Read on if you want to fix up your place, sell your place, make some money off of your place, or if you’re not sure if you should rent or own a place.
If you want to fix up your place:
SmartMoney’s 7 Tips to Cut Remodeling Bills covers the basics, like updating instead of full-scale renovating and utilizing state and federal for green projects. If you’re not sure what part of your home to target, consider finishing the basement—a project that generally provides a good return on your investment, and doesn’t require you to enlarge the footprint of your house.
The NY Times answers the question, Why do home repair bills cost so much? The answer is that you’re paying for the repair guy’s expertise and overhead (tools, truck, training, etc.), not only for the measly 10 minutes it takes him to fix the sink. But before simply handing over a check for services rendered, consider haggling. Why? See Exhibit A at Kiplinger, in which $200 is knocked off a plumber’s bill through some negotiation.
If you want to get rid of your place:
Pay close attention to the little details, say realtors in this NY Times piece. Specifically, a TV antenna on the roof gives a bad impression—that the home is outdated, and probably poorly cared for in all sorts of different ways.
If you want to make some money off of your place:
Think twice before you become a landlord. This LiveCheap post offers eight reasons to reconsider your Trump-like ambitions—mostly because renting out property takes up more time, involves more headaches, and is less lucrative than a lot of amateurs think.
If you’re thinking of getting your own place:
Don’t make the 10 mistakes this guy made, including ignoring the home inspector (who warned the furnace would die, and it did), overestimating how much he could afford, choosing a location too-too far out of the way, and underestimating the closing costs.
If you’re not sure if you should get your own place:
BusinessWeek weighs the question on the minds of many Americans, Buy or Rent? Unfortunately, the answer boils down to, “It depends.”
Homeownership is probably overrated anyway, says Richard Florida in a WSJ op-ed. In fact, too much homeownership may hold you back in your career, and possibly hold back the economy as a whole:
Owning a home may actually be a drawback given the economic flexibility required to power long-lasting recovery. My colleagues and I tracked homeownership levels across U.S. cities and regions to see how they correlate to other measurable demographic and economic factors. As we expected, the rates of homeownership are greatest where housing prices are lowest. But cities with high levels of homeownership—in the range of 75%, like Detroit, St. Louis and Pittsburgh—had on average considerably lower levels of economic activity and much lower wages and incomes. Far too many people in economically distressed communities are trapped in homes they can’t sell, unable to move on to new centers of opportunity.