The answers, of course, depend on your personal situation. However, if your company is moving you abroad, you will likely receive several perks, including housing that is paid for when you are abroad as well as travel allowances and sometimes hardship pay, all of which can translate to a nice increase in pay. If you are going to be living in a country with a lower standard of living and you are going to also receive an increase in pay, you could find yourself in an enviable position of having quite a bit of extra cash.

Strategy One—Keep the House and Make Extra Payments

Several months before your move, if you decide you want to keep your home, you may want to compare home loans. With all of the extra allowances you will receive living abroad, you may find that you will be able to put more money on your mortgage and pay it off faster. In this case, a flexible mortgage may be right for you because it offers you the flexibility to pay more on your loan without incurring any penalties for early payment. If you are living abroad for several years, you may find that you have enough money to pay off your home during that time. You can use a loan repayment calculator to help plan how much extra you would need to pay on the house to pay it off while you are abroad and making extra money.

Strategy Two—Sell the House in the Next Few Years

If you don’t feel comfortable making any plans for your home before you move but think you may want to sell, you might want to consider refinancing and taking out an adjustable rate mortgage. Some adjustable rate mortgages are adjusted five years into the loan. If you can get a low interest rate now, you can continue making payments, and you will have five years to make up your mind whether or not you will keep the house. If you choose to sell before the adjustment at five years, you have saved yourself interest on your payments, and you do not have to worry about refinancing when the rate is set
to adjust. In addition, refinancing may reduce your monthly payments, so you will have more money to enjoy overseas, which may give you the opportunity to travel more.

Moving overseas to work is an exciting prospect. Still, before you can enjoy the move, there are many things you must take care of at home. Deciding what your future plans might be can help you determine if you want to sell or keep your home. If you decide to keep it, refinancing may be necessary to help you live a comfortable life when working overseas.

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As you begin the home search, your first question might be “How much can I borrow?”  Before you even go to the bank, you should have an idea of how much money you can comfortably afford to pay each month.  From your income, deduct all of your monthly expenses, excluding any rent expenses you may currently have.  Remember to also include a few new categories that house buying necessitates—property tax, homeowner’s insurance, and maintenance and repairs.  What you are left with is the amount you can afford for a mortgage.  Use a calculator mortgage online to determine how large of a loan you can take out and still pay the monthly payment you have determined you can afford.

You may find when you actually begin the loan application process that the bank will allow you to borrow more than you may feel you can comfortably afford.  Although it may be tempting to find a house in the upper range of the mortgage you qualify for, try to avoid this temptation.  If there is anything the last few years have shown us, it is that no job is truly secure.  If you or your spouse suddenly lost your job, would you still be able to afford the same mortgage?  If the answer is no, buy a home at the price level you can afford.

While buying a home can be intimidating for first time home buyers, know that the decisions of what home to buy and how much to borrow ultimately rests with you.  Take out a mortgage that you can truly afford, and you will not risk being house poor or working solely to pay for the house.  This in turn can make homeownership a positive experience rather than a stressful one.

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But with any landlord/renter agreement comes the potential for problems. Be sure to do your homework well ahead of time so the rental agreement can cover, in writing, rules about food, storage, behavior, noise and visitors.

Will you be offering additional storage areas to the tenant or will they be limited to their room? If you do not offer storage, inform the renter that they will need to acquire a storage facility elsewhere.

While it may seem like a no brainer to share the same refrigerator and cabinet space, you may be asking for headaches with such an arrangement. It’s worth your while as a landlord to provide a small refrigerator in the rented room. Designating separate cabinets and pantry space is also important.

Make any house rules clear. Who takes out the trash? Should everyone just wash their dishes immediately after use or will there be a sharing of chores around the house? As the landlord, you may end up doing all the chores if you don’t spell out the rules in the rental agreement.

List what constitutes acceptable noise and visitor stays. Do you really want an overnight visitor walking through your kitchen at 7am?

Once you determine how you will approach your new role as a landlord, make sure the space is adequate enough for a long-term tenant.

Renting out a room with access to a private bathroom is wonderful and letting out an entire basement apartment is ideal, but if all you have to offer is a single bedroom you need to be prepared to ask for a smaller amount of rent.

To maximize the amount of money you can charge, see if your budget allows for a new private entrance or even private bathroom addition.

Of course, adding a new entrance into the rented room from the outside will be less expensive than building an entire en-suite bathroom, but your investment will come back to you either way.

Fortunately,homeowner loans can help finance these types of upgrades. Homeowner loans allow you to borrow money based on the equity in your home and with interest rates incredibly low, now is the time to borrow.

People should never take out homeowner loans if they aren’t sure whether or not they can consistently make payments. Missing them can mean foreclosure.

Those that qualify and have stable incomes will find that using homeowner loans to prepare rental space will triple or even quadruple the amount of rent money you can charge, making the debt well worth it in the long run.

Before settling on a tenant, ask close friends and family if they know of anyone personally looking for a room to rent. If you do place an ad, interview the applicants in person and go over the lease agreement.

Although credit and background checks may be priorities for most landlords, giving someone with bad credit a chance after enduring the harsh realities of the recession can be quite rewarding, since these types of renters are unlikely to qualify for housing elsewhere.

As long as you prepare the rental space to a standard in which you could see yourself living and set all the boundaries upfront and in writing, renting a room to make ends meet is a smart decision.

Post by Les at MoneySuperMarket

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Regardless of which step you select, the first thing you will need to do is to create a budget that is the right kind for the task. It should be detailed and should guide you through exactly how much money you will eventually need to borrow. This is key, as you will not want to run out of money half way through a project.

Private or commercial?

Once you have figured out how much money you are going to have to put down, and presuming that you have discovered that you will not have enough in savings to cover that amount, then your next step will be to figure out how and where to borrow the money from a person or an institution. What you do at this point will depend on a number of different factors, such as whether or not the home extension in question involves your home.

If the extension involves your home, then you will continue to live there. However, if you are extending a property that is not yours for residential purposes, then you might be working on a developmental project, such as improving a property so you can turn a profit on it during the sale. Extending and then selling a property is not an uncommon practice these days and popular amongst builders.

Commercial developers will be able to access a number of different financing options that will consider the final property values once construction has finished; this is something you typically will not be able to get typical providers such as building societies and banks to do.

A number of commercial developers are private investors. They make their money through loans to developers once they have examined the viability of the project in question. They will provide large sums of money through daily or monthly interest rates. Other lenders may be financial institutions that focus on the provision of funds for development projects.

Make use of existing equity

If you are improving your own home, then you will probably want to get the money by extending the mortgage you already have; this is called a re-mortgage. It releases your home’s equity due to the increased value of your home. You borrow the money you need and pay it back through your mortgage. In some cases, you might not face a significant increase in your monthly payments. When you come to sell your home you will pay back both mortgage charges together.

It was not too long ago that borrowing against your mortgage was difficult and rarely done, but the rules have been changed to make it much easier these days, so you can even play a number of lenders off each other when trying to find the best deal. Watch out for deals that feature low introductory payments, as these periods will inevitably come to an end.

The problem with those situations is that you might fancy yourself earning more money at the ends of those periods but if you aren’t, you might be stuck with much higher monthly payments that are much harder to pay. Be sure you know what you are getting into before you sign any papers.

Alternative Loans

You can also get additional loans beyond your mortgage, including loans from banks, specialist lenders, or building societies. These can be secured or unsecured loans, depending on whether they are secured against your property or not. Separate loans are generally over shorter terms than mortgages and come with higher repayments. Consider the pros and cons of each option.

Bio

This guest post was written by Andrew Potter from My Online Estate Agent. My Online Estate Agent is a UK low cost estate agent and charges a fixed fee to advertise on Zoopla and many other top UK property portals and provides all the online tool and guides you need to sell or let your property.

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You could read the entire stimulus bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) online at the Library of Congress that President Obama signed into law today. Or…you could just find out how it affects you right here on Christian Finance Blog!

First things first. You’ve probably heard that the new bill has a tax credit on your paycheck. It’s called the Make Work Pay credit and it’s worth 6.25% of any earned income in 2009. The max is $400 for singles making less than $75,000 and $800 for families with $150,000 or less combined income. It will be distributed through payroll for the last 26 weeks of the year. So it equates to about $15 a week for single filers who qualify for the $400. This will not come through your tax refund like the last stimulus. It also provides a one-time $250 payment for those who don’t work and retirees.

The next big tax credit in the new bill is the $8,000 New Homebuyer credit. This is different from the $7,500 new homebuyer “credit” that was supposed to be paid back over 15 years. The new $8,000 new homebuyer credit is a real tax credit, not an interest-free loan. It actually reduces your tax liability. Even if your tax bill is less than $8,000, you’ll get the difference back. If you overpaid your taxes throughout the year, you’ll get your regular refund plus the $8,000 extra! Sounds like a good deal to me!

So how do I qualify? You have to purchase a home between January 1, 2009 and November 30, 2009 and be a first-time homebuyer. To qualify to be a first-time homebuyer, you must not have owned a primary residence home within the last 3 years. It’s okay to have owned investment property or a vacation home as long as you didn’t live in it for most of the year. Also, you need to stay in the new home for 3 years to keep the tax credit. Income restrictions are the same as the Make Work Pay credit; $75,000 for singles and $150,000 for married filing jointly.

The next part of the bill that may affect you is the Car Buyer tax deduction. This is a tax deduction not a tax credit (which is more valuable). A tax deduction only reduces your income so it’s only worth the amount times your tax rate. The deduction allows you to deduct the state and local sales tax for any new car, truck, R.V., or motorcycle that was charged on the purchase during 2009. This won’t help you if your state doesn’t have a sales tax and it’s an above-the-line deduction so you don’t have to itemize to get the deduction. Income restrictions are $125,000 for single filers and $250,000 for joint filers.

Next up is the American Opportunity Tax Credit for 2009 and 2010. This tax credit increases the existing Hope Scholarship tax credit from $1,800 to $2,500. Income restrictions are $80,000 ($160,000 for married filing jointly). Partial credits are available to those making up to $90,000 ($180,000 filing jointly). Also related to this is the increase of the Pell Grant to $5,350 in 2009 and $5,550 in 2010.

For those of you who are unemployed, there’s also help for you in the bill. Cobra coverage (which allows the unemployed to keep health insurance from a previous employer) will be subsidized up to 65% of Cobra premiums for up to 9 months if you laid off between September 1, 2008 and December 31, 2009.

Unemployment benefits are also going to be increased by an additional 20 weeks (and 13 weeks more in certain states where unemployment is higher than 6%) and $25 additional weekly. Also, the first $2,400 is tax exempt in 2009 on your federal income taxes.

There are other portions of the stimulus bill like increased food stamp payments and deductions for energy efficient appliances and others. I may not agree with some of Obama’s policies but I’ll take free money any day! Bring it on Prez!

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1. Jose Canseco

Former baseball player Jose Canseco reportedly abandoned his home in the spring. His 7,300 square foot Encino, California house had four bedrooms, and six baths. He bought it in 2006 for almost $2.8 million. It had an outstanding balance of over $3.3 million which includes back payments, fees, and penalties.

2. Ed McMahon

Former Tonight Show announcer Ed McMahon is behind about $644,000 on his 90210 home. The mortgage balance is approximately $4.8 million and is currently listed at $6.25 million. He has had no offers in two years. The home has six bedrooms and seven baths and he paid less than a million back in 2000.

3. Evander Holyfield

Former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield has a 54,000 square-foot, 109-room, 17-bath mansion in Fayette County, Georgia. Holyfield defaulted on his mortgage (balance of $10 million) this spring and an auction was scheduled but has since been cancelled. He said that he is in no danger of losing his home and that he’s “just not liquid.” Holyfield must have found some cash because he is no longer in foreclosure.

4. Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson’s 3,000 acre estate in Los Olivos, California is valued at around $35 to $45 million. He owes more than $24 million on the mortgage and the loan was taken over by Colony Capital, LLC since Jackson left it in 2005.

5. Courtney Love

Singer Courtney Love purchased her home in Olympia, Washington in 1997 but stopped making the payment in 2003. It went into foreclosure in 2006. Her balance on the mortgage was $386,000 at the time. The house went to auction but it failed to sell and Love caught up her payments. She is still the owner of the house.

Source: CNN Money

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