Posts Tagged ‘home ownership’

Your Money Friday: Mortgage Talk


18 Jan

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.

Rent vs Buy


25 Mar

I had a hard time trying to decide what to post about this week. I chose the “Never own a home again” thread because it addresses a question I think a lot of people are considering right now.

Each person should make their own decisions about owning vs. renting. We own. Part of that is peace of mind. Yes, we’ll have taxes and insurance, but having no other housing costs once we retire seems pretty ideal. In addition, we have dogs, which always makes it harder to get the deposit back when you rent, adding to the long term costs.

Flooding


22 Dec

Hydrostatic water pressure is one of my least favorite phrases because if I’m using it, it means my basement has flooded, again. One of the first times it flooded, we thought a pipe had burst because water was geysering up around a pipe. No, just that much water pressure in the ground.

Two years ago the city made improvements to our neighborhood to help with flooding. It appears to have made it worse in our house. Now, we have water coming in from two places, the new one in the finished portion of the basement. Time for a professional opinion.

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