There are so many things that you can do to update your home – where do you start? What gives you the best bang for your buck? Do I need a designer or permits? Start inside or outside? Lots of good questions. Here are your best answers: The first rule of thumb: Use the 10% rule: Ensure that your home is not too terribly different from the rest of the homes in the neighborhood. If hardly anyone else in your neighborhood has new cabinets and granite, then adding that won’t give you as much of a return. Don’t add that
Read More
Archives for FHA
Selling Your Home in a Down Market…
Follow these rules - get your home sold. Think that your home is so special - you get to keep it
Read More
You Snooze…….You Lose…….
Those Who Wait Will Pay Thousands More This Spring Waiting a few extra days or weeks to purchase a home this spring could cost buyers thousands of extra dollars as the office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) implements several changes for loans guaranteed by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). Coming just weeks before the April 30 deadline for the Home Buyer Tax Credit and just days after the March 31 expiration of the Federal Reserve Board's mortgage backed securities purchase program (which has kept home loan rates artificially low for over a year), these FHA changes make it even
Read More
New Job Report – How it affects Homes, Mortgages & You
New Job Report – a Mixed Bag of Treats ( or Tricks) The Labor Department, today, released the latest government data for Non-farm payrolls ( employment data ) which revealed jobs losses of 20,000 for January. This was a surprise as the consensus expected a gain of 15,000 – 20,000 jobs. Surprisingly, the unemployment rate dipped to 9.7%. However, employment numbers for December were revised to 150,000 job losses as compared to initial reportings of 85,000. Furthermore the Business Survey threw in another revision that indicated an ADDITIONAL 900,000 job losses from March 2008 – March 2009 from what was
Read More