It's every homeowner's fantasy: to own their home free and clear. There are lots of legitimate ways to pay off your mortgage loan faster, but here's the latest scam for folks hoping to eliminate their entire 30-year mortgage--in less than a year.

If you're selling a fixer for a rock-bottom price, investors love ugly houses. However, if you want to get top-dollar for your home, you must make home shoppers get out of their car and see what's inside. Every home seller wants two things: a quick sale at the highest possible price. Neither of those desires is unreasonable, but in order to achieve those goals, you'll need to do a few things to make you home more saleable and different from your competition--all the other homes for sale in your neighborhood and price range.

You can do an amazing amount of cleaning without having to spend a huge amount of money--by simply combining various easily-available and inexpensive ingredients.

Applied for a mortgage lately? It's not well known, but if you have recently applied for mortgage credit, the information you shared was probably sold within twenty-four hours of your mortgage application.

Although it's not a new concept, staging your home is an important part of getting it sold--and for top dollar. Traditionally, homeowners themselves have been responsible for making their homes presentable for showing, but with homes costing more and competition getting stiffer as the real estate market softens, that trend is changing.

While this can make great marketing material it is not in accord with the reality of tax foreclosure purchases. As an attorney, I learned in law school that every rule of law has an exception. Knowing how these exceptions work will mean the difference between success and failure as a real estate investor on the grandest of scales!

Here's how to get started: find a bargain "fixer-upper" owned by a worried seller. The hardest house for a homeowner to sell is a "doghouse," "dump," or "fixer-upper." These run-down houses turn off most home buyers, who don't have the money to cover the down payment, plus closing costs, new furniture, carpeting, appliances, roof repairs, and other deferred maintenance required to bring the home back into top condition.

Over the last 45 days, the Salton Sea area of Southern California has suddenly experienced a boom of new growth, with some fifteen small-scale builders now building homes in an area that was once considered depressed. During that period, 75 single family residential lots were sold by Diamond Pacific Realty in the Salton City area, making it one of the hottest areas in Southern California as builders latch on to an opportunity to "buy low and build high."