When selling a home, understanding a little bit about home buyer psychology can help you move your home more quickly. After all, what people perceive helps define how they act. A recent article from RealEstateJournal.com listed techniques home sellers can use to attract more offers from buyers. The tips included: Number Play: $299,999 seems far [...]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified to Congress Wednesday, alluded to further rate cuts to support an ailing U.S. economy. Already, the Federal Reserve has lowered the Fed Funds Rate by 2.250% since September 2007. The graph at right comes from the Wall Street Journal and it highlights a very important correlation between the Fed [...]

Yesterday, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight released its fourth-quarter housing data. The OFHEO report color-coded each state according to its annual price changes. The states shown in red lost value, and everyone else gained. Overall, the OFHEO measured a 0.8% national increase. Also hitting the wires yesterday was the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. [...]

When a buyer and seller reach agreement on a home sale, the buyer typically puts a small amount of money into a trust account. This up-front deposit is more commonly known as “earnest money”. A sales contract’s earnest money requirement will vary from contract to contract. It can be as high as 10 percent of [...]

It’s a big week for mortgage markets (again) and that should cause rates to fluctuate wildly (again). The volatility we’ve seen since December has not been for the faint of heart. Even this past Friday, as mortgage rates were poised to end the week lower, a late-afternoon stock market rally reversed it. In the last [...]

For a lot of homebuyers, calculating a prospective mortgage payment is an online experience. For example, a search on Google for “mortgage calculator” returns 39 million options. Some people, however, prefer to plan on their local hard drive using spreadsheets. For these people, the hardest part is often figuring out what formulas to use. Interest [...]

When buying a home, there are two stages in the home loan approval process. Stage 1 starts when a homebuyer submits a mortgage application to his loan officer for a pre-approval. A pre-approval is a “walk-through” mortgage approval that says — at a given purchase price and downpayment amount — the home loan application will [...]

For homebuyers and homeowners expecting low mortgage rates this week, Tuesday marked the unofficial end to basement 30-year fixed mortgage rates. According to the market analysts at BestInfo, Inc., the 30-year fixed rate measured its largest one-day movement in more than 10 years Tuesday. Nationally, 30-year fixed mortgage rates increased 0.375%. Here is the “real [...]

Early last week, mortgage rates rose on strong consumer spending and Warren Buffett’s offer to assume $800 billion in debt from three major bond insurers. Both reports were interpreted as signs of long-term strength in the economy, leading mortgage rates higher for long-term products such as the 20- and 30-year fixed rate mortgage. Meanwhile, Fed [...]

As mortgage rates lurch higher this week, we have additional proof that cuts to the Fed Funds Rate do not lead to cuts in mortgage rates. Since the Federal Reserve’s surprise rate cut January 22, 2008: The Fed Funds Rate is lower by 1.250% The 30-year fixed rate mortgage is higher by approximately 0.750% Mortgage [...]