7 Smoke Detector Facts

Every morning, it’s the same thing. You get out of bed, take a shower, burn the toast and then curse the smoke detector. Although its singing the song of its people can be incredibly loud and awful to hear, the truth is that smoke detectors save lives. So, while your smoke detector may sing way off tune, it’s trying very hard to protect you and your family from smoke- and fire-related hazards, like your morning toast.

It’s time to check your smoke detector batteries yet again — and to learn more about those white pucks that hang out on the ceiling.

Meet Your Friendly Neighborhood Smoke Detector

Every single day, your smoke alarms hang around next to the ceiling, just waiting for something to go wrong. They don’t ask for much, which is why most people tend to forget they even exist. But the job they do is vital to the safety and security of not only you and your family, but the families that neighbor you.

You’ve heard it a hundred times: check your smoke detector batteries. Check those batteries! Hey, by the way, have you checked your smoke alarm batteries? But for most people, that’s as intimate as they ever get with these clever devices. Here are some things to know about smoke detectors:

1. Working smoke alarms give you additional escape time in the case of an actual fire. Thirty-eight percent of home fire deaths from 2009 to 2013 were do to a lack of functioning smoke alarms. In the homes that had smoke alarms that failed, 46 percent had missing or disconnected batteries.

2. Best places to install smoke alarms are in each bedroom, in halls outside of bedrooms and in every major living area. Why so many? Closed doors can slow the spread of smoke and living areas on upper or lower floors may have a significant blaze going before smoke is noticeable.

3. Interconnected smoke alarms are considered the safest option currently on the market. These alarms are connected to each other and often directly powered through your home’s electrical system, with a battery backup. When one detects smoke, they all go off. It can be annoying if you tend to burn the toast, but when it’s a real fire, all that noise will be a life saver.

4. Smoke detectors work in one of two different ways. One type, called an ionization detector because it uses electrically charged particles to detect smoke in the air, is faster to respond to flaming fires with small smoke particles. The other, known as a photoelectric detector, uses beams of light to check for smoke particles in the air. These are better for smouldering fires. Both will get the job done, though!

5. Most people don’t realize that smoke detectors need maintenance, too! You should check the battery monthly and use the bristle attachment on your vacuum to clean any debris off of your detector twice a year. You’ll also want to change the battery twice a year. Many people do this when they change their clocks for Daylight Savings Time.

6. Smart Smoke Detectors can save you money on insurance. It’s true! If your smoke detectors are connected via WiFi, they can call for help or send you a message about their status. Many insurance companies love these features, as they reduce the amount of damage insured homes suffer in case of a fire. Break out the cool new tech and reap the savings!

7. There are other, similar detectors on the market. While you’re shopping for smoke detectors, you may come across heat or carbon monoxide detectors. These units look very similar, but they function very differently. Heat detectors literally detect high heat, so aren’t very fast to respond in a residential setting. They’re best used in small, confined spaces.

Carbon monoxide detectors, however, are very suitable for home use. They measure the amount of carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas created by combustion, in the air. If dangerous amounts are detected, you’ll know and be able to make your home safe again. Most homes use these in conjunction with smoke detectors.

Where There’s Smoke, Well… You Know

No one wants to deal with a house fire, but if your morning bacon cookery gets out of hand, it’s good to have an early warning system. If your house doesn’t have adequate smoke detectors, it’s time to reach out to the HomeKeepr community for the very best electrician they can recommend. When other companies put their reputations on the line to connect you with the right home pro, you know they’ve gotta be good.

5 Tips for Buying A Vacation Home

Just imagine it! Waking up to the sound of sea and surf pounding the sand right outside your very own home. You don’t have to call ahead for reservations, you don’t need to ask anyone for a key or have a check-out time. It’s all yours to do with as you will, and you’re going take advantage of it constantly because now you own your very own vacation home.

Not to burst any vacation home-shaped bubbles, but before you get too lost in the fantasy, you need to consider some of the many pros and cons of owning a home away from home.

Vacation Homes Aren’t For Everybody

As the real estate market begins to respond to financial pressures from higher interest rates that are only set to increase further, as well as trade wars and tariffs with some of the country’s best trading partners, more people are just waiting for their favorite vacation spot to experience a market correction. If you’re one of them, don’t jump into the vacation home market without seriously considering what you’re doing.

Sure, it can be cool to have a vacation home. It can be the very best thing. But if you never use it or you never go anywhere else, it might be the wrong call. Consider these five points when buying a vacation home today or tomorrow:

1. What can you afford on your own?

It’s no secret that many vacation homes will go for several times what your personal home may be worth. Because of this, buyers like to try to pool their assets to pull off a vacation home purchase with friends or family. Don’t let your vacation home become a cautionary tale: buying a vacation home with anyone that you’re not married to could become a long term problem.

What if you and the friend or relative don’t like the same beach? What if you can’t agree on the property to purchase? Will you be resentful the rest of your life? Most importantly, perhaps, is what to do if your co-borrower has poor credit, can’t come up with their part of the downpayment or is otherwise creating a giant problem for your mortgage?

After you’ve actually bought the property, who pays for what repairs? Don’t buy with friends or family, but if you do, get a lawyer to draw up a maintenance and payment agreement that you both sign to get everything on paper and make it official.

2. Even if you do buy a vacation home on your own, it will be complicated.

This isn’t your momma’s FHA loan. When you buy a vacation home, you’re almost always going to use a conventional mortgage. You’ll need stellar credit, an excellent debt to income ratio and, most importantly, a lot of cash. Unlike primary homes, which rarely require reserves, being the lender on a secondary home feels awfully risky to the bank.

They may still lend to you, but they’ll want to see that you have anywhere from two to 12 months of reserves on hand. If you’ve not heard the term before, “reserves” are funds already in an account somewhere that are equal to a certain number of months’ worth of payments for both of your homes. This also includes anything wrapped into your payment due to escrow, like homeowners’ insurance and taxes.

3. Do you have a plan for off-season care and maintenance?

If a friend or relative lives nearby, you probably are set for someone to look in on your place, but if not, you’ve got to get this part figured out before you sign on the line. Just like an occupied home, your vacation home will develop problems over time. Wear and tear happens even when you’re not home and pipes love to freeze and burst when no one’s looking. You have to have a plan.

You should hire a handyman, property manager or other real estate expert to keep an eye out and call in help when necessary. That’s a cost you’ll have all year, so make sure you figure it into your budget. Since your property is a vacation home, it will also require more expensive insurance coverage, as well as specialty insurance if it’s in an area where floods, hurricanes or earthquakes are common.

4. Renting it out when you’re not using it makes your vacation home a rental, not a vacation home.

You absolutely can rent your vacation home from day one, provided that you purchased it as an investment home. Some buyers think this will save them a bunch of money, since someone else will take care of it part of the year, at least. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between a glorious rental partnership and a home that’s been burned to the ground. If your neighborhood, for example, won’t allow AirBnBs and their ilk, or has strict rules about maintenance, you are responsible for the rebound from missteps there, no matter how good your renters.

You will have to find the guy to mow the lawn, you’re paying for clean up every time renters move out, you’re paying for repairs and so forth. Did you want to be a long-distance landlord? A property manager can help ease the pain, but it will still cost plenty. If you do decide to proceed with a rental situation for your vacation home, make sure the house you buy is in a location that’s really hot, otherwise you may not be able to get enough rent to cover all the expenses.

5. Oh, hey, and selling can be difficult and costly.

For every one of the real estate experts who claim that buying a vacation home is a great way to make money, there are experts who realize that the market is unpredictable and you may find that you don’t love that vacation home as much as you thought in a few years.

After spending two years dealing with short term renters, you may decide it’s easier for you to go back to renting a nice hotel for your vacation stay, rather than owning a headache of a property. That’s all fine and good, until you find out that not only has the market bottomed out, you can’t even get enough money out of the place to cover the mortgage and your closing costs.

Remember, when you sell, you may also be on the hook for capital gains taxes, and you can’t take a capital loss if the property in question is classified as a second home.

If you still have the stomach for a second home after running through this list of things to consider, then proceed with caution. Don’t buy a project house unless you have someone else to do the work and even then, make sure that the only thing you do at that vacation home is relax. Going on vacation just to stress out about the lawn isn’t a fun kind of vacation, you know?

Your Vacation Home Support Team

Wondering where you’ll find all the people you need to help keep your vacation home in good shape, whether you’re renting it out or just visiting on the weekends? Ask your HomeKeepr family! A quick click and the community can recommend home pros in the area, from the best handyman around to a property manager who can keep your renters in line.

Smart Thermostats

In the Internet Age, it seems like almost anything is possible. There are cars that can drive themselves, microwaves that you can talk to and, of course, smart thermostats. For the average homeowner, that last one might not sound all that special, but there’s really a lot of “neat” coming out of that weird little thing that hangs on your wall and controls the complicated HVAC system in your home.

But have smart thermostats lived up to the hype? Or are they really just vanity gadgets that you can use to one-up your buddies when they come over to visit?

What Can a Smart Thermostat Really Do?

There are two things every thermostat has to be exceptionally good at or it’s just not worth the effort: first, it must be able to tell what the temperature is where it’s located. Secondly, it needs to be able to turn the HVAC system on and off. Considering these two basic functions, nearly any thermostat is a pretty good one by some standards.

Your basic tilt-switch based thermostat (sometimes called Mercury thermostats because at one point they pretty much all contained the metal that’s liquid at room temperature) can get the job done, but it relies on you to do an awful lot of work if you hope to maintain any sort of efficient usage of your heating and cooling equipment.

Do you remember to turn the thermostat down when you go to bed or leave the house? It’s ok, most people have too many other things on their mind to keep track of where their thermostats are. They just set ‘em and forget ‘em. That’s where the problem lies, really.

When you have a smart thermostat, “set it and forget it” doesn’t mean that your furnace or air conditioner runs all day while you’re gone just so it’s a decent temperature inside when you finally get home from work. It means that your thermostat puts itself in economy mode when it knows you’ve left, and works the temperature back to perfection when it expects you’re on your way back.

Smart Thermostats and WiFi

Every smart thermostat on the market takes advantage of WiFi to both connect with you via your smartphone and, with most models, download the weather and other information that can be used with other smart home tools. And, of course, so you can pre-heat the house on chilly mornings without getting out of bed.

Your smart thermostat can also update its own software without bothering you via that same WiFi connection. They are very self-sufficient devices. However, any “always on” device like a smart thermostat can have problematic relationships with network security.

When they were first released, a few nefarious types found a way to hack into individual private networks using the weakest link — a smart thermostat or other smart device that hadn’t been built with security in mind. Most devices you’ll buy today are designed to protect themselves and other denizens of their network from hacking. They’re also constantly patching themselves to shield against newly discovered bugs.

But Do They Save Me Money?

According to one major smart thermostat manufacturer, their device saves users 10 to 12 percent on their heating and 15 percent on their cooling bills annually. That’s $131 to $145 a year. For a lot of smart thermostats, that means that just two years in operation will be enough for the clever little device to pay for itself.

Of course, with a smart thermostat that can learn your patterns, the longer you use it, the smarter it gets. It’s almost as good as having a robot maid — almost.

Smart thermostats have consistently earned Energy Star certifications and many utility companies will help you buy one. These days, there are plenty to choose between so you can definitely find a device you love to look at, that is compatible with your other smart devices and that has the sort of tools that help you get the most out of your HVAC dollars.

Where Do I Find Help With My Smart Thermostat?

Many smart thermostats are designed to be simple for a homeowner to install by themselves, but if you want to have a professional installation, all it takes is a quick visit to your HomeKeepr community. You’ll find recommended smart home professionals that can help you choose the perfect smart home devices to complement your lifestyle and home and they’ll make sure they’re working right!.

Emergency Plumbing Repairs

You didn’t do anything different, but all of a sudden the garbage disposal is smoking and water is backing up in the sink. Is your plumbing possessed? Should you just set the whole house on fire and run? The answer is almost certainly no. What you may have, though, is a plumbing emergency on your hands. After all, that sink is pretty important and the reasons it’s backing up could be many.

But how do you know if you need an emergency plumber to save the day?

Most Homeowners Can Handle Basic Plumbing Issues

There are plenty of plumbing issues you can DIY. After all, plumbing is just a set of fancy tubes that connect in a logical way to move water around. It’s not magic. It is, however an incredible inconvenience to have indoor plumbing sometimes. Certain issues like minor leaks, problems with your toilet tank like a flapper that doesn’t quite seal or a handle that won’t flush, and household clogs are often entry level homeowner difficulty.

With the right tools, you can totally handle that! Bigger problems, though, require bigger guns (and more experience). Don’t be ashamed to call a pro in if you don’t think you can handle a plumbing issue. Here are some signs to look for:

* No results in about 10 minutes. That is to say, after you located the problem. It can be very time consuming to track down a clog, leak or other faulty plumbing part. But once you find it, if you’re not starting to make any headway within about 10 minutes, you need help. You’re just going to get more frustrated and tired and it’ll take even longer for the plumber to get there.
* Your pipes are cast iron, steel or copper. Metal pipes are great for some things, but they’re not for beginners. If your pipes are basically made of anything but plastic, you need a pro. Each type requires specific knowledge and tools to manage.
* Every drain is backed up. If you notice your tub is backing up and every drain that’s before it in the plumbing architecture is also backing up, you have a big problem. I’m not saying it’s roots in the line, but it might be roots in the line. Or a toy your child flushed. Either way, this is where the kind of cameras that plumbers use to evaluate sewer lines come in really handy.
* You have no water pressure to more than one outlet. No pressure to one sink or appliance might indicate a bit of sediment in the little screen filter that is sometimes fit between the device and the water line or that you forgot to turn the shut off valve all the way back to the “on” position. However, if a few of your plumbing fixtures are suffering this problem, you could have rust in the lines or other problems that need a pro to fix.
* You just really don’t know where to start. There are some plumbing issues that aren’t all that complicated once you know how to fix them, but figuring them out on the fly in a semi-panicked state is not going to be easy. This is where you call a pro sooner rather than later. Ask if you can watch, often they’ll show you how to perform basic plumbing jobs. You get a lot of value for the fee that way — if the problem ever happens again, you know exactly how to go about fixing the problem.

When you encounter a plumbing issue that feels like you might be able to fix it, given enough time, ask yourself seriously how much your time is worth. The thing that many homeowners neglect to figure into the equation is how long that job will take to DIY. If you’re going to have the kitchen torn apart for days because you’re working a full time job and also you’re following instructions from the internet that you have to keep referring back to, maybe it makes more sense for the plumber to come and knock the issue out in an hour.

It’s not that you shouldn’t do your own plumbing, just that it’s often not really worth it when you juggle the extreme inconvenience of not having functional indoor plumbing. This is the line that homeowners have to walk every time their house needs work. Do you call someone or do you try to fix it yourself?

When You Need a Home Pro

When you need a pro, they’re just a click away inside your HomeKeepr community. It doesn’t matter who you need, your Realtor has already made some professional recommendations and you can request more if you need a specific type of expert. From plumbers to bankers, pool installers to gardeners, they’re all here. At HomeKeepr, we believe in recommendations, not reviews!

5 Ways to Stick to Your New Home Furnishing Budget

You’ve finally done it! You bought the house of your dreams and closing is just around the corner. Then it occurs to you. Your aged and creaking futon, cement block and raw lumber bookshelves and that one lone chair in your kitchen might not be anywhere near enough furniture for the new space.

What’s a new homeowner to do?

Step One: Don’t Do ANYTHING Until After Closing

Before going into detail on how to keep your budget under control when buying new furniture, it’s important that you actually close your loan. It’s a common pitfall for new home buyers (and really, even home buyers who have bought before). Of course you’re excited, you got a clear to close — but you’re not closing for another week because there’s just not another day that works for everyone.

THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO BUY FURNITURE.

If you buy furniture, especially if you buy it on credit, you can literally have your loan approval revoked. You were approved based on your debt to income ratio, your credit score (which heavily weights how much of your credit is used at any given time) and your cash reserves. Whatever you do, don’t upset the balance. Don’t even breathe too hard. Window shop, but don’t buy anything yet.

You’ve Closed, Green Light on Shopping!

Because you were patient, your loan closed and all is well. The thought of moving into your new house with your sad, saggy furniture is almost too much, though. You want to get to it: new house, new furniture, new life. Before you do, consider these five tricks to help you stick to your home furnishing budget:

1. Actually have a budget. It’s easy to walk into the Pier Ones, Ikeas and Crate and Barrels of the world and lose all sense of self-control. Before you take your first step, determine how much you really can afford, whether you’re paying cash or putting your home’s furniture on a card. When using credit, be realistic because if you can’t pay the payment you’re going to suffer a lot for an overstuffed couch you bought on a whim.

2. Wait until you know how your space will function. Many new homeowners will be so excited about getting on with the furniture purchase that they buy furniture before they really understand how their new space works. Every house has a flow about it — when you add that to your own personal behavior patterns, you get rooms that are unique and require careful furnishing.

This means that the amazing coffee table you bought the day of closing may not end up working as well as you thought, but now you’ve got it and that money is just out the window. Each piece you buy should work with the way you envision the space. Save money by not wasting it, that’s a winning scenario.

3. Try online outlet stores. There are lots of places to buy furniture these days. If you’re handy with a tape measure and your imagination, sites like Overstock.com and Wayfair.com can bring you brand new furniture and decor at a discount. Since you’re working out of an online shopping cart, it’s easy to compare different pieces or build a customized set of furniture for any given room and know exactly where you are price-wise. You can’t always say the same for brick and mortar furniture galleries where it’s easy to get turned around and allow yourself to be talked into upgrades or additional items you don’t actually need.

4. Wait for sales or open box items. Even if you prefer a real life store, you can clean up if you’re patient. Most home furnishing stores have regular sales, especially for big holidays. Think Presidents Day, Memorial Day and so on. It might be madness inside the shop, but you can start shopping a few weeks ahead to pick out your furniture in your own time. Write down the SKUs and bring them back during the sale to finish the deal.

These same shops do sometimes get items returned for any number of reasons, including that the product was delivered and it wouldn’t fit through the home’s front door. Minor scratches and dents are also possible when dealing with these “open box” furnishings. Often, though, those dings are in a place where no one will ever see them, they’re so small that no one would notice them or they’re the sort of damage you’ll eventually inflict upon the item through regular use. When it’s inevitable, you might as well get a discount.

5. Check out upscale resellers. So you bought your dining table at Havertys, but you hated the chairs they had on offer. Why not save some dough and check out your area thrift stores and other resellers like Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore? These are always gambles, you may go in one week and there are sixteen couches and the next there aren’t any. If you’re building your furniture collection bit by bit, though, resellers will make your dollar go further, while often benefiting a charity. Don’t believe what you’ve heard about these places being cash and carry, most will offer local delivery for a small fee.

No Matter What Your Home Needs…

You know that new light fixture you bought for the dining room that the salesperson assured you was going to be easy to change out yourself? If it turns out that it’s a bit above your skill level, there’s always somewhere you can turn for help: your HomeKeepr community!

Whether you need a carpenter to build custom shelving, an electrician to run those under cabinet lights or a banker to make a loan for all the furniture you’re buying, we have you covered. Everyone in the community is recommended by Realtors in your area, so you know they’ve got to be good!

Home Staging Fails...

There you sit, watching “The Vanilla Ice Project” on the DIY Network when a thought bubble forms over your head. If Vanilla Ice can remodel houses on television, you could probably save yourself the expense of a pro home stager and take the job into your own hands. Your Realtor will be so impressed that she’ll probably put it on her Instagram account right away.

This is a critical decision point. Do you put down the remote control and get to work making your home presentable for buyers or do you keep watching in hopes that Vanilla Ice breaks out into random song? It’s a hard decision.

As you lean forward to turn the television off, your spouse calls to see if you picked up milk on the way home from work. Of course you did. It’s just that important.

You may not realize it now, but one day you’ll see how close you came to total annihilation. That might be a bit dramatic, but you definitely came close to something…

What’s the Big Deal with Home Staging?

Staging a home is a delicate art meant to accentuate the positive features of your home, often with furniture you can’t afford or would never choose because of its basic impracticality. Who really owns a fainting couch in this day and age?

No one. Nacho cheese Doritos, football and fainting couches don’t mix.

This is why interior decorating pros often bring their own furniture and accessories to vacant or partially emptied homes. With their own furnishings, pro designers have a lot more control over how your home is presented and they can go wild creating a lot of interior decorating fantasies for people who will never own furniture like what your home is showcased with.

Even so, when potential buyers later see your professionally decorated home online, they’re far more eager to take a look right now than if your home is photographed empty, or worse, full of furniture that is practical and functional, but makes no sense with the architectural style. If your furniture were music, it would sound like a 10 year old learning to play the violin.

Does Professional Home Staging Make Sense for You?

There are some homes that absolutely demand home staging. That ancient manor on the hill, for example, that’s a place that needs to be photographed with furniture in it or else it’s just a series of long, scary, dark rooms. Put the right furnishings inside, from curtains to a long, elegant dining table, and suddenly it’s a glamorous and ornate dreamscape for someone.

A house like that, with a value in the millions of dollars, clearly is getting treatment that yours may not, but you’d might be surprised how well you can come out. According to reporting by Realtor.com, staging can cost about $2,400 per month and a typical contract is for three months, even if you sell sooner. That brings the total to around $7,200, give or take.

Before you decide you can do better on that kind of budget, take a moment to check out these sales-related stats from the National Association of Realtors 2017 Profile of Home Staging report:

* 39 percent of Seller’s Agents reported that staging greatly decreased time on the market. That means fewer house payments for you and a faster transition into your new place.
* 33 percent of Buyer’s Agents told NAR that staging resulted in a one to five percent increase in their clients’ offers. Nationally, the median home sold in August 2018 went for $320,200. If this home were staged, the owner would have seen an initial offer of $3,202 to $16,010 more than similar homes that weren’t staged.
* On the flip side of that, 29 percent of Seller’s Agents reported the same one to five percent increase in sales price versus comparables nearby, another 21 percent said they saw a six to 10 percent increase in the final sales price. If you do the math on this, that same $320,200 home staged may bring up to $32,020 more just because it was easier for the buyer to visualize themselves in the space.

Obviously, where you live and how in demand the area is will make a big difference in whether or not it makes sense to hire a home stager. The cost can initially be alarming, but with the right type of home and the right market, it becomes a bit of a magical money machine.

Before You Stage Your Home Yourself…

Why not drop in on your HomeKeepr community? Not only is it an easy way to find trusted and reliable home stagers in your area, you can touch base with your Realtor before you do anything rash. After all, that life-sized velvet painting of Elvis in your bathroom is cool, but it’s not exactly what homeowner fantasies are made of…

Understanding Mortgage Insurance

Whether you’re in the process of buying your first home or you’ve been a homeowner for years, there are few phrases that hit right to the bone like “mortgage insurance.” Why, you’re not sure entirely, but lots of people indicated that it was terrible and you were going to regret it.

As usual, the truth lies somewhere closer to the middle. Mortgage insurance is not your enemy, but it can be a costly surprise if you’re not prepared. Let’s dive into this hot button topic.

What Exactly is Mortgage Insurance?

Mortgage insurance is a type of coverage that your lender will take out on your loan to help shield them against loss should you default. They generally only require it if you have less than 20 percent down and often, this monthly payment will drop off once you’ve paid your home loan down to the point that your house has about 22 percent in equity versus its mortgage.

To be clear, this insurance does not cover you — at least not directly. In the case of default, the bank gets the check, but you get something, too. In many states, even recourse states, the mortgage insurance can be enough to prevent the bank from coming back on you for the difference between what you owe and what it was able to recover at a public sale.

Having mortgage insurance does not guarantee you will be free and clear should you lose your home, but it sure helps, especially if that house is in good condition when you turn it over to the bank. Its original purpose was to make it easier for people to get mortgages, even if they couldn’t come up with a big down payment, but during the housing bubble a decade ago many homeowners discovered that it can help on the back end, too.

MIP, PMI and Funding Fees

Mortgage insurance is a blanket term for several different insurance programs that essentially do the same thing. Rather than just calling it “mortgage insurance” across the industry, due to the way each program came into being in sort of a vacuum, different loan types have different names for it. For example:

* FHA calls it MIP, the Mortgage Insurance Premium. It was one of the first programs and the name is an original, for sure. It requires both an upfront and monthly payment.
* Private Mortgage Insurance is available on conventional loans and will be provided by one of a few different companies, MGIC being one of the biggest.
* Many people think that VA loans don’t have mortgage insurance, but they do — it’s a one time charge at closing known as the “Funding Fee.”

For most people, having mortgage insurance is just a reality of life. They can either continue to give their entire payment to someone else to pay off real estate the renter will never have a stake in, or they can give a fraction of their payment over to the bank in order to be given a chance to establish some equity and build a little wealth, even if it’s in the form of the family home.

Since the pricing of your mortgage insurance is based largely on your outstanding mortgage balance, the payment will get smaller and smaller each year. You can expect to pay from a half percent to one percent of your total mortgage balance annually. So, for example, if you borrow $300,000 to buy your home, your mortgage insurance payment will be anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000, or $125 to $250 a month, the first year.

Getting Rid of Mortgage Insurance

Although mortgage insurance has its place, you don’t want to pay it forever. That’s where this section of the blog comes in! If you borrowed using an FHA program after the summer of 2013 and had less than 10 percent down, you probably have lifetime mortgage insurance. There’s no joking, this is not a great situation.

Usually, once you reach 78 percent loan to value, based either on the original appraisal or an updated one, the bank will drop your mortgage insurance. You may have to write a formal request, but it’s not that big of a deal. With these FHA products, the mortgage insurance is meant to stay for the entire life of the loan. So, your options to shed it are a little trickier. You can:

1. Avoid it entirely by using a piggyback loan. This is a combination mortgage made up of an 80 percent LTV conventional loan and a 15 percent LTV secondary loan. That secondary loan, however, can have a pretty high base interest rate and may have terms like an adjustable rate, a shorter amortization period or a prepayment penalty.
2. Bring more to closing. Hey, it’s not fun to crack your piggy bank or 401(k) to get extra money, but there are times when it makes sense. This is one of them. You always need somewhere to live, you might as well be building equity, too.
3. Refinance the monster. If you’ve noticed prices in your neighborhood rising dramatically or you’ve just been paying on your mortgage a while, it could pay to refinance your loan. Your Realtor can help you determine if it will be worthwhile to spend the money for a new appraisal and new loan paperwork. That’s also the downside, though. It can cost as much to refinance at the wrong time as you’re paying in mortgage insurance.
4. Sell your home. You know, it was a good home, but you’re sick to death of paying the mortgage insurance. You plan to take the sale proceeds to buy another place that you can put at least 10 percent down on to avoid further incidents of lifetime mortgage insurance.

Most of the time, if you compare your mortgage insurance to the alternatives, it’s not really that big of a deal to pay an extra percent for the ability to buy a home with five percent down, rather than when you finally have 20 percent down.

Keep in mind that although interest rates have been in the three to four percent zone for a while now, pre-bubble, they were between six and eight percent for a prime mortgage and no one blinked an eye. Effectively having a four to five — or even six — percent interest payment doesn’t have that much of a relative impact on your monthly housing costs.

Ready to Shed That Mortgage Insurance?

Log in to your HomeKeepr community, where you can meet bankers who can help you refinance, builders who can help you add instant equity to your home and, of course, your Realtor who can help you build your case if you’ve accumulated enough equity naturally to be rid of mortgage insurance entirely. Because the entire community is powered by recommendations, you know the people you’ll meet can be trusted to follow-through in a totally professional way..

Natural Disaster Planning

Any time there’s a natural disaster, emergency preparedness is all anyone can think about. But soon after the news coverage fades away, it’s back to the same old grind, with little brain power paid to wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and their ilk.

The truth is that natural disasters happen when they will and waiting until the last minute to be ready for one is a dangerous practice. Instead of that, you can be truly well-prepared for the next emergency situation.

Emergency Preparedness Is Quick and Painless

When done outside of an actual disaster, emergency preparedness can be easy as pie. People often assume they need to have complicated battlements in place just in case of an invading force, but the truth is that a little awareness can go a long way. Be ready for the next big thing with these tips.

#1. Understand your local disasters. Even if you’ve lived in the same area all your life, there’s probably something you could learn about local disasters and their patterns. For example, you may know that a tornado means duck and cover in the hallway, but do you know if you should evacuate your home when an EF3 tornado is coming your way? Ready.gov has a library of information on emergency preparedness, including how to manage many different types of natural disasters.

#2. Understand your insurance coverages. Insurance is never sexy, but it’s necessary. If you haven’t gone over your coverages in a while, today is the day. Call your insurance agent and set up an appointment to review everything in your portfolio. Ask the important questions, like “Is my car covered if my tree falls on it?” and “Will my house be repaired if there’s a flood?”

#3. Know who to contact before, during and after the event. Long before trouble pokes its head up, get a list of phone numbers together. These should be organized neatly and put in a place that’s easy to get to in case you have to grab them on the go. Numbers for a pet sitter, your child’s school, your spouse’s workplace and so on so help connect you with your loved ones before a predictable disaster.

Keep contact information for your mortgage servicer, your insurance agent and your favorite general contractor or handyman in the same place for after the disaster has ended. Out of area family may also be good resources for bigger disasters like wildfires and hurricanes.

#4. Have an emergency plan that includes your pets. You need an emergency plan that the whole family knows. It should include what type of disaster you’re preparing for, the steps you should take, what items need to be involved and how pets and small children will be handled. Obviously, you can’t plan for every outcome, but if you include the most common natural disasters for your area, it’s a good place to start.

#5. Practice your disaster plans monthly. No matter how well you may think you know your disaster plans, in the moment you may well freeze or forget something. That’s why practice is so important when it comes to preparing for these incidents. Determine how much time you have to get to safety, then time yourself with the goal of cutting the time down without missing anything on the list.

#6. Keep a stock of supplies. Even if you feel a little silly doing it, keep an emergency supply cabinet stocked. You don’t need several months’ worth of food and water, but enough to get you by for a couple of weeks will be absolutely valuable. Check expiration dates frequently, rotating out food that’s about to go bad and replacing it with food that has plenty of life left in it. While you’re at it, don’t forget to stock some lumber and fasteners. That way, you won’t have to fight the crowds at the home improvement stores in days following a natural disaster.

#7. Have an emergency fund. Even if you just put $10 a month into it, keeping an emergency fund in cash can help you make it through any disaster, even if credit card readers are down. Since epic disasters don’t occur every day, you have time to save, but you need to start as soon as possible to have plenty put away for that extra rainy day.

Recovering From a Natural Disaster is Hard, But HomeKeepr Makes it Easier

It feels like things will never be the same after a natural disaster, but you’ll get by with a little help from your friends and HomeKeepr community. Log in, check out the contractors your Realtor has recommended to help get everything set right again and then give them a call. When you’ve got so much to clean up, it’s nice to know you have home pros that you can trust to do the job right.