Real Estate Archives - Page 3 of 7 - Making Sense Of Cents

A Complete Guide To Renting A Room For Extra Money

April 22, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 66 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

In one week, my sister will be moving back in with us.

She's joining us in Colorado so that she can do a little more traveling while having a safe place to store her stuff. She won't be with us full-time, as she mainly plans on using our home as a home base so that she can travel more. However, she will be with us some of the time and she will be paying rent for when she is actually with us.

I'm excited to have her move back in. We've missed her, it will be nice to have our dog sitter back (I'm not going to lie, this will be amazing), and the little extra money will be nice.

While renting a room in your house most likely will not make you rich, it may earn you a good amount of side income. I know of a few people who rent out many rooms in their home and have been able to pay off their home completely due to this. [Read more…]

How Your Credit Score Impacts Your Home Buying Process

April 9, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 31 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Your credit score is so very important. Like I said in the post How Your Credit Score Affects Your Life + Credit Sesame Review, your credit score has the ability to impact all areas on your life whether you want it to or not.

Some are completely against credit scores and think they can just do without trying to improve their score, but I don't think that's the correct way to go.

Your credit score can impact all areas of your life, such as obtaining a job, waving additional deposits when signing up for new bills (such as utilities), renting a home, and probably most important of all – obtaining a mortgage and buying a home.

Even though it can make such a large impact on your life, your credit score can be quite easy to improve for the better, so why not just do it?

So, how important is a credit score to buy a house?

Answer: It is very important!

The needed credit score to buy a house can vary a little, but the higher your credit score the better. When you are in the 620 to 720 range, you may come across some problems as stated later in this post.

Check your credit score with Credit Sesame for free!

Below are different ways your credit score can impact your home buying process.

[Read more…]

Pros and Cons of Paying Off Your Mortgage Early

March 16, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 63 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Currently, one of our main goals is to save for a down payment for our next house. Due to this, we have been wondering about how much exactly we should save.

With our first house we didn't put down 20% and had to pay PMI (big mistake), so we will definitely put down at least 20% on our next house.

Also, we are self-employed and I have heard that most self-employed people have to put around 25% to 30% down (and sometimes even 35%!) because banks want to see more upfront from small business owners.

Now, that's a lot of money!

This has got us thinking. While we are aiming for 30% or more, at what point should we stop saving for our down payment and ramp up our retirement savings instead? Yes, we are still saving for retirement, but should we be saving more?

In the personal finance world, the decision seems to be split. Some are all about paying off a mortgage quickly, whereas others don't think that's a good idea. There is no right or wrong answer, which makes the decision a little more difficult. [Read more…]

Should You Rent Or Buy? – Why I’m Excited To Rent

February 25, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 92 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

We are currently in the process of settling into our new home in Fruita, Colorado. This move came quickly and we are enjoying our new home so far.

Ever since I announced that we are renting our current home, I have received many questions. Some for some reason have given me flack for deciding to rent, whereas others understand why we made this decision.

While we loved owning our last home and there were many positives, owning this time around would be a huge hassle.

I believe there are positives and negatives when trying to decide whether to rent or buy a house, and our reasons for renting this time around clearly outweigh buying.

Below are the many reasons for why I'm excited to rent a home. Hopefully the below will help you decide whether you should rent or buy a house as well if you are stuck in a similar situation. [Read more…]

Our Moving Expenses And Moving Checklist – Colorado Move Update

February 20, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 112 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Today, I'm going to talk about our move to Colorado. It kind of popped up out of nowhere but now we are right in the middle of it all. I can't believe how quickly everything is moving along and I am extremely excited.

Out of all of the moves we've done, this one is definitely the largest. We've moved a few times now, but they have all been fairly cheap and short distance moves.

However, after collecting, hoarding, and buying things over the last 5 years, we have many more items to move this time around. Even if we were just moving across town it would be difficult with all of our stuff.

Moving to Colorado will be our longest move as well as our most expensive. I've heard of people spending over $10,000 moving, and that is something we didn't want to come anywhere close to.

Below are some updates for our move to Colorado, including our moving expenses and what's left on our moving checklist.

[Read more…]

Should We Keep Our House Or Sell It?

February 18, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 84 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Over the past few weeks, we have been going back and forth about what we want to do with the home we currently own in Missouri.

I realize I say this all the time about everything in my life, but I am an extremely indecisive person.

This decision has been a difficult one so far, and we are still leaning either way depending on the day.

There are many reasons for why we are undecided about what to do next as well. So, what should I do? Should I rent or sell my house?

Below are some of the reasons for why we keep going back and forth about whether we should rent or sell our house:

We love our house again.

We've been fixing it up and have been slowly falling back in love with it. I know, this isn't a good enough of a reason to keep a house and it seems like we are just coming up with excuses to keep it. [Read more…]

We’re Moving To Fruita, Colorado! And My Moving Bucket List

February 9, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 128 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

We are moving to Fruita, Colorado! Fruita is a small town near the town of Grand Junction (which is small as well), on the western side of Colorado.

Even though we came across many Craigslist scams, we found one house that we absolutely loved. We loved the location, the house was nice (the picture in this post is of the house we are renting), and it was below our budget.

We had everything pretty much riding on this one house though. We didn't find anything else in the area that we liked and rentals seemed to go very fast in this small county.

We were nervous, but submitted an application and were accepted just a few days later.

The rental house is $1,400 per month, which is more than what we pay for the house we currently own. However, I'm still happy with this amount as our budget was $2,000 per month, which was an amount that I didn't want to really reach.

Some of you may be wondering why we chose Fruita of all places in Colorado. It wasn't even on our radar until recently, so I've never talked about this small town on my blog until today. [Read more…]

We love our house again.

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