Alternative Housing

Why alternative housing? To save money, to travel, to live creatively - there are many reasons why people choose to live in tents, RVs, cabins, underground homes, rental rooms and anything else that's less common than the houses, condos and apartments that most people call home. Below are some of these housing options, and their advantages.

<b>Alternative Housing That Moves</b>

Camping at a hot springs area, we sat around the campfire one night with several young men living in the desert in their old converted school bus. It cost them nothing to park it in the desert (on BLM land you have to move every two weeks, though), bathed for free in hot spring tubs that were as nice as those in nearby expensive resorts, and played guitar around the fire each night. Not such a bad life.

In Arizona there are whole communities that spring up each winter, full of people living in their RVs. Advantages of RV housing are obvious, and include moving with the seasons, trying out different places, and not paying property taxes. I've talked to people living in Rvs that cost $200,000 and ones that cost $600, so the selection of accommodations is varied, to say the least.

My wife and I lived for almost a month in our conversion van as we traveled from Arizona to Florida and then to Michigan. Advantages of a van include better mileage than an RV, and being inconspicuous. We found that could park and sleep almost anywhere.

<b>Other Alternative Housing</b>

In most areas where rents are high, renting rooms has become common. This makes sense for single people. Just pay a set amount each month or week, and (if it includes utilities) you have a predictable and lower cost of living. I rented out rooms in my own home for years, and even put carpet and lighting in a shed so I could get $50 per week for it in summer.

A friend of mine lived in a shack he built for $3,000 on a small piece of land he bought for $7,000. Eventually he ran into problems with the county because he had no occupancy permit. Apparently you can't live on your own land in the woods if your home is too small. However, you can camp on it, so a $2,000 used RV parked on your land makes for a cheap and legal housing alternative.

Some people live on houseboats and avoid paying property taxes. Some live in the jungle near the beaches in Hawaii, so they can afford to be in paradise. I know people who lived in a basement while slowly building the house above for cash. People live in cabins built in the national forest wilderness, moving every few years as they are discovered. Truly, your imagination is the only limit to your alternative housing options.

Advantages to Shopping for Real Estate Online

The real estate market is one of the most complex markets in the entire world due to the fact that it is in a continuous change, thus making it a very dynamic market. The internet has a lot to offer consumers regarding real estate and as a result it is a great place to start shopping. Some of these advantages are:

- It is inexpensive, if not free to list your home in an online property listing service.

- It is a quick and easy method to advertise your property that is for sale/lease or if you would like to buy a property.

- The buyer and seller have direct access to information about the property in question. This makes other forms of communication between the buyer and the seller obsolete. The internet is easy in comparison to the old-fashioned method of answering dozens phones calls or setting up numerous meetings.

- Many websites that deal with real estate allow you to include up to 5 photos of your property. This is a lot more in comparison to a regular newspaper and you have complete control over the photos’ quality.  In addition you can highlight specific features about your property with the potential buyers. This can be very helpful if you are working to attract buyers from outside your local geographic area whom potentially need more explanation of certain elements.

- Once listed, your home is available until you will sell the property. This is a big advantage if you consider that for a newspaper ad you will systematically have to pay a fee week after week.

- These online real estate listing services have a nation-wide audience which will make your ad visible to the entire country;

- Searching for the right house is very easy as these websites have filters which will allow you to only see the houses that meet your specific requirements. Therefore you can spend time looking only out houses that meet your needs without having to waste time looking at houses you aren’t interested in.

Using the Internet for real estate will make you your own real estate agent without having to pay a great sum of money to an agent and also you will have full-control of the entire activity. Whether you are a home buyer or seller, it is very easy to search for the perfect house as the online offers are endless. Or, if you would like to sell a piece of real estate, there is no safer and quicker way to do it.

Online real estate has become popular and is consuming are looking to the internet more each day as an easy place to get good information. As a matter of fact, more than 5 million people use the internet for real estate issues every month. With numbers like this it is easy to see how the internet can improve your chances for selling or buying a home.

Another major advantage of real estate moving to the internet is that you won’t need a real estate agent to start your search. This is very important because we all know that real estate agents are of value but sometimes you just want to look.

All in all, there is no better, safer and easier way to search for a home or to sell one than online as the internet has a lot to offer in the real estate market and it is rapidly developing, gaining more and more consumers everyday and thus improving your chances for a profitable buy/sell.

3 Pitfalls to Avoid When Playing in the Real Estate Game

So you’ve seen your umpteenth infomercial with the guy in his neatly pressed button-upped white T-Shirt grinning ear to ear waving his rock-solid no-money-down rags-to-riches real estate investment course for 3 easy payments of a gazillion dollars (but only if you call now) and now you are thinking, "wow this looks like a great deal, I better get it fast before the special offer expires." You notice how there’s always a special offer? Anyway, I am not saying this guy isn’t telling the truth, however regardless of which course or school of thought you buy into there are several key areas that one must avoid when engaging in any real estate related transaction.

Pitfall Number 1: Don’t Overpay!

The whole point in investing is to find properties that are undervalued. How does one find out what is undervalued versus overvalued? Without getting into technical details, the bottom line is you need experience. Yes much like shopping for anything else, real estate is essentially one of the highest ticket items in the shopping center of life. It’s advisable to stick with one market, perhaps the one closest to you in proximity as a starting off point. Through your experience and asking the right questions, you will eventually have a feel for the pulse of the market you are looking after, and of course identify what is considered a good buy.

Pitfall Number 2: Know the Market

Yes, you are actually going to have to do more work! This part is really common sense though, but executing it where the beauty and the payoff comes in. How do you make money in real estate? The most basic way is to buy low and sell high. So from the first step, you have identified general trends in the value of homes, and are pretty good at spotting undervalued homes. Assuming you acquire that home, you may want to profit from it by selling it off to someone else for a higher price. How can you do this? Well there are many ways. For one, most markets appreciate in value over time so if you want a longer term approach that will work. Making upgrades to the property will automatically raise the price of the home as well. Think in terms of what the market wants, not what you personally want. You aren’t the one buying it; you are trying to sell it to someone else for a higher price than you bought it.

Pitfall Number 3: Know Your Budget

It may be a fine philosophy to go through life on a whim, but real estate is serious business, and thus diligent financial planning and budgeting is critical to your success. Don’t worry you don’t need to be a finance geek, however you need to be disciplined and know your budget from the onset, or you may be finding you are learning that you need to make certain renovations or upgrades, and didn’t anticipate it going over to a certain cost. Think ahead as to what is needed before actually going forth with investing in real estate.