Considering Buying a Condo?

When searching all over the region for a home, we found buying a condo to be the best way to get a home in a nice area and decent square footage for the money at the time. There can be benefits to condo living. • Community is one. Many people like the thought that there are neighbors close around them that have a general interest in the security of the community. • Outside maintenance is typically taken care of though your homeowners association dues, also referred to as HOA dues. Typically this covers yard maintenance outside of private fenced areas, … Continue reading →

Living Out of a Box

I grew up in the same home pretty much my whole childhood and adolescence. I longed to be able to move to a new environment. I got my wish around 19 when I was getting married. In the past 9 years, I’ve lived in 8 homes, 3 of which were mortgaged. Needless to say, I know a little bit about living out of a box. When time to prepare for a move, my husband and I will collect boxes locally that would otherwise be used for recycle. I begin packing up anything that I know I wont be using from … Continue reading →

RENT: It Can Be a Four Letter Word

If you have ever owned a rental property, you can probably relate to the title. If you recently began renting out property or managing rental properties, you’ll soon begin to understand. While rental properties can be an excellent source of extra income, as well as being an investment tool, they also provide many challenges. As an income property, you can make extra money collecting rents. However, don’t forget there are also expenses. You are not likely to get rich renting out one unit, as the expenses are often nearly as much as the amount you’ll be able to charge. By … Continue reading →

Tiny Houses- An Alternative to “McMansions”

Could a 750 square foot house be the wave of the future? Advocates of the tiny or small house phenomenon think so. In this day of supersized homes, so-called McMansions, many people all across the US are building homes that are just the opposite– tiny houses measuring just 50 to 750 square feet. Jay Shafer, an Iowa designer has been at the forefront of this movement since 1997, when he built a 100 square foot tiny house which he called, “tumbleweed”. But it didn’t stop there, he actually downsized, in 2004, to a house just 40 square feet, calling it … Continue reading →

A Few Tips for Dealing with Inherited Property

You may consider inherited property as an opportunity, the one good thing to come out of a sad situation. Your new piece of real estate may well be a valuable asset, but there are some things you need to keep in mind when dealing with inherited property. If it’s not a large estate and you decide not to hire a lawyer, there are some important considerations to examine. Partners If you have siblings or others that inherited the property equally with you, everyone is likely to have a different idea of what should be done with the property. Even if … Continue reading →

Moving Up

If you followed our money pit condo story, you’ll know we had quite a rough time with home problems. Our condo was fixed and finally completely livable. I suppose we could have just settled down to enjoy it, but we thought it would be fun looking at new construction one Sunday afternoon. We found the home we wanted! It was beautiful with 1700 square feet of living space, a two story vaulted family room, 3 bedrooms and 2 ½ bathrooms. We thought it would be the perfect home to invest in. So a week shy of 2 years in our … Continue reading →

Our Condo Story Part 3… The Conclusion

Part 1 covered our pursuit of our dream of homeownership and Part 2 touched on the horrors of mold. Okay, so listen what happened next… The water damage was along our common wall so we notified our neighbors. They were not having any leak problems. We thought the water must be coming from the roof since there wasn’t any other places it could have come from. We’d had over a month straight of rainy days. With everything that had happened so far, we were not excited about going into the attic. We thought either we’d find a body, drugs or … Continue reading →

Our Condo Story Part 2… The Money Pit

Our first problem with our new home was worked out thanks to our new exterminator friends. Our condo was affectionately referred to as the money pit from this point out. We updated our kitchen and proceeded to work on the bathrooms. So far everything was looking beautiful and new. But there was a problem. When we pulled out the counter where the sink was, there was black mold and rot on the floor! We then had a new floor put down. There was an issue with the caulking though. It wasn’t drying. We switched to baths thinking it didn’t have … Continue reading →

Our Condo Story Part 1… New Home Owners

Like many others, my husband and I desired to be home owners. We were not sure what kind of home we could afford or how we would come up with money for closing costs and the down payment. We were in our young twenties and my husband was the provider for our then family of two. We found a mortgage broker who we trusted and were pre-qualified for a home around $100K. We searched the Portland metropolitan area for something that would be habitable (and believe me, not all homes we saw were!) and in a neighborhood that didn’t require … Continue reading →

Differences Between Buying vs Renting

When you weigh the pros and cons of renting versus owning a home, you will find advantages for buying winning. The first thing is that you need to determine how much of a house you can afford, which would mean taking a good look at your income, savings, and monthly expenses. Then of course, you would need a down payment but with so many excellent programs on the market, you can be sure there is something for you. For savings, often you will discover that the amount of your monthly rent is the same or even less than what you … Continue reading →