Rent Or Sell?

It was a question that once never entered our consciousness - if we wanted to move, of course we would sell up! Now suddenly there are too many variables involved and many of us are asking the question: shall we sell now or shall we rent our house.

Well, one thing is for sure, if you want to buy in a new location, then it is best to - at least - try and sell in the old location so that you can get settled in the new one.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly five and a half thousand Americans are moving every day. Wow! Surely some of them will be moving into your area?

Apart from finding it easier to settle into the new area, another reason to list your home if you are planning to move is this: the area that you will be buying in is experiencing the same housing difficulties as you; therefore so as long as you are selling AND buying you have lost nothing.

This is because selling in a buyer's market means that you may have to settle for a lower price than you hoped for, but buying in the same buyer's market means that you too will be able to negotiate a lower price for your new home.

There are drawbacks to renting your home, although many landlords will not experience them, it is just a question of luck. Luck and careful reference checking! As a renter you are fully aware that you are buying your landlord's home for him/her; the renter has less to lose than you. Another point is that renters do not get tax breaks but home owners do.

One of the biggest single reasons for staying or being a home owner is the tax credit system. Over the years, tax relief will more than balance any loss of equity that you may feel you are taking.

The United States government actually subsidizes you to enable you to pursue the American dream and buy your own home. There are many different types of tax relief that we, as Americans, benefit from.

Both from local taxes and federal taxes there is a choice of tax credits and/or exemption due to mortgage interest payments, homestead exemption, property tax help, private mortgage insurance, capital gains exemption, and points paid on loans.

Many of us save thousands of dollars every year as we levy tax relief against our mortgages, but we forget to add these savings into the formula when we are summing up the advantages or disadvantages of buying a house.

In this 'instant gratification' age, it is almost impossible to believe there will be advantages to home owning in thirty years time when we are older. What are the advantages?

In time, the house will be paid for so there will finally be no mortgage payments and the home may render some equity money via a reverse mortgage for emergency spending money.

However, renters get no emergency spending money and they can never stop paying rent. Unless of course they get notice to leave their home, and as a homeowner, remember, this can never happen to you.

Yes, home ownership may not be the perfect answer, but it beats busking!

PorchLight Real Estate Group combines local market knowledge with cutting edge marketing skills. For more information on Denver CO real estate or to do a search for Arvada real estate, visit us online at PorchLightGroup.com

Real Estate Agent Salary

Real estate agent is sort of broking job. A real estate agent should work out a deal for a property sale between a prospective buyer and a prospective seller. It can be a job of high earning potential. But the real estate agent should work hard to achieve that. A lot of real estate agents work as consultants. It may not be their full-time job. This can be done during the free time of another full-time job. But such juggling of jobs needs high-energy quotient and expertise in time management. Since it is not a full-time job, there is no fixed salary. The real estate agent gets a fixed percent of total amount of land sale from both the buyer and the seller.

There is absolutely no limit for the salary of a real estate agent, when working as freelance consultant. As they say in advertisements, sky is the limit for the salary of land brokers. The harder one works and more sales one engineers, the more will be the money one earns. But for earning a good monthly income, the freelance real estate agents should be highly industrious and have good inter-personal communication skills. In general, real estate agents should be well versed with the value of a property. They should be able to do a quick valuation of the property and should be able to explain the aspects that influence the price of the property and convince both parties about a reasonable price.

There are plenty of real estate firms and agencies that employ real estate agents. In such firms, the agents have a fixed monthly salary. The salary varies from agency to agency. Usually it depends on the volume of business done by the agency. There are some agencies that provide a pay based on the number of real estate sales materialized by a particular employee. In general, the annual salary of a real estate agent, who works in any of the established firms, varies from $25000 to $75000. There are a minority of real estate agents who earn a salary even less than $25000. Some agents working in start-up companies only earn an annual salary of only $10000. Such a large variation of salary can be explained by the fact that some real estate agencies have more business volume than some of smaller fish in the real estate fray.

Also the commission-wise salary and sales-wise salary affect the annual pay. There are some months, especially in the winter months of November, December and January, in which conventionally real estate business are somewhat fewer. So in the case sales-wise salary structure, the salary suffers a dip in those months. But the sales move up from March to September. So will be the salary in those months.

Ian Pennington is an accomplished niche website developer and author.

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