Resources

Buzz: Have you checked your credit report?

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Following up on this week’s theme of Financial Issues, we’ve looked at Mortgages, Credit Cards, Loans, as well as making a little extra money , it seems fitting that we review Obares.com, a website that aims to provide “…the best way to sell your home or buy your dream home the FSBO ( For Sale By Owner ) way.”

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In fact, the unique sales point of this website is quite simple: you will find the right tools including calculators (much simpler than opening Excel!), legal forms, mortgage information to help you buy and sell your home, and it includes (their words) a FREE FSBO Listing.

(updated information) When I went back today to visit the website today, I noted a new tab at the top for Forums and indeed there are: one for every state in the US. This is a very smart move on the part of Obares.com to include forums. VERY few Real Estate sites that I have reviewed in this blog have any kind of community feeling. In fact, it has been one of my leading criticisms of most of them. Creating a kind of community in your website allows you the opportunity to market your products to an obvious marketplace (don’t oversell!), increase traffic to your website overall, and build a relationship with clients that could last years.

It will take a while to bring traffic to the forums: I’d suggest the website owner create the states as child-boards, rather than simply mark 50-odd boards. It’s quite daunting for newbies to look through all of the boards. You could use a conventional approach: North, South, etc. Break the boards into about 8-10 major forums. Then add the states as children of the major forums. VB is quite capable of this. If you are interested in running good forums, TheAdminZone is well worth visiting both for information and as an example of how to run forums well.

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Now, underpinning many of the financial issues that individuals and families face is the Credit Rating, which is an assessment of a person’s creditworthiness or ability to pay back any loan that is made. These days, Credit Reports are provided by agencies to lenders who then assess the applicant by referring to their FICO score.

For example, you have decided to buy a new house in Houston at $350,000. You walked into your local bank, picked up an application form for a mortgage, and filled it out. Once the application is complete, the bank will then refer to the credit bureaus for your score. It’s that score that can help you get the mortgage loan or have you turned down!

There is a lot you can do to reduce the risk of having lending applications rejected. The first is quite simple: know your own credit history and FICO score. You can apply to a company like Equifax to get your Equifax Credit Report, or Experian or Transunion so you can know what problems lie within your credit history. In fact, clicking through to the website will allow you to see some information on:

  • contacting the bureaus
  • how FICO scores are calculated
  • some tips on managing your credit cards
  • and guidelines on what FICO scores mean.

There are significant benefits for knowing your FICO score. You’ll be able to tidy it up, correct any errors, check for fraudulent activity and improve your score, by knowing what to look for. Once that is done, you’ll find that you should get better offers on your loans, credit cards and mortgages, thereby SAVING yourself money! What could be better than that?

(Ed. I’ve extended the content since version 1.0 and tightened some wording and a picture).

Tri-Cities Real Estate: buying and selling great houses

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In early April, Colleen Lane contacted me and asked to me to review the Tri-Cities Real Estate website, which you can see at the top of the blog, and in the sidebar.

After visiting such a beautifully crafted website, rich in visual media, careful coloring, and pleasing welcome page, I have to say that this website is perhaps the most visually attractive website that I’ve had to review, and I believe it surely reflects the natural beauty of its home state.

Tri-Cities Real Estate, based in Washington State (one of the loveliest states with its low population density, extensive reservations and wonderful scenery), provides Real Estate services in Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland.

I like the URL which is simple and easy to remember. The only problem with the URL is it doesn’t tell you what the website is… but then you likely already know when you visit it. Theirblog is updated regularly, but uses a different theme, so it looks out of character with the rest of the website.

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One of the reasons a book like “Rich Dad Poor Dad” has succeeded is by personalizing the story, by creating characters, and events, and narrating the story. People are drawn to a story, rather than to cold, dry facts, lists and explanations; it would be nice if this website could play up this angle of the ‘story’ and show us how Tri-Cities Real Estate really does make a difference in the life of its customers! That would help to show their customers how they actually solve problems.

As a resource, the website is literally stuffed with articles on ALL aspects of moving house, including fixer-uppers, real estate lawyers, and even Debt Ratios. You could spend quite some time just reading around the articles. In fact, all the content is unique as well, and there are some interesting things to play with such as the Google Locator Map, and the search function which had me searching for a lot of nice houses in my (ideal) price range. So joelaneColleen, do you have any good property for a British expat with not much cash?! Well, I found that there are quite a few bungalows (single floor houses), which would appeal to my wife. Why don’t you head on over and check out the fine houses of Washington State. I was also surprised to find that Kennewick’s sister city is YingKo, Taiwan. It’s like a stone’s throw from my wife’s home, and is the home of pottery in Taiwan.

So search away on their website, you can search and register for looking at properties on their website easily and quickly using their search engine. The images, information and website are all responsive and tidy, making it easy to thumb through many properties in your price range. Since their servers are quick, you’ll find it a pleasure, not a drag.

So if you are thinking of Washington State as a place to move to, check out the real estate first, courtesy of Long Term Capital Growth !

Sponsored by Tri-Cities Real Estate.

Can you budget? It’s not that hard!

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How to Budget

If you are having trouble making a budget, you will find that there are lots of good resources available from OneCareCredit who provide lots of ideas on credit counseling.

The basic ideas are quite simple: you want to make sure that you are keeping more than you are spending in the long run; that your primary expenses are paid for; and that there is discretionary money for other things, such as savings, retirement, holidays, and nasty surprises. All of these come out of the budget.

Initially, many bloggers report that budgeting is difficult, and that they miss their budgets for several months. However, after following their budget, they manage to get better at predicting (ie. the budget becomes more accurate) and controlling their expenses (ie. they are able to manage their spending within the budget guidelines).

A good article of theirs goes into some great ideas about keeping your budget on track, but there’s also a good expense tracker page you can use and print out graphs. So if you are having trouble budgeting, you’ll find that there are some surprisingly effective (and did I say free?) tools on the Internet that can help you achieve a good budget.

Sponsored by OneCareCredit.com.