In news that is beginning to feel a little like a scene out of the movie Groundhog Day, Freddie Mac revealed that mortgage rates dropped to new all-time record lows late last week. Results from Freddie Macs weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey showed that fixed mortgage rates established new all-time record low marks for the [...]
A nation still struggling to clear up one housing debacle has run smack into another — soaring rents. The foreclosure mess has pushed millions of former homeowners with tarnished credit into a competitive apartment market across the U.S. Add fresh demand from young workers, few new units and tight standards for home loans, and the [...]
It’s April fools weekend! A couple of years ago we were in Maui with a large group. On April 1st, we enlisted the manager of the hotel to pretend we were all getting kicked out because a guest reported George smoking on his balcony (non-smoking hotel). George has since quit smoking so a repeat of that joke won’t [...]
The house for sale. It’s found a couple to love it now. Old-fashioned auctioning in a crowded hotel lounge has jacked up the price of a worn-out end-of-terrace house in county Durham which earlier attracted only one bid of £501 online. The Guardian Northerner featured the dilapidated bargain last week when the official reserve for [...]
Overall mortgage application activity dropped week-over-week, but purchase activity is showing signs of life, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said in its weekly mortgage report. According to the MBAs Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey (for the week ending March 9, 2012), overall mortgage activity total mortgage applications for all types of loans declined 2.4 percent from [...]
If you presume that the average American homeowner’s No. 1 daydream for a next home is of a glitzier kitchen, a sumptuous media room or maybe a luxurious master bedroom suite, you’d be wrong. Think laundry room. Year in, year out, that’s what Better Homes and Gardens magazine, I was surprised to learn, says is [...]
When my husband, George and I moved into our home we were busy raising a family. He has his own business, and as a Realtor I was busy helping clients buy and sell homes in Los Angeles suburbs. Unfortunately we didn’t make the time to plant fruit trees. So sixteen years later in the same [...]