You may think you don’t need a first-time homebuyer’s certificate, but it’s a good idea to take a few hours to obtain one. A certificate shows you’ve completed educational requirements to prepare you mentally and financially to buy a home. Plus, completion of a course may make you eligible for some first-time homebuyer assistance or income qualified programs such as grants, down payment assistance, and zero interest loans.

Getting certified is easy as long as you make certain that the course you’re taking or the counseling you’re receiving meets the National Industry Standards for Homeownership Education and Counseling. Coursework will typically include:

• How to budget for a home you can afford.
• Learning all about mortgage loans and interest rates.
• How to navigate the homebuying process.
• Property maintenance, taxes, and other ongoing costs.
• Local, state and federal housing laws.
• How to avoid foreclosure. 

Supported by major banks, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the National Association of REALTORS®, and numerous community service groups, the recommended curriculum is standardized to provide high-quality, trustworthy advice. You can take first-time homebuyer or income qualified courses online through:

• Mortgage lenders and insurers
• State, local or national housing authorities
• Community development financial institutions
• HUD-approved counseling agencies
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Grants are offered by The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Down payment assistance requirements may or may not include completing a homebuyer course, meeting income limits, purchasing a home in an approved location, staying below a price limit, and contributing some of your own money.

To make it easy to compare homes, the real estate industry supplies lots of data for each listing, including number of stories, type of home (condo, single-family, etc.), building materials (brick or siding), size of lot, number of bedrooms and baths, and so on. Nearly all homes listed for sale provide square footage to indicate overall size, but there are several reasons why square footage can be misleading, causing you to either overpay for a larger home or pass up a smaller home that’s actually more comfortable and livable.

First, there’s no single universal means of measuring square footage. Differing state rules and customs make calculating square footage somewhat subjective. Insurers, tax authorities, lenders, and real estate professionals typically use square footage numbers as determined by licensed property appraisers, but this data can conflict with tax roll figures if improvements to the home were made without permits.

Some states exclude attics, basements, garages and detached structures, while others allow them to be included if they’ve been finished out as living space. In high-rise buildings, square footage often includes balconies, even though they’re open air and not enclosed.

As a homebuyer, use square footage as a guide, but pay more attention to the home’s living spaces. Does foot traffic flow easily from room to room? Does the floorplan make sense? Are the rooms the right proportions for their purposes? Do you have the right spaces for your family’s needs? These questions will help you prioritize factors like flow, layout, and functionality over square footage alone.

Many aspiring homeowners cannot afford to buy a home where they want, especially in expensive inner cities. So, they’re turning to a new concept: rentvesting. It’s a clever way to enter the property market and start building personal wealth, giving you the freedom of renting coupled with the financial benefits of homeownership.

Rentvesting means renting a home where you want to live while buying an investment home somewhere else. While it may seem ironic, rentvesting can make sense. You rent a home where you can’t afford to buy, and then charge rent on a nice, less expensive property in the suburbs or a nearby town. The trick is to buy a home that’s right for your budget so you can earn a profit. Take the profit and save it, spend it to lower your rent, or best of all, reinvest it into your rental property so you can pay off your mortgage faster and build equity.

Of course, there are pros and cons. Some things to consider:

• You can live wherever you want
• You can buy a home anywhere you want
• As a homeowner, you can deduct the interest on your loan, depreciate the property, manage property expenses, and more. However, as a renter, you do not receive these tax benefits
• You can increase the rent on your property, but your rent payments may also increase
• You aren’t responsible for maintenance when you rent, but you’ll be responsible as a landlord.

Ask your Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices network professional to help you become a rentvestor. 

Back in the day, you could make moving simple by saving old newspapers and retrieving boxes left behind your local grocery store. Today, you’ll likely have to order packing supplies for your move from somewhere online. Which is better—packing paper or bubble wrap? Actually, the answer is both.

Packing paper can take less space than bubble wrap, and it’s useful to tuck into corners to keep packed items from moving around in their boxes and breaking. You can wrap breakables in packing paper, but bubble wrap may be better for precious breakables, even if it takes up more space and raises moving costs. Bubble wrap is also water-resistant and non-abrasive, says the USPS store. 

According to USpackingandwrapping.com, you can buy blank recycled newsprint paper inexpensively in either rolls or sheets. Rolls are 1,440 feet long and vary in width from 12 to 48 inches. A 30” newsprint roll is $51.14. You can get 1,200 20” by 30” sheets for $68.88. You can also try to get old newspapers for free from gas stations and grocery stores, or go to your local newspaper and ask to buy “end rolls” which are too short to be reused for printing standard quantities.