometimes he specifies properties. Then, once inside the home, he steals wallets and other valuables – sometimes from the real estate agent as well as the owners of the house!

Agents in the Fort Worth area have been warned about a man who wants to be shown homes, but then excuses himself from the agent to tour the property alone. Breed’s most recent heist occurred July 15 of this year and included jewelry valued around $1500. Once released on bond, he called another realtor using a fake name and asked to be shown another home.

Have you ever had a problem buyer as bad as this one?

Thank you for reading! Your comments and questions are welcomed below.

Sounds pretty grim for investors in St. Louis: their governor is making vague references to cutting nearly 86 million dollars in real estate-related tax credits. The opposition is heating up, blogging about how these cuts could destroy development in the city’s historic and low-income districts. The governor has responded by pointing out that these tax credits are not producing the revenue that they were designed to create.

At first, cutting these credits sounds to me like a negative as far as real estate investors are concerned. After all, about 1.8 million buyers made use of the federal home buyer’s tax credit expiring in April.  Don’t we want to keep that type of incentive for our investing and sales use? After all, anything right now that makes that house easier to move sounds pretty good in my book. However, when I did a little more looking, turns out a lot of that 86 million goes to historic renovations, movie shoots and agricultural properties supporting qualified livestock.

While historic properties, movie-ready properties and agricultural benefits are all good things and probably good for the city of St. Louis, it does seem possible that these types of credits are maybe diverting or “fuzzing” the focus when it comes to creating real revenue. While I imagine there are a lot of people who are making a good living by working these credits to their advantage, I wonder if it might not be more effective to remove the credits and find a different place to make that money work – maybe in the form of tax cuts for people who are creating revenue in the area.

Now, I’m not from St. Louis, so I’m not saying that I’m an expert on these matters. And if you are, I’d love to hear a local perspective. Because with such highly specific requirements for these credits, I wonder just how many people will actually be affected. It seems to me like a lot of these highly specialized real estate programs could be far more beneficial if they extended their sphere to include more of the people who are pulling the market out of the tank rather than excluding the majority of investors from the program.

Your thoughts are welcomed in the comments area below.  Thank you for reading http://realestate.BryanEllis.com!