| Buying a home is a great way to improve your family’s financial security. The main way this happens is through home equity. What is equity? |
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| Why own your own home? There are many reason including tax breaks, appreciation, equity and many more. |
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Mortgage rates continue to fall, with fixed-rate mortgage rates reaching new record lows last week for the second consecutive week, Freddie Mac reports in its weekly mortgage market survey.
“Fixed mortgage rates continued to ease somewhat this week to record lows and should help the ongoing housing recovery,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. |
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| Lawrence Yun , chief economist of the National Association of Realtors®, said the housing market clearly turned around in 2012. “Existing-home sales, new-home sales and housing starts are all recording notable gains this year in contrast with suppressed activity in the previous four years, and all of the major home price measures are showing sustained increases,” he said. |
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First-time homebuyers have never gone through the stressful experience of buying a home, and they often learn the hard way that making a wrong turn during this process is costly and stressful. Sometimes it leads to a failed deal.
Getting approved for a mortgage, finding the right agent, searching for the perfect home and staying within a budget are some of the challenges buyers must face before they become homeowners. Here are ten common mistakes first-time homebuyers should avoid. |
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| Lenders are insisting on higher credit scores and more documents than required by the Federal Housing Administration and government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Quicken Loans Inc. and Vision Mortgage Capital are among firms saying they are increasing scrutiny of would-be borrowers in response to pressure to cover losses incurred on U.S.-backed housing debt. “You’ve got to take measures now to protect yourself,” John B. Johnson, chief executive officer of Birmingham, Alabama- based MortgageAmerica Inc., said during a panel discussion this month. Demands that lenders repurchase bad mortgages from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are “casting a pall over the market. I fear that it will face a much longer recovery because of this.” |
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| Part of the optimism shared by those in real estate is the relative steadiness of the local economy and the area’s low unemployment rate compared with the rest of the nation. “We don’t see the boom and we don’t see the bust,” said Valenti. “We always fall somewhere in between.” |
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