FHA Loans 101

An FHA loan is one of the tools available if you want to buy a home but don’t have much money for a down payment. I actually bought my home with the help of a FHA loan. However, it is important to consider the pros and cons of a FHA loan before jumping in. What [...]

5 Secrets to Surviving a Short Sale

Thanks to Neal for this guest post on things he learned about surviving a short sale. A generation ago a “short sale” was a special on Capri pants at and the local department store. A decade ago a “short sale” was a stock transaction that bet on failure.And now, it’s something completely different, and depressingly [...]

Angies List Contractor Checklist

Finding the right contractor for the job takes some work but it’s effort that will pay off with quality work and a fair price.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, my approach is to find the top 3 or so contractors or companies on Angies List a get a price estimate from all three. Finding [...]

Buy a House Without Making Big Money Mistakes

Buying a house involves making lots of decisions, many of which are daunting because of the high cost of real estate. I spent 20 minutes on the phone with a friend of mine this morning talking through various options and considerations for selling his home and buying a house in our area.  I could hear the [...]

How to Sell Your House Without a Realtor

One of the advantages of having a real estate agent sell your home is that you have access to their expertise. In addition the agent is working on your behalf so that you don’t have to do as much with the nuts and bolts of selling your home. The biggest downside is the fact that [...]

How to Buy a House in an Expensive Market

Buying a house always seems to cost you more than you planned.  If you live in a city with expensive real estate you might even feel like those high home prices mean you’ll never be able to afford your own home. While some citites in California, New York, and other states across the country have dauntingly expensive [...]

How to Improve Your Credit & Buy a House

If you want to buy a house with bad credit, the drop in housing prices over the last few years may be a little frustrating.  Real estate is on sale but it may be tough to get approved for a home loan with bad credit. It doesn’t mean that you absolutely won’t be able to [...]

5 Reasons Not to Join Angies List

Angies List is a great way for current or soon-to-be homeowners to find local contractors to do work on your house or property. We use Angies List and I’ve written about it a fair amount on this site but it’s not for everyone. I had a reader email me about the site after reading my [...]

3 Ways to Buy More House for Less Money

When you buy a house, you are making a major purchase, probably one of the largest in your lifetime. Although buying a home will never be “cheap,” there are ways that you can get a little more for less. Why does it seem like the place you want most when house hunting is often the [...]

Our Home Owner Warranty Claim

Whether or not home warranty companies are worth the money they charge was the question we debated last summer when we bought a house on short sale.  Often when you buy a house you can ask the seller to include a home owner’s warranty as part of the deal, particularly in a buyer’s market. For [...]

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