Family Formation & Housing

For young couples starting families, buying their first home and/or other real estate. Covers mortgages, credit cards, interest rates, children’s education savings plans, joint accounts for couples and the like.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of listing your home in the Winter

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Photo by unsplash

By Sean Cooper

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

If you’re thinking about selling your home, you probably believe the springtime is the best time to list it. While that may be true, wintertime can also be a good time to sell. Not only are homebuyers usually more serious then, you’re more likely to have more of your realtor’s attention. Let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of listing your home in the wintertime.

Advantages

More serious Homebuyers

Although more people may visit your place in the spring, not everyone will be serious. Some will be nosey neighbours who want to see inside your place. Others will be people who are just considering buying a home and haven’t made up their mind yet. This means you can spend a lot of time showing off your home with few offers to show for it.

In the wintertime you better believe homebuyers are more serious. Chances are a homebuyer isn’t venturing out into the cold weather unless they really want to buy a home. Likewise, you’re probably listing your home because you’re serious about selling it. Since both parties are serious, you’re more likely to sell your home.

Fewer Sellers to compete against

When you’re listing your home in the springtime, you better make sure it’s looking its best. If your neighbourhood is popular, there could be quite a few homes for sale that you’ll be competing against for the attention of buyers.

Not so in the wintertime. Since there tends to be fewer people selling their homes, if you’re lucky your home might be the only home for sale in the neighbourhood. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stage your home and make sure it’s looking its best, but it does mean if someone really wants to buy a home in your neighbourhood, your home will be the only option, which could lead to a higher selling price for you. Continue Reading…

8 ways to build Home Equity

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Nanaimo, BC

By Lynn Donn

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

If you’ve been watching the real estate market in British Columbia, you may have noticed that quite a few Nanaimo homes for sale have a large amount of equity. Equity is the difference between the market value of your home and the mortgage balance owed. Another way of thinking about equity is that it’s the profit you make when the time comes to sell.

Building equity is the largest single benefit of owning a home in Nanaimo or anywhere else. Your home equity increases in one of two ways:

  • Value of your home increases
  • Amount of debt on your home decreases
Add value to your home

Here are eight great ways to build equity in your home by increasing value and decreasing debt:

You have instant equity in your home when home values appreciate. Three things that make home values rise are:

1.) Real estate market in Nanaimo is moving upward: Appreciation is something that happens without you having to do anything. Home prices are more likely to go up in established, attractive neighborhoods and in growing areas around town.

2.) Improvements and updating: Not all home improvements have the same return on investment. So, before spending money on updating, be sure to choose the ones that will add the most value to your home. Smart home improvements include kitchen and bathroom updating, improving curb appeal with low-maintenance landscaping, and adding square footage to your home.

3.) Upkeep & routine maintenance: Although routine maintenance can be tedious, it’s better to keep everything in your kept up than to face a major repair bill like a leaking roof or broken down furnace. Nanaimo homes for sale that have been maintained poorly are also at the biggest risk of losing equity, even when the real estate market is appreciating.

Decrease debt on your home

Decreasing the debt on your home while adding value can build equity surprisingly fast. Techniques to reduce mortgage debt include: Continue Reading…

Don’t make this Life Insurance mistake

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Life insurance is a must if you have a spouse or children who depend on your income to get by. But asking a life insurance agent if you need more life insurance is like asking a barber if you need a haircut. Of course the answer is going to be ‘yes’. Indeed, the life insurance business has a long history of commission-hungry agents pushing expensive policies onto consumers who would be better off with simple term coverage.

While you should view any life insurance discussion with a skeptical eye, the reality is that many people are severely under-insured. Most group insurance policies at your workplace only provide coverage for one or two times your annual salary. You might need 10 or 15 times that amount if you have a young family at home.

The other challenge with group life insurance coverage is that it’s not transferable: you can’t take it with you when you leave your employer.

Ending my Group Coverage

That’s the situation I find myself in right now. The group coverage I have with my employer is quite generous at 2.5 times salary. They also offer the voluntary option to add up to an additional $500,000 in coverage at favourable rates (each $100,000 in coverage cost just $4.50 per month). I took the maximum optional coverage and increased my overall life insurance coverage to approximately $700,000. My total premiums cost less than $35 per month.

The rational side of me knew that I’d eventually leave my job and would need to take out a private insurance policy. But I didn’t get around to it. Then I quit my job.

Now I’m scrambling to get an insurance policy in place before the end of the year to avoid any lapse in coverage. First, I performed a life insurance needs analysis. A lot has changed in 10 years. My kids are older (11 and 8 next year). We have a lot more money saved. We have less debt. Do we still need $700,000 in coverage? Do we need more?

A needs analysis considers things like your survivor’s income and spending needs, years of income replacement, personal and household debt, children’s education, non-registered assets, and final expenses. My analysis found that a 15 year term with $600,000 in coverage would be sufficient.

Term Life Insurance quotes

I shopped around for term life insurance quotes using the website term4sale.ca (no affiliation). Continue Reading…

Tricks about residential home construction you wish you knew about before starting

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By Daniel Quindemil

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Designing a home is often one of the best (or worse) experiences for most people.

Building in general is a relatively difficult task, but building your own house can sometimes be nerve racking!

As a construction company, we understand the importance of planning the project beforehand, designing a solid design, getting pricing and the labor and material take offs done early so you can accurately create a budget.

That’s why we wrote this simple guide packed with tricks so you don’t fall into pitfalls some owners and investors fall into.

First, let’s look at the different types of residential projects.

What is Residential Construction?

Residential construction is building or remodeling a structure designed for everyday living.  Residential consists of Single Family, Duplexes, Triplexes, Townhouses, even Apartment and Condo buildings.

Each has its own challenges.

Single Family

Single family construction is typically designed for one family, hence the name single.  They typically are one or two stories, although some places like New York often go more vertical due to availability of space.

Duplexes, Triplexes, and Quadplexes, Twin Homes, Townhomes

These are single structures designed for multiple units.  A duplex will have two units within the structure, triplexes have three, quadplexes four.  A twin home is similar to a Duplex but has two owners.  Duplexes are owned by one party.  Townhomes are a group of units within a structure.  They are usually two or more stories.

Apartments and Condominiums

Apartments and Condos can be single story, but more often multi-story. Apartments are designed for rentals while Condominiums are for purchase, although they look very similar.

How long does it take to design and build?

The short answer: it depends. Every project is going to have its unique budget, schedule, sequencing, and craftsmanship.  All of these will come into play when planning your schedule.

When planning the overall project, you have to take into account four important timelines:

Design time

Timeframe for architects will vary quite a bit depending on size, details, and complexities involved with the project.  Often when an interior designer is involved, the timeline doubles or even triples because of the level of detail required.

Typically a single family and duplex home can be designed in 1-3 months.

Townhouses can take longer depending on the number of units.  Designing a townhouse building is very similar to a duplex and often the units are repeated or “flipped,” which speeds up the design process. Continue Reading…

Comparative saving for Financial Independence: Is the world financially stacked against women?

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By Billy and Akaisha Kaderli, RetireEarlyLifestyle.com

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Why do women lag in retirement savings as compared to men?

Are women at a disadvantage for reasons too numerous to list? Is it sexism? Are females not good savers? Big spenders? Is it really true that women get paid less for the same work performed? Is the world financially stacked up against women?

I read lots of articles noting all the reasons that “women have it harder” than men when it comes to saving for retirement. Regularly listed are the following:

  • The difference in men’s and women’s wages, also affecting their Social Security amounts later: but the articles don’t give honest insight into why the wages vary. This leads the reader to conclude that it’s sexism that determines pay.
  • Women often live longer than their spouses, “forcing” them to live on one SS check instead of two:  however, by women living longer, this gives more time for their investments to compound.
  • Women take off work to raise children or to become a caregiver to a family member, thus affecting their career path earnings. See the tools offered below which – if used – both stay-at-home-moms and caregivers can become financially independent.

Think outside the box

I don’t enjoy reading articles that tell me “statistically,” I’ll be settling for less and that I don’t have options. Or that “according to the numbers” – somehow – I am doomed to a mediocre savings rate and career path. Or because I am a woman, I’m going to have it tougher in life: all across the board.

So, let’s think outside the box for a moment.

First things first: education and career choice

It’s called OPEH.

OPEH is an anacronym for Occupation, Position, Education and How many hours worked a week. These four things affect a person’s income far more than one’s gender.

And we, as women, have choices in all of these categories.

Occupation

Georgetown University composed a list of the best paying college majors and the percent of men and women majoring in those fields.

The highest paying majors were Engineering, Math and Science. Men dominated these job choices, so their career path was set to earn a good, solid wage with upward mobility.

The lowest paying majors were those in Psychology, education, and social services. Women dominated these fields, so their career path was set to earn less than the above-mentioned choices that males made. These different career choices limited their upward mobility within their jobs.

We women have a choice as to what field we want to excel in, and we need to choose wisely.

Position

Teaching young girls the value of STEM courses (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) will place them in careers where they will earn more. Upward mobility in STEM careers is greater and this will translate to better earnings on their future bottom line.

Education

Within those STEM fields, males tended to gravitate towards a specialty or training that paid better. In other words, males once again made different choices for their focus. Nothing is stopping us from making these same choices. Our brains are every bit as good, wouldn’t you agree?

Hours worked per week

Even within the same job categories – and this is important here – one of the things that differentiated male workers from female workers was the willingness of male workers to put in more hours per week on the job. Males were more inclined to be on call or be at the office any time the firm might call them. Continue Reading…