You're slowly selling the house rather than building up an asset.If you use your ability to shelter gains, and do "low speed fix and flips" where you buy a junker, live in it and fix it up over the course of two years, and then sell it at a tax-free profit, then it really can be an investment.And, if, as David Niles says, you pay it off and leave it to the kids, then they have not only a nice asset, but also get it with a stepped up basis, avoiding taxes.

Along with that could come the ability to get the loan and raise the money for the down and closing.There are other ways to skin the cat.

The agencies have no way of knowing what you owe your family members.Your ability to get a future loan has no bearing on who holds the existing mortgage, other than showing it having been done at arm's length, as I outlined above

With one, I got so fed up I started calling every week to see if they had sent out a bill yet or if they knew what the new amount would be.

I'd rather over insure then be stuck with a bill after a catastrophic event.

Calling the bank is not going to get you very far since they are bound by confidentiality guidelines and will not take favorably to some Joe questioning their ability to pre-approve a candidate.

Thanks Kieth for the mention and clarification as I should have discussed the filing in more detail together with the ability to convey title.

To celebrate the new ability to upload photos easily here on the forums, I'd like to start a "before/after" thread here on the site so people can post their favorite transformations!

If she is getting a divorce, she will not know for sure until the ink is dried on the divorce papers.I have always used two rules of thumb:1) Avoid being more than 25 percent of the NET income.2) Make sure the tenant/borrower has the ability to enjoy life and still pay the rent/mortgage without sweating bullets.

You can drive and find them, you can go into public records and search street by street, or probably some other somewhat labor intensive things.I'd guess you can just buy a list from a list provider as well.Going back to the real estate agent stuff they might have the ability to pull that information from the MLS systems public records data.