Selling Your Home This Fall: Take Time to Prep Your Yard
January 23rd, 2010 by adminWith the weather turning cooler and gardens showing their less vibrant side, it is a good idea to prep your yard for prospective buyers so that they look well maintained and easy to take care of.
One of the most important things to take care of in the fall, especially if you live in an area that gets a lot of precipitation is gutter maintenance. Well-functioning gutters that aren’t all clogged with leaves will decrease your chances of a basement flood or gutter damage later in the winter. Make sure that your gutters are clean of any leafy debris and are securely attached to the house. Even if it’s not particularly raining where you live, melting snow later in the year can cause drainage issues.
To minimize damage to your trees and shrubs while supporting their general heath it is a good idea to prune or trim your trees, shrubs, and bushes usually in the late fall after they are finished with their growing season. Each individual type of plant will require a slightly different handling, so make sure you look up the pruning requirements for your specific plants.
In areas that receive a great deal of winter winds or accumulations of snow, you may want to prepare your shrubs for rougher weather. Some delicate shrubs may require a shelter to keep the snow off of it; you can wait until closer to the time that snow is expected to do this, but try not to push the envelope too far and have the first snow hit before you’ve taken care of these plants. Evergreen shrubs may require wrapping to keep them from breaking under the weight of a snowfall; usually these plants are wrapped with a mesh or burlap to keep the branches supported.
Your lawn is a fairly easy area of the yard to winterize; mow the lawn until the growth slows for the cooler season. This will vary from area to area due to climate. Use a weed & feed product on your lawn to control plant pests as well as encourage grass growth in the spring. To encourage better aeration, use a thatching rake to remove the dead grass from your lawn. Keep dropped leaves off the lawn as well to keep it healthy.
If you have a vegetable garden then you should turn the soil and add some compost to it to nurture the soil for the spring. Don’t get stuck thinking that you’re selling your home so you don’t need to do these steps; if your home doesn’t sell you will want your garden ready for you to plant. Also, taking care of your entire yard makes prospective buyers look more favorably on your whole property.
Home Loan Modification Myths Circulating During This Time of Economical Difficulty
January 10th, 2010 by adminEveryone is talking about home loan modification. Even though this has always been a option for homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages, the process of renegotiating the terms of your loan and having it adjusted by the bank or lending institution, is much more commonplace today. Even so, there are still many myths and misconceptions about home loan modification.
Since the President’s new Making Home Affordable (MHA) plan has been introduced, there is now an understandable series of steps lenders must follow before granting home modification loans. There is $75 billion set aside for the Homeowner Stability Initiative that is to be used for loan modifications between March 4, 2009 and December 31, 2012
Lenders participating in this program are paid money to adjust your loan and this incentive makes a modified loan a much better deal than foreclosure or something else. Through this method, the MHA hopes to help 4-5 million homeowners get back on their feet financially and keep their homes.
There is still a lot of false information about the MHA plan. Some people think that participation is mandatory and lenders are being forced into the plan. This is not true, there is a clean set of procedures for modifying loans and the plan does give lenders incentives to work out modifications, but no lender must participate.
The bank has to decide if a modified loan will be more profitable than foreclosing and they will choose the option that gives them the most profit. Foreclosure is a very expensive, lengthy, unprofitable process for lenders. With the recent incentive payments offered by the MHA plan, lenders usually decide that they would rather modify a loan than proceed with foreclosure.
Another common misunderstanding is that the Homeowner Stability Initiative plan will help speculators and house flippers. This is also false. To qualify for a loan modification in the MHA plan, the homeowner must be living in the home to which the mortgage applies. This will be checked. Vacant, condemned, investment properties and second homes are not eligible.
There are a lot of home loan modification myths circulating during this time of economical difficulty. The MHA plan is new and people have yet to learn about it. Learn the facts and understand this loan modification plan.
Learn all you can about home loan modifications and don’t let false information keep you from applying for this new program. You can avoid foreclosure and lower your mortgage payments
The Early Stages of This Loan Modification Plan
December 28th, 2009 by adminWhen the first stages of discussions and talks got underway on Obama’s loan modification program, many people responded with good cheer and a healthy dose of curiosity. Many politicians were uncomfortable in their division of their stance against, and with Obama’s loan modification plan, that would provide incentives for lenders to help homeowners keep or modify their mortgages on their homes. There of course, are stipulations for the handing out and the usage of these loans. This includes a lending company to stimulate the housing economy by loan modifications to a homeowner deemed eligible to receive the loan. Each year the recipeints could receive up to a thousand dollars for up to five years in the maintenance of their mortgage.
Within the early stages of this loan modification plan, many people were already bailing out of their mortgages by the thousands and leaving lenders with a bad taste for helping America’s homeowner at all. On the other side, with money already being given to these large corporate banks, holding companies and investment companies, most American’s were already losing their faith in the companies who handle, negotiate, process and finalize their loans.
This seemed to be a standoff at first with politicians heating up the talk radio shows, firing rounds at the President from their political podiums, and hounding the House and Senate representatives with fervor over the government bailouts. This was not something that suddenly sounded just and fair for the average American, because once again, the Federal government was bailing out the bad guys.
The reports of the housing industry’s downfall, came on the heels of homeowners being served with eviction notices, while still other people were ultimately defaulting on loans that had sky-rocketed to momentous proportions. This grand scheme of Obama’s loan modification program came into the light as a way to use federal money, up to the tune of 9 million dollars to help lenders adjust and modify their client’s home mortgages. How sad to see the Federal government bailing out these same companies that were looking for their own skins to be saved, while still closing down on the necks of the American people they were set upon to make loans to.
This was just one of Obama’s first ventures into helping America get back onto its feet, and it comes hot on the heels of the occupancy of the oval office. With the promise of the American dream held in the hands of the federal government, one wonders just what the loan modification will eventually do for the American homeowner.
Texas Property Taxes – You May Save Money Living in This State
October 23rd, 2009 by adminI don’t know a thing about you, but I am willing to bet that you think your taxes are too high. Let’s face it, we all know that we pay taxes for a reason but sometimes it just feels like we pay too much. After all, we worked hard for our money! Why do we have to give so much of it away? We pay federal income tax, Medicare tax, somebody named FICA takes a huge chunk of our change; we pay state taxes and even local taxes. We even pay property taxes on our land. That is probably the tax you hate most—your property tax. You pay money to your state and city governments on your property. So in a way, you could pay for that property two or three times: once to buy it, once for local property tax purposes and once for state property tax purposes. Of course, in Texas it is different. In Texas, you can actually save money because you only pay Texas property taxes once.
In Texas, you only pay property taxes to your local a local taxing unit. In Texas, you will not have to pay state property tax. This means that the money you pay in Texas property taxes each year funds only your city, county and (if you live within the boundaries of one) school district.
This is partly how taxes were originally supposed to work, and it helps take the sting out of your property taxes when you can see the people who are benefited by them. After all, you live in the same district as the school you are funding. You don’t have to wonder where your Texas property tax money is going. You can see it working within your community. In fact, you get to have a say in how your property tax is spent! In Texas, the county, city, school and the special districts decide how they spend the money that is paid in property taxes. If you are active in your community, you could help make these decisions.
Your property will get looked over by an appraiser and then you are notified of how much Texas property taxes you will owe. This number is not set in stone; you have a right to dispute the report. You can file a dispute or an application for a tax exemption until April 30. Starting on May 15, an appraisal review board starts going through the disputes and applications and makes decisions regarding final tax amount.
In conclusion, living in Texas can save you a considerable amount of money in Texas property taxes because it does not have a state property tax. Not only that, but it is one of the few states in the union that invites its tax payers to be a part of every step of the taxing process. You can help decide how much you will pay in taxes and how your tax money will be spent. No other state in the union has such a citizen-centric tax process.
