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Pay Off A House ASAP If You Owe Less Than $726,525 And Live In California

If you owe less than $726,525 on your home, use Congress's free refi program. The program itself is totally free and doesn't add any cost to your refi. You'll be shocked when you see how much you can save.

Make one extra mortgage payment each year

Instead of paying a little more each month, make one extra monthly payment each year. One way to do this is to save 1/12 of a payment every month, and then make an extra payment after every 12 months.

Advantages of Buying

OWNING VS. RENTING

Our goals are simple -- to ensure that you're happy with the home you buy and that you get the best deal you can. This describes why owning should be less expensive than renting.

OWNING SHOULD BE LESS EXPENSIVE THAN RENTING

Here's a guideline that may change the way you view your seemingly cheap monthly rent. In order for you to see how expensive a home you could afford to buy while having the same approximate monthly cost as your current rent, simply do the following calculation:

Take your monthly rent, multiply by 200 = purchase price of home

Example: $ 750 x 200 = $150,000

So, in the preceding example, if you were paying rent of $750 per month, you would pay approximately the same amount per month to own a $150,000 home (factoring in tax savings). Now your monthly rent doesn't sound quite so cheap compared to the cost of buying a home, does it?

Even more important than the cost today of buying versus renting, what about the cost in the future? As a renter, your rent is fully exposed to increases in the cost of living, also known as inflation. A reasonable expectation for annual increases in your rent is 4 percent per year.

NO MORE LANDLORDS

A final (and not inconsequential) benefit of owning your own home is that you don't have to subject yourself to the whims of a landlord. When you own your home, the good news is that you're generally in control.

The fundamental problem with some landlords is that they are slow to fix problems and make improvements. The best (and smartest) landlords realize that being responsive and keeping the building ship-shape help attract and keep good tenants and maximize rents and profits. But to some landlords maximizing profits means being stingy with repairs and improvements.

When you own your home, the good news is that you're generally in control -- you can get your stopped-up toilet fixed or your walls painted whenever and however you like. No more hassling with unresponsive, obnoxious landlords. The bad news is that you're responsible for paying for and ensuring completion of the work. Even if you hire someone else to do it, you still must find competent contractors and oversee their work, neither of which is an easy responsibility.

Another risk of renting is that landlords may decide to sell the building and put you out on the street. You should ask your prospective landlords whether they have plans to sell. Some landlords won't give you a truthful answer, but the question is worth asking, if this issue is a concern to you.

Selling Your Home?

REASONS TO SELL

Our goal is to help you make the right decision about whether to sell your house. When you do, we want to make sure that you get the best possible price. People's reasons for wanting to sell their houses are almost as varied as the houses themselves.

People's reasons for wanting to sell their houses are almost as varied as the houses themselves. Here are some of the common, not-so common, and downright bizarre reasons that have prompted sellers we've known over the years to put their houses on the market:

• School district
• Neighborhood
• Better job opportunities elsewhere
• Recent marriage or divorce
• Recent death of spouse
• Additional debt burden due to layoff, medical expenses, disability, or overspending
• Serious house defects that they don't want to fix
• Increased space desires for expanding family
• Diminished space requirements now that kids are grown
• Noisy neighborhood
• Unfriendly neighbors
• Neighborhood shopping
• Climate

SELLING IN A STRONG MARKET

While your personal and financial situation is clearly an important factor in deciding whether and when to sell your house, the strength of your local housing market may also influence your decision.

SELLING DURING A STRONG MARKET

Be happy if you're selling your house during a time of rising or already elevated home prices. If you can afford the transaction costs of selling your current house and buying another home, and if the costs of the new home fit within your budget and financial goals, go for it. Just be careful of two things:

• Don't get greedy and grossly overprice your house. You may end up getting less from the sale than you expected, and the sale is likely to take much longer than it would have if you'd priced the property fairly. If you price your house too high, when you finally drop the price to the right range, you may face lower offers because your house has the stigma of being old on the market.
• Be careful about timing the sale of your current house and the purchase of your next one, if you're staying in your current strong market or moving to another strong market. For example, you probably don't want to sell and then spend months bidding unsuccessfully on other homes. You may get stuck renting for a while and need to make an additional move; such costs can eat up the cash from your recent sale and interfere with your ability to afford your next home.

How to Pay off your House ASAP (It's so simple)

Should you prepay your mortgage?

Should You Pay Off Your Mortgage Early?

Pay a little more each month. You can get all the benefits of an early payoff without the extra costs of a refinance by paying more each month. Divide your monthly principal and interest by 12 and add that amount to your monthly payment for a year.

In other words, you wouldn’t want to pay down a mortgage at 4% APR when you can earn a greater return by investing in stocks and bonds through a brokerage account or bumping up your retirement contributions. Add in the home mortgage interest deduction you can take on your federal taxes and, they say, you would be silly to prepay your mortgage and miss out on those perks.

When it comes to people who see the mortgage prepayment issue in black and white, the question is just about math. After all, why would you prepay a loan at 3% or 4% and lose out on part of a valuable tax deduction when you could invest that money instead and earn considerably more.

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