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Buying your first house? Don't know how to buy a home in Canada? Or how to save for the down payment? Read on to clear the clouds of doubts..

What Are The Down Payment Requirements When Buying a Home? What do you need for a house down payment? This is one of the first questions potential homebuyers ask for a good reason. Understanding how much of a house down payment is needed is essential for any home buyer. The house down payment is where most of the money goes for most homebuyers – you don’t have enough to pay cash for the home and need a loan, so you plan to put as much of your savings down as you can to make the purchase happen. But the old

Before taking out your first home mortgage, check out these first time home buyer tips to help you save time and money when buying your first home.

Is your new home healthy from the foundation to the roof? A thorough personal and professional check is vital before purchase.

Buying a house is stressful. Keep it simple and avoid these red flags that complicate the process.

Buying your first home? Make sure to check out these home buying tips that can save you thousands of dollars. Learn by our mistakes!

Trying to buy a home in Toronto? It can seem like a daunting process when you don’t know where to...

Maintaining your home doesn't have to be a challenge. The free home maintenance checklist can help you manage your home maintenance tasks.

This house hunting planner will make looking foe a forever home the easiest thing ever. This planner includes everything a person requires to take of note when viewing properties or visiting possible homes. So that you are aware of the costs that go into owning a new home, repairs and the state of the hope. It also allows for space to take note of the area, schools and the new place you will be residing in. House Hunting Checklist,New Home Checklist,Real Estate Form,House Hunting Form,House Hunting Planner,New Home Checklist,House Hunting List,New Home Checklist,Moving Planner,Moving to do list,New Home Template,House Hunting Template

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“One can furnish a home very luxuriously by taking out furniture rather than putting it in.” —Francis Jourdain Many people will miss the joys of minimalism because they are afraid to begin. Often, they fear if they “minimize” an item from their home, they will regret it in the future if they need it again. While […]

Are you in the market to buy a home? While buying a home has benefits, you should never buy a home if you can't afford it or don't have a stable job.

Have you always dreamed of escaping cubicle life and traffic jams to live off the grid,independent and free? You know, being self-reliant…

Proper home maintenance will keep you from costly repairs. Here is an annual checklist you can stick to when performing your house duties.

Having been the owner of vacant farm land for approximately a whopping two months now, I'm certainly no expert when it comes to owning property. But, David and I did go through the purchasing process and (we think) completely vetted all of our options and exhausted all of our resources during that time in terms of performing due diligence and making sure we were buying the right thing. Plus, I'm a real estate attorney, so my professional background gave me a lot of insight into the process, as well. A few of you have recently emailed me asking for tips for buying vacant land or property, so I thought I'd compile my notes and thoughts for you guys! FYI, we found our land for sale on Zillow- it was for sale by owner. A local farmer was retiring and splitting up his 150 acre tract into 10-20 acre tracts for single-family homeowners. We got lucky with this piece, we think it's the best in the area! Once we negotiated the price and contract, we started the due diligence period, which is basically a "free period" you have to research the property. If you find something you don't like within the due diligence period, you can walk away, have your earnest money refunded and the contract is off. We gave ourselves three weeks, which is a minimum. Try to negotiate something more like 30-60 days into your contract period to conduct this due diligence if your seller is willing. But definitely make sure you have a due diligence period- you need some time to research what I describe below! Keep in mind that while I'm a real estate attorney, I'm not giving this advice as a professional real estate expert. Another caveat is that a lot of the information I have may be limited to how things work in Georgia, since that's where we bought property. The third thing I want to throw out is that this list doesn't encompass the actual build process at all- this just covers shopping and purchasing vacant land. But with that being said, in no particular order, here are ten things you should research in your due diligence before you buy vacant land or property. 1. Pick a trustworthy team, including a builder, an architect and/or a contractor. Step one for us was to get a few people to help us navigate this process. A huge blessing we have is that my uncle is a talented, renowned architect in Atlanta and he is helping us design our home. We're also working with a builder that he works with and that I know through my real estate profession. Now that we've got this team together, we have folks we can email questions to or run things by as we go through the building process. It makes a huge difference to have smart, trustworthy people to turn to! 2. Ensure the land you're looking at has a proper building site. One of the most important things we did after we first found our property was to ensure that there was a good site to build a house. Would we have to do a lot of site work to put the house where we wanted? Was there enough slope to build in a daylight basement? Would we have to spend a lot of money grading the land and taking out trees? Was there a good place to put a driveway? We asked our builder and architect to take a look at the site to generally answer these questions for us. Luckily, they affirmed for us this was a good piece which would need minimal site disturbance to build the house. We also clarified with the county that we could put a driveway onto the main road from the spot we wanted on the property. All signs pointed to yes for us! 3. Conduct a soil test. It's very important to hire a professional to conduct an examination of the soil to determine if it's able to house a septic system. Most counties will require evidence of this test and proof the soil passes all the right tests before they issue a building or development permit. 4. Ensure the zoning classification permits what you're planning to build/develop. Most local jurisdictions have a zoning map which sets forth what each piece of land can be in terms of use- rural, single-family, commercial, etc. Do your research and get a letter from your jurisdiction confirming what your zoning designation is. For us, it was important to know what our use (agricultural residential), setback lines and permitted accessory uses (farming, live animals) are. 5. Plan ahead and research your financing options. In full disclosure, we'll have three loans throughout the course of this process: a land loan (to buy the land) which will roll into a construction loan (to build the house) which will then roll into our permanent loan (which is like a regular mortgage on a house). So we reached out to multiple local lenders to find out their terms for each of the three loans to make sure that, as we process each stage of the financing, we know what to expect. 6. Make sure all utilities are available at the property. Our property is located off of a main road, but otherwise is relatively off the grid. It was a farm animal pasture and vacant woods for the past few hundred years! Of course, we don't plan to stay off the grid, so it was important to us to ensure that we could get power, well water, gas and internet at the house. We called around to all of the local companies who helped us confirm that information. 7. Obtain a recent metes and bounds survey of the property. A survey basically lays out the exact property lines bordering the land. This helps you to determine exactly what you are buying and whether or not there are any encroachments. If your seller doesn't have a recent survey to share with you, it's worth the few hundred dollars to obtain one yourself from a surveyor. 8. Have an attorney conduct a title examination. If you've got a closing attorney, they'll handle the title exam for you. An examiner will go to the county record room and review the chain of title and any "hits" against the property that are current, such as liens, other mortgages, encumbrances, easements, etc. The title exam will show you if any liens need to be released or if you'll be purchasing the property subject to any permissible encumbrances such as a right-of-way easement for a road or a power easement. 9. Confirm with the local school system which school district the property is in. With two little ones ready for school in the near future (H will start kindergarten in the fall of 2017, ahh!), schools are very important to us. We called our local school system and had them confirm with us the current districts. Once we confirmed we were in a great school district, that pretty much sealed the deal for us! 10. Request an appraiser to conduct an appraisal of the property. Unless you've got a realtor working for you who can verify the value of the property with certainty, put an appraisal contingency in your purchase contract and pay a couple hundred dollars to have an appraisal done. Then, if the appraiser finds that the property is worth less than you have contracted for, you can renegotiate with the seller or walk away. Make sure your money is going towards a great investment! I've said a lot about the due diligence process and how we handled it... what insight do you have about buying vacant land or property? Spill your tips!

For aging in place modifications, performing a home evaluation or assessment is the first step toward determining what a home might need and to achieve it. Using a checklist, assessment... Read more »

Moving is a monumental task. Use our interactive checklist to help spread your move out over the course of a month for maximum success.

Home-buying is complicated and even the most prepared have regrets. Here are things people regret overlooking after buying a home.

Often school-based speech-language pathologists are swamped. Therapy sessions, IEPs, meetings, progress reports, evaluations---the list is endless. It’s tempting to cut corners with paperwork and tasks but one of the corners that can’t be cut is conducting thorough speech/language evaluations. Best practice dictates that school-based SLPs include the following components in language evaluations: one or more standardized measures a language sample a classroom observation a hearing screening a file review or case history evidence of adverse classroom impact Federal law states that in order to be eligible for speech/language services, there needs to be documentation of adverse effects in the classroom. “Adverse effect” means that the progress of the child is impeded by the disability to the extent that the educational performance is significantly and consistently below the level of similar aged peers. Part of a speech-language evaluation is to determine the impact of a disorder on the child in the classroom which includes obtaining teacher input. Several states have developed forms and checklists to gather teacher input. Teacher rating scales require a classroom teacher to rank a child’s skills based on what a typical child does in the same environment. The scales should reflect the communication demands of the curriculum, and now several systems have developed rating scales based on the Common Core standards. There are several teacher rating scales or survey questions available free to download. Some are linked to Common Core standards, while others are not because some schools use other curricula. This list is a short sampling of the many states that have their own checklists and guidelines. This first set of checklists is in the Texas Speech Language and Hearing Association Guidelines. These were published in 2011, and are not tied into the Common Core. (Texas did not adopt Common Core). These teacher impact rating forms cover a comprehensive range of communication skills. Go here to access the guidelines and then find the teacher survey questions, and item analysis on pages 29-35. The second link for teacher checklists take us to the Georgia Organization of School-Based Speech Language Pathologists. They have a wonderful website of helpful information, forms, and teacher checklists which are based upon the Common Core and on language development research. The checklists are targeted for teachers, therapists, and other school staff to help in gathering information on classroom functioning related to language skills and meeting the Common Core standards. There is also a set of teacher checklists available from the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS) in North Carolina. These checklists are based on the Common Core standards, and were developed over a year’s time by the CHCCS team of speech-language pathologists. In addition to checklists for semantic, syntactic and morphological language skills, there are also separate checklists for a teacher to report on pragmatic language skills. These checklists are available here as one collated document. As we SLPs know, standardized assessments tell you only so much about a child’s true struggles in the classroom. Teacher input is critical to a thorough evaluation and also for therapy planning. Once you know that the child has a disorder and there is a significant negative impact in the classroom, you as the SLP are set to begin the rewarding and challenging task of therapy. A teacher checklist, as simple as it seems, is an invaluable tool for you in your assessment and therapy planning! Your assessment, no matter how thorough, is incomplete without teacher input. Grab one of the above checklists and add it to your assessment protocol today! You’re only as good as your checklist. --------------------------------------------------------- I am grateful to the help of my Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools colleagues who assisted with editing, and especially grateful to my co-author, Wendy Lybrand, M.S., CCC-SLP

This planner or guide is perfect for anyone moving into there new apartment or living space including most of the essential items for a living room,kitchen, Bedroom and Bathroom. Knowing exactly what you need to buy when purchasing or renting a new place can feel overwhelming if it’s your first or last time. Check off each item of your list so you have all of your essential items for your home. It may be easier to collect things overtime or maybe after getting the place. Get absolutely everything you need for your brand new apartment this is some of the basics needed for any startup home or apartment.

Hay cosas que todo católico debe saber. No tanto por discurso o argumentación, más bien porque deben ser vividas. Más por formación que por instrucción. No me resulta extraño que alguien se atore, o que dude en la formulación precisa. Pero saberlas, hay que saberlas. Simplemente con la práctica de vida cristiana cualquier católico adulto las debería decir de carrerilla. ¿Te atreves hacer el test? No sería mal propósito acabar el Año de la Fe: la memoria refrescada. Las 3 Personas de la S

How do you know you are prepared for your home appraisal? Use our home appraisal checklist to ensure you get the approprirate value for your real estate.

Het grootste punt waar uitvaartprofessionals tegen aan lopen in de praktijk blijkt de onwetendheid van de nabestaanden, de achterblijvers.

All you need to know checklist for starting your addiction recovery in rehab. The complete guide to navigating your rehab packing list step by step.

How to start decluttering when overwhelmed? Find out how to stop being confused if you start with these 20 simple decluttering steps. Get started here.

New Homeowners Checklist | Instant Download

These 40 questions to ask when buying a house will tell you whether you'll need to walk away, or how much you'll have to spend on redecorating and repairs.

How to get pre-approved for a mortgage? The most critical thing is to gather all the required documents for mortgage pre-approval. To help, we've put together a mortgage loan documents checklist that's specific to each type of loan.

I know the decluttering process can feel overwhelming. Some people have a hard time parting with unwanted items. Others feel paralyzed about taking that first step. This is where a declutter checklist can help! In this article, I’ll share with you how I like to declutter my entire home. I’ve broken down my process with […]

If you just purchased a new home, you might be wondering what to do before moving into a new house. Come check it out!

Are you in the market to buy your first home? If you're a millennial and a first time home buyer, avoid making these mistakes when buying a house

Stressed out by the MANY decisions to make for a new build or renovation? This room by room checklist will help you make sure you don’t miss anything when planning. And planning is the key to a smooth process and a successful outcome.

Clutter, debt and impulse buys go hand in hand. Read on to find out why you buy, and how to shop intentionally without guilt...

Tired of your old clothes? Here are 20 Ways to Renew Your Entire Wardrobe with Less than $50! See for yourself and be fashionable!

How to Buy a House: 7 Steps to buying a house. Wondering how to buy a house? Then consider these steps. Step 1: Polish your credit score.Step 2: Get a ...

Moving to your first apartment? Use our first apartment checklist to make sure you have all of the essentials so you can settle comfortably in your new place.

Buying a Home For The First Time: What to Know If you plan on buying a home for the first time and are feeling a little overwhelmed, you are not alone. Buying a home is the most significant financial decision many people have ever made. It makes sense to cautiously approach the process and strive to learn as much as possible before you finally pull the trigger. Fortunately, there is a lot of good advice available to help you navigate the buying process. Do your research, find tips that apply to your situation, and strive to make decisions based on

This post is in partnership with Lexington Law, thank you for supporting brands who support TCM. As always, all thoughts, opinions, experience, and advice is my own. Today’s post is extra special! It's a vlog presented by Lexington Law, my favorite credit repair professionals and I'm sharing my top tips for talking with your significant other about … How To Talk About Finances With Your Significant Other Read More »

Having a Realtor For New Construction is Smart! Do I need a real estate agent when buying a new home? Inquiring minds want to know. The pros of using a Realtor for new construction far outweigh the cons. It's not even close. Buying a house without a Realtor can be financial suicide, whether it is a new construction or a resale. It can seem so easy when you decide to take the leap and buy a new construction home – a property you get to customize and be the first to live in it. You are the one calling the

You probably don’t even realize it, but these things are wasting energy (and your money!) in your home.