Green Residential
One of the joys (or curses) of home ownership is that you’re in charge of virtually everything that happens on your property. While your HOA may limit you in changes that can be made to the exterior of your house, just about anything in the privacy of your house can be tweaked and optimized according to your tastes and needs. So why not take advantage of this and make your house a home?
Real estate investing is a fundamental principle in most methods of wealth building. It provides the investor with an appreciating asset that simultaneously produces monthly cash flow. In an ideal world, you would slowly accumulate rental properties and build a portfolio over time. But life isn’t perfect and plans frequently change.
In the early stages of parenting, your goal is simple: Keep them alive. You feed them, change them, bathe them, provide a place to sleep, and make sure they don’t stick their fingers in light sockets or run out in front of moving cars.
Simple in theory, yes, but challenging in execution. As your children grow up and pass through childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, your mission becomes less about helping them survive and more about giving them opportunities to thrive.
Renovating your house? Investing in a fixer-upper? Upgrading one of your properties so you can increase the rent?
Whatever the case, you’re probably going to need to bring in a contractor to help you do the heavy lifting. But given such a lack of regulation in the industry, you want to be extra careful to make sure someone doesn’t take advantage of you.
Your home, if anything like the average, contains hundreds of thousands of individual items and possessions. While you may like to think your “crap” is all useful and systematically organized, the reality is that it’s a mess. Very few items have a permanent resting place, and most of the stuff you own is pretty useless. And when you look at the house as a whole, specific rooms are worse than others.
With homeownership comes great responsibility. When something breaks, stops working, or needs to be upgraded, there isn’t a landlord or property manager you can call to take care of it for you. It’s up to you to find a solution and, if necessary, handle the repair on your own. But in order to do so, you’ll need to make sure you have a quality selection of tools available at all times…. [Read More]
Choosing to sell your home is a massive life decision that will have both personal and financial repercussions for years to come. When it comes time to sell, you have options … but one you should never select is the For-Sale-By-Owner route, commonly abbreviated as FSBO.
Not every tenant is perfect. In fact, you’ll very rarely find someone who takes good care of your property and continues to renew their lease agreement year after year. In most cases, these people eventually transition into home ownership or reach a point where they can afford to move up in house. But tenants should be tolerable – meaning they respect your property, follow the rules, and pay on time.
If you’re in the property management game long enough, you’ll eventually encounter a nightmare tenant who doesn’t seem to have any respect or decency. But because the eviction process can be expensive and drawn out, you don’t necessarily want to file for a formal eviction. Instead, it’s in your best interests to quickly, quietly, and legally get rid of them…. [Read More]
Quick – can you name three realtor friends off the top of your head? Most people don’t have any trouble quickly naming a handful of friends and close acquaintances that work in the industry.
When you finally decide that you’re ready to buy a house – or sell your current home and buy another – one of the first questions you ask yourself is, how much can I afford?
Inquiring about affordability is smart. Unfortunately, getting a clear answer isn’t always simple. Every real estate agent, lender, financial advisor, and homeowner has a different opinion on how much house is okay to own. But regardless of what number or ratio people land on, everyone agrees that there’s no benefit to being house poor.