With so many ads touting the historic lows of mortgage lending interest rates you have to be at least thankful that they have dropped the word: “New” when describing the historic lows. Believe me when I say that we are all thankful (ok, well, maybe some lenders wish the rates were higher) for the historic…
No wonder our legislators and President are suffering such low approval ratings right now – with just 2 days to spare, they have finally re-enacted the Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Relief provisions which keep Short Selling home occupants from facing stiff taxes on phantom income. Unfortunately, 2015 is upon us and once again the collection of…
Over the past five years, our short sale practice has become ever more streamlined and efficient. We’ve seen time required for approvals drop as all the major lenders in the Virginia market recognize our firm name and even have first name relationships with some of our staff members who have been with us throughout the…
At first this sounds like great news for consumers. In reality, the only good news for consumers is that we live in America where you have the freedom to make risky choices. Only a decade ago you could buy more home than you could afford by paying just a little higher interest rate using a…
We try not to wander too far afield into the political end of things. But sometimes you just have to give credit where credit is due and point out some of the obvious consequences of laws affecting lenders, borrowers, default, and legal ramifications. Dodd-Frank and the ensuing Quality Management or QM regime enforced upon the…
Nationally, we have seen between 2% to 7% rise in home prices over the past year. Big California cities have seen the biggest increases. The latest news is based on the increase in prices and reduction in time on market between February 2013 and February 2014. “Black Knight Financial Services released its Home Price…
The Good News on this rainy day 3 of a moderate Noreaster in Tidewater, Virginia, is that foreclosures and “shadow inventory” continue to decline. The meteorologists tell us we have a couple more days of winds and much needed rain off the Atlantic Ocean. Likewise, the economists predict that our financial storm is not over…
Never underestimate the lobbying power of NAR (National Association of Realtors). NAR managed to have the enforcement of the anti-dual agency rule postponed. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had planned to implement the new regulation 10-1-13 to help fight Fraud in Short Sales. “Dual Agency” is generally defined as one real estate…
This headline out of Missouri at first seems encouraging to the average homeowner trying to find anyway possible to keep from having their home taken from them. Like this family in the featured story, many homeowners have done everything possible to “keep a roof over their heads”, including selling all the family jewelry. But unlike…
Here’s a great article that I found by Carrie Bay from February 10, 2001 at DSNews. There is a lot of interesting information. You can see the original article here. Home values in the United States fell 2.6 percent during the last three months of 2010, posting their largest quarterly decline since the first quarter…
