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Is Buying Your First Home Within Your Grasp?
Are you an “old millennial”? Despite the terrible name chosen for this generation, you might be a good candidate for home ownership!
Based on the infographic below, you will see that those that have been categorized as “old millennials” are dominating the first time home buying market.
How to Increase Your Equity Over the Next 5 Years
As the value of a family’s home (an asset) increases, so does their equity.
Many of the questions currently surrounding the real estate industry focus on home prices and where they are heading. The most recent Home Price Expectation Survey (HPES) helps target these projected answers.
Here are the results from the Q2 2019 Survey:
- Home values will appreciate by 4.1% in 2019
- The average annual appreciation will be 3.2% over the next 5 years
- The cumulative appreciation will be 16.8% by 2023
- Even experts representing the most “bearish” quartile of the survey project a cumulative appreciation of over 6.7% by 2023
What does this mean for you?
A substantial portion of family wealth comes from home equity. As the value of a family’s home (an asset) increases, so does their equity.
Using the projections from the HPES, here is a look at the potential equity a family could earn over the next five years if they purchased a $250,000 home in January of 2019:Based on gains in home equity, their family wealth could increase by $42,000 over that five-year period.
Bottom Line
If you don’t yet own a home, now may be the time to purchase. Owning or moving up to your dream home could allow you to ride the increase in equity of a growing asset.
Home Price Expectation survey – Every quarter, Pulsenomics surveys a distinguished panel of over 100 economists, investment strategists, and housing market analysts regarding their 5-year expectations for future home prices in the United States.
What is Title Insurance and Why is it Important?
The first question you may ask is, what is the title? The title to a piece of property is the evidence that the owner is in lawful possession of that property. Secondly, what is title insurance? Title insurance protects homeowners against any property loss or damage they might experience because of liens, encumbrances or defects in the title of the property. While other types of insurance protect you from the risks that are possible to occur in the future, title insurance protects you from risks associated with what has already occurred.
There are two policies in the mix at a real estate closing, The lender’s policy, which is required, and an optional owner’s policy. Both are a 1 time, upfront cost.
A title search will occur during your closing process to check out the owner’s history and to make sure the title is clear – which means the current owner who is selling you the property, has complete ownership with no legal claims against it.
Why does title insurance exist? Well, there is not a 100% guarantee that an oversight was made. If a title defect arises after your loan is closed, YOU are now responsible for any legal cost or worse case, loss of property!
For my clients, I also recommend getting title insurance. You can only get it at closing and it is more of a piece of mind so that you are protected down the road in the chance that something comes up that was not found in the original title search.
-Brentney Moore, Sales Partner | Story House Real Estate
