The House Financial Services Committee passed November 15 its somewhat controversial Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007 (H.R. 3915), which seeks to combat predatory lending practices.

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DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Two days after the largest provider of home mortgages in the U.S., Countrywide Financial, announced that a full 1% of its home loans were in foreclosure, the company got more bad news on August 16 from a ratings agency. Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the senior debt ratings of Countrywide Financial Corporation and Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. to Baa3, from A3, and the deposits of Countrywide Bank to Baa1, from A2.

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DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

The category “middle class” is a moving target. Is it an income category? If so, is a middle-class life the same in Santa Barbara as it is in Crown Point, Indiana? Or, is the middle-class a statement of values and status, more accurately expressing our mindset than our income? Perhaps it’s too simplistic to have just three categories: working class, middle class and wealthy. Your clients may fall into the “wealthy” category but they may think of themselves as middle class.

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DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) continue their gravity-defying run. After exceeding the return of the S&P 500 index for each of the last six years, REITs have built up a tremendous lead in 2006, and with only two months left to go, are poised to extend their yearly winning streak.

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DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Hugh Bromma believes in fortifying clients’ retirement plans with big helpings of real estate—not only diversification into REITs, but actual purchases of residential houses in their hometowns or local restaurants, bringing their retirement plan an income stream or a potentially nice profit from a sale.

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DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Real Estate: Good Inflation Fighter

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DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

If you’re a data nerd like me, I’ve got a book for you: Freakonomics by Steven Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Dubner, a former New York Times reporter, who through brilliant data mining blow up conventional wisdom on subjects ranging from criminology to commerce and from politics to parenting.

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DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

For many clients, emotions around home and property aren’t gone with the wind. Many of us grew up believing that owning a place of our own would be a sign of success in life. In some families and cultures, owning real estate is the only true mark of a family’s wealth. For a fortunate few in this highly mobile nation, family holdings have deep emotional roots. In all these situations, a house is not just a home; it’s a magnet for people’s hopes, dreams, and disappointments.

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DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

As advisors strive to diversify clients' portfolios by allocating investments across a broad range of asset types, one challenge may be finding assets that should benefit from an economic scenario that includes rising inflation and interest rates. Some advisors place part of the portfolio in real estate investment trusts, but how many REITs must one have in order to be diversified in that asset? Would those assets perform well in a low inflation and interest-rate environment?

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DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Ken Heebner's broader definition of real estate can mean opportunity for investors—Mutual Fund Spotlight, June 2006 (extended version)

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DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Purchasing real estate has long been a vehicle that investors use to help pad their retirement, but a growing trend among investors these days is to invest a portion of their retirement accounts, like IRAs, in real estate.

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DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Advisors must help their boomer clients preplan the tax consequences of real estate transactions

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DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com