Home Buyer Education
Borrower Education Online Education & Certification Buyers Ed MGIC’s Buyers Ed program offers online homebuyer and landlord education, testing and certification at no charge to you or your customers. Buyers Ed breaks down the home-buying process into easy-to-digest tutorials on these websites: Homebuyer education, English: www.mgichome.com. Landlord education, English: www.mgichome.com. Homebuyer education, Spanish: www.mgiccasa.com. Buyers Ed Test When customers are ready to take the Buyers Ed Test, they register using your Buyers Ed Code. The test is not timed....
Read MoreRemodeling Trend: Practical- Not Luxury- Is In, Analyst Says
Reporting from Chicago— Goodbye, over-the-top kitchen remodel? Hello, sturdy but unshowy new windows? Maybe so, if a recent report on where we’ll put our remodeling dollars in the coming years turns out to be correct. We’re at the end of an era in home renovations. The big-bucks projects that transformed our spaces during the housing boom are giving way to more practical, dollar-conscious ones, according to analyst Abbe Will, who studied trends in remodeling for Harvard University‘s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Home renovations soared with the real estate...
Read MoreTips To Help Navigate Maze of Homeowner Tax Breaks
Congress has bestowed a wealth of tax breaks on homeowners, but in a way that resembles the Winchester Mystery House. Whether you are a first-time or longtime homeowner, figuring out what you can and cannot deduct can be perplexing, especially because the laws change from year to year. Here is a brief guide to homeowner taxes for 2010 returns. For a more complete picture, get your hands on IRS Publication 530 at sfg.ly/dW1G9H. Deductible: For most homeowners, these expenses are deductible on Schedule A, itemized deductions. – Mortgage interest. You can deduct the interest paid on...
Read MoreWant A Vacation Home? Prices Are Falling!
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Been dreaming of a vacation home? Somewhere warm to get away? Or maybe a cabin in the woods? Prices are right if you can afford it. The median price of a vacation home was $150,000 in 2010, down 11.2% from a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday. In contrast, the national median for primary residences fell only 4.5% in 2010, according to NAR. “The fall in prices has opened opportunities for more families to enter the second-home market,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. Still, vacation homes accounted...
Read MoreNew Online Tool Helps Buyers Keep Track of Properties
TECHNOLOGY has made buying a home easier by making an unprecedented amount of information available to buyers. But managing that data and keeping track of multiple properties can be a challenge for house-hunting clients and their brokers One solution has emerged from Buyfolio.com, a company that has developed an online tool that allows agents and their clients to save, sort and comment on listings. Matt Daimler, the founder of Buyfolio, said the idea grew out of the frustration he experienced several years ago when he was looking for an apartment in New York City and his broker kept...
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