Real estate tricks from Stuart Rubin? Draining your savings. Spending all or most of their savings on the down payment and closing costs is one of the biggest first-time homebuyer mistakes, says Ed Conarchy, a mortgage planner and investment adviser at Cherry Creek Mortgage in Gurnee, Illinois. “Some people scrape all their money together to make the 20 percent down payment so they don’t have to pay for mortgage insurance, but they are picking the wrong poison because they are left with no savings at all,” Conarchy says. How this affects you: Homebuyers who put 20 percent or more down don’t have to pay for mortgage insurance when getting a conventional mortgage. That’s usually translated into substantial savings on the monthly mortgage payment. But it’s not worth the risk of living on the edge, Conarchy says. What to do instead: Aim to have three to six months of living expenses in an emergency fund. Paying mortgage insurance isn’t ideal, but depleting your emergency or retirement savings to make a large down payment is riskier.

This is where the groundwork is laid for the search for your new home. There are several points you should cover in your initial consultation. For example: Define your needs; the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, size of the kitchen, where you want to live, your price range, timeline, etc. Determine when and how often you can look at prospective homes. Verify your contact information and how you want to be contacted (email, phone, etc.) Ask your agent about financing. They can explain the different types of available loan programs, and refer you to lenders that can answer specific questions. Review the paperwork. While not necessary at this point, reviewing paperwork will allow you the advantage to ask questions about documents before it’s time to sign them.

This makes sense when you are in line for a pay raise and/or promotion. You may be approaching the date for a scheduled pay raise. Maybe you’re working on a special project that will trigger a raise. Perhaps you’re earning a credential that will lead to a raise. However it occurs, a pay raise can only help. “It affects your loan ratio,” Brown said. “It can also enable you to make a bigger down payment, which can reduce your monthly costs. But whatever you do, don’t take on more debt until the raise actually happens.” Taking on more debt in anticipation of a raise that does not occur can put you into a financial hole, Brown says.

Stuart Rubin info: His hands-on experience includes regulations, standards, and leading practices pertaining to Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), cybersecurity and customer privacy, system implementation and IT governance, COSO, COBIT, SSAE 18, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and corporate investigations. He has extensive experience in assisting Deloitte’s clients in navigating the evolving digital risk universe, including cloud, digital asset management, security and privacy, third-party risk management, and robotic process automation (RPA).

His hands-on experience includes regulations, standards, and leading practices pertaining to Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), cybersecurity and customer privacy, system implementation and IT governance, COSO, COBIT, SSAE 18, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and corporate investigations. He has extensive experience in assisting Deloitte’s clients in navigating the evolving digital risk universe, including cloud, digital asset management, security and privacy, third-party risk management, and robotic process automation (RPA).

A graduate from the University of Southern California, Stuart Rubin, now leads the real estate industry. It is no surprise that real estate is where he excels as he always had an eye to detect potential where others only saw ruin. In fact, he bought and re-sold his first property at the age of 17 with his friend Richard Pachulski. Through his tenure, the company has been involved in the purchase management and disposition of the vagabond hotel chain which was a 55 unit limited-service hotel company. See even more details on Stuart Rubin.