According to a new report from Redfin, average monthly mortgage payments are up 39% over just one year ago — a record spike — while interest rates are at their highest mark in more than a decade. But while median sales and asking prices are still rising, home searches, touring activity, and mortgage applications are all in decline, indicating a slowing market as buyers take pause. Get more numbers from Forbes.
If you want to reduce the burden of interest, the best thing to do is pay off your mortgage as quickly as possible. That could mean making a higher down payment or devoting any unbudgeted income to reducing your principal. Turn your side hustle from a money maker to a money saver!
If you don’t have a lot of extra cash lying around, congratulations! You’re officially the average homebuyer. But you can’t let the uncertainty of interest rates dictate when and how you make an offer on a home you want. And there’s no guarantee that rates won’t keep rising!
Did you know? Californians use an average of 196 gallons of water per day, and I guarantee most of us don’t drink more than half a gallon a day. So where does all that other water go?
Well, at least half our household water is used outdoors, so we can start by following the mandate from the County to cut our lawn watering down to two days a week. It’s also important to check your house for leaks, which cost the average American household 27 to 90 gallons of water each day.
Get more tips for reaching your 15% reduction goal.
There’s never been a better time to rethink and renew your yard and gardens with succulents, cacti, and other plants built to withstand the West Coast heat with a minimal amount of maintenance – and water. But don’t dig up your lovely lawn without a plan! Contact us for tips and referrals to quality landscaping professionals.
If years of shrinking reservoirs and rising water rates haven’t convinced you to convert your lawn to hearty native plants, I don’t know what else will. So the best advice I can offer is to invest in reseeding your lawn with bermuda, fescue, or another type of drought-tolerant grass. Here’s a helpful review of the options.
While they may seem harmless, buyer “love” letters can get a seller in trouble because they often include personal information that could reveal characteristics of the buyer like race, religion, or familial status. Why is that a problem? That information could create a conscious or unconscious bias in the seller’s decision to accept or reject an offer, which would violate fair housing laws.
At the end of the day, your decision to accept or reject an offer has to be based on objective standards, like the offer amount or the ability to pay in cash. We always let sellers know up front that we will never deliver buyer love letters, and we advise them to document the basic facts of every offer they receive and their objective reasons for saying yes or no to every prospective buyer.
