Once you’ve paid for your house, how much will it cost you? This is a crucial issue for anyone looking ahead to retirement. The more expensive your home, the more of a drain it’ll likely be in terms of property taxes, maintenance, homeowners insurance and more. Suppose you own a home that, in addition to any mortgage payment, costs $1,000 a month. You then get a fat pay raise, prompting you to trade up to a larger house, which has double the monthly expenses. Read more.
If you stay in the larger home during retirement, you’ll need to come up with $2,000 a month, equal to $24,000 a year. Based on a 4% annual portfolio withdrawal rate, that would mean $600,000 in retirement savings just to pay your housing costs, versus $300,000 for the smaller home.
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Before you fall in love with a house and call up your agent to make an offer you need to make sure your financing is in order. There are any number of mortgage options in Louisville. Here are some other great tips on getting your financial house in order before you buy one. Read more.
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In the past two years, the housing markets have recovered faster in red states than in blue, a new analysis reveals. According to data from RealtyTrac, most housing markets in the U.S. (52%) are better off now than they were two years ago, though 11% are worse off and for the 36% remaining it’s merely a toss-up.
Put simply, to be declared “better off,” a majority of the residents in that state had to live in counties that exhibited at least three of these five factors (all of which have a strong influence on housing health): significantly fewer foreclosure starts; higher median home prices; a percentage of homeowners who are severely underwater on their mortgages that was lower than the national average; significantly lower unemployment; and be counties where home prices didn’t rise so quickly that many average people could no longer afford to purchase a home. Read more from Marketwatch.com.
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