Bob Haywood, www.BobHaywood.com

Pushing the Pause Button When Buying a Home

So you're going to buy a home. And you're excited. And maybe it's your first home. And you're going to get that awesome first time home buyer's tax credit. And you're excited.

But then you get a call from your loan officer. And they have news for you. And it ain't good.

You're not getting that home you hoped for. And you're not gonna get the tax credit either. And you're gonna be stuck in that apartment for what looks like a long time.

What happened? You forgot to push the pause button in your life!

What is the pause button? It's your buying activity and your bill paying history.

Pause Button Part One: What you Buy

When you're going to buy a house, you need to clear your calendar for a period of time. Let's say 60 days to be safe. That's two months when you're not going to make any major purchases. Don't buy a car. Don't buy a washing machine. Don't go out and buy that motorcycle you just have to have. Don't go out and buy anything that you're going to have to begin making payments on.

Why? Because it might push your income to debt ratio too high. Basically what that means is that you're making too many payments on stuff you bought. If you want to buy a house, you cannot have an income to debt ratio that goes above a certain percentage of your income.

Think about it this way: I make $1000.00 a month (as an example). Let's say I pay $600 per month for my car, my motorcycle, my boat and whatever else I bought. More than 50% of what I make is going out of my pocket every month to these kinds of payments. If this is the kind of life I live, I'm not going to be able to buy a house unless I reduce those monthly payments and get my income to debt ratio much lower.

So, if you think you want to buy a home, check with your loan officer before you start the looking process. Have them run your credit report to find out if you can qualify to purchase a home. Many loan officers that I know are very happy to work with you to help you improve your credit to the point where you can be a home buyer.

That way, when you call me to show you houses, we can go looking knowing that you can actually buy what you're looking at!

Pause Button Part Two: Don't Miss Any Payments!

You might not consider this a pause button, but if your habit is to miss payments, then PUT THAT PRACTICE ON PAUSE!

Simply put, missed monthly payments will kill the deal for you. Missing monthly payments drives your credit score down and could cause you to not be able to qualify for a home mortgage.

I had this happen to a client recently. They were pre-approved, but then she was off work for a while following the birth of their prematurely born baby. During that time, they missed some payments on some appliances they bought and on their car. They missed enough payments so that they no longer qualified to buy a home.

They were sick over the deal, especially because we had found a great house and they wanted to get out of the apartment now that they have a new baby. Bummer.

If you have missed payments, it might not be a deal killer, but once again...get with your loan officer immediately if you have. They will be able to tell you if it will stop your purchase or not.

In Conclusion

We all have to pay much better attention to our financial activities in today's climate. Buying too many toys on credit is foolish. And not paying for them because you stretched your dollars too thin is irresponsible.

And the only person who will be hurt is you.

We don't know what it is, but my wife planted this vine early this summer. It has taken over and is beautiful with it's purple flowers and seed pods.

For the most complete information on the Owasso and Greater Tulsa Oklahoma housing market, be sure to check out www.BobHaywood.com

The information, content and pictures in this blog are the property of Bob Haywood. You must obtain written permission from Bob Haywood if you would like to use any of this content. Opinions expressed are those of Bob Haywood and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of other brokers, associates or home owners. Blogs may be used in their entirety using the reblog feature within Active Rain.

When you're thinking of a great place to live, think Owasso, Oklahoma! Owasso means end of the trail!

Now that you've got Picasa downloaded to your computer and all your pictures organized into easy to find folders, let me show you how simple it is to use the program to clean up pics that didn't come out right.

You can see in this screenshot that I took a couple of these pics vertical in order to try to get the best shot.

But a vertical shot doesn't work when it should be a horizontal view. So here's how to make a vertical picture into a horizontal picture. First, double click on the picture you want to work with.

To turn the picture, go to the bottom panel and click on the arrow button that say's "Rotate Counter Clockwise". Your picture will flip around and look like this!

Now, it's time to make sure it is straight. Click on the "Straighten" feature in the basic fixes panel on the top left panel. You should see a grid appear on top of your picture and a bar below it. Drag the marker on the bar left or right to straighten up the picture. When you are satisfied, click apply.

You can see from this screenshot how the picture looks better now that it is straight!

Now, there are two quick effects I would apply to this picture before using it. Those are "Fill Light" and "Auto Contrast." Both are on the Basic Fixes tab at the top left.

Here's the vanity after using those two features.

And here it is after adding some sauration.

You can see that using these simple steps, I was able to straighten, lighten, add contrast and color to a picture that started out in the wrong direction without much color.

This is the power of Picasa. Again, it won't do everything high dollar programs can do, like turning brown grass green (at least as far as I know), but for basic fixes and most photo editing, it is great!

Enjoy and go be a Picasa today! You'll love how you can really clean up your pics!

Want to make cool pics like everyone else does, but don't have the big bucks for Photoshop or some other high end photo editing program?

FEAR NOT! Picasa is here! It's easy and it's FREE!

Yep, you read that right. Picasa is a photo editing software program that is not only simple to install and use. It doesn't cost a dime!

To find the program just Google "Picasa." Then download the program to your computer. Once it is installed it will ask you if you want it to scan your computer to locate all your pics.

Say yes. It will then go out and scan your entire hard drive to find all the pics it can. Now here's the really cool part, it will put them into folders that are organized by the year they were taken. Don't worry, it won't make up new folders, it will just put your already created folders into a neat order by year. It will look something like this.

Your pics will be on the right and the folders on the left.

Change folders by clicking on any folder and you get to see all the pics contained there. This is my Active Rain folder. You can see some of the pics I've posted in past Blogs are located here.

Okay, so you've got the program and you've scanned your computer. Now, let's edit a pic into something fun. This past Sunday I posted a picture of a horses rear on my Speechless Sunday blog. A comment was made that I must be real talented with Photoshop. Guess what? I'm not. I don't even own Photoshop! I used Picasa!

Here's the picture I posted on the left. The picture on the right is the original.

Now, here's how to apply this effect to your pictures. This is the wonder of Picasa and the magic that makes your pictures really cool.

First, you have to get your original picture from your camera or smart phone to your computer. Many times I will just email it to myself and then save it to my hard drive Active Rain pictures folder. Once you do this, you will see your new picture in your folder. When you see the picture you want to work with, double click it with your mouse.

If you do it right, you should see your picture enlarged in the work area of Picasa. There are several options of what you can do with the picture at this point, but for now we will just focus on putting the black and white effect into this picture. We'll cover other options later.

For now, look at the three tabs at the top of the column on the left. They should read, "Basic Fixes", "Tuning" and "Effects."

Click on the "Effects" Tab.

Now, here's where Picasa makes you look like...well, Picasa! You can add a variety of effects to your picture. The one we want to use today is called "Focal B&W." Click on that picture.

What you will see next is a transformation of your picture. There will be a spot of color and a "cross hair" marker.

Now, pull the cross hair marker up to move the color portion up so that the horse (or whatever is in your picture) is centered in the color. Use your mouse to move the cross hairs by moving the cursor over the cross hairs and then holding down the left mouse button while you pull the marker to where you want it.

Now, for the MOST IMPORTANT STEP. Be sure to SAVE your work! To do this find the "File" tab at the top, click it and then click "Save As".

A window will pop up where you can save your picture. If you know what you are doing, you can also pick whatever folder you want the picture to be in too. NOTE: Be sure to name your picture something different than the original name. That way you will have the picture before AND after you changed it.

Now, you can go back to your Library.

And your new picture will now be in your folder (where you saved it) and ready to upload to Active Rain or wherever you plan to use it!

That's just one of the many effects you can use to tweak your pics using Picasa. There's many others including lightning up dark pictures, straightening crooked shots, cropping and even uploading pics right to blogs.

I should caution you that Picasa does have some limitations. You can only save pictures in the JPEG format, for example. But hey, it's a freebie and it's simple to use!

So go get Picasa and watch yourself turn into a Picasa when it comes to making great looking pics! Tomorrow, I'll show you another cool feature that I really love!

Speechless Sunday - Seen at a House Inspection in Claremore Oklahoma

Okay...just kidding...Here's a better view!

For the most complete information on the Owasso and Greater Tulsa Oklahoma housing market, be sure to check out www.BobHaywood.com

The information, content and pictures in this blog are the property of Bob Haywood. You must obtain written permission from Bob Haywood if you would like to use any of this content. Opinions expressed are those of Bob Haywood and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of other brokers, associates or home owners. Blogs may be used in their entirety using the reblog feature within Active Rain.

When you're thinking of a great place to live, think Owasso, Oklahoma! Owasso means end of the trail!