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Front Page News
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In a market that has prices on the slide, nothing is more important than doing the right things to get the right price. That's where home staging (also called "home fluffing") is becoming more and more interesting to many sellers. The good news is that...
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While the housing market is cooling, the national obsession with real estate and real estate topics has not. In fact, even the big players like Yahoo and Google are now pushing real estate information. If you go to Yahoo's real estate portal , you can...
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If this is true, there could be a lot of people affected: an article on Reuters reports that a lawsuit has been launched against Countryside Financial Corp., alleging racial bias in how the company writes mortgage loans . The lawsuit accuses Countryside...
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I'm going to finish up my series on environmentally-friendly building practices with an overview of "natural building". Natural building is a term used by Wikipedia to encompass the wide variety of practices in the eco-friendly building movement. I've...
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Here's something new: I stumbled across a site from the UK that specializes in the rental and sales of exclusively eco-friendly homes! Now this is one way to properly showcase a home that's helping to preserve the earth while providing you a comfortable...
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My "Going Green" series has been focusing a lot on what to look for if you are building new. But what about the homeowner who wants to renovate and still save the earth? Well, if your renovation includes a new floor for your room, consider bamboo instead...
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The newest thing in eco-friendly building is -- you guessed it -- certification. An article in the Toronto Star showcases a number of green development projects, from homes to condos, and introduces the LEED certification to the home-buying consumer's...
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Money from Uncle Sam? Yes, indeed! According to the Alliance to Save Energy, you could save $500 on your 2007 taxes with the right renovations to your home . Alliance President Kateri Callahan says, “Homeowners who make certain energy-efficiency home...
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I'm just back from a family driving holiday (next time, we won't take the kids), and it certainly got me to thinking about greener building. I'm amazed at the amount of green space that is lost each year to a sea of houses. Why couldn't our building blend...
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This is the first in a series of blogs in which I'm going to cover some of the most interesting and cost effective innovations in the greening of our homes. I've done some blogs in the past on green building, from renovations that you can make on your...
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How do you win at the mortgage game? You've got to ask the right questions. According to an article on Realty Times, the right questions are open-ended questions, as opposed to closed questions. How do you know you've asked a closed question? Any closed...
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Despite crack downs by law enforcement and more awareness in the market, housing fraud continues to be an attractive crime according to an article on Realty Times. In fact, the crime is up by almost a third in just the last year according to the Mortgage...
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This approach is not quite the Smith Maneuver that I blogged about earlier this week , but does allow you to bank on the equity in your home to get more invested in the stock market. It also lets you deduct the interest of that loan. In effect, you use...
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Here's a way to help out your retirement savings, and make sure that your home mortgage works for you: be your own lender! How the heck can you do that, you might wonder. Well, this approach requires you to have enough in assets in your RRSP so that you...
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In the US, mortgage interest is tax deductible . So, your home is considered a straight-forward investment, and you end up paying capital gains on your property when you sell it. If your property doesn't gain value, you don't pay any tax when you sell...
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