The down payment is often the toughest hurdle to clear when buying a home. Whether your goal is $5,000 or $50,000, consider these 10 simple ways to save for your down payment. For example, try to negotiate your rent. With rent likely near the top of your list of expenses, cutting its cost can help you sock away serious savings. If you’re a good tenant, approach your landlord about lowering your rent. If that doesn’t work, consider downsizing to a smaller, cheaper apartment, and put the money you save on rent directly into savings. Also, shop around to reduce major monthly expenses. If it’s been a while since you checked rates for your car insurance, renter’s insurance, health insurance, cable, Internet or cell phone plan, now is the time to look into those costs. You may be able to save hundreds or even thousands of dollars by making alterations to some of these contracts. [Read this article]

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Do you feel like your credit report is spying on you? Sometimes it seems like just about everything personal is included in your credit history, including your name, address and Social Security number. Even your birth date is on it. But you still have a few secrets even your credit report doesn’t know. Here are seven items that lenders won’t see when they pull your credit report. For example: your spouse’s credit history. Contrary to popular belief, marriage doesn’t result in one joint credit file for both parties. When someone pulls your credit, whether you’re married or not, the lender will see only your individual credit history, along with the debts and accounts with your name on them. Some of those obligations may show that you’re a joint account holder, co-signer or authorized user on certain accounts. However, your report won’t show the names of the other people on those accounts, or your relationships to them. [Read this article]

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If you want to sell your home this spring, prepare for pent-up buyer demand. Spring might be an even livelier home-selling season this year because homebuyers want to act before interest rates or home prices rise. Glen Gill, broker and owner at Landmark Properties in Sugar Land, Texas, says three things sell a home in any season: location, condition and price. Here are five tips to sell your home this spring. For example: pay attention to curb appeal. Gill says buyers decide within 60 seconds of seeing a home whether they want to consider buying it. “People know immediately something will fly, so you need to make sure you don’t turn them off before they get in the door,” says Gill. Gill recommends trimming trees and bushes so buyers can see the house, and pressure-washing the driveway, front walk, house and patio. He suggests cleaning and painting the front door because buyers must linger at the door while they wait for the agent to open the lockbox. [Read this article]

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While the prized possessions of property owners might feature in residential listing photographs – artwork, furniture, décor – there’s one thing that won’t: their pets. No matter how cute, fluffy or personable they might make a property for pet lovers; marketing directors have traditionally shied away from including them in listings. “A pet is not a universally appealing value proposition in a home,” says Nicole Oge, senior vice president of marketing at Town Residential. “Eight out ten people – if you show them a photo with a dog in it, they wouldn’t remember the apartment, they would remember the dog,” says Ms. Oge. “What you’re trying to do is paint a picture of the type of experience one could imagine [having], living in that home. What you want to do is avoid a really strong focal point that is completely subjective.” [Read this article]

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Freddie Mac is hoping to spread information about a rule that allows people to leverage financial assets such as retirement accounts as qualifying income when applying for mortgage loans. Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), 401(k)s, distributions from retirement accounts, and funds acquired from the sale of a business can all contribute to a potential borrower’s qualifying income, according to Freddie Mac. In order to contribute to a borrower’s qualifying income, these financial assets must be accessible – meaning the borrower must not incur a withdrawal penalty when accessing them. They also cannot already be included as a source of income. The rule is especially helpful for “qualifying retiring Baby Boomers and other savvy homebuyers who have limited incomes, but substantial financial assets,” according to Christina Boyle, VP and interim head of single-family sales and relationship management, and John Watkins, VP and single-family chief credit officer, on Freddie Mac’s Executive Perspectives Blog. [Read this article]

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When getting a mortgage, “rapid rescore” is a phrase worth knowing. Credit scores ebb and flow as information is updated to the credit report. While the rapid rescore has “been around forever,” the concept of quickly updating a credit history – and getting a new credit score based on that newly updated file – has gained traction in the last few years, says Linda Davidson, a loan officer with Service First Mortgage. “It’s much more important today than it’s ever been because credit scores have become king,” she says. The market for the rapid rescore is almost exclusively mortgage loans, says Maxine Sweet, vice president of public education for credit bureau Experian. “Those are the ones that are not only rate-sensitive but time-sensitive.” Here are five things you should know about the art of the rapid rescore. [Read this article]

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It can be confusing making sense of the many “best places to retire” lists out there. The discrepancies are the rule rather than the exception, partially because the rankings emphasize different criteria. Some lists emphasize college towns, whose populations tend to skew young, while others put a premium on communities with a lot of senior residents. Here’s the good news: you can probably ignore them all. The way “best places to retire” lists are graded often misses the point: they don’t tell you much about what your life would be like if you lived there, because there’s just too much about your life they can’t possibly know or take into consideration. Plus, a lot of what’s desirable is completely subjective. One person’s tranquil small town might make another go stir-crazy, while someone from Texas might shiver just at the thought of moving to Maine. [Read this article]

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With graduation season underway, young adults are gearing up for a career and paying close attention to their personal finances. While sticking to a budget can be challenging, the good news is more young adults are becoming financially conservative. According to a recent study by the financial startup SaveUp.com, young adults ages 22 to 32 are saving more money and paying down 57 percent more student loan debt than generation X or baby boomers. Here are six ways to jumpstart savings behaviors for recent college grads. For example, when it’s time to move off campus for a new job, it’s also time to update your budget. Review your spending habits, and adjust your budget to account for new expenses, such as your commute, food and entertainment activities. Making room for a savings account within the expense section of your budget is also a smart financial move. [Read this article]

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To build a good credit score, most people know that paying bills on time and not having too much total debt compared to income go a long way to establish creditworthiness. But there’s another important credit score factor which is less known and much less understood: credit utilization, also known as a debt-to-credit ratio. Credit utilization looks at how someone uses credit cards and how disciplined that person is in credit use. Credit cards are considered revolving credit since levels owed can vary each month, unlike mortgages and car loans, where monthly payments are fixed. Individuals can find out their credit utilization by adding up their credit card limits and dividing by how much of the limit is used. Smaller is better for a credit utilization number, said several personal finance experts. Credit agencies are looking for people who are disciplined enough to use credit sparingly and are not tempted to run up big balances. [Read this article]

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Having a large window in the bathroom is an advantage, regardless of how awkwardly placed it is. “A windowed bathroom is a selling point,” said Carol Friedman, a senior vice president at Nest Seekers International real estate in Manhattan, because it provides natural light and ventilation. “Having light is always a plus,” Ms. Friedman said, and some bathrooms have only an exhaust fan for ventilation. As far as window treatments go, the best one depends on what your window faces and how much natural light it gets. If it is a lot of light, something as simple as a solar roller shade could be a good option. These shades provide some privacy, Ms. Friedman said, “but still let the light in.” If the window faces the wall of another building, you might consider something that takes the emphasis off the view, said Goil Amornvivat and Thomas Morbitzer, partners of the Brooklyn architecture firm AM/MOR. A roller shade is the easiest solution, they agreed, but a more elegant option (which would also eliminate worries about shower spray soaking the blind) would be to replace the window glass. [Read this article]

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