Some well-off people are thinking of buying a vacation or retirement home abroad, now that the dollar is strong and the real estate market has become depressed in many parts of Europe and elsewhere. If you’re considering such a move, be aware that the rules of real estate can be very different in other parts of the world.

As a general rule, you can deduct home mortgage interest on your federal income taxes, as long as you itemize deductions. This sounds simple enough, but it can get complicated if a home is owned by more than one person. Recently, the IRS provided an explanation of how this works. According to the IRS, the key question is how much interest each owner actually paid in a given year – not what percentage of the home

Many parents who co-sign a private student loan for a child don’t realize that it can affect their own credit score if they later apply for a mortgage. Having parents co-sign loans has become more popular lately, because it can make it easier to get a loan approved or to get a lower interest rate. Some 94% of private student loans were co-signed in the last academic year, up from only 77% six years ago.

The recovery in the housing market has produced higher prices for single-family homes along with all-time record-high apartment rents. But condominiums have been late to the party. The median sale price for an existing single-family home in the U.S. is now back up to what it was in 2005-2006, before the housing crisis. But the median sale price for an existing condo is still more than $15,000 below its earlier peak.

A home is the largest purchase most families ever make. The vast majority of people wouldn’t hesitate to buy homeowner’s insurance to protect their investment against fire, theft, tornadoes, and so on. Title insurance protects people against losing their home in a different way – through discovering that they don’t actually have all the ownership rights they thought they did. How could such a thing happen? There are a number of ways. For instance, it might