You’re Making Your Landlord Rich

It’s expensive to rent–really expensive. More than you think.

With spring coming and a number of staffers at the Movoto Headquarters soliciting for help schlepping cardboard boxes and floppy futons into new apartments and homes, we started thinking about what it would cost to do away with paper-thin walls and inattentive landlords.

What we found was in 8 of California’s 11 most prominent metro areas, renters on average spend $480 more per month for their units than homeowners in similar homes.

Advantages of Newer Homes

Who doesn’t like something new? New things look good and come with fewer worries. You don’t have to worry about the treatment they got from previous owners, because you’re the first. This goes for new homes, too. Buying a newer home, there’s not as much to assess, it seems. That’s the main advantage. You don’t…

The Psychology of First Impressions When Selling Your Home

  How to make your house more appealing before a buyer has even walked through your front door.   Psychologists say that we make up our minds about a person within the first fifteen seconds of meeting them. And the same is true when viewing a house. It’s likely a prospective buyer will have made…

Tips for Building a Home

Many real estate developers purchase derelict houses for an unbelievably low price, knock it down, rebuild it and either flip or rent it. Although this can be incredibly profitable for some people, others may unearth problems during the building process which cause them to make a loss on their development project. If you’re considering building…

Advantages of Older Homes

Are there any advantages to buying an older home like this one in Boston from 1900? An old house could be rundown, it could need repairs and it could have unforeseen problems. But there’s a reason why it’s made it more than 100 years. It’s well-made with expert craftsmanship. And it’s got old-world charm. Fireplaces to…

Divorce and Real Estate: Custody of the House

No happy couple thinks about the possibility of divorce, not when you are registering for china, and certainly not when you are signing off on a 30-year mortgage. However, life happens, and sometimes couples do not wait until death to depart from one another. Children’s time can be shared, but a house cannot go to…

Avoiding Residential Building Contractor Scams

For some homeowners, DIY is actually more favourable to them than hiring a contractor to carry out the work. Aside from the financial savings related to DIY, some fraudulent tradesmen have really given contractors a bad name. With television shows constantly airing and unearthing rogue traders and neighbours filling your ears with tales of their…

Reverse Mortgages

Maybe you’ve been seeing commercials on late-night TV lately asking “Is a reverse mortgage right for you?” and then offering vague ways to go and get one. What are they talking about anyway? They’re talking about borrowing against the equity on your home to get a lump sum cash payment, a line of credit, or…

Moving With Children: Good Luck With That

  Unless you are an unflappable Type-A personality who has everything figured out or a totally laid back dude who worries about nothing, moving is a stressful experience. Toss a couple of squirmy, high energy youngsters who think they know everything into the mix, and you might be in some trouble. This is what nervous…

Top 11 U.S. Cities for Raising a Family

Top-10 lists for the most the family-friendly cities in America are a pretty regular occurrence. Forbes seems to do one every year. MSN Real Estate’s got one. Kiplinger and Parenting have them. Usually the criteria range from crime to quality of schools. Other things to consider might be what kind of environment, overall, do you want…