Category Archives: Buying a Home

In the last few years the trend has been for buyers to shop for a property without a buyer’s agent. The belief is that it buys you more time to find exactly the home you want because you don’t have someone paid by commission pressuring you to buy before you are ready.  However, this might be a bit of a fallacy because technically the buying agent is splitting the commission that the seller gets for the property. So when you make this move of trying to buy without an agent, […]

If you are shopping around for a home and then applying for a home loan on bad credit it means that you are putting “the cart before the horse.”  Knowing the amount of the mortgage you prequalify for before you shop around for home spares you the heartbreak of choosing a property and then being told by a lender that you cannot afford it. Having this information in-hand when looking for a first time home buyer loan also impresses everyone involved in the real-estate transaction and may give you an […]

Are you an LGBT buyer that fears that you may experience financial discrimination when purchasing property or do you feel that you have already experienced the wrong kind of preferential treatment while attempting to buy a home? If so you are not alone, despite the fact that there is a Federal Fair Housing Act in place in the United States. The Fair Housing Act consists of several Housing Laws and Presidential Executive Orders that is supposed to prohibit discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of dwellings or other property-related […]

Have you ever walked into a new home for sale to see its walls all painted that sterile white or neutral cream tint and then wondered, “What would this place look like if I did some interior house painting with a different color?”  It used to be that we had to hold up color chips from the paint store and work our imaginations quite hard before we could picture how a place would look if the walls were redone in a different shade, to get more ideas, check this website […]

Are you considering buying a home that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places? If so, well, congratulations! You are part of an elite group of buyers that more than likely has excellent taste, a concern for preserving older architecture and you are also likely to be a little wealthier than most people. People who buy historic homes also tend to be philanthropic in nature as they can be expensive to maintain. On the other hand, some of these properties are in pristine condition as they have been […]

Buying a timeshare in a gay hot spot is a sensible economical solution for LGBT snowbirds that want to go somewhere warm for the winter.  There are many wonderful time shares in the United States that are located in gay and lesbian friendly resort communities such as Sedona, Long Beach, West Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, South Beach, Province Town – just to name a few! First off it is a good idea to travel to the vacation resort and check it out before you. You should never buy a timeshare based […]

One the most effective and expedient ways to give a home-for-sale an instant face-lift is to replace the windows. Brand new windows sparkle and give your home a more polished look, so if you have any damaged windows, make sure you get a window repair. They help make a property look contemporary, clean and less lived in, thus making it easier for a buyer to imagine a life in the space. If the home has distressed or unpainted sills, missing pane frames or absent screens then it can really look […]

The Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) recently co-published the 35th annual edition of Emerging Trends in Real Estate. This publication provides an outlook on annual market trends that is widely read by real estate professionals. The analysis for 2014 includes information about the top markets in the United States thus provoking the question, “Of these top markets, which ones are LGBT-friendly?” The answer, not that surprising, is that all of the top markets (especially with revitalized downtowns) were also very LGBT-friendly including two of the most gay-friendly metropolises in […]

If you want your home to sell for more than is expected then it is crucial that you have two professionals in place: a real estate agent who can tell you what your home is worth and a home staging professional who can help you present your home to the buying pubic in the most favorable possible light. The real estate agent can help you decide on the asking price of your home by advising you about how much your property is likely to sell for based on the market […]

Some cities are definitely more LGBT-friendly than others in the United States and then there are those few cities that actually excel when it comes to offering their LGBT residents real support in the form of community groups, friendly laws and a low incidence of hate crimes. One of the friendliest of these cities is Palm Springs, CA that is not only known as a real party spot for gays but also as a LGBT haven for artists and married gay couples. In fact, 8.6% of households in this progressive […]