Category Archives: Real Estate
Can You Negotiate Your Way to an Affordable Home Purchase?
After years of unaffordable everything, we are starting to see a few rays of sunshine for buyers in the housing market. Yes, the prices of groceries are still astronomical, and wages are stagnant, as the few people who still have jobs are afraid to ask for raises or apply to new positions. Many consumer… Read More »
Appealing Your Property Taxes
It is not just your imagination that all your bills have gotten more expensive in the past few years. As lonely as you might have been when you were working remotely during the pandemic, it was the last time you saw your debt balances get lower and your savings account balances grow bigger. For… Read More »
6 Home Features That Give Buyers the Ick
Everyone who has successfully bought a house or condo unit knows that getting emotionally attached to the property that might become your new home before you have closed on the purchase is a recipe for disappointment. Real estate purchase deals can fall apart for a variety of reasons. Buyers or sellers can inexplicably get… Read More »
Are Portable Mortgages a Thing?
Even though Canada is right on the other side of the border, we in the United States tend not to think about it much, but there is a lot to admire about our northern neighbor. For example, Toronto has a vast network of underground walkways where you can stay warm when you don’t feel… Read More »
Cheaply Renovated Properties Are a Trojan Horse
Of all the picturesque animal-related metaphors to emanate from inside the Beltway, “herding cats” is one of them. Anyone who has tried to get two or more children ready for school at the same time knows the feeling, even though here in D.C. we tend to use the metaphor in a workplace context. We… Read More »
The ROAD to Housing Act
The biggest challenge regarding affordable housing is that someone else must bear the cost of the discounts that the landlords offer to tenants and that real estate developers offer to homebuyers, and there are only so many resources to go around. Tax incentives by local governments offset the costs, but only enough for developers… Read More »
Disputes Over Joint Homeownership
Money can cause conflict even between people whose temperaments are compatible under almost any other circumstances. Friendships have ended when the friends started a business venture together, but the business project fell apart before it got off the ground. Spouses who were each other’s strongest supporters when times were tough have turned against each… Read More »
Positive Rent Reporting
Resentment can quickly form between landlords and tenants, but it does not have to be that way. In many rental properties, especially those owned by small-time landlords, there simply isn’t enough money to go around, and each party blames the other. Even when the rent is more than a third of the tenant’s income,… Read More »
Why Do Sellers Back Out of Real Estate Deals?
Trying to sell a real estate property is as stressful as trying to buy one. Only a small percentage of deals that make it to the stage where the buyer makes an offer result in a final sale, with the property changing hands. In most cases, the buyer is the one who backs out… Read More »
Taking a House Off the Market Can Be a Strategic Move
Browsing real estate listings can be fun when you are just daydreaming about buying a house or when you are confident that you will be able to finalize a real estate deal. One of the pieces of information that most real estate listings include is how many days the house has been on the… Read More »
