How Your Mortgage Can Be a Surefire Investment

Paying down your mortgage is a great investment. Find out how to do it fast right here. Looking to buy in the Greater Houston Area?  Get a full MLS accessLooking to Sell in the Greater Houston Area?  Get a free home market analysis Today, we’re going to talk about how your mortgage can be a surefire investment. Paying down a mortgage has long been viewed as a reliable investment. It reduces debt, helps home equity grow faster, and provides a guaranteed return equal to the mortgage rate—usually more than someone can make in bank savings, bonds, or other comparable investments. One of the things I recommend to buyers when it comes to making additional payments is to make one to two extra payments of what their principal and interest on their home is. For example, if your total payment with principal, interest, taxes, and insurance is $1,300, where $600 of that is just the taxes and insurance and $700 is the actual principal and interest portion, then you will make one additional payment of that every year for the life of the loan consistently. You’ll reduce the amount of time you pay by five or six years. By making two additional payments every year for the life of the loan, you can reduce your mortgage by 10 to 12 years. The key is to do it every year without fail. The key is to do it every year without fail. Any more than that doesn’t make as much of a difference, unless you’re dropping huge chunks of money. Remember, you can break it up throughout the year on a monthly basis. Using the earlier example of the two extra payments of $700, if you broke up that $1,400 up on a monthly basis, the dollar amount per month would be $116, which would mean a world of savings over the lifetime of the loan. As they say, a penny saved is a penny earned. Should you have any additional questions about buying or selling real estate in today’s market, feel free to contact me. I’m always happy to help. Contact Us   Written by Ruby Miranda on September 23, 2018. Posted in Buy A Home, Buyer Tips, Financing A Home, First Time Home Buyers, Home Loan ProcessTags: Buy Your Home, Buyer Tips, Financing A Home, First Time Buyer Trackback from your site. Leave a Reply

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A Few More Buyer and Seller Questions Answered

I have five more common buyer and seller questions I want to answer with detailed explanations. Looking to buy in the Greater Houston Area?  Get a full MLS accessLooking to Sell in the Greater Houston Area?  Get a free home market analysis Here are a few more common questions I get from buyers and sellers ad my answers to them. I accepted an offer, but now I’m wondering if I could have sold for more. Can I keep looking at other offers? Sellers never know how long a particular buyer has been on the market. It could be that they’ve been looking for a while, and it’s because you’re just now coming on the market that you’re getting an offer pretty quickly. A lot of times when sellers get an offer quickly, they wonder if they priced their home too low. That’s not necessarily true. Sometimes it just means you priced your home exactly where it needed to be for that right buyer at that right moment. Once you accept an offer, you can continue to show your home, place it under “Pending, continue to show” status, and accept other offers. However, even if you get a cash offer, you can’t move forward with it unless the previous buyer cancels their contract or defaults in some way. While it’s a good idea to continue showings in case you have backup offers, any backup offer depends on the whether or not the current offer you have closes. The seller didn’t disclose something about the property? Are they on the hook? It depends on what they didn’t disclose. Was it a defect that you can prove they knew existed prior to filling out the disclosure, something they didn’t know existed, or something that was apparent throughout the transaction and never caught? They’re only on the hook if they knew about something and didn’t disclose it. The answers to some of these questions vary on a case-by-case basis. This is the kind of question that varies on a case-by-case basis. Any issue would be addressed between each party and their agents. The buyer’s financing fell through before the close date. Can I walk away? If they can’t obtain financing in some other way, yes you can walk away. If their financing didn’t come through, it becomes a question of whether they’re taking action to come up with cash funds or get their financing in order to proceed with the closing. If neither is the case and they can’t move forward, the contract will be terminated. The inspection raised some issues I wasn’t expecting and the house appraisal doesn’t match the contract price. Can I back out of the deal? When it comes to the inspection, unless you’re purchasing a new construction home, you’ll probably find defects with the house. Some of these defects will be normal wear and tear, and others will be more high-dollar items, and those are the things you need to watch out for. When you do an inspection, you have to decide whether you want to negotiate with the seller to get them to fix certain things before closing, give you a credit to fix them after closing, fix those things yourself, or back out of the transaction. Again, the answer will vary on a case-by-case basis and depend on what your inspection entails. If you decide you don’t want to move forward, you’ll enter an option period where you can cancel the contract. What happens if the house isn’t appraised for what I’m willing to pay for it? There are a few different paths the transaction can go. The seller can lower the price, the buyer can make up the difference between the sale price and the appraised price, they can meet in the middle, or the buyer can walk away without penalty. If the house doesn’t appraise at the sale price, the seller’s agent will typically confer with them and decide on the best course of action. At that point, the buyer also has to ask themselves how much they really like the property. If you have any additional questions about buying or selling real estate, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d love to speak with you.  Contact Us   Written by Ruby Miranda on September 23, 2018. Posted in Buy A Home, Buyer Tips, Financing A Home, First Time Home Buyers, First Time Home Sellers, Home Loan Process, Sell Your Home, Seller TipsTags: Buy Your Home, Buyer Tips, Financing A Home, First Time Buyer, First Time Seller Trackback from your site. Leave a Reply

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What Actually Happens During an Appraisal?

What Actually Happens During an Appraisal?   Looking to buy in the Greater Houston Area?  Get a full MLS accessLooking to Sell in the Greater Houston Area?  Get a free home market analysis We are here to answer the commonly asked question: “What is an appraisal and why is it important?” An appraisal is when a mortgage lender sends someone out to a property to determine its value.  “An appraiser will look for any major defects.” When it’s time to order an appraisal on a home you purchase, a third party will come out to the home so they can determine what homes are selling for in the area and how your property matches up. They will physically look at the exterior and interior of the home and note any major defects. An appraisal will mostly look for major defects though, they aren’t going to get into the details as much as a home inspector would.  As a buyer, when the appraiser goes out there, there are going to determine if the home you made an offer on is worth more, less, or the same as you paid for it. If the appraisal is the same as what you paid, or it comes in higher, you’re clear and free. If the appraisal comes in under what you’re paying, you will have to re-negotiate with the seller. You can stay firm at your price and force them to cover the difference, you can come down in price, or you can negotiate somewhere in the middle. There are a lot of options. If you have any questions for me, give me a call or send me an email. I would love to hear from you. Contact Us   Written by Ruby Miranda on September 23, 2018. Posted in Buyer Tips, Home Appraisals, Home Loan Process, Seller TipsTags: Buy Your Home, Home Appraisals, Ruby Miranda, Sell Your Home Trackback from your site. Leave a Reply

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