Monthly Archives: April 2020
How Interest Rates Work
Interest rates are an important component of buying a home. Interest is the cost to take out a loan to purchase a home. It is paid in proportion to the loan and typically expressed as an annual percentage of the loan. Taking out a loan allows you to start paying off a home monthly instead... Read More
Buyers or Sellers Market?
You may be thinking about buying a home and started asking around about what’s happening in the housing market. You want to be sure you aren’t making the wrong decision at the wrong time. And maybe you’ve heard different opinions or terms being tossed around that are a little confusing. Below are a few definitions... Read More
2007/2008 Lessons
I wanted to give you some context on what happened during the 2008 housing and financial crash as I understand it and what we can learn from it. Following the dotcom bubble, values in real estate began to creep up, fueling a rise in homeownership among speculative buyers, investors, and other consumers. A perfect storm of... Read More
Real Estate Bubbles
School sucked. I have never in my life used the quadratic formula since I learned it 10th grade math. It’s too bad school didn’t teach us more… like how to do our taxes, how to create a budget and follow it and oh yeah… how the real estate market worked. Now were adults and its... Read More
The Advantages of Owning Over Renting
“Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate. More money has been made in real estate than in all industrial investments combined. The wise young man or wage earner of today invests his money in real estate.” -Andrew Carnegie The truth is, you’re already paying a mortgage. Its just not your own. Also... Read More
Top 10 Book Recommendations
Top 10 Books Recommendations from Brett Belknap 1. Rich Dad Poor Dad– Robert Kiyosaki’s book on financial literacy was life changing for me. I was in college trying to figure out what I wanted to do and I stumbled across this. I resonated immediately with the differences in mindsets between his poor dad (his actual... Read More
What is Earnest Money?
So you did that home search thang and made and offer and got that bad boy under contract! Congrats! Depending on your state contract, you will be required to turn in a deposit on the home. Earnest money is a negotiated term in the offer that is then deposited in an escrow account after an... Read More
Whats Included in Your Mortgage Payment?
Heres a crash course on whats included in your mortgage payment. The easiest way to remember where your monthly payments are going is the acronym PITI. P– Principle. Principle is the actual amount you own on a home. This is about the only part of the payment you will be happy making. In the beginning,... Read More
7 Warning Signs when Buying
Lets keep it simple. You are thinking of buying a house and you want to know what to look out for, right?! Here are 7 warning signs you should be aware of when looking. Buying a house with one or several of these issues could mean yugeeee financial problems for you. The first thing to... Read More