Real Estate

What Is a Good Mortgage Rate Today?

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When shopping for a home loan, it can be tough to tell if a certain mortgage rate is good these days. The trick is that all matter of gobbledygook can complicate what you are looking at when shopping for a good mortgage rate. In fact, the mortgage companies and mortgage brokers have made it pretty hard to know exactly what is the best mortgage rate today, or any day. Lookup Good Mortgage Rates First, stop worrying about what the “best” mortgage rate is. Chances are that the best interest rate for your mortgage is different from someone else. This is due to differences in credit scores (check your credit scores for free with Credit Karma, or Credit Sesame), differences in home price, and differences in areas. Then, don’t forget that like anything else, the advertised price for a mortgage is only for a specific mortgage in specific circumstances. One of the few good things to come out of the Great Recession and the near-collapse of the banking system is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB (who for inexplicably uses lowercase latter for their logo). The CFPB has been building out not only an enforcement division to help protect consumers, but …

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Capital Gains Home Sale with Home Office Depreciation

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If you have a small business, the taxes can be pretty tough to swallow. That’s why you need to be sure that you take all the tax write offs you possibly can to lower your small business tax bill. These small business tax deductions are particularly important for solo entrepreneurs and other self-employed business owners who get stuck with additional self-employment tax. For many business owners, one important tax deduction is the home office tax deduction. This deduction allows home owners who use part of their home for business purposes to write off expenses including deducting property taxes, a portion of utilities and other costs of owning and maintaining a home. How Home Office Affects Capital Gains on Home Sale When you sell property, like your home, you typically have to pay taxes on any increase in the value of the asset. These taxes are called capital gains taxes. Fortunately, these taxes are often taxed at a lower tax rate than your standard tax bracket rate. Unfortunately, on the sale of a large asset, like your home, these capital gains can still be substantial. Luckily, there is a special home sale exclusion for capital gains on the sale of your …

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Bank Mortgage Scams Continue

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Think that after a multimillion dollar lawsuit and settlement that the big banks would start playing by the rules and treating their customers right? If so, the bridge salesman convention would LOVE to have you drop by. Get ready for the next mortgage scam by the banks. Single Point of Contact Scam One of the things that the big mortgage banks were supposed to do to help their customers and stop mortgage foreclosure fraud was provide a single point of contact for borrowers to deal with on issues like mortgage modification, refinance or foreclosure avoidance. Before, borrowers were forced to call some 1-800 number where a faceless phone drone would do the standard dance. The borrower provided all of his or her information, and then the person on the phone would tell them what they needed to do. Unfortunately, customers found that they had to start over every time they called. One mortgage modification specialist would say that they needed certain documents, then another one would say that they needed additional, or different documents, until finally, one day, a foreclosure notice showed up in the mail because the borrower had “failed” to comply with the necessary procedures. By having a …

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Buy Real Estate Now – Or Maybe Not

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I’ve been a professional writer and business consultant for over a year now, but many people still remember me from my financial advisor days.  So, I get plenty of questions about investing, the stock market, and real estate.  The number one question I get these days, is, “Should I be buying real estate now?” The answer? Yes, if you need a new house. Real Estate Investment Cycles are Long The funny part about all of this to someone who has been “on the inside” is that these are the very same people who refused to have anything to do with the stock market following the Internet bubble of the late 1990s.  While I patiently tried to explain to them that buying low and selling high meant buying now, when things looked at their worst, they shook their heads and said they were going to do something else.  The same thing about the stock market holds for all investing.  Buying low and then selling at a higher price is how you make money.  But, here is the thing everyone seems to have forgotten, or maybe they just never knew.  Real estate market cycles take much longer than stock and bond investment …

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Free MLS Listings No Realtor

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I’ve written recently about our attempt to sell our home without a realtor using Iggyshouse.com.  We used them because we got a free MLS listing and a place to upload a ton of description and pictures.  Their site was down for a disturbingly long time in June and part of July but is back up for now.  The only reason I’m not blasting them is that our MLS listing stayed up the whole time.  Still, proceed with caution. There was some confusion about the MLS listings caused mostly by the way MLS operates.  As a member of the general public, you can search MLS to your heart’s content, but you cannot directly contact the sellers.  MLS does not list the contact information on any publicly available view of MLS, only on the version that you have to pay for.  This is how MLS maintains its monopoly position and forces people to use realtors.  In fact, one of the warnings from Iggyshouse is that it is against MLS rules to use pictures that have any contact info on them (because then you wouldn’t need a paying subscriber to get a phone number).  So, your picture can’t have your phone number at …

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Sell Your Own Home – Update

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Ok, I’ve stopped daily updates about selling our own home. Truth is, there just isn’t that much action in real estate to justify daily postings. However, today we have 3 showings scheduled, so that is very good news. We haven’t got much in the way of feedback. One of the downsides about selling your home without a realtor is that other real estate agents won’t talk to you in the same way. It isnt’ anything against people selling their homes themselves, it is just that they can’t be sure that the homeowner understands the code that goes along with giving feedback and might use something that is said later in a way that another realtor wouldn’t. So, we put out sheets to solicit feedback. That way either the client or the realtor can jot something down if they feel so inclined.

Get Rich Not So Quick in Real Estate

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As you may have noticed, we are getting ready to sell our house.  After living in our first house for about 7 years, we’ve been in our last two for 2 and 3 years respectively. The interesting thing is that each time we have made a lot of money.  The past two times we’ve used this new wealth to buy more expensive houses.  This time, we’ll be trading down, but we will also be paying off every dollar of debt we have other than the new mortgage.  This isn’t insignificant when you consider that we are in our early thirties and both had to go to college on the back of student loans (including the wife’s three years in law school.) Looking back, I’ve noticed a parallel to the stock market.  In the stock market, there are day traders.  You probably remember more than one or two friends who tried this way to easy wealth in the late 90s.  Only, it turns out it isn’t so easy, and ironically, that most of the people who thought they were day traders really weren’t. A day trader buy and sells positions within the same day.  The entire concept is based upon taking …

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Sell Your Own Home – Day 14

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You have to be kidding! My cell phone, which is the number we have put on all of our real estate marketing, was off yesterday all afternoon. I checked it this morning just to be sure and we have 2 showing requests on there from Friday. So, we scrambled to clean up and call the right people back. Both showings got scheduled and held so, Yea! Also, another call this morning for one more showing, so that is 3 for Saturday. That is perfectly respectable. The really good news is that the showings we’ve had so far represent a pretty good cross section of the local Realtors who “specialize” in our area which means that the people in the know are brining their clients here. So, we aren’t way overpriced or anything it would seem.

Sell Your Own Home – Day 13

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So, it’s Friday and no calls for showings yet this weekend.  This is bad news as far as I can see.  Apparently after an initial burst of interest, it has dried up.  It is still early April and we planned to have our house on the market for a while, but I’d still like to have at least one showing lined up just to let me know the interest is still there.  Last weekend, I got several calls on Saturday to do Saturday showings but I figured that was because we were new to MLS that weekend.  We’ll see what happens from here.