Buying or Selling a Home: Use the Website to Your Advantage

Use the Website to Your Advantage—Drive Past Your Favorite Homes Buyers consistently rave about the efficiency of searching for a home. Users rebel against the time drain of a traditional home search. This entails large amounts of time spent viewing homes that don’t appeal. The online search has revolutionized the home buying process. Another way to maximize the efficiency of the process is to drive past the property on your own. Once your search returns the properties that match your criteria, place the most promising properties in My Portfolio. Then go to My Portfolio and select the properties you want to look at more closely. The next step is to put these properties on your list to drive past. An exterior viewing lets you rule out those whose neighborhood, condition, or street appeal would prevent you from a purchase. After driving by, it is time for a look at the inside of the home with your sales professional. To do this just click on Request a Tour for a home viewing. Driving past a home is an intermediate step that eliminates many properties or communities before they take up valuable viewing time. This leaves you more time to focus on the real contenders.

The Rent vs. Buy Decision

 The decision to rent vs. buy is a very personal one. There are many sound reasons to purchase a home: equity build-up, tax savings, capital gain when you sell, and the enjoyment of ownership. The purchase of a home requires a cash investment and taking on debt. Naturally you must have saved enough cash, be able to make future payments, and also have enough time and resources to maintain your home.

The cash investment is applied toward your down payment, closing costs, and prepaid items. Some of these items are not easily recouped if you should sell the home you buy in the short term. Buyers need to consider how long they will own the property before selling. If you intend to occupy the property for a short period of time, then the financial benefits of owning the property are diluted.

In financially analyzing the rent vs. buy decision, you should compare your current rent, future increases, and the renters insurance that you are now paying to the monthly house payment, future appreciation, maintenance and capital gain when you sell. The house payment normally includes your principal repayment of the mortgage, the interest owed on the mortgage, the property taxes, and property insurance. (This is called your PITI, which stands for principal, interest, taxes and insurance.) With time, your property should appreciate or increase in value.*

The rent you pay a landlord is never recouped and none of the rent is tax deductible. When you buy a home, the yearly property taxes, interest, and some of the closing costs are tax deductible.

To learn more about calculating the advantages of buying vs. renting, go to http://smithssellre.com/page/mortgagecalculator and click on Home Center.

*Property appreciation is dependent on many market factors. It cannot be accurately predicted because it is a future event. Your sales professional can give you past sales prices of properties in a given area but cannot promise you any specific increase in value.