Working From Home In California? Give Yourself A Raise!
Californians given the option to work from home can drastically reduce their living expenses by relocating to Las Vegas
Will a Refinance Now Make Sense For You?
We bought our current home in the beginning of 2018, home values have gone up and mortgage rates have gone down. We initially put 10% down on our purchase, bumping our rate up a little from what could have been had we put down 20% lowering the bank’s risk and our interest rate. Since then,…
The Four Pillars of Real Estate Investment
Hopefully, you’re someone who owns not only their own home, but also another asset that generates cash flow. If you are a real estate investor, you’ll realize many benefits when done correctly. The four pillars of real estate as an investment vehicle are: Cash flow: Simply put, if you can rent the home or apartment…
Buying a Home – The Financially Responsible Way.
If you’re like many people who just moved to a new area, or decided you’d like to stop making your landlord rich & start building some real wealth for your family, you may be getting excited about buying a home. You’ve got a lot of things to consider before you jump into a car & start looking at something you saw online.
Firstly, are you qualified to complete a purchase? If you haven’t spoken with a mortgage lender yet, you may be getting excited for nothing. Do you know what your credit score is, do you know what credit score you’ll need to secure a decent loan? How about a good loan? There are many ways to get an idea of your credit score & credit history if you’re just getting started. The easiest is by using a site such as CreditKarma.com. Keep in mind, nothing is truly free, your credit information is provided to you here in exchange for the ads offering you credit cards & other loans. Provided you can avoid any temptation to to get a card you don’t need (which may actually temporarily hurt your score, depending on your situation) you may be well served to keep an eye on your score & find ways to improve it before making a large purchase such as a home.
Once you know where your creditworthiness lies, it’s time to think about down payments & closing costs. Yes, you may be able to get an FHA loan with very little money down. Again, nothing is free, since March of 2013 this now comes with a PMI (private mortgage insurance) monthly fee that will now stay on your loan until it is paid off or refinanced. That being said, if you can get into a property in an area where appreciation will result in your equity growing substantially over the next few years, your ability to refinance out of the FHA into a conventional loan may happen more quickly than if you were just paying down 20% of what you bought it for.
For example, I buy a $100,000.00 house with 3.5% down My loan would be for $96,500.00 . In the first few years, most of your monthly payments are going to interest, not paying down the principle much. However if in a few years, appreciation has been good in the area, maybe my home is now worth …