1. #HAPPINESS

The feeling of owning your own home is unmatched. You can fix it up, make it your own, get a dog, or plant a tree if you want. Doesn’t that sound exciting!

2. #TAXSAVINGS

The government rewards homeowners by providing excellent tax benefits. The interest paid on your mortgage and other home-related expenses can generally be deducted from your income.

3. #APPRECIATION

Home values have a well-documented history of going up over time. This increase becomes equity you can benefit from when you refinance or sell.

4. #EQUITY

Renting has often been compared to paying 100% interest, but when you own a home and a mortgage is in place, a portion of your payment goes toward the principal balance on your loan. This builds your equity and acts as a savings account.

5. #ROOTS

People who own rather than rent stay in their homes 4 times longer. This provides an opportunity to get to know your neighbors and connect with your local community.

6. #EDUCATION

Research shows children of homeowners earn higher test scores and graduate at a higher percentage than those of renters.

Conclusion: If you want stability, a sound investment, and a big yearly tax break consider buying property. www.carlosfcamargo.net

Why I should be your #REALTOR® ww.carlosfcamargo.NET

#SFBayArea #contracostacounty #alamedacounty #Realtor #HouseExpert #NewHome #housing #BHGRE #CarlosFCamargoPhD #RealEstate #NoPlaceLikeHome_EastBay #Homeowners #downpayment #homebuyer

There are a number of low down payment alternatives Available to help buyers get into a home sooner. Down payment assistance programs offer loans, typically with a low interest rate. Some of them aimed specifically at helping both first-time buyers and low- to moderate-income buyers get into a home. Mortgage credit certificates allow an increase in income by obtaining a tax credit for a specified percentage of mortgage interest. Grants and gifts may be offered by state and federal governments, non-profit organizations, or the local community. For more information, visit downpayment.car.org

SMARTmoves | DECEMBER 2019 | VOLUME 3 | ISSUE 12

+ Easy Holiday Home Improvement Projects

+ Home Tip: Let Your Oven Breathe

+ The Lowdown on Mysterious Mistletoe

+ Super (Simple) Peppermint Bark

Why I should be your REALTOR® www.carlosfcamargo.com

#SFBayArea #contracostacounty #alamedacounty #Realtor #HouseExpert #NewHome #housing #BHGRE #CarlosFCamargoPhD #RealEstate #NoPlaceLikeHome_EastBay

WEIGHING YOUR FALL CLEAN-UP OPTIONS

For many homeowners, fall ushers in one unavoidable dilemma: What should I do with the leaves in my yard?

The answer depends on many factors, including: 

• Your community – Do you live in an area that offers curbside leaf collection services? Or, are you governed by a Homeowners’ Association that stipulates fall clean-up requirements?
• Personal preferences – Do you take pride in keeping your yard neat and tidy? Or, would you rather compromise on appearances and create an environmentally-friendly oasis?
• Your neighbors – Will leaves from your yard impact the family next door, or vice versa?

All these considerations, plus others, make fall leaf clean-up a surprisingly complicated chore for homeowners.

Reasons To Keep Your Leaves

If you have some leeway in deciding if your leaves will stay or go, consider these reasons for letting them hang around.

1. Leaves in Landfills

According to the most recent Environmental Protection Agency estimates (2015), U.S. municipalities collect over 34.7 million tons of leaves, brush, and grass clippings each year. Over two-thirds of those yard trimmings (21.3 million tons) are composted. The remainder is sent to landfills, along with solid waste.

Environmental experts say that leaves in landfills take up valuable space and contribute to the production of the greenhouse gas methane when the leaves decompose along with other organic materials.

2. Free Fertilizer and Mulch

Leaves that decompose in your yard can add valuable nutrients to your soil, lawn, and plantings. The leaves will break down faster if they’re chopped into smaller pieces, using a lawn mower’s mulching feature, for example.

Larger leaves left in perennial borders and garden beds can act as a weed deterrent and help protect plants and bulbs from extreme winter freezes.

3. Bugs, Butterflies, and Birds

Many beneficial insects rely on leaf litter as a safe hiding spot for laying their eggs. If you remove the leaves, you may, for example, see fewer butterflies in your yard next summer. 

Since birds rely on insect larvae to feed themselves and their babies in the spring, so you may also negatively affect the local bird population.

Clean-up Options

Leaf clean-up doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Options include:

• Use a mulching lawnmower to break down significant accumulations of leaves on your grass. You may need to repeat the process. 
• Rake your leaves into your beds and borders, then wait until spring to clean them up.
• Add leaves to a compost pile, either raking by hand or using your lawnmower’s bagging attachment.

Of course, hand-powered tools are a more environmentally-friendly choice than gas-powered equipment, so you may prefer to use a rake instead of a lawnmower or leaf blower.

Neighborly Considerations

Perhaps you’re convinced that it’s time to postpone or stop removing your leaves. But what if your neighbor puts a lot of time and effort into keeping their yard leaf-free?

Fall weather often includes strong, windy days, rapidly relocating leaves from one yard to the next. 

If you’ve mulched your leaves, they’ll probably sit tight. However, if you’ve collected larger leaves in spots amidst your plantings, try lightly watering them into these spaces. They’ll be less likely to take flight.

smartmoves Newsletter| NOVEMBER 2019 |VOLUME 3 | ISSUE 11 
+ Your Guide to a Stress-Free Thanksgiving
​ ​+ Homeowner Tip: Don’t Ignore Your Garage Door
​ ​+ Avoid a Thanksgiving Plumbing Emergency Visit
​ ​​​+ The Perfect Apple Crumble

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10 Benefits of Owning Your Own Home

Homeownership is a rite of passage many of us dream of. Owning a home means putting down roots and having a space that is truly yours. It’s a significant moment of your life when you finally own a home.

But owning a home can be daunting because of the responsibilities and obligations that come with it, combined with the initial process it takes to get there. When done properly, though, buying and owning a home is a process that limits your financial risk, increases your investment power, and saves you tons of money over the long term—and it can even save you money immediately.

 

Renting has little to no ROI. Renters don’t have to worry about maintaining a residence or paying the mortgage. But if you’ve been renting long term, chances are you’re already performing home maintenance on some level and you’re at your landlord’s mercy when it comes to major repairs. And when it comes to paying the mortgage, there are many advantages over rental payments, which don’t provide any return on investment beyond securing a place to live through the end of the month or lease.

How much is rent actually costing you? Consider the amount one pays over a 10-year period. A $2500/month rental payment adds up quickly to a whopping $300,000 over 10 years, when the same amount of money could have gone toward reducing 1/3 of the debt on a 30-year home mortgage by essentially making the payments to yourself instead of a landlord. Wow!

Here are 9 more benefits to owning your own home:

1. Homeownership is an investment. Unlike a car and many other purchases that decrease in value, a home is a purchase that appreciates over time. While each local market has its own unique factors, the national median home price goes up each year, even in times of recession. As you pay your mortgage each month, your debt amount goes down, while the value of your home continues to rise. This creates the buying and reinvestment power better known as equity.

2. Gain equity. When it comes to homeownership, investment and equity are directly related. As you make mortgage payments each month, part of the payment goes toward the interest, while the rest pays down the principal balance. Equity can be better defined as the part of the principal balance you’ve already paid, or the percentage of your home you already own. Paying the principal is like depositing money in the bank, because that money becomes available for reinvestment in the home itself or a new home.

3. Take advantage of tax benefits. The federal government encourages homeownership (which in turn encourages economic growth) by offering tax incentives for homeowners. The biggest one is the option to deduct interest from mortgage payments on your income tax return, especially at the start of a mortgage when most of the payment is applied to the interest. Payments on private mortgage insurance (PMI) and certain home-related purchases also qualify for tax benefits.

4. Stabilize your housing costs. A fixed-rate mortgage means you’ll have the same mortgage payment for the term of the loan (usually 30 years), while monthly rental payments will continue to climb. And even adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM) have a fixed cap on them. Homeownership also stabilizes other home-related expenses like utilities and gives you more control over your ability to make investments in your property that keep those expenses down.

5. Gain control over your living space. Renting doesn’t usually come with a lot of options for modifying your living space to better suit your needs. Renters with changing needs must also deal with changing residences. Homeownership means you can make improvements to your home, and home improvements usually lead to increased home value, both financially and in daily home life. The power of equity can give homeowners the extra financing they need to reinvest in their homes when cash funds aren’t an option.

6. Increase your own sustainability. Homeownership can help you create a sustainable future in many different ways. Long-term renters lack sustainability because a high percentage of their income usually goes toward housing expenses that are constantly increasing. Locking yourself into a mortgage payment helps level out living expenses, so when income goes up it can be budgeted elsewhere. Paying off a mortgage allows homeowners a long-term plan to significantly reduce their living expenses as they move toward a retirement budget.

7. Stop moving. Homeownership increases sustainability and stability. Moving from rental to rental is a major inconvenience and a financial and emotional burden. Renting can mean that you never really know where you’ll be living next or what your expenses will be. Staying in the same home allows a financial and emotional investment in both your living space and your community.

8. Social benefits. Staying put for longer periods of time also creates social benefits that range from friendships with neighbors to community involvement and consistent educational opportunities for children.

9. Use your investment to make another investment. The equity that comes from paying a mortgage is what allows many individuals and families to make future investments in the same home, a higher-valued home, or second home. A home equity line of credit helps homeowners use the part of their home that’s already paid off to obtain financing for investments apart from the home itself, such as purchasing a boat or RV.

Homeownership comes with a bevy of benefits; these are only a handful. What other benefits have you experienced with homeownership? What makes you want to own your own home?

Sometimes sellers sabotage their home sales.

Usually it’s because they are doing things unintentionally that are making it hard, if not impossible, to sell their home in a reasonable time frame and for top dollar.

And sometimes seller do not do the things they ought to do that would facilitate a sale. 

Here are some examples of how home sales may get sabotaged:

PRICING – this is probably the biggest offender. No matter how nice the home looks, and no matter how much marketing is done, if the price is too high the market will reject you. You wouldn’t overpay for something you see in a store that you know you can get elsewhere for less money, or if you feel it costs more than it’s worth, would you? Neither will today’s buyers! And with the Internet they are pretty savvy about today’s pricing, as is their real estate agent.

 

AVAILABILITY TO SHOW – limited showing times and days, and requiring extensive notice for an appointment make your home tough to show.

 

INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR CONDITION – if your lifestyle tends to result in a lot of personal stuff laying around, or your home just does not look inviting inside (need for paint, need for repairs, dirty carpets, etc.), it might make buyers want to run the other direction. This is also true if there is deferred maintenance. Buyers will start subtracting dollars from a potential offer, and will become concerned that there is a lot of deferred maintenance to take care of.

 

CURB APPEAL – does your home encourage buyers to want to see the inside or does it make them decide to keep on driving? Is the yard a mess? Bushes and grass not trimmed? Junk all over the yard? Will buyers see it as a place that will require a lot of elbow grease in order to make it presentable? Would they be ashamed to be the new owners?

 

These examples of sabotage send a message to buyers, perhaps unknowingly, that selling may not be your objective.

SELLERS: DON’T SABOTAGE YOUR HOME SALE

HOUSING PRICE-TO-INCOME RATIOS

The Housing Price-to-Income Ratio is an interesting and important measurement of housing valuation and affordability.

When purchasing an asset – whether it is a company through an acquisition or a home, there are two primary decisions to be made:

Investment Decision: What is the value of this asset that is being purchased? In an acquisition, this measurement can be made by using the “price-to-earnings”, or P/E ratio. This is how much is paid for each dollar of earnings generated by the asset. The higher the P/E ratio, the more expensive the asset. The value paid may be deemed reasonable if the asset’s value in the future is expected to rise more rapidly than assets with a lower P/E ratio.

Financing Decision: How will the purchase of this asset be financed? For an acquisition, it may be new equity through issuance of stock or it may involve debt. Measurements may include years to payback based upon cash flows or earnings contribution after financing costs.

For the “investment decision” for a home purchase, the P/E ratio depicts the number of years of family or household income that will be invested to purchase a home. A high Housing Price-to-Income Ratio may depict a housing market that home prices are expected to continue to grow rapidly or it may indicate a housing market that is over-valued. For the “financing decision”, the prospective homeowner will measure the percentage of the financing costs are to the family’s income.

Similarly, from an affordability perspective, the more years of family or household income that one must invest to purchase a home indicates lesser affordability. In this case, the family or homeowner must divert more of their income to paying for the home rather than saving or investing in other assets (e.g., 401k, investment portfolio, etc.).

Below are various charts that show the Price-to-Income Ratio for metropolitan areas across the U.S. The average for the U.S. is 3.7X. That is, it median purchase price of a home consumes 3.7 times the median family income. The U.S. average is shaded in dark blue. The green shaded bars represent markets where the average Price-to-Income Ratio is below the U.S. average. The red shaded bars represent markets where the average Price-to-Income Ratio exceeds the U.S. average.