How to make a family mortgage work with a construction loan to ensure the complicated building process doesn’t exceed the loan amount. Q: In regard to your article "How to become a mortgage lender for your children" in the Washington Post, can a family mortgage also be accomplished on a construction loan? Can you refer [...]
Why you may not need a full 20% down payment before buying a home, especially if it means draining your savings. Q: I’m looking to buy a home where the typical property sells for about $200,000. I have saved up about $25,000. Should I wait until I have $40,000 to buy the home or try [...]
How to afford your summer travel plans without totally breaking the bank, or taking out potentially risky travel loans. Have you considered taking out a travel loan to pay for a vacation? I read an article on MarketWatch about several companies offering payment plans for flights, hotels and amusement. Each company offers different loan terms, [...]
How to find proof of your cancelled mortgage if your lender didn’t send you a cancelled note. Q: How you can figure out if a cancelled mortgage is cancelled by the county? A: In a recent column, we discussed how a lender should and generally does send the cancelled note and mortgage back to the [...]
Buying your first home: How to find the right mortgage lender that will have your best interests at heart. Hint: It may not be who your real estate agent suggests. Q: I recently saw you on the news and I wanted to reach out to ask you a few questions. I wanted to take the [...]
A recent report from the Harvard JCHS takes a look at the important differences in the housing market since the 1980s. Many staples of American life look different in the three decades since 1988, from big hair to the cost of college to the rising number of Americans burdened by housing costs. In a recent [...]
Wondering what threats await real estate this year (and in the future)? Scott Muldavin, Chair of the Counselors of Real Estate (CRE), ran down his annual list at this year's National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE) conference, in Denver. This story features the first 5 threats to real estate. Real Estate Threat #1 - [...]
Do you get the deed after your final mortgage payment? After making your final mortgage payment, there are many documents you should receive, but is the home deed one of them? Q: My husband and I paid off our home in 1999, 10 years early. We never received a deed. The loan company said that [...]
Home buyers are out in force. Sellers are scarce. The number of homes for sale on the market is as low as it was more than twenty years ago. As a result of supply and demand, half of all housing markets are overvalued in terms of price. The median home price in San Francisco is [...]
Millennial’s student loans have kept them from becoming homeowners because they can’t afford a down payment or tanked their credit defaulting on a loan. If you’re hoping your children will be able to buy a home of their own someday, you might want to keep an eye on how much money they’re taking out in [...]
