real estate
Realtors Profit Even When Home Buyers do All the Work
Remember when investors almost completely relied on brokers? Remember when there were no mutual funds or low cost ETFs? Remember when employees relied on pension funds alone for retirement? Remember when a dealership was really the only place you would go to look for cars?
Thanks to the internet and innovative financial products, consumers no longer [...]
What is the First Time Home Buyers Tax Credit?
Congress has been blamed for pushing homeownership so much so that in part, they helped our subprime crisis evolve. After all, it’s easy for them to turn a regulatory eye when their constituents are happy and in nice homes. Having said that, in a desperate move to try to get people to buy homes again [...]
When Will the Market Improve?
We are rounding out the end of 2008, which will be known as having one of the worst economic times in the history of money. There are few schools of thought as to know what to do in times. Some people sell off all their shares (as seen in the market lately), while others see [...]
Alternative Home Equity Loans—Unregulated, Costly, and Dangerous
Credit seems to be easing a little, which means maybe the Government’s move to purchase shares of banks is working. I don’t think credit will ever be as assessable as it was just a couple years ago, which has meant opportunities for those with extra cash. Not only can you invest directly in people through [...]
Purchase Real Estate Within Your Self-Directed IRA
The increased volatility in the stock market recently has probably got you thinking where you should park your money. One interesting investment option that is overlooked by many is using your IRA to purchase real estate. If you think the real estate market has hit its low, you can purchase a rental home now; using [...]
MYM Series: Wall Street Bailout Explanation 2 of 4
Understanding the Crisis: Timeline of Failure & Who’s at Fault?
How did we ever get to the point of needing $700 billion dollars from the Federal Government? Were the regulators asleep at the switch or were they simply out smarted by the markets? Did greed win over principles on Wall Street? These are great questions [...]
MYM Series: Wall Street Bailout Explanation 1 of 4
You’ve heard the news; Wall Street’s biggest financial institutions are in need of a major financial Government backed bailout in order to stay afloat. What does this actually mean? How will it affect me? Why should the taxpayers pay for the Wall Streets errors? What are the pros and cons of such a bailout?
My day [...]
When Is Too Much, Too Much?
We are in the process of looking into buying a house. We found one and have been going over the numbers over and over and determining that our budget would stretch really tight. It would be doable, but our safety net would have to be used for a down payment and we would need to [...]
U.S. Treasury Department Contracts Out Its Own Job
The U.S. Treasury Department has recently hired Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, to assess how vulnerable the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE) of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are to future economic problems, in part by evaluating how much capital the GSEs should have in the future to weather any such similar housing problems. GSEs are [...]
Negotiate Real Estate Commissions
Selling your home can result in realizing extreme amounts of real estate equity, however, commissions paid to your realtor can really eat into your profits. A recent Consumer Reports Magazine reported that 46% of sellers, during a specified time, attempted to negotiate a lower commission and an amazing 71% of these sellers succeed in reducing [...]
Milk Your Money Tools
As the internet doubles in size, power, and reach at such an exponential pace, we are evolving our websites to not only display “content,” “opinions,” “news,” and who knows what else. Now we are pointing our links to pure data. The internet does not sleep, its always on, and it loves to crunch data.
So MilkYourMoney.com [...]
Mortgage Buster: Scam or Savior?
We were recently approached with an interesting question regarding making interest payments. While there are many different ways of manipulating money, the absolute hardest way is to manipulate it to the advantage of the average consumer or homeowner. The house is stacked against us and we are given the pesky task of paying interest on [...]
Renting vs. Buying
It’s the American dream, buy a home and raise a family. For many, buying a home just feels like the right thing to do, but really couldn’t tell you the financial benefits for doing so. In fact, buying for many is simply not worth the cost. There are obvious advantages to owning a home; likewise, [...]
Your Guide to House Hunting
Both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have gotten quite a bit of media attention on their recent bailout, a la Bear Stearns. While the consequences for this hasn’t been felt yet (and I am pretty sure that we as tax payers are going to be integral in footing the bill) the ramifications of them going [...]
Pay Off Your Mortgage By Age 65
Being a recent first time home-buyer, my final mortgage payment is comical to think about. And this is exactly why many people don’t think about actually paying off their mortgages, ever. The Washington Post recently reported that, “more than 55 percent of boomers who have mortgages do not plan to pay their mortgages off until [...]
