the better homes fund
Affordable Housing Solutions
There are many ways to find affordable housing. There are even ways to make the home you have more affordable. Here are some of the best.
Move to a cheaper location. This is often not considered by people, but the difference in housing costs between two cities within an hour of each other can be dramatic. This can be true whether you are renting or buying. If the new location isn’t too far away, you can commute to your job. On the other hand, if the difference is enough and you can find a similar job, you might do well to move hundreds of miles away to lower your living costs.
Find cheaper types of homes. Often there are many types of housing in an area, and some are definitely more affordable than others. There are apartments, seasonal rentals, mobile homes you can rent, mobile homes you can buy in a park, mobile homes you can buy on land, modular homes that look just like regular houses but sell for less, recreational vehicles in parks, rooms for rent, and more. Make a list of the options and investigate to see which cost less.
Find cheaper parts of town. In some cities the same house can be half the price in one neighborhood versus another. Now, in some places you wouldn’t want to live in the half-priced areas. But sometimes it is more a matter of aesthetics than safety, so this might be a temporary solution while you save money to someday upgrade.
You can create affordable housing right where you are if you own your home. Just rent out any empty bedrooms. If you have a basement you might build two bedrooms there for very little investment. I used to get over $300 per month for rooms in a mobile home. Read the rest of this entry »
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An Affordable Shortcut to Designing Your Dream Home
You have likely been making mental notes for years. Every book or magazine that you read and each home that you visit has become a source for pieces to the puzzle that can become your new home. You don’t know a thing about architecture, designing or drafting but that shouldn’t stop you from taking the dream house that you have pictured in your head and making it a reality.
There are two ways that you can approach the creation of new house plans from which a builder can work:
1. Hire an architect
2. Make alterations to an existing house plan
There are many benefits to working directly with an architect. You will be able to sit down with an experienced designer and review, very specifically, all of the ideas and requirements for the home that you have in mind. The architect can give suggestions and help you to avoid problems that you may not have anticipated. However, be prepared to pay handsomely for this service. A good architect does not come cheap.
An economical compromise is to modify existing new house plans. There are hundreds of publications and websites that specialize in developing house plans that are available for purchase. These packaged plans are designed by professional architects and are available in a variety of styles, sizes and price-ranges. In many cases, you can visit a website and enter the various criteria for the home that you desire and an internal search engine will match your specs with plans in inventory. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: housing affordable, the better homes fundRelated posts
Affordable Apartments for Rent in the Salt Lake Valley
Often the first thing one does when searching for a home to rent is assess their income. For many Utahans with large families, liabilities or low wages, this can seemingly be a discouraging task. Utah’s economy is increasing and therefore the population is swelling right along with it. This progress is in turn nudging, or rather, shoving the cost of renting an apartment in Utah to levels that are surpassing previous years. Over the past four years, [Utah] has seen the cost of housing, both rental and owner-occupied, rise more that 50 percent and rental vacancy rates drop to 4 percent or less.
As daunting as this may seem, there are countless options for those who simply cannot afford these high rental rates. Realizing that this high cost of living drives away many important, but sadly underpaid community members such as school teachers, factory workers, small business owners and police officers, Utah’s legislature has passed the Utah’s Moderate Income Housing Law. This law requires communities to design individual strategies so that their low and moderate income inhabitants are encouraged to remain in the area. One of the programs that evolved with this process is the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, also known as Section 42 of the Internal Revenue Code.
The tax credit program is quite literally the shining star of the Moderate Income Housing Law. This is because the LIHTC program was created as an incentive for investors and builders to construct or remodel buildings specifically for the low to moderate income population. Because the program provides credits to be used against sizeable tax liabilities, many large and successful corporations are taking part in the tax credit program, building beautiful, and often luxury apartment communities that are desirable to many and affordable for even more. While ‘low income’ or ‘affordable’ housing was once met with opposition from developers and communities alike, affordable apartments both in urban and rural areas are showing up all over the state. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: low income housing, the better homes fund