Archive for the ‘Home Ownership’ Category

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Your Money Monday: Is Owning Cheaper?


29 Apr

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When dealing with money, people often think it’s about the numbers, that you can do the math an instantly and empirically know if you have gained money or lost money. But that’s not quite true. Everything, even numbers, are subject to our perception of them.

Much like the arguments that “it’s cheaper to buy than to rent” right now, but only if you have a 10-20% down payment saved up (which is usually a pretty hefty chunk of money), we are facing the question of whether it is actually cheaper to buy and sell at a loss than to rent.

Your Money Friday: Mortgage Talk


18 Jan

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Talk this week at Your Money about mortgages and putting stricter limits on who can qualify for one and whether or not the standard should remain a 20% down payment. I agree that the housing market became a mess. But I don’t know when we decided that it was the fault of the homeowners instead of the predatory lenders.

I should admit, we bought our first two homes with 0 and 2.5% down respectively. We’ve never been behind on our payments, and we certainly don’t treat our property as if it were disposable. And I don’t think we’re the exception.

Brick Blocks


09 Jan

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Posted in Home Ownership, Science, Technology | 1 Comment »

Growing up, my brother and I had Brick Blocks. They were Legos, but made of a thinner plastic, came in red and white, and had a limited number of shapes. We loved them. We built a million different things, from houses to cruise ships.

Wondering if they still existed, I decided to search for them and came across these Brick Blocks. They’re like the toys I grew up with, except they aren’t toys! You can use them to design the interior of your building, and even build furniture.

Is it wrong that I want to redo my basement with them?

Blog Feature: @AffordAnything


22 Sep

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Posted in blogging, Finances, Home Ownership, Writing | Comments Off

Paula of Afford Anything gave one of my favorite talks at FinCon12, earning her her spot as this week’s Blog Feature.

Since C really wants us to own rental property someday, I find this post on how the costs of renovating one of her rental units spun out of control really valuable. And also how even a fairly experienced landlord can have a hard time figuring out what to price a unit at.

The place looks great and she has a tenant, which in my mind is a win-win scenario, especially if she can increase the rent in one year.

Your Money Friday: All About Real Estate


20 Jul

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It was real estate theme week on YM. We had questions about refinancing- would it make sense  and would it hurt chances of getting a mortgage on another property.

Someone’s dream home went on the market. Another person had the appraisal on the home they are looking to buy come back lower than anyone expected.

And then there were the threads about selling a home- is it worth it to make significant upgrades just to sell, if you do make improvements, which ones have the most bang for the buck, and finally, is it worth it to use a “stager”.

The Rain is Here


01 Feb

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Posted in Home Ownership, Weather | Comments Off

Winter has arrived inSeattle. I am not talking about the snow a couple weeks ago, though that does happen roughly every two years. I’m talking about the rain- the weather we normally associate withSeattlewinter. Up until the January storm, it had been a relatively mild and dry winter.

This week, the rain has hit. And I am kind of glad, despite the fact that one of my dogs doesn’t want to go outside. We had work done in the basement last spring to prevent future flooding. I would really like enough rain to see if it worked.

Fire


21 Nov

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Early Friday morning, a major fire broke out near Reno, NV. At first reports, it was burning 400 acres. By Sunday afternoon, it had burned across a 2,000 acre area containing over 4,000 homes. Only 32 were lost to the flames. And miraculously, I’ve only heard about 1 death, and that caused by a heart attack as a man was being evacuated.

I lived in Reno for 12 years. My thoughts are with those who lost so much, and my thanks goes out to the fire fighters and other personnel who worked to prevent things from being so much worse.

To Do List


19 Nov

Posted in Dogs, Home Ownership, House work, Pets | Comments Off

Today’s list of things to do includes taking Larry to the dog park. Junebug could use a run, too, but not a good idea with the stitches. Then I need to take income verification paperwork to my MIL for her to sign and then go drop that off at her apartment complex. Then it’s home to start the cleaning so that I don’t have 5 million things to do on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving- vacuuming, bathroom clean up, preliminary kitchen clean, start the decluttering process. And maybe finish the day with buying a turkey fryer (oil-less).  What a fun day.

Electrical Work


17 Sep

Posted in Home Ownership | Comments Off

My father is visiting, and he and my husband have been doing all sorts of electrical work around our house. They have rewired the garage to give us actual outlets so we do not have to run extension cords everywhere. They have replaced the awful recessed lighting in the family room with pretty dome lights. They fixed the switch in the kitchen so we do not have to jiggle it to get the light on, and they have added a second light fixture on our stairs so that the whole stairwell has light.

There may even be more to come.

A Working Vacation


03 Sep

Posted in Home Ownership, House work, Relationships, Yard Work | Comments Off

I have been on vacation, but doing fairly well with keeping the daily posts up until today. Sorry about that.

My mom is here, and with her help we have been cleaning the house and doing yard work, lots and lots of yard work. (The fight against the blackberries is never ending.)

She also bought us a new love seat, so the living room has been rearranged.

She goes home this afternoon, so I’ll get a couple days left of the weekend to relax, but its been good having her here. And my house and yard really do look better.

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