Four ways to buy your dream home.

When it comes to purchasing your dream home you have multiple options, such as: working with realtor, locating and buying FIBO home, buying direct from a builder or buying from specialized investment company.

The most common route is using a realtor or real estate agent. They find and negotiate the purchase of the home for you. It a great convenience, but has a down side. First you have to be pre-approved for a loan and real estate agent charges for 3% to 6% for their services.

FISBO is "for sale by owner" and there are multiple websites geared to this market. In this case there is no realtor involved, but you have to do all the work: find the homes, make appointments to see them, negotiate the sales terms and handle paperwork for closing.

Buying direct form builder is one of the options too, but usually there is real estate agent hired by the builder who handles the transaction. Since the realtor is hired by the builder, he or she is looking after builders best interest. In current economy, when houses do not sell fast, you can get a good deal, but keep in mind that you will need to be approved for financing to be able to buy from builder.

When buying your dream home form a specialized investment company you can avoid some of the requirements present in other choices. Usually you can get owner financing or try out the rent to own program or even take advantage of the down payment assistance. See what is offered and what suits your needs best.

Five ways to finance your dream home purchase.

There are many option how you can finance your dream home purchase. Let's face it, only very few of us have couple hundred thousand dollars stashed in bank account somewhere. The rest of us have borrow money to buy the place we will call home. Let's explore the options we have how we can finance our home purchase.

The most well known option is to get a mortgage. Mortgage is broad term and can mean a lot of existing financing options. The most common type of mortgage is a loan from your bank or mortgage broker. Let's call this option a bank loan. To be able to "qualify" you have show a track record of borrowing money and paying the monthly payments on time.

If you have borrowed money before, but your track record of paying that debt back is not perfect, your probably will not qualify for a conventional bank loan. Not all is lost yet. Government has stepped up and now is offering FHA loans to people with less the perfect credit history.

If you do not have any credit history or you hit a bump in the road, which impacted your ability to repair your bills, you can still buy a home. In such situations the owner financing loans can be used. Since there are no banks involved the "qualifying" solely depends on the trust of the seller of the home.

Even if you do not have a big down payment or owner financing is not available there still are options. You can buy your home with rent to own or lease to buy program. For people struggling with down payment there are down payment assistance programs. Do not give up if you can not qualify for a bank financing, explore the other options available and educate yourself.