Payment history is an important factor both in terms of your credit score and as a deciding factor for lenders and others who check your credit. Lenders may be less likely to lend to you or may charge you a higher rate based on your payment history and in most states, auto insurance rates are determined largely by your credit score. Poor payment history can also affect your ability to get a job because employers usually look at your credit report, rather than your credit score. When they look at consumer reports (background checks) to build a picture of you, credit history has proven to be a good predictor of job success.

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Subprime lenders have yet to learn from their mistakes. According to a consumer advocate group, abuses persist industry wide, despite the recent subprime mortgage meltdown. At a Senate subcommittee hearing on ending mortgage abuse this week, the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) presented its findings on subprime loans included in 10 recent packages of mortgage backed securities. More than three quarters of the subprime loans CRL looked at turned out to be adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). 90 percent of those were hybrid ARMs – otherwise known as “exploding” ARMs.

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More and more dream homes have gone inside — at least for all or part of the construction phase — as curious consumers research and locate the new creative designs, energy-efficient features, often lower costs and environmentally controlled production of prefabricated residences. And, the finished product absolutely demolishes the preconceived notion of a “kit.” Modular, manufactured, structural insulated panels and other types of “prefab” housing are reaching a growing segment of new-home buyers yet they are very different in the way they are built. The built-to-be-towed house — in a custom, preassembled package or enclosed finished unit — has changed dramatically, and so have its occupants. For example, modular home builders have begun to target last-time home buyers: customers who know what they want and are willing to pay outside the “affordable” range.

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Do-it-yourself home improver injuries have jumped in recent years. Injuries result from consumer repair work when homeowners fail to understand the proper use of common tools. Ladders in particular need to be anchored securely and replaced when they appear damaged. There were 198,000 ladder injuries that resulted in emergency-room visits last year, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Old-fashioned wooden ladders eventually weather and may need to be replaced with a newer-generation aluminum or fiberglass one.

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Buying, selling or leasing real estate, for personal or business use, requires knowledge and skills that usually fall outside mainstream education and the average work experience. Sharpen your communication skills and you’ll be less vulnerable to salesmanship and to those who do not have your best interests at heart. If you want to investigate your real estate choices and unearth potential pitfalls before you sign on the dotted, how well have you equipped yourself to gather relevant and essential information? Improving your communication powers may be easier than you think. The main goal is to move from unconscious to conscious or strategic communication where results matter every time.

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Touch-up exteriors. Repainting the trim and front door of your house can significantly boost its curb appeal, Devers said. This kind of retouching work is easy on the budget and can be done in just a couple of hours. Replace your floors. The widespread availability of affordable “floating floors” (flooring options that can be installed on top of existing boards or linoleum) makes updating the floors in your rec room or pantry a cinch. “You’ll probably save a minimum $500 to $600 dollars by doing it yourself,” Devers said. click here for other suggestions

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When real estate changes hands, a special tax comes into play. Some people call it the real estate conveyance tax. Others call it the real estate transfer tax. if you itemize deductions on your tax return (instead of claiming a lump sum standard deduction amount), you can’t deduct the real estate transfer tax, as you would for state income taxes and Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) taxes. So if you’ve been involved in the sale of real estate this year and wind up paying the real estate transfer tax as a result (the seller usually pays the tax), you can’t deduct it when you do your federal income-tax returns early next year.

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A home is yours forever. As long as you can afford the mortgage and taxes, you don’t ever have to move. There’s no landlord to terminate your lease, raise your rent or deny you permission to make changes to the property. Homeownership also forces you to save. If you have a traditional 30-year or 15-year mortgage, a small portion of each monthly payment reduces your indebtedness. And the amount that goes toward amortizing the loan increases over time.

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As MSN reports, tax breaks are frequently cited as motivation for moving from renting to owning, and there are many ways a home can cut your tax bill. But, as is often the case with the U.S. tax code, homeownership tax benefits are not always clear cut. That frequently leads to some bad information floating around. While myths, half-truths and misconceptions may abound, we’ve narrowed it down to five which, if you buy into them, could cost you.

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Using your pension to invest is hot. Like most other popular investing trends, there are pitfalls for the inexperienced when using your pension for real estate investing. Consider UDFI (unrelated debt-financed income) and UDFI Tax, for example. Not everyone has enough cash in their plan to buy a property or business outright. Not everyone wants to sink all of their pension money into a single project, either. UDFI happens when your pension fund borrows money to make up the difference.

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Home inspections have come to be regarded as a reasonable and routine procedure when buying a home. In fact, most real estate purchase contracts specify inspections as a buyer’s option, thereby obligating sellers to accommodate this normal disclosure process. If your father were to refuse a home inspection of his property, he would not only violate that contractual provision but would foster an air of suspicion in the minds of most buyers. Even if he had nothing to hide, his position would appear suspect.

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Although only two miles long by five miles wide, the Tennessee mountain town of Gatlinburg is a thriving tourist community of over 3,500 permanent residents. Nearly surrounding Gatlinburg is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park which last year hosted nine million visitors. Years ago, the park transformed Gatlinburg into a mountain resort destination. Gatlinburg is packed with dozens of up-scale and economy lodgings, fast-food and fine dining and dozens of attractions from miniature golf to theme parks. During all but the coldest of days, families enjoy one of many campgrounds in the area.

Gatlinburg TN is known as the wedding chapel of western Tennessee by hosting tens of thousands of romantic weddings every year. The majesty of the mountainous location makes a perfect backdrop for the wedding ceremony. Couples can get married in a quiet mountain chapel in downtown Gatlinburg, deep within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, or even in the privacy of their own rental cottage.

Gatlinburg has recently become a perfect showroom for buyers and dealers. With 67,000 feet of floor space for 350 booths in the Great Hall and room for 1000 more booths within the same building, Gatlinburg has the facilities to host many major trade shows each year. Thus, businesses can make their convention or trade show a leisurely buying trip for clients with the added attraction of allowing the clients’ family to enjoy the mountains and Gatlinburg attractions.

Once you find a house or condo, before making a purchase offer, ask your buyer’s agent, “How much did the seller pay for this home?” Most buyers don’t ask this vital question. Your buyer’s agent might be shocked. Just explain the reason you need to know is to discover how much negotiation room the seller has so you can buy the property. Your agent will be thrilled to learn you plan to make a purchase offer. For example, if you learn the seller paid $100,000 for the property many years ago, and the comparable home sales prices in the vicinity indicate it is worth $300,000 today, that seller has lots of negotiation room.

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According to CNN Money an increasing number of adults – 11 million in all, according to recent estimates – are taking care of an older person in their home. And that number will likely rise sharply over the next few decades as the population ages. Certainly the emotional and financial advantages of opening your home to a parent can be great. You won’t have to stress about whether they are taking proper care of themselves – you’ll be able to see for yourself and help as needed. And if your mom or dad becomes frail or chronically ill, neither one of you will have to pay the $30,000 or so a year that the average assisted-living facility costs.

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After beating the broad market for seven years, REITs got clobbered in the first two months of 2007. Investors, fearful that problems in the residential mortgage industry would spill over to commercial real estate, sold off the industry group by 15%. That put REITs in correction territory. It’s easy now to buy REITs without digging through each company’s financial statements and driving around to visit their properties. There are several REIT index mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that buy baskets of REITs. That’s a great deal because it reduces your risk of picking the wrong REIT and it also diversifies you geographically, giving you exposure to commercial property across the nation.

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search for : REIT, REIT index mutual fund, exchange-traded fund, ETF

The temptation to buy a house can be strong, especially if you’ve been renting for a while, have gotten married or are ready to start a family. To help you estimate your own cost of home ownership and come up with a realistic housing budget, I offer my experience as an example. Below, I itemize the expenses Alex and I have paid over the past four years, complete with dollar amounts. Your own costs will vary depending on the size, condition and location of the house, but this should help you anticipate what you’re getting into. Homeownership comes with a bevy of benefits, but you’ll want to make sure it’s the right move for you at this point in your life before making that long-term commitment.

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As women play ever-larger roles in family real estate decisions, developers from Florida to Florence are seriously rethinking the luxury second-home market. For women buying into this market, it takes more than a celebrity-designed golf course and a gourmet kitchen to entice them to invest in an expensive second home, experts say. It’s not the structure of the house as much as the transformation from house to home that interests women, when there are people sitting in front of a fireplace or lying on the floor playing a board game.

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In September 2006, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report on credit card fees. The report was requested by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and decried fees charged by credit card companies and the opaque legal disclosures that enable their billing practices. 2007: In May, Levin and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., introduced in the Senate a bill called the Stop Unfair Practices in Credit Cards Act, which would amend the Truth in Lending Act. The bill would limit some of credit industry’s most egregious practices such as the application of penalty interest and charging debtors for paying their bills over the phone or Internet.

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Demand for luxury log homes is rising, as busy executives and retiring baby boomers seek the peace and tranquility of “the great outdoors”. Since 1995, sales of log homes in all price ranges have increased 46 percent with luxury log homes accounting for 7% of the custom-home market. Today, these custom homes are priced from $500,000.00 to well over a million dollars. In addition to celebrities, the homes are gaining in popularity with outdoor enthusiasts and environmentally conscientious clients. Internationally, Canada and Spain have both reported significant growth in the luxury log home market.

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By spending $500 to $3,000 on plants and materials and a few hours of time, you can achieve a well-landscaped look without shelling out for professional help. Besides the personal enjoyment you’ll get from a prettier yard, landscaping adds more value than almost any other home renovation. A recent Michigan State University study found that depending on where the house is located, high-quality landscaping adds 5 percent to 11 percent to its price. If you have no immediate plans to move, all the better: Landscaping is the one home improvement that actually appreciates over time.

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Summer is the busiest time of year for professional movers, according to the American Moving and Storage Association. It’s an arduous process, but these tips will make your transition much smoother. If you’re planning to use a moving company, call now. As busy as they are, they usually need plenty of notice — often at least six weeks or much more if you’re moving a long distance.

Be sure to build in some overlap between the closing/possession date of your new home and the last day of the lease on your rental (or closing date of your current home). Moving always takes much longer than you think. If you want to make any changes to your new home — for instance, paint some walls, put in new carpeting or refinish wood floors — plan enough time to do it BEFORE you move in so your furniture and belongings are not in the way.

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As you find yourself heavily immersed in the house-hunting mode, you may encounter a situation in which you’re torn between two houses. Perhaps you and your spouse each have a favorite, or perhaps you both like two houses equally – or think you do. Making a final decision and determining which house to make an offer on shouldn’t be taken lightly. The decision should be made rationally and not guided by emotion. Of course, you may not have the luxury of taking your time on deciding which house you’d like to pursue. You may be in a market in which homes in your price range get snatched up as quickly as they go on the market, perhaps even attracting multiple offers.

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The outlook for home prices this year – already expected to post the first drop on record – got worse Wednesday as an industry group cut its forecasts for sales and prices for 2007. The National Association of Realtors said it now sees the median price of existing homes sold falling 1.3 percent this year. That’s almost twice the 0.7 percent drop forecast just two months ago, and is worse than the 1.0 percent drop in prices it estimated in May. New home prices are now expected to sink 2.3 percent, according to the group’s report, much worse than its previous forecast of essentially flat prices for the year. If home prices fall as is now expected, it will be the first time that’s occurred in the nearly 40 years the group has tracked home sales.

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search for : home prices, National Association of Realtors

Many a young grad makes the mistake of buying a house and digging into a community only to discover that first job fresh out of college doesn’t suit their ideals — and that a much better one awaits them in another town. Suddenly, that new house morphs from an American dream to an agonizing albatross — especially if the resale market is soft, as it is now, and you have to move in a hurry. Sales data consistently show that first-time buyers are more transient than the rest of the home-buying population and generally move within three years after buying.

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These days, elaborate patios, outdated or high-maintenance landscaping and invasive plants and trees can kill buyer interest in a home almost as quickly as an outdated kitchen or orange shag carpeting, according to landscaping experts and real-estate agents. “Landscaping often makes the difference between a prospective buyer getting out of the car for a closer look at the house and simply driving on by.

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Two new online mapping features offer literal spins on the way we get from one location to another and how we learn more about where we are going. The Web-based applications can give consumers a better look at where they are and they can serve as marketing tools for professionals looking to send their business in the right direction. During Silicon Valley’s Where 2.0 location aware technology conference in San Jose this week, virtual tours hit the street as Google rotated the bird’s eye view of satellite imagery 90 degrees and swooped in to get a down-to-earth look at the neighborhood, much as Google Earth has been looking at select locations around the globe for years now.

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search for : online mapping, satellite imagery, Google Earth

Home staging can be simple and inexpensive, involving small projects like repainting rooms or adding fresh flowers and plants. But, sellers who really want to impress might drop the big bucks and rent high quality furniture, or even remodel. You might not think the fancy tissue box or those fresh flowers on the kitchen counter make a difference, but they do. In fact, according to stagedhomes.com, most home staging efforts have a return on investment somewhere between 400-700%. For example, simply cleaning and de-cluttering your house has a value nearly seven times the cost. So if you spend $400 getting rid of junk, it can raise your home value by an estimated $2,800.

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A popular tax-deferral trick for real-estate investors is facing scrutiny as key middlemen in the strategy run into financial trouble. The problems are starting to leave investors with significant losses, and raising the possibility of increased oversight of a lightly regulated corner of the real-estate investment world. In at least one instance, a firm that helps investors defer taxes this way is facing allegations of fraud. The strategy, known as a 1031 exchange, lets investors who sell investment properties defer capital-gains taxes if they invest the proceeds in “like kind” property within 180 days. To qualify for the benefit, the seller can’t touch the money from the sale. Instead, the funds must go into an account until they are used for the purchase of a new property.

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search for : 1031 exchange, capital-gains taxes