Blogs

Although the thought of paying a mortgage is more enticing than paying rent, it's important to understand all the costs involved in buying and owning a home as you determine whether you can afford to join the ranks of homeowners. Potential buyers sometimes forget to factor in the down payment, homeowners insurance and the possibility of depreciation, as well as the costs associated with closing the transaction, moving, purchasing major appliances, and home, landscape and pool maintenance, not to mention furnishings and design accessories once you move in.   The days of calling up the landlord to fix your problems come to an abrupt halt when you're a homeowner. You'll be responsible for everything from malfunctioning appliances to leaky faucets to broken heating and air conditioning units and everything in between. And if you buy an older home, you'll probably eventually encounter costly repairs, such as replacing the roof or windows....

When you’re buying a house, there are a lot of unknowns—and once you’ve bought a home, you’re committed, usually for years. Contingencies clauses in your home purchase contract might help take away some of the uncertainty of buying a home by detailing conditions that must be met before closing will take place. How mortgage contingencies protect buyers One very common contingency is a mortgage contingency. A mortgage contingency gives buyers added security during the home-buying process; it states that a buyer will try to get a particular kind of mortgage (traditional, Veterans Affairs or Federal Housing Administration) at or below a certain interest rate for a set amount of the purchase price (generally 80 percent) by a specific date before closing. If the buyer is unable to secure a loan at the stated terms, he can back out of the contract, and the earnest money deposit returns to him. How...

Sometimes our hiring managers and business leaders are not fully aware of all of the work that goes into growing our organizations. Often, we are looked at as an unnecessary expense on overhead of an organization. Recruiters Are Expert Researchers. As recruiters, we need to know where to find people and the market intelligence around the industries we recruit for. There are many tools we use to find people to join our organizations. A good recruiter is constantly updating their skills because recruitment changes rapidly. Recruitment is very data driven. We use a variety of tools to source our candidates. Boolean search is data search method used by recruiters. It can be a very simple or very complex. I compare it to writing to writing code because if you are one key off, the meaning of search string changes. Another tool that we use is networking and it is extremely...