Mortgages - Nolo.com

Sample Gift Letter

If a relative or friend is giving you gift money to buy your house, your bank and lender will

How to Arrange a Home Loan from Mom and Dad

How to Choose and Work with a Mortgage Broker

When Home Mortgage Interest Is Not Deductible

The home mortgage deduction is one of the most popular in the entire tax code.

Shared and Community Gardens

With half of the world's population living in cities, growing food locally requires us to find space between buildings, parking lots, and streets.

Sharing a Yard With a Neighbor

People spend a lot of money and time making their yards, decks, terraces, gardens, and gazebos appealing.

Shared Housing for Seniors

For seniors, shared housing requires a little interdependence and creates a lot of independence.

How to Form a Co-Housing Community

There are hundreds of cohousing communities in the United States and Canada.

The Shared Vacation Home

While owning a second home is a luxury that few can afford, 10% of a vacation home might be more in your price range.

Title Insurance: Why a Home Buyer Needs It

Getting title insurance is one of the standard steps home buyers take before closing on a home purchase. Title insurance is crucial for home buyers be...

Buying an Affordable House: Top Tips

Are you experiencing sticker shock? Even when the market is down, the number of zeros on a house's price tag makes buying a challenge for most people.

Where to Shop for a Mortgage

You can save real money if you carefully shop for a mortgage. Even a one-quarter percentage point difference in interest rates can mean savings of tho...

Qualifying for a Mortgage

Don't start house hunting until you seriously consider how much you can afford to pay. A little advance planning will save you time and money later, b...

The Many Benefits of Sharing

We tend to consider it a given that sharing is a good thing. As children, we're taught (and made) to share our toys, our crayons, and our rooms. As we...

Stricter Mortgage Requirements for Homebuyers

New Truth in Lending rules approved in 2008 by the Federal Reserve should foster more responsible mortgage lending and give consumers additional prote...

Mortgage Rate Locks: How They Work

A mortgage rate lock (also called a lock-in) is a lender's promise to hold a certain interest rate at a certain number of points for you, usually for ...

Your Down Payment: Where Will It Come From?

Most home buyers don't have large cash reserves and hope to make as low a down payment as possible. Unfortunately, the traditional 20% down -- which b...

Fixed Rate vs. Adjustable Rate Mortgages

Before choosing a mortgage, you need to understand the differences between mortgage types: fixed rate mortgages, adjustable rate mortgages, and intere...

Comparing Mortgages: Points, Interest Rates, and Fees

Even after careful shopping, many people wonder whether they've really found the least costly mortgage or whether it makes sense to pay more points fo...

Cobuying a Home

What you learned in kindergarten about sharing could help in your quest for a home. More and more homebuyers are discovering the advantages of teaming...

Buying a Foreclosed Home: Your Way Into the Real Estate Market?

Many people, in the hopes of getting a home at a rock bottom price, consider buying a foreclosed property -- not necessarily aware of the many risks i...

Borrowing From Family and Friends to Buy a House

Bob Hope once said, "A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it." Maybe that explains why more and more homebu...

The Basics of Sharing

More than ever these days, we all want to save time and money. Most of us also want to create peaceful and nurturing homes, live in healthy, sustain...