Get Ready

8B • Get Ready

www.crossville-chronicle.com • Tuesday, May 19, 2015

GET READY!!

Thinking of selling your home?

Use these helpful tips to get ready to list your home with a Realtor!

Busting first-time homebuyer myths

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(BPT) - When buying a first home, most people are making one of the biggest purchases of their lives. Without home buying experience, it’s hard to separate fact from fiction.

“Buying a first home can be exciting and stressful for most young buyers, especially the financing process,” says Clete Thompson, vice president at imortgage, a division of loanDepot LLC. “There’s a lot of paperwork, many choices, and sometimes budgets don’t stretch very far. Our licensed loan officers specialize in helping firsttime buyers navigate the home finance process, which can be stressful if you’re not working with a seasoned professional.”

To help first-time buyers, the experts at imortgage are uncovering prevalent myths about financing a home purchase: Myth: It takes a 20 percent down payment to buy a home.

Reality: Required down payment amounts vary by type of loan and they are on average much smaller than people think.

Last year, the median down payment for all firsttime buyers was 6 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors.

One reason is that many first-time buyers use FHA loans, which require down payments as low as 3 to 3.5 percent.

VA loans require nothing down for qualified veterans or active military

personnel.

If you want to take out a conventional loan, many lenders do require 20 percent down, but you can lower that percentage with private mortgage insurance.

There are also hundreds of down payment assistance programs that eliminate or reduce down payment requirements for qualified borrowers.

Myth: If you owe a lot of student loan debt, there is no way you can get a mortgage.

Reality: Don’t assume that having a lot of student loan debt automatically disqualifies you from getting a mortgage. The key factor is not necessarily the size of your loan obligation, but the amount of your total monthly debt payments compared to

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your monthly income. This is called DTI. imortgage, for example, has approved thousands of loans to firsttime buyers whose monthly student loan payments were as high as $300, and many more could qualify by increasing their monthly income.

Myth: If your credit score is low, you should not even try to get a mortgage.

Reality: Millions of potential buyers assume they will not be approved for a mortgage even though many could qualify, according to a national survey commissioned by loanDepot LLC. Today, median FICO scores for mortgages to buy a home are 683 for FHA loans and 754 for conventional loans. But hundreds of thousands of buyers with scores lower than those are getting mortgages if they have good income and low levels of debt.

Myth: Buying a home isn’t a good investment.

Reality: Real estate, like other assets, rises and falls based on supply and demand. Over the past two years, home values in most markets have been rising. While all real estate is local, if you bought a home in March 2012, by August 2014 the national median home price as measured by Case-Shiller had risen 29.6 percent.

Myth: The mortgageinterest tax deduction is

going away.

Reality: Though the deduction has its critics, most observers believe it is unlikely that Congress will eliminate the mortgage interest deduction any time soon. Many states also allow homeowners to write off the interest they pay on their mortgages from their state income taxes. Check with your accountant or CPA on if you can qualify for this type of tax deduction.

Myth: I’m about to get married and the wedding is so expensive I won’t be able to buy a home.

Reality: According to TheKnot, the average wedding has 138 guests who typically give a gift valued at $100 each. That’s $13,800 in spatulas, baking pans and other things.

If every guest contributed to a Down Payment Fund, you could have enough saved for a down payment on a $276,000 home in San Diego.

“These are just a few of the myths about home buying that surface frequently in our conversations with first-time buyers,” says Thompson.

“I always advise potential buyers, especially first-time buyers, to get in touch with one of our local imortgage loan officers if they’re interested in straight answers to specific questions about financing a home. We are here to help.”

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Get Ready • 9B

www.crossville-chronicle.com • Tuesday, May 19, 2015

GET READY!!

HOME FOR SALE

Renovations and improvements are well worth the investment when you want to sell your home!

Factors to consider before selling your home Selling a home is no small undertaking. It often pays to be patient when putting a property up for sale, but waiting for an acceptable offer can be stressful, especially for those homeowners who have already found their next homes.

Because so much tends to be riding on the decision of whether or not to sell a home, homeowners would be wise to consider the following factors before putting that “For Sale” sign in their front yards.

• Motivation: Many homeowners sell their homes because their families are growing and they have outgrown their current residences. Others may recognize a seller’s real estate market and want to strike while the iron is hot, while still others might be moving for a new job. The factors that motivate homeowners to sell their homes vary with each individual case, but prospective sellers should keep in mind that moving can be expensive, and finding a new home may not be so easy, nor is the grass necessarily greener on the other side. When deciding if now is the best time to sell your home, make sure you will be selling for the right reason. That can make the often trying process of sell-

Research recently sold homes in your neighborhood to get an idea of how much you can expect to get if you sold your home in the current market. ing a home a lot easier to handle.

• Market: The local real estate market is another factor to consider when deciding whether or not to sell your home. A home is a sig-

nificant investment, and you want to earn as substantial a return on that investment as possible. Selling when the market is struggling will make your investment less valuable. Research recently

sold homes in your neighborhood to get an idea of how much you can expect to get if you sold your home in the current market. It might be worth it to sell now, or it might pay off to be patient and wait until the market rebounds.

• Kids: Selling your home will impact your family just like it will impact your bottom line. Unless you plan to move down the street or to another home in your community, selling may mean you and your family no longer see your friends and neighbors. That can be a difficult adjustment, especially for school-aged kids who will have to adjust to a new school. The potentially negative impact that selling can have on your children may not be worth the financial benefits of selling, so the decision of whether or not to sell should not be taken lightly by homeowners who also happen to be parents.

• Quality of life: It can be difficult to turn down an opportunity to make a lot of money on your real estate investment. But if you plan to sell and move further away from your office and your friends and family, the financial windfall you earn when selling your home may not be worth the sacrifices you have to make

Do you know what’s below?

(BPT) - With the snow melted and the ground thawed, many eager homeowners and landscape professionals across the country will roll up their sleeves and reach for their garden shovels to start projects that require digging this spring.

During the transition into “digging season,” Common Ground Alliance (CGA), the association dedicated to protecting underground utilities and the people who dig near them, reminds homeowners and professional diggers that calling 811 is the first step toward protecting you and your community from the risk of unintentionally damaging an underground line.

Every digging project, no matter how large or small, warrants a free call to 811. Installing a mailbox or fence, building a deck and landscaping are all examples of digging projects that should only begin a few days after making a call to 811. Calling this number connects you to your local one-call utility notification center.

Nearly half of American homeowners say they do not plan to make a free call to 811 before digging, according to data collected

by CGA in late February.

Extrapolated to the full population of U.S. homeown-

ers, approximately 38.6 million people will dig this year without first calling 811.

A utility line is damaged every six minutes in America because someone decided to dig without making a call to 811 to learn the approximate location of buried utilities in their area.

Unintentionally striking one of these lines can result in inconvenient outages for entire neighborhoods, harm to yourself or your neighbors and repair costs.

As a result, CGA offers the following tips to make sure you complete your project safely and without any utility service interruptions, so you don’t become a statistic.

Here’s how the 811 process works: 1. One free, simple phone call to 811 makes it easy for your local one-call center to notify all appropriate utility companies of your intent to dig. Call a few days prior to digging to ensure enough time for the approximate location of utility lines to be marked with flags or paint.

2. When you call 811, a representative from your local one-call center will ask for the location and description of your digging project.

3. Your local one-call center will notify affected utility companies, which

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will then send professional locators to the proposed dig site to mark the approximate location of your lines.

4. Only once all lines have been accurately marked, roll up those sleeves and carefully dig around the marked areas.

There are nearly 20 million miles of underground utility lines in the United States that your family depends on for everyday needs including electric, gas, water and sewer,

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cable TV, high-speed Internet and landline telephone, which equals more than a football field’s length of utilities for every person in the United States. With that much critical infrastructure underground, it’s important to know what’s below and call 811 before digging.

To find out more information about 811 or the onecall utility notification center in your area, visit www. call811.com.

Jake Williams Crossville

Crossville: 931-707-7727 Cookeville: 931-528-7616 cell: 931-510-1488 fax: 931-707-7707

in order to earn that money.

Studies have shown that longer commutes can elevate stress levels, and even the most affordable property may not be worth moving to if you won’t be able to enjoy the home with your friends and family.

When deciding whether or not to sell their homes, many homeowners make the decision a strictly financial one. But there is more than money to consider when deciding if now is the right time to sell your home.

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Replacement projects can help increase the value of your home.

Replacement Projects Sellers might consider having a home inspection done prior to listing the home as a way to detect any overdue replacement projects. A seller has the option of either fixing the problem or

giving the buyer a discount to account for the needed repairs, but most realtors are an advocate for making the necessary repairs before selling.

They believe that home buyers recognize the value of a house that doesn’t need major repair. The house is probably not going to move, or you’re not going to get all the value out it, if the new buyer knows they’re going to have to replace the windows, siding or deck sometime soon.

In fact, according to the 2015 “Cost vs. Value” report from

“Remodeling” magazine, A vinyl window replacement for a midrange home had an average cost of $13,193, and returned $9,610, or 72.8% at resale.

A vinyl siding replacement had an average cost of $12,813, and returned $10,488, or 72.8% at resale, according to the report.

A composite or vinyl Deck replacement/addition in a midrange home had an East South Central Region average cost of $15,135 and $10,002, or 66.1%, was recouped at resale.

A Bathroom Remodel in a

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midrange home had a East South Central Region average cost of $15,316 and $11,283, or 73.7% was recouped at resale.

A Major Kitchen Remodel in a midrange home had a East South Central Region average cost of $53,814, and $37,772 or 70.2% was recouped at resale. Please give us a call to help you prepare your home to sell. You’ll be glad you did, because “We make home improvement easy”!