Buyer's remorse is common, but here are five ways to beat it Most people have experienced buyer's remorse in some form, whether it's feeling guilty over the price paid for a new pair of shoes or a jab of regret after splurging on some unneeded tech gizmo. But when it comes to one of the most expensive purchases in a consumer's life, a home, feelings of remorse can be a lot more intense, easily rattling otherwise confident home buyers and causing them to second-guess what they liked about a hou

This is one tab the house won't pick up. It's among today's most popular retirement-savings strategies: Buy the big house, hope the real-estate boom continues and then trade down at retirement, thus freeing up home equity that will pay for years of early-bird specials. Sound appealing? Trouble is, you will fork over a heap of dollars -- and you'll end up with a surprisingly small nest egg. Living large: To understand why, imagine you are age 35, have a $400,000 home with a $300,000 mortgage

You've found your dream condo, and you're ready to relax among the mango trees and swaying date palms. Hold everything. To keep from getting stuck with a lemon, you've got to do some homework. Here are the seven most important questions you need to ask before buying a condo. 1. "What's the Beef?" Take a look at the minutes of the condo association board meetings to see what the owners have been griping about. If everyone was complaining about the faulty plumbing or the gardener's absence, you k

We're smack in the middle of prime house-selling season. The National Association of Realtors predicts that 6.6 million existing homes will change hands this year. But many markets around the country are cooling, and the inventories of homes for sale are rising. Compared to the hot real estate market of recent years, you can no longer automatically expect to sell a house quickly and for a high price. However, sensible pricing and careful presentation can go a long way toward hastening a transa

The Web just keeps coming up with new ways to help make buying or selling a house easier. But the focus has gone from information to conversation; many sites are designed to enable users to freely exchange knowledge and opinions about places to live and homes for sale. Free MLS listing - Iggys House Iggys House offers a valuable service for owners who want to sell their homes themselves: free access to the multiple listing service (MLS). The MLS is a database of information about on-the-market

[spam URL stripped]