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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4 Unexpected Things That Increase Your Houston Home’s Value

  There are four unexpected things that can increase your home value that I want to share with you today. 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 There are four surprising things that may increase how much your home is worth. How close your home is to Starbucks. Who doesn’t love coffee? A 2015 Zillow report found that between 1997 and 2014, homes within a quarter mile of Starbucks increased in value by 96%. That really shows you that America has a coffee addiction! Blue kitchens and blue bathrooms. According to Zillow’s 2017 Paint Color Analysis, which examined more than 32,000 photos from sold homes around the country, homes with blue kitchens sold for $1,809 more compared to similar homes with white kitchens. Pale blue or soft periwinkle blue bathrooms sold for $5,440 more than similar homes without blue bathrooms. Homes with “barn door” mentioned in the description sold 57 days faster than other homes. Trendy features. Zillow measured listings that mentioned certain favorite features, such as “barn doors” or “farmhouse sink.” According to Zillow’s 2016 analysis of more than 2 million homes, homes with “barn door” mentioned in the listing description sold for 13.4% more than expected and 57 days faster than comparable homes without that keyword. How close are you to the city? Urban homes are now worth 35% more than homes in suburban areas. Since 2012, the median home value in urban areas increased 54%, while the median home value in suburban areas went up 38%. If you have any other questions about home value or would like to know what your home is worth in today’s market, just give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!  Contact Us   Written by Ruby Miranda on September 23, 2018. Posted in First Time Home Sellers, For Sale By Owner / FSBO, Market Snapshot, Sell Your Home, Seller TipsTags: First Time Seller, For Sale By Owner, For Sale By Owner / FSBO, Sell Your Home, Seller Tips Trackback from your site. Leave a Reply

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