The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) reports that appropriate landscape improvements are estimated to return 100 to 200 percent of their cost when a house is sold, arguably the best return on investment of any home improvement you can make.
Are you looking at the possibility of realizing a hefty capital gain on the sale of your business or investment property? Perhaps you should consider the possibility of purchasing a second home or vacation property. If you sell your business or investment real estate and replace it with a different business or investment property as a tax deferred exchange under Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, you should be able to defer payment of the capital gains tax on the sale. A 1031 Exchange provides additional proceeds for your next investment, substantially more than you could gain through the re-investment of after-tax proceeds.
Generally speaking, to qualify for a 1031 exchange, a vacation or second home must be used fewer than 14 days a year by the owner, and rented out the rest of the year. Ultimately, it is also possible to not pay any capital gains tax by converting your vacation home held as an investment property into a primary residence. After two years as your primary residence (and at least five years after the exchange), you could then sell the home and the first $500,000 ($250,000 if you are single) of gain would be tax free.
Make sure to consult with a tax professional for advice prior to purchasing or selling your investment property to ensure that your proposed transaction qualifies for 1031 exchange treatment.
A blog is owned by just one person, or a small group of people. The blog owner chooses the topics of entries on the blog, and controls who can read and comment on these entries. Although people can comment on entries, this is not the main focus of the blog, and it is possible for the blog owner to create private entries which cannot be viewed by anyone else. Because the blog owner has complete control over what appears on their blog, the blog can form a personalised reflection of the work, interests and ideas of one individual.
Forums are not controlled by one person - instead, any member of the forum can start a topic for discussion. Forums rely on responses from the community to initial posts in order to form a discussion, reflecting the interests of the group rather than of an individual.
One of the struggles for most first time home buyers is obtaining the down payment. Here are seven suggestions.
1. Have your parents give you the money as a gift.
2. Borrow against your 401K or insurance policy.
3. Sell or borrow against an asset.
4. Obtain low point or zero point loan.
5. Ask the seller to pay for all or a part of your non-recurring closing costs.
6. Ask the seller to carry back financing.
7. Consider different loan programs.
As a real estate broker, lenders continuously sent me information regarding there new loans programs. One of these companies is a mortgage lender in California and Arizona and is launching a new mortgage program that is unlike anything I’ve heard of, “offering 0.25% Interest Rates.
According to the lender, “This loan gives the borrower a fixed interest rate of .25% for the first five years. The borrower pays the interest only for their monthly minimum payment for these first 60 months. . . It is a hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM, designed for people who want to use the equity in their home to increase their cash flow. The minimum payment of the loan will be the fixed-interest only amount for the first five years of the loan, and then the borrower will pay the interest only payment based on the interest rate of the outstanding balance. This interest only period will last for the first 10 years of the loan.”
I’m all for creative financing, and this sounds like a great program for educated buyers/investors, but I fear that many people will get lured into buying otherwise unaffordable properties with loans like this one.
At Anderson & Kemp we continuously strive to help our clients to stay informed with the never ending changes of Real Estate. In this effort we are in the process of adding a forum to our website. The forum is currently under construction and should be operational in a few weeks. Please check back to see and enjoy our new forum!
