The Tax Benefits of Owning Real Estate

 If you are still renting, now may be the time to switch to homeownership and start enjoying certain tax benefits.

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. 

Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale.

Owning a home offers a number of practical benefits, but did you know that it also offers some incredible tax advantages?

There’s a good reason that homeowners have an average net worth that’s 47 times more than the typical renter’s. So if you don’t already own a home, now may be the time to start your search.

When you rent a property, you may already be paying at or above the amount you’d pay each month if you owned a home. Why not make the switch to homeownership and start enjoying tax benefits? There are far more benefits to paying your own mortgage than there are to paying someone else’s.

“

There are far more benefits to paying your own mortgage than there are to paying someone else’s.

”

Imagine you took out a 30-year mortgage, which is typical for most homeowners. Though your first year of payments will go almost exclusively toward paying off the interest, the portion of payments applied toward interest become a tax write-off. Not only that, but, unlike rental payments, mortgage payments are fixed.

And as you make these mortgage payments over the years, less and less will be applied toward interest and more and more will go toward principal. You can see a graph illustrating the breakdown of these payments over time in the video above.

The bottom line is this: There are many tax advantages associated with homeownership. To make sure you’re taking full advantage of them, though, I highly recommend meeting with your CPA within your first year of homeownership.

If you have any other questions or would like more information, feel free to give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

How Real Estate Commissions Work On the Hauer Team

In real estate, commissions have been a somewhat questionable topic to discuss, but it’s important you understand how they actually work.

Want to sell your home? Get a FREE home value report. 

Want to buy a home? Search all homes for sale.

There is no such thing as a set commission in real estate. By law, commission rates have to be negotiable; the real estate community as a whole can’t just decide what you’ll pay.

And when it comes to real estate, it’s important to know that you get what you pay for. If a firm says they’ll do a 1% commission, it will still be a 4% commission because you’re still paying the buyer’s agent when they bring the buyer a 3% commision. If they’re being deceitful in how they market themselves in the first place, how do you think the rest of the transaction will go?

The Hauer Home Team’s philosophy when it comes to commissions is if you’re aren’t getting value from what we bring to the table, then we don’t see the point of charging you money for it; it’s as simple as that.

“

The Hauer Home Team’s philosophy about commissions is if you’re aren’t getting value from what we bring to the table, then we don’t see the point of charging you money for it.

”

We have what we refer to as our variable commission schedule—it’s entirely dependant on the value that we bring to you. For example, if you have a friend or family member who is interested in purchasing your house, that’s totally unrelated to the elaborate marketing efforts that we normally put forth to get your home on the market, and in that situation, we’ll charge you a big, fat 0% commission for the transaction.

That’s part of the benefit of working with a team of our volume: The average agent sells eight homes a year, while we sell over 100 homes in that time frame. Because of how much business we consistently pull in, we can take the loss of money we spend on marketing when you don’t end up needing it.

Additionally, if you find the buyer for your house on your own, we can help you facilitate the sale for a 1% commission. That way, you know that everything has been done properly in the transaction, and you’ll still pay much less than if we had found the buyer for you. If we find your buyer for you, we charge the typical 5% commision, and if an outside agent ends up bringing the buyer, then it’s a 6% commission. However it happens, we’ll take good care of you.

If you have any questions regarding commission or how we can help you sell your home, please reach out to us. We can discuss in detail exactly how we can help you make the most money possible from your transaction.