Here’s a great article from the Wall Street Journal on the top 10 reasons to buy a home in today’s market. WSJ’s Top 10 Reason’s To Buy A Home Today In addition to the standard mantra of reasons we’re hearing everywhere such as: Good Prices Low Interest Rates Tax Savings They also talk about: Inflation [...]

So today’s headline is that home sales have plunged 27% from June to July according the National Association of Realtors – and this seems dramatic and perhaps even surprising.  Though, this is an artificial drama being put on by people trying to get ratings.  It should be by no means surprising, and frankly shouldn’t have [...]

The Federal Reserve took action recently to ban Yield Spread Premiums (YSP) in mortgage lending.  YSP is a bonus paid by the mortgage lender to the mortgage broker in exchange for the broker getting the borrower to accept a loan with a higher interest rate. How YSP Can Be Good… YSP can be used ethically [...]

On Monday, the Federal Reserve released a 930 page document that finalizes many of the new rules and regulations that are included in the financial reform package – among the many changes is a proposed rule that would allow potential mortgage borrowers to cancel their mortgage application within 3 days and receive a refund of [...]

Bankrate.com release the 2010 edition of their annual survey of closing costs, where they requested a good faith estimate for a $200,000 from a variety of lenders in a major metro area in each of 49 states, as well as two areas in California (Los Angeles & San Francisco). New York, Texas, Utah and California [...]

More economists are forecasting future growth of housing prices in the next fews years… this time it’s the Chief Economist at Fiserv (a financial services technology firm) David Stiff who is predicting the bottoming of prices in late 2010 with an average climb in prices of 7.2% between late 2010 and early 2014. Fiserv and [...]

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their latest data on pending home sales today showing that pending contracts, a forward looking indicator of sales, have slowed in June by 2.6% over levels in May.  The slowing was expected as the impact of the expiration of the home buyer tax credit takes full effect. Looking [...]

As banks have become more conservative, more and more condo buyers have flocked to FHA-insured mortgages for their more attractive required down payments (3.5% or 5%) and greater stability of rates and fees.  However, one major change in how FHA operates has fundamentally changed condo financing.  Earlier this year, FHA removed the ‘spot approval’ process [...]

You simply have to applaud the creativity of Wall Street investors and property developers… when a door for making money closes they know how to knock a hole in the wall and make a window for cash to pour in. In a recent trend that has been making it’s way across the country, property investors [...]

According to the Seattle Times, mortgage rates have hit historical bottoms for the 5th time in six weeks coming to rest this week at 4.54% for a 30 year fixed rate conventional mortgage. Check out the article here. Look for a local update on mortgage rates tomorrow when I get the newest rates from our [...]