Last week I laid out my best advice for choosing a Buyer’s Agent. It’s shopping season again, I hope you’ve applied those lessons and have been interviewing agents. In this article, I will go into the actual Agency Agreement and what it is and what it isn’t. Signing an agency agreement with a Realtor is… Continue Reading
If you’re in the market to buy a home, or are considering refinance options for a home you already own, you’re likely to be presented with a range of mortgage products to choose from. Making an informed decision between a fixed rate mortgage and an adjustable rate mortgage comes down to your future plans for… Continue Reading
When I am an old woman and look back on my life, I don’t think there’s anything I’ll remember more fondly than the years I spent working as a buyer’s agent. This is often considered an entry level position, but for me it was the ultimate in the helping professions. I could tell you about… Continue Reading
For US military veterans and their spouses, the benefits of being able to use a VA loan program to purchase, refinance, and even streamline refinance their homes are well known. After all, VA financing makes up over 10% of the mortgage market. Since the creation of the VA loan guarantee program, VA loans have paved… Continue Reading
If the last time you shopped for a mortgage was over a decade ago, then you might be surprised by how much the menu of loan offerings has changed. Immediately following the housing crash, mortgage meltdown, and economic recession of the late 2000s, loan programs began to disappear and an overhaul of industry guidelines and… Continue Reading
Hello! Did you miss us? I’ve been contemplating how to begin again here at USMC. It’s been a while and the last thing I want to do is publish self-serving drivel, but at the same time, if the story of my last couple of years can help to better explain how to go about a long… Continue Reading
A couple of years ago we published a piece about how to get a mortgage even if you have student loans. Back then the mortgage industry was different and eventually the information aged on us. It happens, we can’t possibly predict how things will change, all we can do is try to stay on top… Continue Reading
In my long career as a Realtor, one of the most common problems I encountered was homeowners who had absolutely no idea what their homes were worth. That was before things like Zillow and Trulia popped up, but it’s not like the Internet has been able to make a huge dent in this problem. The… Continue Reading
So, you’re interested in getting a mortgage, but you know for a fact that you’re anything but an ideal candidate. You’ve resigned yourself to a life of renting and living under other people’s rules, because there’s no way you’re going to get your debt-to-income ratio into an ideal place and there’s not a house to… Continue Reading
It wasn’t that long ago that the LA Times wrote a scathing article about the widespread effect that student loan debt is having on the housing market. One report they cited estimated that 414,000 home sales, or eight percent of the average number of annual home sales, would disappear because of this excess debt. The… Continue Reading