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Refinancing
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Written by Mary Ellen Podmolik, Chicago Tribune
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 Mortgage rates are down and you're not going to bother trying to sell your home anytime soon. Should you spend the money to refinance and lower your payments? Can you qualify?
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The Home Search
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Written by Alejandro Lazo, Tribune Newspapers
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Home is where not only the heart is these days — but also the elderly parents, the boomerang kids and the aging-in-place boomer homeowners.
To accommodate the new generations-stacked-upon-generations lifestyle spawned by one of the most severe economic downturns in decades, builder Lennar Corp. is focusing on houses with something few others on the block can boast about: another house.
The company has built two San Bernardino County, Calif., models of its so-called NextGen designs for its master-planned Rosena Ranch community. Like a Russian nesting doll with a smaller doll inside, the new residential design incorporates a smaller home with a separate front entrance, kitchenette, bathroom and bedroom.
Lennar designers and researchers and an independent architect developed the floor plans this year to respond to the doubling-up trend that has affected more than 1 in 5 U.S. households. Executives with the Miami-based home building titan hope the atypical designs will appeal to families moving in together and pooling financial resources. The idea is to draw them back into the beleaguered market for newly constructed homes, which is on course for its worst annual performance on record.
"This Great Recession has forced us, as builders, to push the envelope," said Greg McGuff, president of Lennar's Inland Empire operations.
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Manage your Home Investment
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Written by William Hageman, Special to the Tribune
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A simple broken part can often signal the end of a major appliance, sending a consumer out to shop for a new refrigerator, stove, air conditioner or clothes dryer.To make matters worse, if that old appliance isn't collected by the retailer, it's hauled to the curb.
A Glendale Heights business, however, has a better idea.
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Your Credit
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Written by Carolyn Bigda, Special to the Tribune
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For years, it didn't matter to your credit score whether you paid rent on time.
But that is starting to change, and if you're a 20-something with little or no credit history, your rent payments could make a big difference to your score. Here's what you need to know.
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The Home Search
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Written by Jeffrey Steele, Special to the Chicago Tribune
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It wasn't too long ago that buyers looked at a new home and pondered whether they would flip it in two, maybe three, years. Today, the questions are different.
If we have kids, can we use that home office as a baby's room? Can the family room be turned into a children's playroom? Will the first-floor den work 10 years from now as an in-law suite? Can we rough in some plumbing in the basement, in case our grade schooler is a "boomerang" child after college?
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