Are you ready for home ownership?Written by Syd Johnson
Home ownership has many advantages over renting. You get a tax break for your mortgage interest payments, you can customize your property and you are building up home equity instead of throwing away your monthly payments. Another great benefit of home ownership is sense of pride and commitment to your community. You are no longer traveling, looking or searching, but you’re putting down roots and building your life in a new way.Tax breaks for mortgage payments A huge plus for homeowners is that they can deduct annual mortgage interest payments on their tax returns. This puts more cash back in your pocket that you can spend on yourself and on your family. You can maximize this return by making large monthly payments on a small down payment. The majority of your payments for first couple of years will be interest payments. You can use any online mortgage calculator to check numbers and see tax benefits that you can get with a mortgage instead of paying rent. Control your space Another big advantage of home ownership is ability to customize and personalize your living space. You can paint, tear down and rebuild according to your taste. There is no need to get approval of your landlord or a rental company before you add perfect splash of color your living room. Generally you will also have much more space in your home than in an apartment. So you control how much closet space you can afford up front, and you can make minor renovations later on to give yourself a better backyard, more closet space or a larger kitchen. It’s all up to you with no one leading way.
| | Florida Real Estate Exploding For 15+ More Years?Written by Chris Anderson, PhD
YEEHAW!!!!!! The south will rise again!! Can't you just imagine Dukes of Hazard boys sitting on hood of their car (the General Lee) grinning in front of a For Sale sign in their yard? Well, they should be smiling with prices in south, and especially in Florida. But will this Florida real estate trend continue? That is $100,000 question.We just recently taught a class at Learning Annex in NYC about investing in Florida real estate. As I was preparing for this class, I was just constantly shocked by some of facts that I was gathering…. and I live in Florida and have done so most of my life. So question becomes "is this just an over blown Florida real estate bubble or is this something that is likely to last?" Let me give you an example of just how wild Florida real estate has become. Recently, somebody just made a purchase of LARGEST track of land that his been purchased in Florida since 1965. Back in 1965, some crazy dude named Walt Disney purchased 30,000 acres in a relatively unknown place (at time) called Orlando. At time, locales who sold their land went laughing all way to bank about this guy. This recent Florida real estate purchase, however, was 28,000 acres at a price of $30,000/Acre. No big deal, right? Wrong!!! This land was purchased around YEEHAW Junction, Florida! Ever heard of it? Most people have not. Yeehaw Junction is off of Florida Turnpike in Osceola County. This is one of those places that you could drive through 10 times and still not have noticed it. If you are like most people, then you would have to assume that big groups are buying these large tracts of land with intent of rapidly developing them and selling them during this crazy real estate market. Nothing could be further from truth. What these groups know is that that population of Florida is expected to increase by 35,000 people, per month, for next 30 years. So month, after month, after month, you have people pouring into state. So if you are one big Florida real estate groups with tons of money in your pockets these days, what would you do? Buy land in cash and sit on it for years --- also referred to as "land banking."
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