In this economy, most people want to make some extra money any way they can. One rather old-fashioned method that’s coming back into fashion is renting out a room in your house. Our grandparents and their parents often turned to this technique to make ends meet, especially during the Great Depression. Now, renting out a room in your house is making a comeback. If you’ve got extra space, such as an actual bedroom, a garage apartment, an attic or basement, or a separate guest house, you’ve got the potential to make some extra bucks by renting it out.

So, you’ve got the space, you’ve got the desire, how do you get the renters? Here’s how to do it and make it work.

First, make sure your rental space is clean and in good repair. This will make it much more enticing for potential renters. Dust it, vacuum it, paint it, and try to make it look like a comfortable home. You don’t have to spend a fortune to do this, but adding a few inexpensive features, such as new lights or faucets can help you attract a better quality of renter for your property.

Also, when a place looks nice upon rental, the tenant is much more likely to keep the place looking nice on his own. He’s also more likely to pay rent on time. If you’re a flexible landlord and allow your tenant to make small, personal changes to the space to make it seem more like home, your tenant will treat the place as his own. If you take the extra step of making yourself available to your tenant for any questions or concerns they may have, your tenant will feel loyal to you and want to make a good impression on you by keeping the place nice. You can facilitate your availability by responding to questions from your tenant as quickly as possible and not wasting any time in making any necessary repairs (or in hiring someone to make those repairs you can’t do yourself). Keep open communication with your tenant on the progress of any needed repairs, and your tenant will feel that you care about him.

The more your tenant feels cared for in a professional way by you, the more smooth your landlord experience will be. To make everything legal, simply find some rental forms that are appropriate for your state online. You can have an attorney look over them if you like. Once you’ve got everything set up, simply put an ad in the paper or online, and choose the best tenant for you.

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	Other Northern Virginia Counties and Cities
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If you’re wondering if you can purchase a new home after gonig through a recent foreclosure, the short answer is yes, However, it’s a difficult process that you shouldn’t jump into unprepared. Your credit is going to be damaged from the foreclosure, and as a result, many of the best lenders will be unwilling to work with you. This leaves you as attractive bait for bottom-feeder mortgage companies that may not be on the up and up. You need to be aware of this and avoid those companies. Plus, remember that even with a decent, medium-grade mortgage company, you’ll still be charged higher interest than you would if you had clean credit.

Obviously, you were foreclosed on because you were unable to make your house payments for a period of 3 months or longer. This situation may have come about for a variety of reasons, and your new mortgage lender will look at what those reasons were. Losing a job will be looked on more favorably than, say, if you were financially irresponsible and lived beyond your means (especially if you’ve since gotten a new job). Sure, that large, fancy home may have been attractive, but if you didn’t take utilities and other costs of owning it into consideration when you signed the morgage papers, you probably got yourself into quite a mess.

Most mortgage lenders, scrupulous or not, will not provide you with a new mortgage loan immediately following a foreclosure or bankruptcy. For the first few years, you’ll be considered a risky investment. While some companies may offer you a new mortgage as early as 6 months following a foreclosure, it may be better to wait even longer, as the interest rate you’ll be offered will be extraordinarily high.

The best approach to buying a house after foreclosure is to work on re-building your credit for a few years. Usually two to three years is sufficient. Try to open new credit accounts, make regular payments, pay on time, and pay off old debt. In two to three years after your foreclosure, you just may be in a perfect position to get a great deal on a new mortgage again.

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If you’re attempting to save your home from foreclosure, you may be considering bankruptcy. While it can be done, there are numerous pitfalls in the process, and very few people actually complete the process. Using bankruptcy to forestall foreclosure can end up saddling you with higher monthly payments and lower your credit. For most people facing foreclosure, doing a bankruptcy is just a stop-gap measure to buy themselves some extra time to make plans to move or to work out a solution with their mortgage company.

Filing bankruptcy WILL buy you some time on the foreclosure, but the amount of time you can get will vary from person to person, and largely depends on your financial situation. If you’re using bankruptcy for this purpose, you’ll be filing a Chapter 13 that’s designed to get you caught up on your mortgage payments. Whether or not you ever actually get caught up is irrelevant at this point. A Chapter 13 is where you want to start.

A bankruptcy is designed to give the people facing foreclosure some time under the protection of the law to reorganize their debts and pay back any delinquencies. The court will structure a repayment plan for you for all your debts, including your mortgage. If you make it through the plan, then your debts will be either paid off or current. Once you’re current on your mortgage, the foreclosure process will end and your house will be safe. This can take anywhere from a few months to a few years, depending on the court.

While this is the ideal situation, it isn’t the most common outcome. Many people find themselves unable to keep up with the repayment plan, even with lowered monthly payments. If they miss a payment, the court dismisses their case and the lender can start the foreclosure process again from the date of the original bankruptcy filing. In fact, a homeowner can end up worse off than before, as the bank will often try to add the late payments to the previous debt, which increases the total mortgage payoff. This can only make your credit report look worse, and may even get the attorneys involved again as the mortgage company sends their legal team after you to recoup their investment.

If you can find a way to refinance the property or sell it, you can take the house out of the bankruptcy proceedings and take a small step toward protecting your credit. Taking the house out of the bankruptcy won’t stop the bankruptcy itself, and you can still use it to eliminate your other debts. So yes, a bankruptcy can be used to stall a foreclosure, but it’s not the best strategy. There are other, more financially sound ways to make sure you maintain a decent credit standing and don’t end up owing the bank more than when you started!

Finding out you’re facing foreclosure is a devastating experience, and one of the first questions you’re likely to ask is, “How long can I stay in my house?” Many homeowners facing this situation mistakenly think that they have to move out right away once they get the foreclosure papers in the mail. Fortunately, this is an erroneous assumption. In many cases, you can stay in your house for months, even years, after the initial foreclosure paperwork is filed. Here’s how.

First of all, know that it’s impossible at the start of the process to know just how long it’s going to take to go through to completion. Different states have different foreclosure laws, and the back-up of foreclosure filings made ahead of yours can often hold up the final dispostion of your case for quite a while. In other cases, you may find your case moving through the court system quite swiftly. The important thing is to remain informed throughout the entire process, so you know exactly what’s going on and can make plans accordingly.

First, remember that a foreclosure filing will generally only happen after you’ve missed several mortgage payments and the mortgage company has been unable to get in touch with you regarding it. Once the foreclosure is filed, you’ll typically have already lived in your house for several months without making a payment.

Once the foreclosure notice is filed, you’ll receive notice of this from your local circuit court. You may choose to answer the notice or not. However, by answering the notice, you can often prolong the court proceedings for a few more months, so it’s worth considering. You can also often delay the foreclosure even more by requesting a hearing with the court to defend yourself against the foreclosure suit. You don’t need a lawyer for this, but having one may help you have an easier time of it in court during your hearing.

Basically, the more you fight it, the longer it will take for a final foreclosure determination to take place. Even once your house has officially been turned back over to the bank, you’ll still be given a certain amount of time to move out, usually a week or so. Some homeowners who have been foreclosed on are now actually squatting in their former homes. This means they refuse to move out once the bank has taken ownership. These former homeowners can often get away with this for quite some time if the house is not sold at auction right away (and in this market, the chances of a successful auction sale are minimal). As long as the house is a bank-owned property that isn’t checked on frequently (common for rural properties), you may be able to stay on indefinitely.

Just remember, the longer you can draw out the process, the longer you can stay in your house. There are plenty of people who haven’t made a mortgage payment in 2 years or more who are still in their houses, either through dragging out the court process or by squatting. You can use these tactics, too! Just remember, if your house is foreclosed on, you will eventually have to leave the home, so while you’re staying there as long as you can, also start making plans for where you’ll go when you ultimately do have to move. Saving money for a move during this time is an excellent idea.

	Prince William County Real Estate and Homes for sale
	Bristow | Broad Run | Catharpin | Dale City | Dumfries | Gainesville | Haymarket | Manassas | Manassas Park | Nokesville | Occoquan | Quantico | Triangle | Woodbridge |

	Other Northern Virginia Counties and Cities
	Arlington County | Alexandria City | Falls Church City | Manassas City | Stafford County |

The no money down real estate craze was really popular in the 1990’s, with scores of books on the market purporting to tell you how to strike it rich in property ownership without putting any money down to acquire your houses. It’s true that many people did actually become wealthy doing just this. But can you still buy real estate with no money down in this current market, and more importantly, can you still make money with it? The answer is yes!

Here are the top 3 ways you can buy real estate with no money down.

1. Try Land First

Land is extremely easy to buy with no money down. In fact, the smaller the lot, the easier you should be able to acquire it for zero down. It’s extremely common for land owners to sell lots for no (or low) money down. Residential lots are typically easier to get for these types of deals, but in certain under-developed parts of the country, you may still be able to purchase commercial lots for zero bucks. However, the land deals you find may not look like no money down deals at first. Most sellers do ask for a nominal down payment, even if it’s only $100.

You can get around this and make it a no money down deal by borrowing the small downpayment on a credit card or as a personal loan. When you sell the land later for a profit, you can pay off the credit card quite easily, as the amount you’ll be putting on it will be quite small. Further, if you plan to keep the land and put a house on it one day, banks will be much more likely to give you a mortgage if you already own a piece of land outright (land can be very cheap and paid off relatively quickly).

2. 100% Financing

Though banks are tightening up their rules for mortgage lending, you can often still get 100% financing on a property if you have good credit. Alternately, you could find a bank that will loan you the 90% and then get the seller to finance the remaining 10% as a second mortgage. Either way, you put up no up-front money of your own. In this economy, many lenders are willing to make such deals. If you’re financing a high-profit deal, you could get 100% financing from a hard money lender. The lender will charge high fees and interest, but they’re usually used for short-term deals where you expect to sell the property quickly at a a large profit, making the hard money deal worth it.

3. Negotiate With Motivated Sellers

In this market, there are no shortage of highly motivated sellers, and those sellers are frequently willing to negotiate with you. Many sellers have been known to take collateral as a down payment, such as a car or other valuable property. They may also let you take out two mortgage notes with them….one for 80% of the purchase price and one for 20%. The seller can then sell one of the notes to get immediate cash, and you get into the house with no money down. With the real estate market the way it is, it shouldn’t be too hard to find the no money down deal you want!

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