Real Estate and Housing

How to Build Your Own Amortization Schedule

Looking for a dull, but financially eye-opening home project? Great! Today, we're going to build an amortization schedule. All the tools you need are: 1) an electronic spreadsheet with PMT (payment calculation), addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication capabilities (I use Excel) and 2) this guide.

Let me go ahead and answer the questions you may have after reading this guide and completing your project:

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Prefab Fab - This ain't yer grandma's double-wide

Are prefabbed homes the wave of the future? Judging from some of the magazines that I receive (Sunset, Metropolitan Home), it sure looks like things are heading in that direction. I stumbled across an ad for Modern Cabana, a company that makes an environmentally smart answer to that toolshed that your Uncle Jim used to use as his home office because Aunt Arlene wouldn't let him have the garage. Seeing this stylish little structure got me thinking about all the prefab designs that I've been leafing through over the past couple of years.

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20 Tips for Getting Your Security Deposit Back

The Consumerist recently phoned in a performance with their advice to someone who was looking for help in dealing with a landlord. The landlord was inventing cleaning charges and keeping more of the writer's security deposit than necessary.

We've all been there before, I'm sure. And most of us tend to throw up our hands and let landlord have the damn money, because the amount seems like it just isn't worth fighting over.

From The Consumerist:

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Why you can't trust a real estate agent.

Surely a real estate agent would want to get you the very best price for your home. After all, they earn commission. The more they sell it for, the more they make, right? Well, the popular book Freakonomics , which I'm reading and devouring right now, proves this is not the case.

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How to Avoid Foreclosure

What would you do if you were about to lose your home? What would you be willing to do to keep it? Is it even possible to keep it once you've missed a few payments?

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More Bang for Your Buck: Paint Me Frugal

Paul's post about DIY got me to thinking about all of the times that I wasted money on trying to improve my home. There have been many of these times, more than I care to share. Also, the government is probably listening, so I don't want to go into too much depth when it comes to my remodeling mishaps. So, let's forego the Pergo and crown molding disasters and talk about paint.

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Must watch video for new real estate investors

Casey Serin is a 24 year-old real estate investor who is $2.2 million in debt. Last year, Serin bought eight houses in four states and now he can’t afford the mortgage payments for any of them.

The video below shows Serin candidly discussing all his mistakes with a college real estate class. You know how all those “get rich buying property” infomercials never seem to quite give you the details?

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