Imagine you’re anywhere in your house where water is a feature: bathroom, kitchen, laundry room. They’re all connected by a network of pipes that come from your main water source. If any of those tangential pipes springs a leak, you’ll need to shut off the water until it can be fixed.
Every home is different, but you can likely find your main valve near the perimeter of your house, at ground level, nearest your water meter. If your water pipes are visible (in the basement, for example), follow them until you reach the main inlet and valve.
It’s possible your shut-off valve could be in a crawl space, closet, or somewhere out of the way, but it should definitely be in plain sight, rather than covered over with drywall. But rather than sit there and wonder, be sure to ask the previous home seller before you move in or check your home’s blueprints for a clue.

A circuit box is your house’s bodyguard against sudden spikes in electricity that run through the wires. Know your circuit box! It may enable you to avoid hiring a technician for simple electrical issues.
Most circuit boxes are located in a house’s basement, but some are also found in garages or utility closets. The switches inside correspond to rooms and sets of outlets in your home. Hopefully, they’re labeled properly—and if not, you should get on that pronto to avoid a tortuous guessing game every time you need to turn your power on and off.
If power suddenly goes out in a room (usually because you have too much plugged into one outlet), you can identify the tripped circuit by the switch that’s flipped in the opposite direction to the others. That means you may need to plug in your lava lamp elsewhere.

When your furnace goes out, you’ll be left in the cold—but not if you know how to change its thermocouple.This is the part of the furnace that shuts off the gas if your pilot light goes out, preventing that gas from seeping into your home. (You know, the gas that can kill you if left to run amok.)
If the furnace won’t stay lit, there’s a good chance you have a faulty thermocouple. Learning how to replace or adjust yours can be the difference between a $10 trip to the hardware store, and a $90/hour visit from a technician. Most thermocouples are held in place by brackets, which can be gently unscrewed to insert the replacement thermocouple.
Keeping a spare thermocouple on hand during winter is especially smart, because furnace problems can be more inconvenient—and costly—during the peak times of the year.

A sump pump is a pump (duh) installed in certain basements and crawl spaces to keep these areas of your home dry, which it does by collecting water that tries to seep in and moving it far, far away (or at least as far as the drainage ditch in your yard). They’re especially common in regions where basement flooding is an issue. Without a sump pump, the invading water can result in thousands of dollars in damage.
The good news, though, is that sump pumps are relatively easy to maintain. Check both lines, in and out, to make sure they’re not clogged with debris, and make sure the float component (this is the little bob that floats upward when water begins to fill the sump pit, activating the pump) can move smoothly.

Real estate expert Kristi Burkett discusses the length of the home buying process.

Buying real estate is about more than just finding a place to call home. Investing in real estate has become increasingly popular over the last 50 years and has become a common investment vehicle.

Although the real estate market has plenty of opportunities for making big gains, buying and owning real estate is a lot more complicated than investing in stocks and bonds. In this article, we'll go beyond buying a home and introduce you to real estate as an investment.

PART 5 of 5:  LEVERAGE

With the exception of REITs, investing in real estate gives an investor one tool that is not available to stock market investors: Leverage. If you want to buy a stock, you have to pay the full value of the stock at the time you place the buy order. Even if you are buying on margin, the amount you can borrow is still much less than with real estate.

Most "conventional" mortgages require 25% down, however, depending on where you live, there are many types of mortgages that require as little as 5%. This means that you can control the whole property and the equity it holds by only paying a fraction of the total value. Of course, your mortgage will eventually pay the total value of the house at the time you purchased it, but you control it the minute the papers are signed.

This is what emboldens real estate flippers and landlords alike. They can take out a second mortgage on their homes and put down payments on two or three other properties. Whether they rent these out so that tenants pay the mortgage or they wait for an opportunity to sell for a profit, they control these assets, despite having only paid for a small part of the total value.

​SOURCE:  http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/06/realestateinvest.asp

Real estate expert Matt Madras discusses appraisals and how you can improve the value of your home.

Buying real estate is about more than just finding a place to call home. Investing in real estate has become increasingly popular over the last 50 years and has become a common investment vehicle.

Although the real estate market has plenty of opportunities for making big gains, buying and owning real estate is a lot more complicated than investing in stocks and bonds. In this article, we'll go beyond buying a home and introduce you to real estate as an investment.

PART 4 of 5:  REITs

Real estate has been around since our cave-dwelling ancestors started chasing strangers out of their space, so it's not surprising that Wall Street has found a way to turn real estate into a publicly-traded instrument.

A real estate investment trust (REIT) is created when a corporation (or trust) uses investors' money to purchase and operate income properties. REITs are bought and sold on the major exchanges, just like any other stock. A corporation must pay out 90% of its taxable profits in the form of dividends, to keep its status as an REIT. By doing this, REITs avoid paying corporate income tax, whereas a regular company would be taxed its profits and then have to decide whether or not to distribute its after-tax profits as dividends.

Much like regular dividend-paying stocks, REITs are a solid investment for stock market investors that want regular income. In comparison to the aforementioned types of real estate investment, REITs allow investors into non-residential investments such as malls or office buildings and are highly liquid. In other words, you won't need a realtor to help you cash out your investment.

​SOURCE:  http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/06/realestateinvest.asp

SOURCE:  ​http://random-facts.top5.com/top-5-biggest-houses-in-the-world/?page=2&isp1=1