You can often save more money with your home-buying decisions than anything
else. Yet, many people make their biggest financial mistakes with
these big-ticket items. If you buy the right home at the right time and
maintain it well, rising real estate values can turn your home into your
best investment. You'll feel like you've made your home your own
castle!
Find The Best Place To Live
Before you make a home-buying decision, here are the most important
points to consider:
- Cost of living. Oftentimes, the most glamorous cities
(i.e. New York, Los Angeles) are the ones that cost the most.
- Crime Rate. Usually the lowest crime rates are in inland
cities with low to medium population. Sometimes local government can have a big
impact on crime rates (e.g. when New York murders dropped from about 2400
to 800 during the Giuliani administration.)
- Climate. It's important to research climate
carefully. You should find out the average daily high
temperatures (and daily lows) for any city you're thinking of moving to.
Do this for each month of the year. As an example, Seattle may look
attractive with its 75-degree average summer high... but did you know that
it's rainy in the winter, cloudy through early July, and turns rainy again in
October? You're likely to get only two or three months of nice weather
there.
You can easily get all the answers you need just by visiting
BestPlaces.net, which
has profiles on 1000 cities. Their site covers housing, cost of living,
crime, education, economy, health and climate. You can even describe
your ideal place to live, and their expert
system will give you rankings of the best places that meet your criteria!
This site also reviews many other "Best Places" studies on the Internet, so
you can get a second opinion. There's also a collection of articles
about how to find places with the best quality of life in the United States, and
throughout the world.
If you prefer to live in a rural area, this site doesn't really cover that
lifestyle. But it can still help you analyze different locales for
climate, school quality, cost of living and so forth.
Even if you don't think you can get away from your current location
because of family ties or your employment situation, this is a great site
to visit if you want to work toward relocating your home in the future.
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Make Your Home Your Castle! 
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Time to complete:
| 5 minutes |
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Money you'll spend:
| $0 |
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What you'll get:
| A list of great places to live |
Step-by-step instructions:
- Click here: BestPlaces.net. A
new window will open with this page.
- On the next page, click the button labeled Find your Best Place to Live.
- On the next page, you'll see a choice between
two versions of the "Find Your Best Place" tool, the full version and the
short version. Choose one or the other, then
continue to follow the online instructions.
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Further Reading:
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Legal Notice, Disclaimer and Terms Of Use
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