Aussie is Australia’s leading home loan and mortgage broker with more than 250000 customers. Aussie mortgage brokers find the right home loans for you.

If you have a mortgage on your house, your mortgage lender will require you to purchase home insurance as a condition of the loan to protect the bank if the home were to be destroyed.

Your agent can help you save money, both in up-front premium costs and in the long run, should you ever need to use your home insurance coverage. Be sure to remember these tips from some experts in the field:

A large part of what you pay in premiums is determined by the amount of coverage you select. You want to be insured for an amount sufficient to rebuild your dwelling should it be destroyed. However, many people make the mistake of insuring an amount equal to the entire value of the property, including the land. Thus they are paying more than they have to for protection.

Everyone should raise their deductible to at least $1,000. You’ll save money in premiums.

Be sure to purchase a guaranteed-replacement-cost policy. Under this type of policy, the company guarantees to pay whatever it takes to fully replace your home.

Less than 90 minutes, according to Keller Williams’ latest market research. April’s overview of the US property market also found that the median house price in America was $156,000 last month.

Watch the full report, including detailed stats and buyer advice, here.

Issues such as carbon monoxide poisoning can be fatal but many people are not aware of the warning signs, particularly older people, who may put flu-like symptoms or simply feeling drowsy down to old age.

National Grid is urging people to think about their elderly neighbours and to raise awareness of the issue of safety in the home.

Watch our video with Jennie Bond, where she gives simple hints and tips, such as checking carbon monoxide and smoke alarms are working, ensuring that boilers are serviced on an annual basis by a Gas Safe registered engineer and ensuring people know who exactly to call if they smell gas.

Watching tech giants Google and Apple battle it in the mobile space has been fascinating to watch. It seems everyone is picking sides. But, with every unit sale, app download and activation report, it seems we’re losing sight of the real target.

In a report last week analyst Carlos Kirjner, via Bernstein Research, predicted that by 2016 the majority of web search traffic will come from mobile devices. Is your website ready for the mobile spotlight?

Responsive Web Design

With the landscape of the web changing at the current rate, it’s no longer acceptable to check your site from a few different browsers and launch it. It’s becoming more vital that your online presence is optimized for both a desktop and mobile experience.

Using a number of new tools and technologies you can ensure your website is ready to go from any device. This process is called
Responsive Web Design.

Two fantastically executed versions of this can be found at Phoenix Real Estate Guy and Maya Paveza. When you load up Jay Thompson’s beautiful real estate website from a mobile device you get a smaller version of the desktop site. However, if you click on the search function to are taken to a mobile optimized search page. Maya’s page goes a step further and asks you before you enter if you’d rather have a full version or a mobile version of her site.

Keep It Simple

When optimizing your real estate site for a mobile format you’re going to want to simplify things. There are a few reasons for this: File Size. When it comes to mobile, speed is key. Smaller files will decrease load times tremendously. Screen Size. There is a huge difference between the real estate available on a phone or tablet, as compared to a desktop. So, simply your approach with regard to design and navigation. Tap-ability. When creating a mobile experience you need to take into account all the “clickable” spots on your site, and make them “tappable.” The use of a mouse on the desktop web is much more precise than mashing around with your thumbs on a phone. Keep that in mind.

Action!

The last thing you want to do is avoid testing your site out from a mobile device. Go ahead, pull up your site on your phone – don’t worry I’ll wait.

So, how’s the experience? Put yourself in the mind and shoes of the consumer. Would you love using your site from your iPhone or Android? If not, what you going to do about it?

However, these actions haven’t seemed to phase companies like Zillow. They recently launched their Neighborhood Advice feature within their home search platform.

Let’s face it — when it comes time to move, most people ask their friends and co-workers about the neighborhoods where they live, or hang out. Do they like their neighborhood? How are the schools? Is it safe? Is the commute easy?

Neighborhood Advice

So, what is Zillow’s Neighborhood Advice? Basically, it’s a social home-shopping experience to help buyers and renters learn about neighborhoods from their Facebook friends.

It’s a fairly simple idea that takes the conversation many have with their friends and family offline, about the home buying experience, online.

It doesn’t take a crack team of coders to know that people talk about the largest purchase they’ll ever make, with their social sphere. But, what Zillow has done, is bring this experience into the ever-expanding Facebook Social Graph.

What’s In It For Me

No question this is a feature many consumers will use. Leveraging Facebook is a smart move on Zillow’s part, and with the average user becoming more comfortable with “checking in”, it can only get better.

But, that does beg the question, what’s in it for the real estate agent?

According to Zillow, Neighborhood Advice will not only show agents that it pays to friend your clients on Facebook; but also, that agents can use this feature to gain more insight into their buyer’s habits.

Action!

If you ask me, I see this feature somehow being interrogated into the Premier Agent package on Zillow – similar to buying area codes.

So, if Sally Consumer uses Neighborhood Advice, in you own a particular area she is interested in, she can send a message to you right on Facebook. There is no concrete evidence to back that up, but it definitely sounds plausible.

So, what are your thoughts? Do you see this feature catching on?

NEWS YOU CAN USE

When you take out a loan, your lender will review your credit report from independent companies that monitor your credit.

Your credit report is a compilation of three key factors: your credit history, information from employers, and financial information gathered from public records.

Taken together, all this information is used to create your credit score, which is usually between 300 and 800.

The higher your score, the more likely you will be to get favorable loan terms from your lender.

Here are a few things to keep in mind to improve your credit score:

• Be consistent and punctual when it comes to payments
• Keep your balances well below the maximum. Accounts with high balances can hurt your credit score
• Don’t take out more credit cards than you need
• Be careful of opening or closing accounts near your closing date, and …
• Watch your credit to debt ratio

REALTOR:
Joe Bryson // re-al.com
Real Estate Alliance // Austin, TX

How to find and choose a real estate agent

How can you tell whether a real estate agent is honest and trustworthy…or not so much? Author and CNN financial editor Gerri Willis tells you what to look for when choosing a real estate agent.