Ilyce

While you may buy vacant land to build a home in the future, some real estate investors and speculators, purchased vacant land with timber on it to sell off the land or timber in the future. Now the real estate market has changed along with the housing market, and the value of vacant land has decreased. Worse, for those people that purchased the land for the value of the timber, wood prices have gone down as well. Now, real estate investors have to decide whether to keep the land and timber for a time in the future when prices will have recovered or take their losses now.

You might want to think about a loan modification as similar to a loan application with additional paperwork. Most lenders can give you the package of information they will need to get a loan modification started and processed. If you were able to apply for your mortgage loan, you should be able to get results in your loan modification on your own. While you may want to hire an attorney to assist you in the loan modification, the companies and attorneys that are helping in loan modifications are billing anywhere between $500 and $3000. At this point, we have not seen evidence that lenders are granting more permanent loan modifications to people that have hired attorneys or loan modification companies over people that have completed the loan modification process properly and have followed up with their lenders.

MoneyWatch Ask The Experts: Jill Schlesinger, Jack Otter, and Ilyce Glink Talk Housing Market. The federal government has poured trillions of dollars into the U.S. housing market in the form of tax credits and the purchase of more than a trillion dollars in U.S. housing-backed securities. Is that what's propping up the housing market? Last week, Ilyce was in New York at MoneyWatch.com headquarters and taped this podcast with Jack and Jill.

Real Estate Update - Ilyce Glink and Jill Schlesinger of MoneyWatch.com Discuss The Housing Crisis. I spent some time shooting video and recording a podcast with CBS Editor At Large Jill Schlesinger. We talked about the housing and credit crisis, real estate and what's coming next.

Today on the Ilyce Glink Show we discussed the latest economic news and events. We talked personal finance, real estate, and took questions from callers to answer questions on how to make the best decisions with your money. Are you joining us in Atlanta on March 27 for How To Profit From Foreclosure? Visit RealWorldSeminars.com and use discount code MONEY for a special 2 for 1 deal on full-price tickets.

Refinancing today is hard enough. But refinancing after bankruptcy can be almost impossible. Years ago, lenders would refinance anybody at almost any time, even if they had a recent bankruptcy, a low credit score, or poor credit history.
You can check out your credit report by obtaining a free copy at www.annualcreditreport.com. If you do, you can get one copy per year of your credit report from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus. If you filed for bankruptcy recently, you will find quite a number of obstacles you will need to cross prior to getting a loan approved.

The first time home buyer tax credit and the existing home buyer tax credit have limitations. The first time home buyer excluded people that have owned a home within 36 months of the purchase of a new home. The existing home buyer tax credit excludes buyers if they have not owned a home for at least five out of the last eight years. That might leave a gap with first time home buyers or existing home buyers (or even move up buyers). Why? Because you can own a home and have owned it two to five years and can't qualify for either tax credit. And if you are married, you will exclude your spouse as well from getting the credit.

Now that you closed on a home, you want to get the tax credit. Be careful, you will need to send more than usual to the IRS to prove that you are entitled to the $8000 or $6500 tax credit. So before you push to e-file your tax return, make sure you understand that you won't get the refund you were expecting unless you send in the documents required to get the tax credit. The first time home buyer tax credit is $8000 and the move up or repeat home buyer tax credit is $6500.

During the 1990s and 2000s, people worked on the assumption that bigger was better. But was it? Now people have to deal with the consequences of their spending habits and borrowing demands. Now the advice needs to be on RightSizing Your Finances. That is looking at your budget, your finances, your home, and your family and deciding what is right for you. You may need to cut back on expenses, luxuries, and discretionary spending but figure out what is important to you.

You might think that if you can't afford your current mortgage payments that the first thing you should do is run to your lender and try to get a loan modification. But that may not be the right thing to do. You need to understand what your payments are on your loan before you can get a loan modification. If your payments have gone up because your insurance and real estate taxes have gone up, your lender may not be able to give you a loan modification. You might not even qualify for a loan modification under the Obama Home Affordable Modification Program or for any of the other loan modification plans.