My best advice for buying a home, especially if it’s your first home, is this: Don’t do it alone. Consider everything that’s on the line with a home purchase. For most people, a home is the most valuable asset they will ever have and the biggest financial investment they will ever make. While going solo [...]
Mortgage lenders recommend spending between 28 and 36 percent of your gross monthly income on debt payments. While this is considered to be perfectly affordable, it’s stunning that one-third of the homes for sale right now are unaffordable by historical standards. More than half the homes on the market in seven major American metros are [...]
Last year, home prices were on the rise, and consumer confidence followed. The upswing in home prices set high expectations for a continued housing recovery, and many homeowners saw a light at the end of the tunnel for the first time in a few years. Unfortunately, though, not every homeowner was smiling when the year [...]
Long gone are the days when securing a mortgage required a simple credit check. Since the housing market meltdown of 2008, the path to a mortgage has been lined with paperwork and red tape. “Regulations have made the pendulum swing so far in the opposite direction that there’s an overemphasis on documentation and verification,” says [...]
The final home walk-through before closing is an important time for homebuyers and sellers. To make the most of it, it’s helpful for both parties to know what they should look for ahead of time. A walk-through before closing can help homebuyers avoid getting burned if sellers leave the home in worse condition than it [...]
There are four key times during new construction when homebuyers should schedule a home inspection to protect their investment. Building a new home does not guarantee that everything will be perfect the first time, and with so much at stake it can be easy to get overwhelmed. Homebuyers can ease some of their concerns by [...]
Home prices nationwide increased year-over-year, according to a new CoreLogic report. From January of 2013 to January of 2014, home prices, including distressed home sales, increased by an average of 12 percent. If you look at single-family sales in certain areas, appreciation is higher when distressed sales are included rather than excluded. You would think [...]
This article was updated on 4/25/17. If you are gearing up to buy a home, your credit score could mean the difference between a manageable mortgage payment and one that breaks the bank. That’s because your credit score is one of the biggest factors lenders use to determine your mortgage interest rate and how much [...]
Contract contingencies offer protection for people buying a home in case something goes wrong. There are three standard contract contingencies homebuyers should know about to make sure they can get out of a home agreement if they need to. Under certain circumstances, contract contingencies can keep homebuyers from facing penalties if they decide to walk [...]
Last year, housing prices increased more than they had in seven years, and buyers’ markets turned into sellers’ markets overnight. In many cities and towns across the country, this price jump was a result of inventory shortages that forced buyers to compete over the few homes that were available for sale. Will the housing recovery [...]
