Buying a home for the first time can be complex. To avoid mistakes and make a smart purchase, do the homework and know what to expect. To help start the process, HGTV’s FrontDoor.com identifies the top 10 important points every first-time buyer must know.

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The demand on canopy has been raised lately and a lot of customers are getting them, but the problem is, they don’t really know what exactly they should keep in mind when on the search for a Canopy Tent. Here are 6 tips which will help you select a good canopy..

1) Custom printed outdoor tents or canopies are used for many purposes such as – they can be used as a booth in a trade show or for outdoor promotions and many more activities. First of all customers have to keep the purpose in mind for what they will be using their custom canopy.

2) If they want to use it for outdoor promotion purposes then printing their company logo with some eye catching graphic designs would be a good idea to get some attention from public.

3) Secondly they have to consider that for what purpose they will be using the tent for and how much space would be required for it and then they have to choose a suitable size which will be enough for their activity but keep in mind that they can get a canopy a bit bigger than required but a canopy smaller than their needs wont work.

4) If customer is planning to have a public walk than he have to think about the equipments he will be using and other supplies that would be required by his during the activity and how much space they (supplies) may take in the canopy adding how much would be required by him to do the work.

5) If customer is unable to decide the size, then he can buy a canopy with half walls and keep the pubic outside the covered area which will make it easy for him to work inside the tent and connect with his possible customers.

6) There are different shapes of pop up tents available in the market. Hexagonal ones are from 10 foot to 20 foot sizes (depends upon your needs). Customer can also buy a square shaped tent (mostly used) but It is recommended that he should buy a hexagonal as people get bored walking and taking a look on tents looking the same (due to same shapes) and as a hexagonal tent is different from others, it may get more attention from people.

The Home Buyer Tax Credit is a new legislation congress passed that was developed to stimulate the U.S. housing market and address the economic challenges facing our nation.

With the Home Buyer Tax Credit, First time Home Buyers Tax Credit will be extended to up to $8,000, if you are a first time home buyer, you are eligible for this, it runs until April 30, 2010. The Home Buyer Tax Credit also expands the credit to grant up to $6,500 credit to current home owners purchasing a new or existing home between November 7, 2009 and April 30, 2010.

If you have specific questions or need additional information, please contact a tax professional or the Internal Revenue Service at 800-829-1040.

With home sales continuing to languish, home sellers need to consider alternatives to using a real estate agent to get their homes sold.

ForSaleByOwner.com, the nation’s leading “by owner” real estate website, offers five reasons why today’s home sellers can successfully market and sell their homes without agents.

“The Internet has leveled the playing field by providing access to resources that previously only an agent had access to,” says Greg Healy, Vice President of Operations at ForSaleByOwner.com. “Today’s by owner sellers now have easy access to the most sophisticated tools for selling a home, including in-depth education, resources and information to help price and market their homes. The reasons to use an agent are decreasing”

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Are you religious (or not) and looking for a new way to speed up the process of selling your home? If so, you may want to try what one person did to help sell her home in Brooklyn, N.Y. during this difficult real estate market. She has turned to an unlikely source for help: St. Joseph.

St. Joseph is a Catholic saint who has long been believed to help with home-related matters. And according to lore now spreading on the Internet and among desperate home-sellers, burying St. Joseph in the yard of a home for sale promises a prompt bid. After she and her husband held five open houses, even baking cookies for one of them, she ordered a St. Joseph “real estate kit” online and buried the three-inch white statue in her yard.

These statues are flying off the shelves as an increasing number of skeptics and non-Catholics look for some saintly intervention to help them sell their houses. Talk about desperate measures. You might as well put your house up on eBay and/or Craigslist and see if anyone makes a bid. Regardless, I guess at this point I would try anything and everything to help sell my home.

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Here is an article by June Fletcher of the Wall Street Journal asking the question “Can Home Builder Be Trusted”? Here are some interesting excerpt from the article.

A builder will often promise to repair and repaint a model at the end of the lease, to convert the sales office to a garage and to re-route sidewalks and fences running through the model-home complex. If you’re worried that the builder will go belly-up before all this happens, get an estimate from an independent contractor of what it could cost to perform these necessary fixes. Have the builder deposit the funds to cover them in an escrow account. It’s smart to hire an experienced real estate attorney to represent you during all these discussions.

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In today’s disconsolate real estate market, sellers have to make sure that their properties stand out from the huge amount of unsold homes out there. Pat Vredevoogd Combs, vice president of Coldwell Banker AJS-Schmidt in Grand Rapids, Mich. who is also a former president of the National Association of Realtors recently in an interview gave 7 cheap and easy step that sellers can use to improve their open houses. You can find the 7 cheap steps to a better open house after the jump.

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With so much of the U.S. economy hanging in the balance, where do the Presidential candidates weigh in federally insured limits on bank-deposit accounts?

According to a recent MarketWatch article, Both Senators Obama and McCain are calling for “a raising of federally insured limits on bank-desposit accounts in an effort to reassure voters that their funds are safe.” The limit is proposed to be raised from $100,000 of FDIC coverage to $250,000.

This isn’t the first time raising these limits has been suggested. Former FDIC Chairman William Seidman noted he suggested raising it 10 years ago.

[Realty Times]