Lower Inventories Require Savvier Home Shopping this Spring

The spring buying season may have you in high home shopping gear, but you may find as you get out there that the options aren’t as plentiful as you had hoped. That is because across the nation, inventories are shrinking while demand is increasing. The market still isn’t perfect for buyers or sellers, so navigating this spring’s home sale market could require more effort, patience and money than you might have thought.

To prepare yourself, the experts at Equifax recently published an article, “Low Inventories May Hurt Spring Real Estate Market,” which provides tips on getting the best deal and finding the best home in the current market.

Some of the tips include:

Becoming a Landlord? What to Know

Preparing your home for rent
can be a full-time job.

Spring and early summer is the time to get your home ready to sell; but if you can’t sell, and yet you have to move, you may be in the difficult scenario in which you are forced to become a landlord. If you are in this position, you are not alone. The Equifax Finance Blog gives some great tips this month on getting your home ready to rent out in the recent article, “Preparing to Rent Your Home.”

Get insurance coverage – Switch your homeowner’s insurance to landlord’s insurance to protect you from damage and protect against financial loss.

Prepare your home – Get the property in tip-top shape to beat out your competition; be sure all major systems (like heating, roofing, electrical, etc.) are in proper working condition and document the condition of each area of your home before a tenant moves in.

Know the tax rules - Learn how about being a landlord will impact your taxes; you will receive write-offs on the property, but will also have to count the rent as income; so know the rules. Consult a tax professional for full details.

Remain Vigilant of your Credit Report to Protect from Identity Theft

While there are many ways you can make sure that your identity is staying safe, one way that is both free and easy is to check your credit report each year. Since you receive a free credit report from each credit reporting agency each year, you can get a snapshot of your finances three times a year for free. This snapshot can also be an excellent chance to detect and rectify identity theft. The Equifax Finance Blog explains how to make the most of this in the new article, “The Facts About Credit Report Accuracy.”

When you search your credit report, there is a small chance that you may come across errors. Errors can come from many places, including mis-filings, incorrect data from lenders or credit card companies or from identity theft. Since the chances of mis-filing and incorrect data can be as low as 1.9 percent, if you order your credit report and find lots of errors, you may have caught an identity thief before too much damage gets done.

Set up monitoring service to protect your FICO Score

Balance and protect your FICO score to make
sure you can make big purchases like real estate. 

With the halfway mark for 2012 nearly here, it’s time to think about your FICO Score and how your purchases in the first half of the year have affected it.  You can do this for free, though a once-a-year check may not be enough for those that are serious about improving or protecting their credit. The Equifax Finance Blog explains more ways to protect your credit in the article, “HaveYou Pulled Your Credit Report Yet?”

While you can get a free report once a year from each of the three credit reporting agencies, analysis and checking for mistakes is up to you. Even if you space your requests out to one agency every four months, you may want to keep a closer eye on your credit if you are considering a large purchase in the next year or two, like purchasing real estate.