The Tricky Thing About Buying a Tiny Home

Buying a tiny house is a huge 1458593290-timbercraft-tiny-home-2undertaking—particularly from a financing perspective.

Tiny house hunters are typically looking for homes that range from 100 to 500 square feet. Many of these home buyers are millennials, who don’t want the hassle of maintaining a large house, says Matt Parker, a real estate agent in Seattle and author of “Real Estate Smart: The New Home Buying Guide.” “Owning a large home on a large plot of land is a relic of the American dream,” Parker says.

TV shows like FYI’s “Tiny House Nation” and HGTV’s “Tiny House Hunters” have helped the movement gain traction. However, these programs don’t delve into the process of procuring a loan for a tiny home, says Todd Nelson, business development officer at LightStream, a lending division of SunTrust Bank that offers loans for tiny-home buyers. “Many tiny homes are uniquely built and don’t conform to the mortgage requirements for a traditional house,” says Nelson.

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Make Your Home More Appealing to Young Buyers

Millennials are powering the housing Milsbuyinghomemarket. For the third year in a row, Generation Y (age 18 to 35) comprised the largest group of homebuyers, making up 35 percent of all buyers, according to a March report by the National Association of Realtors.

If you’re considering putting your home on the market, you may want to think about doing some renovation work so that your home has greater appeal to younger homebuyers. That way, you may be able to sell your home more quickly and at the price that you want.

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The Newlyweds’ Guide to Buying a Home

Hey, lovebirds: If you’re newly newlywed-house-advicemarried,you may be thinking of buying a nest together. Indeed, 35% of married Americans purchased their first home together within two years of tying the knot, according to a study by Coldwell Banker. Yet while we hear plenty about the home-buying challenges faced by unmarried couples, that doesn’t mean that marriage makes this process a walk in the park.

“A lot of factors come into play,” says Brandy Wright, a certified financial planner at Cambridge Wealth Counsel in Atlanta. So before you start swooning over Craftsman bungalows or granite countertops where you envision your bright new future, be sure to sit down and ask each other these crucial questions first.

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6 Critical Questions to Ask When Buying New Construction

If you’re in the market for a new-home-constructionbrand-new home, you’ve got a ton of options. Sales of new homes surged to an eight-year high in 2015, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau, and single-family production is estimated to reach 840,000 units in 2016, an 18 percent increase over 2015, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).

Unfortunately for home buyers, new residential construction is coming at a steeper price: Last year the average price of a new home jumped to $351,000, up $100,000 from 2009, reports the NAHB.

Nonetheless, there are still ways you can save when buying a new home. It’s like shopping for a new car: You need the right strategy to nab the best deal. Ask prospective builders these six questions in order to find the right home at the right price.

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How to Play the Just Right Market

Too hot, too cold, too hot. For more than a 150420_REA_spring_main_realestatehouse2decade the housing market has been nowhere near its Goldilocks moment, a just-right rate of growth that offers opportunities for both buyers and sellers. By certain markers, we’re finally starting to get there: Home prices nationwide are expected to rise 4.9% on average this year, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). That’s closer than we’ve been in a while to the long-term average of 3.3%—and a lot more manageable than either the sharp drops of the bust years or the 12% spike we saw in 2013.

What does it all mean for you? If you’re a buyer, you don’t have to worry as much today about being priced out in a bidding war or by all-cash offers. Sellers who didn’t have enough equity in their homes just a few years ago to justify a move could find themselves in a much better position now. And renovators can still get low rates on home-equity loans and lines of credit. In short: If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines, this may be the time to act—or at least to do some serious number crunching.

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