Escalating Costs Of Keeping Your Current Home

Many home owners decide to sell because of expensive monthly mortgage interest payments. In many cases the home owner has little choice and need to sell to avoid a mortgagee sale. In other cases, refinancing a loan may be a sensible alternative to selling. If you are planning to sell your home because of expensive monthly payments, you could investigate the possibilities of changing the loan term, repayment amounts, or dates.

If you don't want to sell your home, here is another alternative solution in our series posted on this blog.

Alternative Solution: Depending on your circumstances and the location and type of home - renting out part of your home could be an option. You could buy another house in a less expensive area.

Pros: At times when the property market is on the way up, your home might be worth holding on to as a longer-term investment instead of selling it. This is especially so if you are considering buying in a lower-priced neighborhood. By not selling you’ll also save on real estate costs.

Cons: You will need to be in a position to carry another home loan as well as your current mortgage. Also, by waiting to sell, you may be disadvantaged when the market and prices level off.

8 Answers To Selling A House And Why You Need To Think Carefully Before Selling A House

Google Maps Helpful Real Estate Search Tool

If you haven't yet done so, have a look at Google Maps, because it can be a helpful tool in searching for real estate to buy. Agreed Google Maps is no replacement for a hands on property inspection, but it can save a lot of wasted time searching real estate listings.

Here is how it works: You simply go to Google Maps and type in the street address of the property and zoom in on a street level view of the property. You can move the photo East, West, North, or South - whichever way the street runs. You can rotate the camera around to view neighboring properties.

The big advantage is that you can get a "feel" for the neighborhood and street appeal without needing to visit the property.

Here is how you could use Google Maps In Your Property Search

Imagine you are thing about buying a property in another State or Country. You could start by searching for properties that meet your search criteria on various real estate listing sites. If you find a property that interests you, you can read all about the property and look at all the fancy interior photos of property. If after doing that, you are still interested in the property, you could contact the real estate agent, or you could search Google Maps before contacting the agent.

Google Maps would give you a good idea of the standard of neigboring properties, terrain, plantings, location in relation to sun, schools, shops etc. Google Maps could save you a lot of wasted time visiting properties that sound good, look good from the fancy interior photos, but are in a poor neighborhood or location.

As I said earlier, Google Maps is one of many tools you can use when searching for a property to buy. You should not rely on Google Maps to make the decision for you - it is a valuable tool to help with your property search.

As at September 2008 Google Maps is available in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S.

There's also full Maps functionality in Japan, with the exception of driving directions, and limited functionality for China.

There's map data from Google Maps available in these countries: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia (Moscow only), San Marino, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey (Istanbul only).

Read this real estate article about LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.