Tips for buying a home
Buying a home can be a huge decision, and a very long and drawn out process. Having the right resources can make all the difference. Let us help you along the way, knowing what to look for, what to avoid and how to get the home of your dreams.
Mortgage Calculator FREE
This app will help you figure out how much that house you're thinking about will cost per month AND provides a realtime look at the current mortgage and refinance rates. And it's free. So why not just try it out and decide for yourself?
4 Different Rules of Thumb For How Much House You Can Afford
Updated for 2013. By definition, a rule of thumb is meant to be a greatly simplified estimate for a complicated matter. Mortgage lenders use income size, income stability, credit score, downpayment size, and other factors before approving a loan. But the most common way to express affordability is as a multiple of your household or individual annual income. ...
Rule of Thumb: When To Pay Off The Mortgage Early
There was a lot of good discussion in my lengthy early mortgage payoff post. Now instead of lengthy details, let me try out a quick rule of thumb about early mortgage payoff. Recall from Wikipedia: A rule of thumb is a principle with broad application that is not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable for every situation. ...
Pay Off Mortgage Early vs. Save More For Retirement? Digging Deep Into The Details
In the world of personal finance, you can always generate a good debate if you talk about paying off your mortgage early. The argument usually boils down to something like this: If your interest rate is 4%, then paying extra towards that mortgage will earn you 4%. If you think you can earn more than 4% elsewhere, then dont pay off your mortgage. ...
Paying Homeowner's Insurance Yourself, Even With Escrow
In response to my earlier post on Should You Manage Your Own Mortgage Escrow?, reader James e-mailed me a trick he found to save some money even if you are required to have an escrow account: Even if youve got an loan that requires an escrow account for the life of the loan, you can still save some money by beating your lender to the punch on payments. ...
Mortgage Refinance and Resetting the Clock
The following is a guest post from reader TFB, who blogs anonymously at The Finance Buff where he covers investing, taxes, banking, mortgage, insurance, and other personal finance related topics. You can find more of his posts about mortgage refinances under the refi tag. I refinanced my mortgage recently. The rate on my 15-year loan went down from 4.25% to 3.75%. ...
Charts: College Tuition vs. Housing Bubble vs. Medical Costs
This chart from Clusterstock (via Carpe Diem) shows the cost of college tuition comparison to historical housing prices and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over the same period. The CPI is designed to track our cost of living by estimating the average price of consumer goods and services purchased by households. Everything was normalized to 100 starting in 1978. ...
Historical Mortgage Rates Chart (1986-2010)
While doing some more research into a possible refinance or loan modification, I ran across this chart of historical mortgage rates from 1986 from HSH. Before, I stated a source that said the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 4.56% for the week ending July 22, the lowest since Freddie Mac started tracking the mortgage in 1971. ...
Best Places To Live? Big Roundup of Major Top 10 Lists
Where are the best places to consider relocating to? I knew that almost every major financial media outlet had their own best places to live list, and my plan was to see which cities popped up most amongst them. Well, that was a bust as every list seemed to be so different; The top city on one list might not even be on the next list at all. Why? There is no one best place to live, it all depends o ... ...
Mobility vs. Geography: Percent Born In State of Residence Map (2010)
I cant stop posting map infographics! Theyre just so pretty. Richard Florida of The Atlantic shared the map above, which shows the percentage of residents of each state that were born in that state. He then goes one step further and concludes that this map backs up his theory that America is being divided into two economic classes the stuck and the mobile: The mobile possess the resources and the ... ...
15-Year Mortgage Refinance Experience and Thoughts 2011
Over the weekend, we signed the closing documents for our refinancing into a 15-year fixed rate loan. Its hard to believe that less than four years ago we bought our first house with a 30-year loan at around 6%. Thanks to additional principal prepayments and lower interest rates, our new monthly payment is actually lower than the payment from our original loan. ...
Mortgage Comparison: 30-Year at 4.75% vs. 15-Year at 3.75%
After the interest rate drama last week, I managed to lock in a refinance of my current 30-year mortgage (with 26 years left) which had a 4.75% fixed rate into a new 15-year mortgage at a 3.875% fixed rate. Youll probably see lower rates in ads and elsewhere, but it did come with negative points that offset my closing costs completely and then some. ...
Interest Rates Staying Low For A While - My Action Plan
In their most recent attempt to try and control the economy (notice I said try), Ben Bernanke and the US Federal Reserve made another carefully-worded psuedo-commitment earlier this week: The committee currently anticipates that economic conditions including low rates of resource utilisation and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels fo ... ...
Real Estate Price Trends Across United States - Zillow
Hows the housing market in your area doing? You can find what Zillow thinks in their Real Estate Market Reports for many metro areas. There are lots of options to play with; you can view different metrics, change the time period, or even compare entire states. Heres a graph of Zillows Home Value Index for the US as a whole as well as selected large cities over the past decade. As you can see, ther ... ...
Mortgage Down Payment Size vs. Delinquency Rate
As part of new reforms, the government is debating what downpayment size should be required for a qualified residential mortgage. If a mortgage doesnt meet the new standards, the lending bank would have to retain 5% ownership even if selling the rest to investors. The initial proposal is for 20%, but of course the mortgage industry wants the required down payment to be as small as possible. ...
Time For Another Extra Mortgage Principal Payment?
If you have a mortgage, do you know when it will be paid off? Have you though about paying extra and making that day come earlier? The commonly discussed biweekly accelerated payment plan is the same as making one extra monthly payment each year and knocking off about 5-6 years from a normal 30-year mortgage. For example if your mortgage is $1,200 per month, you would pay an extra $1,200 a year ($ ... ...
Home Price Index Update Shows Double Dip
The S&P Case Shiller Home Price index was updated yesterday with data through March 2011, or 2011 Q1. Here is the press release [PDF]. Here is the chart: Click to enlarge. Sources: S&P Indices Nationally, home prices are back to their mid-2002 levels. This means that any run-up in home prices between 2002 and the 2006 peak has been erased. ...
Yet Another Housing Bubble Video: Hitler the Flipper
Weve all probably seen enough YouTube videos about the housing crash to last us a lifetime, but this one still made me smile. ...
House Value Update Q2 2011: Mortage Loan Payoff Calculations
As part of tracking our financial status, I regularly check in to see how long it will take to pay off our home mortgage. Buying versus renting is a very personal decision, but we ended up buying our house three and a half years ago and still plan on staying in it for the foreseeable future. ...
Housing Bubble History: Book Covers From 2005-Present
I ran across this funny image on Imgur and just had to recreate it with a bit more detail. All of these books are by the same author, David Lareah, along with the publishing dates of each book. (The first two books are essentially the same book with different titles.) Hover your mouse cursor over each book cover below to see the full titles, the progression is both funny and sad. ...
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About the author:
I love to help people improve their lives. I always try to find the right techniques to make life easier, the right products to make tasks faster so that I can be more productive, and spend more time with my 8 month old daughter and my husband. Hopefully some of the things that I have found can help you in your life and home as well. ~ Brianna Lane