During the boom times for real estate in this decade people were buying homes with $0 down, interest only loans, and jumping into home purchases with friends, family, and new significant others.  Mortgage options like subprime mortgages, Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs),  Reverse Mortgages, FHA mortgages proliferated during this period as they were extremely popular amongst [...]

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I don’t know if I’ve ever crunched the numbers hard on the first place we’d ever bought.  The first place we ever bought in 2002 was a 570 sq foot, one bedroom condo.  We paid $150k and sold it in 2005 for $250k.  The closing costs were minimal at the time, $2k I think.  We [...]

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Right now with the economy the way it is, the housing market the way it is, and jobs scare, it seems like more and more people are becoming landlords; and not by choice.  But is it the right choice?
I’ve got more than a couple of friends having kids and suddenly needing to move out of [...]

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Okay I’ve discussed that we need to stop blaming subprime mortgages.  That we need to stop pointing a finger at all the “irresponsible” people and stop BLAMING banks for giving them loans.  Well I’m going to share what I really think and what the hell is pissing me off.
People who walk away.  People who qualified [...]

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So Meg from World of Wealth last week wrote about RE being a great investment.  Personally I don’t think so.  And there are many reasons why I feel the way I do.
Let’s start with fact 1, your primary residence is not an investment. You need a place to live, thus it’s not about generating you [...]

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My mom was talking about how hard it is to part with homes.  She is worried about the housing market, and yet is still looking at buying a 4th home with a mortgage.  A friend of mine is attached to their home because they lost money on it probably.  Thus they were talking about trying [...]

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I guess I’m in a trend where I’m talking about real estate, this week I’m going to discuss costs.  There are a lot of costs that crop up when you are buying and selling a home.  Unexpected costs.
When you are buying a home, you know pretty much what you are going to pay in closing [...]

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Since I’m running off for the weekend this is starting off a round of guest posts and preplanned posts. To start this is a post by a new blog I’ve found call The Passive Dad. It’s written by Scott and details life in CA. I enjoyed reading his blog so go check it out. Onto [...]

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Apparently a family in Georgia got a free house in 2005 from Extreme Makeover, and now they are going into foreclosure here.  So what happened?
Well 2 years after Extreme Makeover rebuilt the new home for the Harpers and paid off their exisiting mortgage, the Harpers took out a $450k mortgage only 15 months ago!  And somehow in 15 months are [...]

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So on the 4th of July we were hanging out with friends who own a condo in the city.  They have a 2 bd/1ba condo about 700 sq ft.  This place has a premium location, and was EXPENSIVE.  They are 33 and this was their first real estate purchase.  Thus they only considered the location [...]

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