etc

Finance Specials

January 12, 2010

Securing A Mortgage Loan With A Rent To Buy Scheme

Mortgage loans can be hard to secure- often requiring as much as 10% down or more just to get approved. A type of loan that is surfacing is the rent to buy mortgage- which will allow an individual to get approved for a mortgage loan by proving themselves in rental payments.

There is considered to be more freedom with rent to buy mortgages. An example is with the overall cost and term of the mortgage, which will be much different than a typical mortgage. A good total to settle for would be around six times your annual salary. If you are married or intend on marrying soon, you can also include the salary of your spouse into the equation.

Since part of the money you will pay in rent will go towards a deposit, you will no longer have to save for years on end just to get approved for a mortgage. If you are living from one paycheck to another, you already know how hard it can be to get approved with average credit and a moderate-paying job. This is ideal for an unplanned family situation.

Unfortunately for the lessee, a rent to buy mortgage puts the tenant in charge of all maintenance and upkeep charges. If your hot water heater goes bad, you will be the one to pay for it instead of being able to have a landlord pay for it. For this reason, the home owner should have a pool of money ready for repairs and maintenance.

Sometimes, only certain properties are marked as a rent to buy scheme. If your lender doesn’t support rent to buy options, you can still go into an agreement with the original seller to create one. Of course, that requires that the original seller has put the property on the market as a rent to buy real estate venture. The second option will require that you get a lawyer and fill out a formal contract to outline the details of the arrangement.

Bad credit shuts many borrowers down when they are looking for a mortgage. Even bad credit can’t get in the way of those with only “fair” credit, since it builds credibility over one or two years of rental payments. Lenders will see that paying inflated rent, usually at rates high as a mortgage payment or greater, is responsible enough to take a chance so long as the home owner stays up to date.

Final Thoughts

Rent to buy properties can be found via real estate agents. If you live in select locations, you can also find a lender that will finance a property under this scheme, although it’s less popular in the United States as it is elsewhere in European countries.

Learn more on Low Cost Buy to Rent Mortgages and Best Buy to Rent Mortgages.

Filed under Finance by Chris Channing

Permalink Print Comment

January 5, 2010

New Services Virtual Office Businesses Are Offering

The new craze in business design has been to outsource certain areas of the business to make for a more well-oiled machine. Virtual offices and virtual assistants, as the resources are called, are able to provide a better return on investment thanks to simplifying the way a business operates and handles customers.

Virtual offices are now offering bookkeeping as part of services offered to businesses. This puts them in a completely different bracket of usefulness, as previously responsibility was only answered when your clientele needed to contact you. With bookkeeping services, an assistant is constantly kept up to date on your business and keeps the necessary documents and finances filed away for use later on in the year for when tax season hits.

Small business owners that aren’t savvy with computers likely will require an outside service to handle the day to day operations concerning server management and hosting. Virtual offices that take on the job can be trusted to not only manage the resources of your technology department, but secure them against the latest threats.

Virtual offices can fulfill the needs of an accountant if needed. Accountants that take care of payroll are known to be expensive, but mandatory if a business is going to legally keep up with taxes and finances. With new virtual offices coming out every day, the competition to lower prices on services is being felt. Whereas payroll was once grossly overpriced, businesses can outsource it to a virtual office for much less that what it once cost.

Having a call center take on work from your business is the best bet when you are experiencing high growth around holiday seasons. The holidays bring in a lot more business for certain industries, and if you are one of them, you wouldn’t want to miss out on new business due to inability to scale with demand. Outsourcing to a call center is also cost effective; much more so than having to employ new employees either temporarily or even for full-time employment.

Interestingly, a new trend in call centers has been to offer emergency phone call assistance to landlords with tenants. Landlords can now sleep easy at night, even if an emergency occurs, thanks to the rerouting power of the call center. Of course the call center still contacts the landlord to notify of the emergency, but at a time that is convenient if the risks and stakes are minimal enough.

In Conclusion

A virtual office solution may or may not be right for your business. There are plenty of services out there that offer free consultation and demo programs to judge whether or not you should use one. There is no obligation for most free demo services, so it is at least worth checking out if you need to expand.

Learn more on answering services and bilingual answering services.

Filed under Finance by Chris Channing

Permalink Print Comment

November 22, 2009

Tips For Self Employed Individuals Getting A Mortgage

If you have the guile to run your own business, it seems your conquest in getting approved for a home mortgage would seem just as easy. The simple answer is that it isn’t, although there are steps you can take to change the fact that the self employed are at a disadvantage in getting approved for a mortgage.

A regular job is deemed as somewhat permanent- so long as the individual has shown the ability to keep the job for the foreseeable future. Self employed work is often only temporary, or easily falls into the category of unstable. If that’s the case, do everything in your effort to make contracts long term. In doing so, you prove that your income is somewhat stable.

A long-term income is going to be mandatory in a mortgage loan. Don’t expect to find a lender that will agree to offer a loan to anyone self employed for under two years. The de facto standard is set at two years, but with some extra merit, you might be able to sway a lender. The standard two years will prove that you have verifiable income, if nothing else.

Your best bet in being self employed is to find a good accountant. There is software that allows you to solo the operation, but you will be devoid of the advice of an accountant, which can be pure gold to those who aren’t keen on accounting laws. From missing tax breaks to making errors, ill accounting habits can be the end of a good situation.

It takes time to build a good credit line. Since you will be building credit for at least a year or two to get in the green, you should open up a business account immediately if you have not done so. A business account acts as a new line of credit, which lenders will look at to help determine whether or not you are worthy of a loan. Business accounts also offers you organization, as a matter of personal benefit.

Often times you will be alone in your struggle of building a business from scratch. Some forms of business models will help you get a loan- such as a partnership or establishing a corporation. A sole proprietorship doesn’t always look the best to lenders, who know that “two heads are better than one” in a sense, and that businesses tend to succeed more when there are more people involved.

In Conclusion

If you find that you are still having a problem finding a lender, you can always find a guarantor to verify you are credible. If you happen to be married, you can also sign on with a mortgage loan in your spouse’s name. Don’t give up if you get denied once or twice!

Learn more on Self Employed Home Mortgages and Re Mortgage Self Employed.

Filed under Finance by Chris Channing

Permalink Print Comment

Finance Resources

Register Login