Discuss the following with your real estate agent before you begin looking for a home. This will help narrow down the choices and shorten the search process:

Type of home: One-story or two, single-family, duplex or condo? How will paying homeowner dues affect your overall buying power? Will a swimming pool be a bonus or a hindrance? Making these decisions in advance will help you focus on the right types of home to look at.

New or existing: A new home is all shiny and clean, but will carry with it some hefty initial costs such as landscaping and window coverings. Many builders are offering great deals on new homes that aren’t yet in move-in condition. Weigh the potential bargain against the costs involved in completing the home on your own. While these factors don’t come into play with existing homes, you need to assess its general condition, which will also impact your budget.

Features: Weigh the costs of gas vs. electric heating and cooling, the possible need for fencing, etc. How important is a fireplace? Does the home have enough bedrooms and bathrooms to support your family in the coming years?

Ease of maintenance: What is the condition of the roof? The appliances? Will you have to paint the interior or exterior and/or replace the carpeting? Be sure to factor in such costs in your budget and your negotiations.

Location: For many of today’s home buyers, it’s all about lifestyle. Do you want to be in the city or in the country? Nearer to libraries, parks and entertainment or set among tall trees and lakes? What about the need for public transportation? Nearby hospitals and schools?

Crime rate and public schools: Check with local enforcement and local residents to get a feeling for statistics and quality. Your real estate agent should be able to run detailed crime and school reports for your perusal.

Economic stability: Whether an area is growing or not can affect its future property value – as will the economic stability of the area.

Property tax: Examine the annual amount of real estate taxes and other assessments levied in the neighborhoods you are considering.

You may be eager to buy a home. But taking time to save a large down payment has numerous advantages.

Most homebuyers have to finance most of the home’s purchase price with a mortgage. The amount you put down upfront determines the size of the mortgage. A conventional mortgage usually requires a down payment of 20% of the purchase price of the house.

Knowing how much of a down payment to save for can be tough. The larger the down payment, the longer it takes to save.

There are, however, several benefits to waiting to purchase until you have enough for a down payment of 20% or more.

1. Reduced mortgage payments
The more you put down on your home upfront, the smaller your mortgage payments will be. That could help your monthly budget. More important, you could save thousands of dollars in interest in the long run. For example, on a 30-year mortgage at 5% interest, putting an extra $10,000 into the down payment will save you $9,325 in interest payments over the life of the loan.

2. Lower interest rate
Lenders often offer better interest rates to borrowers with a lower loan-to-value ratio, or the percentage of the purchase price that you’re financing. An increase in your down payment lowers the ratio and reduces the risk to the lender that you will be unable to pay your full loan balance. Lower interest rates can also save you money over the life of the mortgage.

3. No mortgage-insurance fees
If you want to contribute a smaller down payment than the traditional 20%, most lenders require that you take out mortgage insurance. This insurance protects the lender in case you cannot pay your mortgage. Federal insurance programs are available to qualified purchasers, in addition to private insurance options. Mortgage insurance can be expensive, ranging from 0.5% to 1% of the home’s value annually to several thousand dollars per year. The insurance premiums are an extra cost of the mortgage and are not applied to the mortgage balance.

4. Less risk when selling
Real-estate values can move up or down after you buy your house. If the market is in a down swing and you have to sell your house, you may find that your mortgage balance is higher than the value of your home. This is known as being “upside down” or “underwater” on your mortgage. This situation gives you less flexibility in accepting offers and may make it difficult to sell your home and pay your mortgage.

If you made a substantial down payment when you bought your house, you are less likely to be upside down on the mortgage.

5. Ability to ride out financial crises
The future is unpredictable. You may encounter a personal financial crisis, such as job loss or illness, that can impair your ability to pay your mortgage. If you have equity in your home because of making a large down payment, you can better weather a financial storm. The mortgage payment will be smaller, and you could borrow against the equity, if necessary. If you borrowed the maximum possible based on two incomes, you could face financial stress and perhaps even foreclosure.

Taking the time to save money for a down payment on your mortgage is a solid investment. It can save you thousands of dollars over the course of the mortgage and can put you on more solid financial footing.

Have you ever thought about chucking it all and moving to a place where the greenback goes farther? Although many people do, the spots that used to be considered cheap — the Bahamas in the 1970s, Paris in the ’60s — aren’t such bargains now. Don’t worry. There are still plenty of places where the slightly well-heeled can live comfortably without spending an arm and a leg. International consulting firm Mercer has conducted its annual survey of which cities cost the most for expatriate workers, providing a pretty good cost yardstick. Mercer measures the prices for what an average American might require overseas to lead a relatively decent life — no gold-plated Rolls-Royces or rooftop helipads, just decent food, an apartment, a cup of coffee and so forth. Although expatriate assignments generally are expensive for companies, living well in some places is far less expensive than in major U.S. cities. These locations include cities in Africa, South America, South Asia and some former Soviet republics. In its 2011 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey, Mercer collected price data from 214 cities on more than 200 items, including housing, transportation, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment, but not the cost of health care, education and other items. Not all winning locations are family-friendly. The Libyan capital of Tripoli is one of the least expensive places to live, living there entails significant risk from military rockets. Many of the cheapest cities are in developing countries, but not all of those are low-cost: The world’s most expensive city for expatriates is Luanda, Angola, followed by Tokyo and N’Djamena, Chad, Mercer says. On the other hand, inexpensive living doesn’t always require a foreign posting: Winston-Salem, N.C., ranks No. 18 among cheap cities.

A multibillion-dollar apartment-construction boom is under way in which developers are pulling out all the stops to cater to the new generation of renters who grew up in McMansions and vacationed with their parents at fancy resorts.

The garden-style apartments of yesteryear are out. To appeal to “echo boomers,” roughly defined as people born in the 1980s and early 1990s, the new urban apartment buildings offer smaller living quarters and grand common areas where renters can entertain and socialize.

At the Savoye, an apartment complex near Dallas that caters to younger renters, the amenities include a resort-style pool surrounded by high-end lounge chairs lined up under oversized umbrellas. There are stainless-steel barbecue grills and an outdoor table with water streaming down the middle and ending in a waterfall. There’s also a posh poker lounge, a private movie room and a banquet room.

Echo boomers “want large communal spaces where they can gather with their friends and neighbors,” says Jerry Davis, a senior vice president at Denver-based UDR Inc., which developed the 392-unit Savoye last year and is working on a second phase of the complex, which will have 347 units. In addition, UDR is building four other communities for echo boomers across the country.

There are about 80 million echo boomers, says Marcus & Millichap, a real-estate investment brokerage firm. By 2020, the 18-to-34-year-old age group, considered the prime renting age, will grow by an additional 5 million.

Developers are betting that instead of rushing to buy a condo, this group would rent for several years.

The Census Bureau says the homeownership rate for people under 35 was 37.9% in the first quarter of this year, down from 38.9% in the first quarter of 2010 and 43.3% in 2005′s first quarter.

The Brooklyner in New York, owned by Chicago-based Equity Residential, offers a rooftop sun deck with sweeping city views and a lounge featuring a pool table and Skee-ball. The Monterey by Windsor, a 371-unit building owned by Windsor Communities in Dallas’ trendy West Village area, boasts an outdoor fireplace, kitchen and large flat-screen television in a space large enough to entertain 50 people.

Demand up, supply lags
During the housing boom, waves of renters left apartments to become homeowners, including many young people. When the boom turned to bust, some homeowners became renters again.

But developers had a hard time finding financing to construct new buildings to meet the growing demand. In the first quarter, some 6,000 new units hit the market, the lowest quarterly figure since research firm Reis Inc. began publishing quarterly data in 1999.

As a result, occupancy and rent levels have been rising. Just 6.2% of apartment units were vacant in the first quarter of this year, down from 8% a year earlier, Reis says. The first quarter’s effective rent for one-bedroom apartments, or what’s paid after special offers, came in at $983, up from $960 a year earlier.

Now that the credit freeze is thawing, builders are ramping up construction. But with more than 225,000 new apartments expected by 2013 — more than double the number delivered in 2010 — it isn’t clear whether developers are bringing on too much supply in areas such as Houston, Atlanta and Austin, Texas, especially on the high end.

Too much competition could force landlords to chop rents. These pricey pads are also highly sensitive to the economy: If layoffs increase or job creation stalls, existing and potential tenants could downgrade to cheaper units.