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If you own a home in Texas or one of the eight other states Ownwell covers, sign up before your county’s appeal deadline. It costs nothing unless your bill drops, the Texas fee is 25% against a typical 40% to 50%, and its edge is widest on homes under $250,000.
Lenders divide your total monthly debt payments by your gross monthly income to decide whether you can handle a mortgage. Approval gets difficult above roughly 43% DTI, and the best rates go to borrowers below 36%. If you plan to buy within two years, pay down debt now to improve your ratio.
The median home price in early 1984 was around $65,000 according to an analysis by Don’t Quit Your Day Job. Today it sits around $424,000. Yes, the dollar has shriveled in value since the early ‘80s due to inflation. But…
Actually living off the grid is rare, but millions of American homeowners can truly call themselves homesteaders. That’s because the Federal Government – and most state governments too – extend special legal protections to homeowners’ primary residences. Generally known as…
Calculating your property taxes is complicated. Even if you pay property taxes to just one tax authority, like your city or county government, that authority uses a complex formula to determine how much you should pay. And there’s a good…
For American homeowners, real estate taxes are an immutable fact of life. Virtually every homeowner pays real estate tax — property tax, in common parlance — to at least one jurisdiction: Notice that these are mainly local or regional units…
The age-old debate over the relative merits of renting or buying a home rages on. It’s doubtful that a definitive settlement is on the horizon. There are simply too many variables at play and too many unique factors affecting individual…
For most homeowners, the place they call home is the single most valuable asset they own. That means the decision to buy a house is among the most consequential financial decisions they’ll ever make. The relatively high cost of real…
“I want to buy a rental property, but the numbers don’t work in the city where I live.” It’s a common conundrum for would-be rental investors. Affordability and returns on rentals in metropolitan coastal cities tend to be poor, yet…
Rental property ownership is a potentially lucrative prospect. Its possible financial benefits include — but are not limited to — generous tax benefits, hedging against inflation risk, and diversification away from market-traded equities whose price movements tend to be closely…
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