PG County Real Estate

This is the first post in a four post series. For details on understanding foreclosure and bankruptcy, keep following this blog.

If you find the terms “foreclosure” and “bankruptcy” confusing, you’re not alone. It’s not uncommon to see people filing for bankruptcy if they’ve defaulted on their payments and received foreclosure notices. It’s important to know whether foreclosure and bankruptcy have the same implications on the people involved.

While neither situation is ideal, they are not the end of the world. You can correct both with proper assistance from lenders and legal assistants.

If you can't pay your mortgage towards your house, speak with your lender.

Let’s try and understand what each of these terms mean.

Foreclosure:

By definition, foreclosure is the legal procedure in which a lender holding a mortgage on an individual’s house forces a sale for the house in order to obtain repayment of their loan. Foreclosure proceedings usually begin when the homeowner defaults on his loan payments.

A common misconception is that defaulting on your mortgage for a couple months will lead to foreclosure. In such situations, people panic and tend to look for options where they can declare or file for bankruptcy in order to retain the control that they think will be lost if the property is foreclosed on.

Homeowners need to be aware that lenders also lose a lot of money when they put a house on foreclosure, so if approached at the right time, they would assist you in avoiding the process completely. The way they look at it, all they want is the principal borrowed and the interest at stake.

If you’re looking to invest in a foreclosed property, or any other home in or around Prince Georges County, Express Realty Services could help. With the lowest interest rates in years, you could get a beautiful house that’s well within your budget.

For more questions or concerns, feel free to call Express Realty Services at 1-877-9EXPRESS (1-877-939-7377)

This series will be continued. For more insights on concepts like foreclosure and bankruptcy, continue to read our blogs.

If you have any tips or suggestions that you’d like to share, please feel free to comment on this blog post.

Ordinarily when companies relocate, it’s often bad news for one city and county and good news for another. In the case of Vocus Software, relocating meant moving in their own backyard, from Lanham, MD, to Beltsville, MD, both in our very own Prince Georges County (PGC). Though the cities’ tax bases will be affected, it’s a win-win for PGC.

Vocus, a software firm previously located in Lanham, MD is making plans to move its headquarters to Beltsville, MD. Vocus is planning an innovative new office design that will incorporate the look of a town but will be built inside a warehouse. For example, their plans include designing the mail room to make it look like a post office, and designing the finance area to look like a bank. The design for the new offices may also include a town square and a coffee shop and is expected to be completed within the next couple of weeks.

Rick Rudman, the President and Chief Executive of Vocus feels that this environment will allow employees to be more productive while still allowing them the opportunity to have a good time at work.

Rudman noted that “People are creative and energetic at different times of the day, and they need to relax and blow off steam at different times of the day, so that’s what our environment supports. The new building is really just taking that to the next level.”

The new Vocus complex will be located in Ammendale Business Park and will cost anywhere between $7 and $8 million dollars. This upgrade will create 93,000 square feet of office space, which is almost double what Vocus has currently.

It has taken almost a year for Vocus to finalize their new location. The 10 year, $20 million lease was decided after Prince Georges County Economic Development Corporation and has provided a $1.1 million incentive package in combination with the State of Maryland. The incentive package includes a low interest rate loan as well as tax credits for property and job creation. The incentive package was provided to Vocus based on the fact that they were staying in the same county and would be utilizing the county’s workforce, infrastructure, and supportive business environment. The new headquarters building could be up and running as early as February 2011.

PGC is a great place to live and work.  Express Realty Services can show you affordable homes right here in the county that qualify for the homebuyer’s tax credit or maybe other local programs. As the #1 Keller-Williams franchise, we are prepared to help you buy (or sell) a home quickly. Please contact us at 888-306-9450 or visit our website to chat with a representative about how to get started.

The new healthcare law recently signed by President Obama will provide healthcare insurance for 170,000 to 190,000 currently uninsured residents of Prince Georges County. Since there is no discrimination by diseases and aging, the ability to increase the amount of residents that are covered by insurance will help to bring up the level of health care for the entire county.  An additional benefit of the new law is that it will provide Prince Georges County with the opportunity to improve its health care infrastructure.

The law, which takes effect by 2014, makes several important changes.  These include:

- Allowing no discrimination by insurers for those with pre-existing conditions like diabetes, cancer, asthma or high blood pressure. 

- Dependants can now stay on their parents insurance until age 26 instead of losing their coverage at 19. 

- People without employer based insurance will be able to get income based subsidies.  

-Employers that currently don’t provide health insurance will be required to provide it to a certain amount of full time employees or be fined.

- Seniors on Medicare part D may be eligible for an additional $250.

While offering help to local citizens, the new law offers some new challenges for Prince Georges County. One of these is a lower number of health care providers in the county compared to surrounding areas.  With the additional number of people that will soon be insured, there is a real possibility that the current infrastructure will not be sufficient for all residents to receive their preventative and primary care within the county.  This could cause a bit of a hardship for residents that don’t have ready access to transportation within, muchless outside of, the area.

Clearly, it is now a priority to attract more quality health care providers and health care professionals to Prince Georges County.  This provides a great opportunity to take this challenge and use it to leverage new laws that will help to improve the overall healthcare for the county.

Prince Georges County is a great place to live and work.  Express Realty Services can show you affordable homes right here in the county that qualify for the homebuyer tax credit or maybe other local programs.  Please contact us at 888-306-9450 or visit our website to chat with a representative about how to get started.

Though Prince Georges County is currently recovering from three feet of snow, spring came early for the city of Greenbelt.  On February 5, communications and information technology giant Harris Corporation had the ribbon-cutting for a new office to support its recently acquired GOES-R satellite contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  The $736 million contract will allow Harris to process satellite weather information for over 10,000 direct users as well as for NOAA’s current weather satellites.  Harris claims the new system will increase the accuracy of weather prediction and allow weathermen to notify the public more quickly of impending weather disasters.

The new office will add 100 workers to its current employee base of 300 in Maryland and the 1,500 in the Washington area.  Located at 7375 Executive Plaza, the 24,000 square foot facility will house a team which, according to a Harris press release, will design, develop, deploy, and maintain the ground segment of the weather system and command operational satellites.

Ray Thorpe, vice president of the GOES-R program for Harris applauds the new location’s proximity to other federal agencies and other NOCC facilities.  The new facility will provide high tech jobs in the city of Greenbelt, which had its origins in the depression as a federal experiment to create a walkable, attractive place for the working poor.  Ironically, the current site of the high-tech facility was built entirely with shovels, without heavy equipment, to make more work for the men.  Greenbelt is today a middle class community which retains its walkability and sense of community.

Looking for a new home in friendly Greenbelt?  Contact Express Realty Services today for a great selection of pre-owned homes. Some are remodeled homes purchased by our sister company, Express Homebuyers.

At a time where regional job losses often dominate the headlines, it is good news for Prince Georges County that Wegmans Market will hire 600 new employees by October 2010.  The new store, still under construction in the Woodmere Towne Centre in Lanham, will fill at least 550 positions with local people.

Open positions include entry level management, cashiers, customer service, pharmacy, and food workers.  Hiring is underway for full time staff, while part timers will be hired stating in July.  Wegmans anticipates investing $1.5 million in training for the new employees.  Though salary ranges were not disclosed on the company’s website, the company was fifth on Fortune Magazine’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For.

The new store will be the second one in Maryland and the sixth in the greater DC area.  The new store, which promises to increase the area tax base, is making a timely entry into the area.  Recent property assessments were down 20%, so the new property and employee tax revenues will help the county maintain services.

Jobs and a nice new store make Prince Georges County an even nicer place to live and raise your family.  Contact Express Realty Services today to learn about fine housing opportunities right here in Prince Georges County.  Contact Express Realty Services for information about area homeowner programs, as well as about the home buyer tax credit.

Prince Georges County has long been the place where aspiring bio-tech professionals get their education and bio-tech companies get their start before moving on.  Currently, the county is home to the state’s second largest concentration of federal agencies plus the research powerhouse of the University of Maryland, but only 2% of Maryland’s bio-space companies and 5% of wet lab space.  Graduates leave for jobs elsewhere.  The county is still smarting because three prominent firms – Digene Corp., Martek Biosciences Corp., and NovaScreen Biosciences Corp – moved to surrounding counties and became multimillion dollar companies.

Recent planning efforts in the county are scoping out publicly owned lots near the University of Maryland and the College Park Metro station, near the Konterra business campus, and Prince Georges Plaza Metro station as sites for new facilities with staying power.  In a tough economy where labs in nearby counties have vacancies, some critics wonder whether the timing is right for the county to gamble on the venture.  Even the developers maintain that the project cannot go ahead unless tenants where in site.  At this point 240,000 square feet of the proposed 1.5 million square feet has been built.

For Prince Georges County, the stakes are high, as the project could be lucrative to the county and a source of new jobs.  The center could open 700 to 1,900 new jobs and produce $1.6 – 4.4 million in revenue, depending on the location.  The Plaza Metro site would cost five times as much to purchase but yield the highest revenuers, as compared to the M Square site.

Want to be in position for one of the new jobs?  Buy a home now.  Express Realty Service can match you up with an affordable home you love.  Aside from our featured listings, we have a special stock of renovated, refurbished, or remodeled homes from our sister company Express Homebuyers.  Check out the many affordable home values we have to offer, as well as programs to benefit those who live and work in Prince Georges County.