Should You Buy A Condominium?

For buyers , condominiums tend to fall into the love them or hate them position. Here's primer on condominiums.

The Pros and Cons of Condominiums

Condominiums can be good or bad depending upon your personal views and they are all about communal living. But the failed experiments of the sixties wherein hippies packed into a structure and shared everything is not what this type of communal living is all about. The modern condominium community is instead all about sharing common spaces as well as rules, rules, and more rules.

When it comes to condominiums, they come in all shapes and forms. Condos can be found in a single high rise building in a downtown area or in an apartment complex type of layout in a planned community. The structure is not the determining point. Instead, the issue is how the properties are owned.

Unlike a stand alone home, the property lines on a condominium are the walls of the structure. This means that you own everything inside the condominium as your individual property. As for everything outside the condominium, these are owned jointly with the people who own the other units. These areas are subject to group rule and they are known as common areas.

A homeowners association is what every condominium has in one form or another. The association has rules set out by the original developer regarding landscaping and so on. Members of the community will immediately become a focal point of aggravation from individual owners and would often wonder why they took the thankless job when they are elected to the board of the association.

The problem with the association and condos in general is the issue of uniformity. If changing the exterior of your condominium is what you want to do, then you must comply with the rules of the association. This means you cannot paint your property a different color, do landscaping and so on. For some people, this isn't a problem, but others are frustrated they can't express themselves.

When you are trying to decide if a condominium is a good option for your next purchase, make sure that you weigh the restrictions of a particular association carefully. If you are an individual and want to show it, then it's likely that a condominium is a very poor choice for you.

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Keep This In Mind When Buying A Home

Buying a home can be a daunting experience. You are left wide open to all sorts of dodgy things being to you by the seller, their estate agent, and your own estate agent, if you have never done it before. However, as with many things in life, a little knowledge goes a long way. If you're buying a home, here are some things you should know.

First thing to consider is that you won't go wrong if you set a budget and stick to it. Work backwards to include agents' fees and other expenses such as surveys after you have worked out what you can afford. The maximum price that you should pay for your house is your budget minus the fees and expenses. You will struggle and get yourself into all sorts of bad debt if you go over and it's hard to get out once you get into debt.

Next, it's important to always have a proper survey done as well. They're expensive, so it can be tempting to skip it or try to do it yourself from a checklist you found in a book, but it will be much more expensive for you if you buy the house only to find something that the survey would have. This is one reason why it isn't a good idea to buy houses at house auctions they will sometimes have drastic structural defects that a survey would have found, but you've just committed to buy the house without one.

Taking your time is actually the last piece of advice I have for you. When you decide to move, you would be tempted to just dive in and see as many houses in a week and then try to buy one of them. The people who find the best houses, though, take a year or even more, looking at only a few good houses each week, until they find one that really grabs them. If you do it this way, not only will you be less stressed, but you'll also be much more likely to be happy with the result.

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Selling More Real Estate Rentals

Selling real estate rentals is quite different from selling houses. You can paint a house, and get a little more because it looks nice. Rental properties, especially larger ones, are different, because they're bought by investors, who look at income more than new paint. By increasing the income, you can increase the value to investors.


Learn about capitalization rates. If the capitalization rate that investors are expecting in your area is 0.08, then it means that they want to get a net return (before the loan payments and taxes) of 8% on the purchase price. So if your three-plex generates $12,000 net income annually, they'll value it around $150,000 ($12,000 divided by .08). If you can raise the net income to $16,000, then the property would be worth $200,000.


Finding More Income From Real Estate Rentals


Raising rents is the obvious way to boost income, if you can justify it. See what similar units are renting for. If your units are $60 below the going rate, then you can raise it and not lose your renters. Increasing the rent $60 for three apartments means $2160 more net income annually. Your property will be worth $27,000 more with a 0.08 cap rate.


There are other ways to raise rents. Your tenants might agree to pay $30 more monthly if you have a carport added. That's $1080 more net income annually, meaning roughly $13,500 more value added to your property. (That's $30 x 3 units x 12 months equals to $1,080 divided by 0.08 cap rate, which gives you $13,500.) If you spent $4,000 on the carport, then it was a good return on investment, right? What more do they want?


Think beyond higher rent. Storage sheds can be rented to tenants or you could put in a coin-operated washer and dryer. With a larger income property, you could install pop machines.


Reduce Expenses Of Real Estate Rentals


Can you have more insulation so you can reduce the heating bills? If you pay $80 a month for lawn care, could one of the tenants do it for less? Can you get cheaper insurance? Any way you can reduce expenses raises net income (unless it scares away tenants). A new $4,000 furnace that saves $800/year on heating costs means you just turned $4,000 into a $10,000 higher sales price.


The appearance and other factors are also important. But increasing the net income is the surest way to increase the value of your property. If you can, make the changes a year or a few months before selling the property. You must also learn to do the math.

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What is the Best Type of Mortgage? Variable Rate Mortgage or Fixed Mortgage?

A lot of people wish to purchase their dream home but are unsure of what is the best mortgage option in the market. In case you are in a similar situation, then merely read further to know more about the variousVancouvermortgage rates categories obtainable in the market. Popular mortgage options may be grouped generally into fixed-rate mortgage and variable rate mortgage. Search the market very well and talk to several banks your earnings, credit score, payment, alternatives and down payment ahead of deciding on your mortgage payment plan.

Fixed rate mortgage is one of the most popular financing ways used by lots of people globally. Under this plan, you are certain of the rate of interest on your credit over the whole period of your loan; unchanged by variable dollars and associated inflation. On the alternate side nonetheless, because the fixed rate is a supposition on the potential interest fees, in most cases banks charge you more to make a buffer protecting against their own loss. In case you are mortgaging your property today at 10% fixed interest rate for a period of thirty years, then be certain that the price is 7%. The extra 3% that you are paying at present is to safeguard the bank's profits in the event that the common interest rates in the market rise to say 12% after five years (in which case you should still pay at 10% fixed interest). Owing to this reason, a fixedVancouvermortgage rates loan should in all probability cost you more compared to a variable rate mortgage.

Variable Rate Mortgage also referred to as Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM), or "Floating" rate mortgage is a type of mortgage with an innate interest-rate hazard. Under ARM, the interest rate on your mortgage varies every month as per the lending bank's mortgage primary rate, which is calculated on variable market directories. Even though this does not alter the actual amount of money you are paying each month, it has an impact on whether that currency covers the interest or in satisfying your loan amount. If the bank's rate becomes higher, more of your payment goes towards paying the interest itself and if the rate lowers, most of it goes towards repaying your principle amount. lowest mortgage rates in Vancouver for a month are in most cases calculated on the first day of the specific month.

ARMs give various selections for you to choose from. If you plan to get a loan for 30 years, then you can go for a 5/1 ARM where the interest fee for the initial period (5 years in this case) stays fixed and for the rest of the period (25 years) the interest rate is altered once every year. Another popular option is 3/1 ARM and you could also look for ARMs with initial period of one year to 10 years. The disparity between the rate of interest of ARM and fixed rate mortgage over the same period reduces as the initial period of the ARM becomes longer. The distinction also becomes less if your mortgage amount is lesser.

With other conditions remaining similar, the initial interest rate for an ARM is more reduced than that for fixedVancouvermortgage rates. This suggests that if you choose an ARM, you qualify for a larger loan at a lesser interest rate. However, bear in mind that after the initial period is completed, the ARM would adjust to prevailing market conditions; in most cases with an increased rate of interest. The loan then shall be viable only in the event that your income rises accordingly or if you can satisfy the remaining loan.