If you recently bought your first home let me congratulate you. This is possibly the very best time to buy real estate that you’ll ever see in your lifetime. You made a smart move. And because you are a smart real estate investor, I know you’ll be interested in taking advantage of the following 3 [...]

Most of us reach a point in our lives when we think we are ready to buy our own home. If you’ve been thinking that yourself lately … pause for a minute and examine your reasons carefully. After all, home ownership is possibly the largest single investment of your lifetime and such a momentous decision [...]

One of the biggest purchases you will make over your lifetime is the purchase of a house.  Some will argue that purchasing a house is an investment.  But, if it’s your primary house that you intend to live in, it’s not an investment.  Sorry, it just isn’t.  If you intend to rent the house out, [...]

Credit card debt, mortgage loan, car payments, tuition…all of these add up to your debt and debt means stress in any economic environment. Like a lot of folks, you probably haven’t defaulted on your debt but it’s hard to keep up on and while there are a lot of plans to pay down cards by [...]

Your primary home is not an investment in the normal sense of the word.  Dictionary.com defines Investment thusly*: “the investing of money or capital in order to gain profitable returns, as interest, income, or appreciation in value.”  Some of you will argue that you buy your house because it will appreciate in value.  But, to [...]

This post on behalf of Emortgage Calculator One of the more important parts of buying a house, is not over spending on the house that you plan on buying.  Despite all the headlines during the recent real estate boom and crash, people are still trying to buy much more house than they can reasonably afford.  [...]

With all the news lately about people “walking away” from their mortgages, increasing bankruptcies, and debt consolidation/repayment schemes, I got to thinking about what the obligations of the buyer are.  And, also, the ways that we as a society have made it easy to sidestep those obligations. Obligations What are our obligations when we buy [...]

A few weeks ago, I asked all of your advice on whether we should refinance our mortgage.  At the time, we had just begun thinking about it and were still working out the numbers.  As you can probably guess from the title of this article, we went ahead and did it. So, here’s why.  Part [...]

Rob Stretch is the founder of VAbenefitblog.com, a new blog that keeps veterans aware of their benefits. Follow us on Twitter also @vabenefitblog. One surefire way to save plenty of money on a mortgage is to take advantage of one of the three government-sponsored mortgage options, whether it’s a VA loan for veterans and active [...]

Ok, folks.  I want your opinions and advice. The situation is this.  My wife and I have been living in our current home for almost 6 years.  While the interest rate on our mortgage isn’t astronomical (6.75%), it is still a few points higher than what we could get now if we refinanced it.  Also, [...]