Year: 2021

Happy New Year 2022! 🎉 We wish you and your family a peaceful, prosperous, and healthy new year! A New Year and New Beginnings!

If you haven’t refinanced and maybe have been procrastinating here are five quick tips to help see if a refinance is right for you. 1. Check Your Rate – Rates are still near historic lows so even half a point can mean substantial monthly savings. 2. Check Your Equity – many home values have increased in equity in the past year so you may be eligible to refinance with cash out. 3. Check Your Debt – if you have a other high interest debt, you may consider consolidating that debt with a lower rate refi. Of course beware the revolving the debt cycle! 4. Check Your Calendar – if you want to pay of your home faster, you can refinance into a 15 year mortgage with extremely low rates. 5.…

Today we are going to discuss two common mortgage loan products, and the pros and cons of both: FHA versus Conventional Loans. Many people are familiar with the 20% down, good credit 30 year fixed conventional loan scenario. FHA loans are designed for people who have difficulty qualifying for a conventional loan to buy a house. FHA Loans offer down payments as low as 3.5% and are more lenient on credit scores and past financial issues. Borrowers can qualify for FHA loans with as low as 580 credit scores. One of the downsides of FHA loans are mortgage insurance requirements, if you put down less than 10% you will be required to pay monthly insurance for the duration of the loan, as well paying Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium. The best…

This week we saw the benchmark 30-year fixed rate mortgage fall below 3% again according to Freddie Mac. While 15-year fixed-rate are down to 2.27%. This opens opportunities for refinancing and rate locks for many borrowers. Sam Khater the chief economist at Freddie Mac noted that this creates a lot of opportunity for borrowers to refinance and increase monthly cash flow, with nearly $2 trillion in conforming mortgages able to refinance and reduce their interest rate by at least half a percent. He said last year homeowners who refinanced their 30-year fixed-rate mortgages saved more than $2800 annually.

This week we saw the benchmark 30-year fixed rate mortgage fall below 3% again according to Freddie Mac. While 15-year fixed-rate are down to 2.27%. This opens opportunities for refinancing and rate locks for many borrowers. Sam Khater the chief economist at Freddie Mac noted that this creates a lot of opportunity for borrowers to refinance and increase monthly cash flow, with nearly $2 trillion in conforming mortgages able to refinance and reduce their interest rate by at least half a percent. He said last year homeowners who refinanced their 30-year fixed-rate mortgages saved more than $2800 annually.

We’ve seen housing prices rising throughout the country so you may ask is buying still better than renting? According to a recent study from researchers at Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University, it is still better to buy than rent in most areas. The study looked at the top 23 metropolitan markets and analyzed if buyers bought a house and built equity or rented and reinvested the remaining income. Overall they found it was better to buy with savings coming from today’s still low interest rates, which lowered home owner costs even with the rise in housing prices. Of course all real estate is local so while the overall message of buying being the better strategy, results varied region to region.

There are a few primary factors in getting qualified for a loan, today we’ll talk about one, that you might be able to easily update – the credit score. Here are a few tips to make sure your score is accurate and possibly improve it. Before getting started you’ll obviously need to know your credit score and you can order a free report from one of the big 3 or get a merged credit report. 1. Avoid late and missed payments – this is a big one. If you have trouble keeping track and paying bills consider setting up automatic payments because late payments can be an easily avoidable ding on your score. 2. Make Sure Balances aren’t too high. If you are carrying balances of more than 30% of…

Forget earlier this year when we saw new home sales actually drop. New home sales for March went up... a lot, up more than 20% in March compared to February, according to data provided by HUD. In fact it wasn’t just a monthly increase but March saw the strongest new home sales in over 14 years! Not since September 2006 have new home sales been at a faster clip. A combination of low interest rates and high demand look to fuel new home growth for the foreseeable future. The biggest obstacle to new home construction now is a surge in lumber prices which is adding on over $35,000 to the cost of average new single family home according to the National Association of Home Builders. Overall new home sales growth…

The housing market has extremely tight inventory and as a result there are often multiple bids on a home. If you find yourself competing with multiple bidders, here are some tips to come out on top and win a bidding war. Preapproval Letter Have a preapproval letter. A preapproval letter shows you are serious and there won’t be trouble getting a mortgage. Without this other bidders will be in a much stronger position. Make A Higher Offer Before doing this, make sure you stay within your budget, but a higher offer is (as common sense dictates) often a key to a winning bid. Your real estate agent can be helpful here to get an idea of how many bids are coming in as well as current market prices in the…

Market Watch - Rates Drop - Housing Red Hot This week we've seen rates drop below 3 percent for the first time in months. Freddie Mac reported the average for 30-year-rate-mortgage was 2.97%. This is the first drop below 3% in months and makes refinancing more attractive. The 15 year rate was nearly 2 and a quarter with Freddie reporting the 15-year fixed-rate average was 2.29% The housing marketing remains scorching hot. Cities are seeing increased activity now as well. Inventories are at extremely low levels which is pushing prices higher as more buyers are entering the market. With inventory so tight and many buyers entering the market, we recommend you consult use for a free qualification to see how much you home you can finance and get a pre-qualification…