HomeKeepr Blog

Shopping for a home can be exciting. Unfortunately, sometimes we can get too caught up in the excitement and end up ignoring signs that the house we’re looking at might not be the best option. There are a number of red flags that can pop up when looking at homes, and even more when shopping for a mortgage to pay for the home you choose. To help you avoid having a bad home-buying experience, here are a few of the biggest red flags that you should keep an eye out for.

Veterans sacrifice a lot for this country. To help honor these sacrifices, special programs were put in place to aid vets in getting and keeping a home. Unfortunately, not all veterans know that these programs exist. Even for those who do, they may not realize exactly what options are available for them and may apply for a program that doesn’t really match their situation ideally.

By now, you’ve likely seen the ads, gotten the emails and maybe even hung up on a few robocalls going on and on about the benefits of a home warranty. Are they actually worth getting, though? Let’s take a closer look at home warranties and what they really have to offer. This will help you to decide if a home warranty is right for you or if it would just be a waste of your money.

If you’re worried about whether you can get a loan on your own, having a co-borrower can take a lot of the stress off. Because there are two people applying for the loan, the lender has a lot more potential assets to consider and two different credit scores. In most cases, the co-borrower on a mortgage loan will live at the same address as the primary borrower (such as the residence being purchased.) Depending on circumstances, though, it is possible to have a co-borrower who doesn’t live at the same address.

Inspections are an important part of the home-selling process. The home inspector will locate any potential problems with the property, making sure that all involved know what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed. What happens then, though? Whose responsibility is it to fix the issues that the home inspector discovered?

One of the greatest myths in the world of real estate is that buying a home that’s in a pre-foreclosure state, or one that has already been foreclosed upon, will get you the very best deal possible. This is inaccurate for a number of reasons, though if you know what you’re looking at you can sometimes snag a bargain. There are a few things you need to know before making that leap the first time.

What’s two stories tall, covered in long green fur and smells like old, wet dogs? For a lot of people, that would be their mental image of an investment house. The truth of the matter, though, is much more complicated. Certainly, there are investment properties so dilapidated that it’s hard to imagine anyone living in them, but many, many more are in fairly decent shape.

You’ve been renting for a while now and it feels like the timing is right to make the leap to homeownership. After all, your friends are all buying houses and your job feels pretty stable, how many more hints that it’s time to settle down could you really need?

If you’re shopping for a house, or even just considering buying one, there’s one person that you absolutely need on your side: a Realtor. Potential buyers often think they can go it alone, but there are a number of things they may not be considering.