Like any life-changing move you make, buying, selling or financing a home has its share of drama. But don’t sweat it! Tara and REThink Real Estate have teamed up with our partners over at HGTV’s FrontDoor.com to offer tips, advice and inspiration to take the fear and stress out of any real estate *situation*.

Note from Tara:

Here are two Drama-Free Real Estate articles for the oft-neglected Smart Owners just looking for some guidance to help them be wise stewards of the homes they already own.

Don’t Freak Out If: You Can’t Afford to Pay Your Mortgage or You’re Upside Down on Your Home

Foreclosure-Proof Your Home: Before or After You Buy It!

For the rest of my insider secrets, strategies and mindset management tools for Buying, Selling and Financing your home Drama-Free, visit the entire Drama-Free Real Estate wonderland over at my second home on the web, HGTV’s FrontDoor.com

The finance fear factor involved in buying or owning  a home has grown particularly intense in the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis. Seeing constant news reports about the tragic consequences of bad real estate and mortgage decisions makes it tough for buyers not to wonder, “how can I avoid that?!” If you’re about to buy a home, and you’ve had this exact thought, you’re in luck — learn from their mistakes and position yourself to avoid foreclosure in just a few simple steps.

Think long term. Don’t buy a place planning to sell it in a year. Really, you should only buy if you’ll be comfortable owning the home for at least four or five years. As we’ve seen recently, one year you might be able to sell at top dollar in just a few days, and the next year it might take months to move the same house at a deep discount. If you plan from the outset to commit to the home for a few years, your home and loan choices will be less likely to force you into a financial crisis.

Intelligent (mortgage) design. Take charge of your mortgage choices and make sustainability your goal. Let your household spending plan and a reality-based projection of your income over time dictate how much you pay for your home. Tell your Realtor and mortgage broker how much you can spend on housing every month, rather than letting them tell you what you can afford. That may mean you end up buying a lower-priced home than you qualify for, a decision many owners who have now gone through foreclosure wish they had made back when they had the choice.

Sustainability should also be your guiding force when it comes to the type of mortgage you choose — with so many low-interest mortgages with fixed interest rates and payments available, it just doesn’t make sense to take on a loan where your payment will double in a year or two (or three, for that matter)! Actually, don’t make any mortgage move where your ability to hold onto your home relies on your ability to refinance your home in less than five years — that’s like betting your home on a short-term prediction of home values, and that’s not a good move.

Cultivate a cushion. Saving money hasn’t been a priority of American homeowners for some time now. When everyone’s home was wildly appreciating, there was always cash to be had from equity lines and loans. With no real savings, though, even a temporary job loss doomed homeowners to foreclosure. To insulate your home from foreclosure, start the savings habit and shoot to create an emergency cushion of six months’ mortgage payments and other living expenses.

Get a shredder. Homeowners who used their homes like ATM machines have been much more likely to end up in foreclosure. So, decide in advance to avoid frequent or excessive borrowing against the equity in your home. And arm yourself against the barrage of equity credit offers you’ll get as a homeowner. Be prepared to shred the junk mail that comes before you have a chance to start daydreaming about that Bahamas cruise you could take if you just got a small equity line.

Put a Plan B in place. Income glitches due to a death in the family or a job-stopping disability lead to almost as many foreclosures as mortgage problems. Make sure all wage-earners have life and disability insurance policies in place to keep one unfortunate event from turning into a double-whammy.

Upside Down. Underwater. Walking away. What sounds like a set of cues for Aquatic Twister are actually the new-age descriptors for an age-old dilemma. The problem of owing more on your home than it is worth certainly isn’t new, but the scope — 1 in 10 American homeowners — is. If dropping property values have added you to the class of underwater homeowners and you need to sell or refinance your home for whatever reason, you might have the makings for a freak-out on your hands, my friend.

I Know the Feeling. And the feeling is trapped. In high finance, they call a property that is eating up funds but can’t be sold for enough to clear the corresponding debt a “toxic asset.” If you’re paying a monthly mortgage on a home you can’t sell for what you owe, it might seem like Wall Street has indeed come to Main Street when the home you once loved so much starts to feel like your own personal toxic asset.

If you want to hold onto your home, the payment on your interest-only ARM is about to double and your efforts at refinancing are going nowhere because you owe more than it’s worth, it’s normal to feel trapped on a path that inevitably ends at foreclosure. Can’t sell, can’t refi, can’t afford the adjusting mortgage — the seeming lack of options can trigger a horrible sense of helplessness and perplexity: what on earth are you supposed to do?

Your Mindset Reset. How do you go from helpless to hopeful if you’re upside down on your home? Put it all in perspective. Your home, as important an asset as it is, is just that — a building. Even if the very worst that can happen to your home (foreclosure) does happen, that is certainly not the worst thing that could ever happen to you. Real estate matters are not life or death, and putting them in their proper perspective can be the cure for those heart-pounding, flush-inducing panic sessions that happen when you hear the house two doors down just closed on a short sale for 60 percent of what you paid for yours.

And don’t be a lemming. Were you actually planning to sell your home before market values tanked, I mean, declined? I talk to would-be sellers everyday with 30-year fixed rate mortgages they can well afford, stable jobs and homes they had planned to live in until they were carried out feet first. The claustrophobia of feeling trapped in a home can cause you to panic and decide to sell, but if you weren’t planning to and don’t need to, don’t decide to just because of the market.

Shift your mindset. It is actually okay to own a home that has declined in value and just keep on owning it, especially if it works for your family and has the potential to appreciate again when the market recovers. In fact, think like a daytrader (on this one point only!) — selling when you don’t need to at the bottom of the market locks in your losses. And that’s bad.

If you really need to sell or refinance, being upside down is a values check — what’s really important to you? There are solutions to help you get out of your home or your loan, but some of them might have less-than-lovely implications for your credit or other downsides. Instead of viewing your situation as a tragedy, it might be the nudge you needed to get out of your comfort zone and make some hard priority choices — choices that could have major upsides for your life over the long term, if you face them head on.

Your Drama-Free Real Estate Rx. You get to choose how you experience this unfortunate upside-downness: call to tears or call to action? If you choose action, be on the lookout for workarounds and for lessons. You can chalk your lost equity up as tuition if you find the lessons in the situation, like ways you will approach your mortgage decisions differently in the future. And when it comes to workarounds, there are dozens of potential solutions out there for upside down homeowners, ranging from short sales to creative sale structures to loan modifications and refinances under the stimulus plan.

Talk with your Realtor to see if you might be able to unload your home, despite the deficit, and check MakingHomeAffordable.com or a local loan modification attorney to see if you might be able to fix your broken ARM before it adjusts. Then take action or calculated inaction (i.e. staying put and sitting still), whichever makes you feel right side up, even if your home’s value is upside down.