Many people could be paying much higher property taxes than they should. When your home assessment comes in the mail really look at it. While having your property values go up is a good thing from an investment standpoint, that valuation also means higher taxes. With the housing market soft, you hav [Read More]

People sometimes use the terms, land contract and land trust interchangeably but theyre not the same thing. A land trust gets set up to protect estate assets, but its revocable. Typically the buyer sets up the trust anonymously and may, at some point, assign the trust to an investor. Alternatively a [Read More]

As youre driving down a tree-lined street it creates a distinctly different impact than a cityscape. Both visually and emotionally those trees reflect a sense of permanence and longevity for a neighborhood. And while its hard to put a firm value on trees, we can certainly measure it in various ways. [Read More]

Among early humans a simple cave would suffice for hanging ones club and having a shelter from the storms and occasional hungry tiger. Hunt by day, eat and sleep by night was pretty much the routine among hunter-gatherers. It wasnt until humans became more agrarian that the idea of a real house was [Read More]

When it comes time to revise your homeowners policy or get a brand new one for a house you just purchased, it helps tounderstand the types of homeowners insurance in the market. Superficially buying insurance seems simple, but when you start getting into language and coding, all of a sudden your hea [Read More]

Not long ago I ran across an advertisement offering acres of land on the moon. While I admit that the prices for even the most prime locations were very reasonable (averaging around $20 each), I had to wonder exactly what are the legalities of such a purchase, and how exactly would I ever hire a ma [Read More]

Closing on a house is the final step to getting those coveted keys. What exactly happens at a real estate closing and what should you be expecting? Well its nearly a given that all buyers will walk away from a closing with cramped hands from signing so many documents. Nonetheless, those pieces of pa [Read More]

Youve finally settled on the house that you want. Now what? Bidding isnt necessarily something that comes naturally, even to those who have purchased a home before. Randomly guessing at what your opening bid should be is akin to buying a car at list price without checking under the hood you could e [Read More]

When youre looking to buy or sell a home, step one is finding a real estate agent on whom you can depend. The question is, how exactly do you find this amazing individual? The best agents arent necessarily those at big brokerage firms, nor those who sell the most houses. Rather, the kind of agent yo [Read More]

There is a growing trend in real estate namely single women are becoming a significant segment of buyers. In the last 15 years the numbers of single women purchasing homes has increased 14 percent for first time ape owners (and 17 percent for repeat home buyers). On average these women are about 40 [Read More]