Renovating a Park Model Home
If you own a park model home you know renovating it is a snap. Those who never set foot inside one might wonder why you would want to – until they actually set foot inside! Crafted according to the strictest guidelines currently set fort in the industry, they are designed to be customizable according to the consumer’s changing needs. Consider for a moment these amazing homes are sold in Colorado as well as California.
One state is known for its snowy winters and cold surroundings inviting the snowbird who just loves to snowboard and ski. The other state is aptly referred to as the land of sunshine. Surfers and hikers love California and bring with them a host of various different paraphernalia.
To accommodate those in either state it is not possible to custom tailor a home specifically for Colorado residents and another for California visitors. But, instead the idea ..
Source: Misc
Home Equity Cash Outs Hit 4 Year Low
This is a good sign, homeowners have hit a 4 year low in their home equity cash outs.
Of course it begs the question, do they have any say in the matter or is the piggy bank all tapped out?
The amount of money Americans pulled out of their homes is at a four-year low as homeowners battle falling home values and stricter standards among lenders, Freddie Mac said Thursday.
Homeowners “cashed out” about $68 billion in home equity during the first half of the year, the lowest since the first six months of 2004, according to the McLean, Va.-based mortgage finance company.
About $38 billion in home equity was cashed out through refinancing of loans made to prime borrowers in the second quarter — less than half the $79 billion cashed out during the same period last year, said Amy Crews Cutts, Freddie Mac deputy chief economist. via msnbc.com.
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Source: Real Estate
Riding out the Real Estate Market Crash of 2008
Real estate has been regarded as one of the safest investments for quite some time. Despite the relative safety of real estate investments; however, there remains the possibility that the real estate market can fall like any other investment. Over the long term, real estate still remains relatively safe simply due to the fact that the population of the world continues to increase while land is a limited resource. When there is an occasional downturn in the real estate market, it is important to recognize certain strategies which can be used in order to keep a real estate investment from becoming a complete loss.
The first thought many people have when they realize the market has experienced a downtown is to attempt to sell the property as quickly as possible before the market grows worse. In reality, many investors have found that it is often better if they can manage to ..
Source: Blog
Homebuyers: What You Need to Know About Foreclosures
Are you looking to buy a new home? If you are, you may examine the online websites of real estate agents or pick up copies of their printed brochures. Of course, this is a great way to find and buy a new home, but there is another step you may want to take. That step involves reviewing foreclosed properties available for sale. In a time where foreclosures are on the rise, you may be surprised just how affordable they are to buy.
One of the most common questions asked by perspective buyers is what causes a property to enter into foreclosure. Typically, there is nothing wrong with the property itself. In fact, the current or previous homeowners may have taken great care of it. Foreclosures occur because of financial difficulties. These difficulties may include an injury that prevents someone from working, being ..
Source: Finance
Homebuyers: The Pros and Cons of Pre-Foreclosure Sales
Are you looking to buy a new home? If so and if you are on a limited budget, you may use the internet to research foreclosures. The sale of foreclosed properties is on the rise, due to their affordable prices. Somewhere in the mix, you may find homes for sale that are in the pre-foreclosure stages. As you can likely gather from the name, these are properties that are headed for foreclosure, but not yet there.
As stated above, some pre-foreclosure properties are listed available for sale online. These may appear on foreclosure listing websites, but not always. There are two main ways in which pre-foreclosures are sold. A real estate agent is used or the current homeowners list the home as for sale by owner. As for who you should do business with, it depends on your own personal preference.
One ..
Source: Finance
California Insurance Commissioner Drops Allstates Homeowner Rates 28.5%
Welcome California to the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner has announced that he is forcing Allstate to drop it’s homeowner insurance rates 28.5% so that the poor suffering people of California can pay their other bills. The average rate for Allstate customers in the state will now be $600.
And you know what, he has the power to do it. Of course with the wildfires and earthquakes it makes no sense to insure homes in the great state of California at such low rates so Allstate has stopped writing policies in the state.
And you know that the level of service the remain 850,000 customers will get will be minimal along with cancellations based upon the slightest reason.
Face it, why would you want to participate, even if it is the largest state, when the government stacks the deck against you. Allstate can not say to their customers, well the state lowered our income 28 percent so we will lower our coverage the same amount, can they?
Instead they will leave, the next disaster will have a bunch of underfunded, shallow pocket insurers in California who will be bankrupt the day after the disaster, and the population will wonder why they are getting screwed.
All I can say is when this happens, call your esteemed Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner. Of course he will be all over the television screaming for tighter regulation of the insurance companies, populist morons like him do that all the time, when the suffering should be laid upon his doorstep.
When government creates an environment that honest businesses can not succeed, all that is left are the crooks and the thieves. Oh, and the politicians ducking for cover.
Poizner’s legal order, signed Tuesday, rejects Allstate’s request for a 9.3% increase in its homeowners insurance rates, and, instead, instructs the company to reduce its existing premiums by 28.5%. “In today’s sputtering economic environment, people need all the help they can get just to pay the bills,” Poizner said. “That’s why I’m pleased to order this tremendous rate cut.”
According to the Department of Insurance, the reduction should drop average Allstate premiums to around $600 a year. The new rates will take effect July 28.
The insurer will comply with the commissioner’s order, Allstate spokesman Peter DeMarco said. “We are reviewing the order in detail and communicating with the department about the process for adjusting the rates of our 850,000 homeowners policyholders in the state.” via The LA Times
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Post from: The Real Estate Bloggers
California Insurance Commissioner Drops Allstates Homeowner Rates 28.5%
Source: Featured
The Top 10 Reasons Why Home Equity Loans (HELOC) Are Good To Have
1. A home equity loan is a loan that is taken out against what the home is worth – the loan you currently have on the house. For example: the house is worth $175,000 and you owe $125,000 on your current first mortgage. You could take out a home equity loan for $175,000 – $125,000 = $50,000.
2. During the height of the refinance boom some mortgage companies were letting home owners take loans up to 125% of the value of their home. Everybody thought that this was going to be okay because real estate always goes up and more than likely the home would be worth more than what you would owe on them in the next year or so. It was easy for banks to think that way because almost every home in America doubled in so called value over a 3 year span. So in the example above you could take out a loan for $175,000 x 125% = $218,750 – $125,000(Current Mortgage Balance)=$93,750. That’s $43,750 more than what you could if you could just go up to 100% of the value. The banks thought this was a good idea because now they could collect more interest on more lent money. Dumb.
3. Not to get off track but many people took out 80/20 loans to get away from private mortgage insurance(PMI- Which is dumb as hell). So you take out a conventional 30 year fixed rate mortgage up to 80% of the value of the home and a Home Equity Loan to cover the other 20%.
4. The Home Equity Loan gives home owners a lot of flexibility in what they want to do with their payments. From this point on I’m going to assume that you have equity in your home and are not purchasing a home so you see the benefits of having a HELOC. The only thing with a HELOC is that it as an adjustable rate loan. Every time you hear on the news that The Federal Reserve raised or lower rates HELOC’s are affected. Your payment will move up or down every month that The Fed does this. Some banks offer fixed HELOC’s but they are few and far between. The adjustable interest on the home equity loan is the trade off for the flexibility of the loan. It’s not a bad thing if you use the HELOC correctly.
5. The payments on a home equity loan are based on a 30 year amortization schedule with the first ten years being a interest only period. The cool thing is that you only pay interest on what you borrow. As an example lets say that you want to put some new cabinets in your kitchen but you do not have all the money that its going to take to pay for it. You go to your bank and open up a HELOC and lets say they give you this line of credit up to 100% of the value of the home. I like the example above where you have $50k of equity. You need $8k to finish the kitchen and that’s it. Let’s say that your interest rate is 5% (it will probably be higher but use this as an example). Your payment the next month is $8,000 x 5% = $33. That is a pretty cheap payment for $8k. The $33 is just interest so if you only make a payment of $33 then your balance will be the same until year 10. At year 10 the HELOC changes into a 20 year loan where you have to pay down the balance.
6. So now you have a balance of $8k so what does it mean to have a $50k HELOC. Think of it as a credit card limit. You can borrow up to $50k at any time. Some banks even give you checks to write them from your account. Others will make you call them and they will overnight a check. So in our example you have $42k to use at any time. I am by NO MEANS saying that you should go write a check for a Cadillac Escalade or something you do not need (this is what a lot of home owners did during the mortgage mess) but its nice to know if you have an emergency and need quick cash.
7. The cabinets are installed and the kitchen is complete. You were able to get the $8k you needed in the first place to pay for it. What do you do now? Do you keep the money and put it in the bank(OK Idea)? Do you go out and blow the $8k on a vacation(Bad Idea)? Or do you pay back the $8k towards the HELOC? PAY IT BACK. No need to pay interest on something that you earmarked in the first place. Remember, if things get tight you can always take that money back out at anytime. Debt = Bad.
8. The HELOC should be used for the right things such as an emergency, home improvements, college tuition’s and oh what the heck you can even say weddings. We all now how long weddings take to plan so if you don’t have the money right there but will get it by the end of the ceremony you might as well use it. Instead of making your kids get student loans take money out of your HELOC and pay their tuition with it. Since a home equity line of credit is a loan against your house you get to write off the interest that you pay. You don’t get to write it all off but every bit helps.
9. If you are an investor and like to buy stocks or flip homes than you need a HELOC. This should almost be considered cash. You can tap it at any time and if a great deal comes around you do not want it to pass you buy. Get out the checks for your HELOC and write a check that day.
10. One of the coolest features of a home equity line of credit is a little trick you can do to help pay down your bills or the balance on your mortgage. There are a couple companies that do this and they call it Money Merge Accounts. Its their way of selling you into a program to do what I can show you for free. I’m going to write another post about it in the future that’s more in depth but here’s the basics. On the HELOC you pay little interest on big amounts. Example: $125k 30 Year Fixed Mortgage at 6% has $750 monthly payments were $625 of that is interest. So only $125 goes to pay down the loan. Over one year your balance will go down $125 x 12 months = $1500. So lets say one month you write a check from your HELOC for $2k towards one months payment on your first mortgage. Your payment is $750 so $1250 went on top of the loan to pay down the first mortgage balance. That $2k is now a balance on your HELOC where your payment (I’ll use 7%) is $2000 x 7% = $140 interest in one year / 12 months = $12. So what you effectively did now was transfer a lot of interest from your first mortgage to your second mortgage. You basically are going to double the amount of principle you pay off on the mortgage every year. Which in the long run will save you in the tens of thousands of dollars. When you get your HELOC bill the next month all you have to pay is the $12 but you should pay $750. This might be confusing and I’ll work on a post in the future so its more detailed. All in all the HELOC gives you a ton of flexibility with your finances and can be considered your emergency fund in tough times.
More Reasons
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- The Top 10 Reasons You Should Always Get A 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage
Post from: The Top 10 Reasons
The Top 10 Reasons Why Home Equity Loans (HELOC) Are Good To Have
Source: Finance
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Face Market Turmoil
As IndyMac fights for their lives, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae face the daunting challenge of raising new capital and a steep drop in their share prices. The federally chartered lending institutions stock prices were hammered yesterday after fears resurfaced over the lending crisis.
One of the strongest warning signs came Monday, when shares of the nation’s most important mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, plummeted. After falling almost continuously over the past month, in just one day Freddie Mac tumbled another 18 percent, and Fannie Mae lost 16 percent amid concerns that the companies would need to raise billions of dollars in fresh capital. via the International Herald Tribune.
The market is telling the lending institutions that they think the worst of the housing market has not passed but is yet to come. While we know that the real estate market is not solid yet, signs have been pointing to ..
Source: Freddie+Mac
Foreclosure: How and Why You Should Talk to Your Bank
Are you homeowner who is facing foreclosure? If you are, your first thought may be to start packing. Yes, this is the only choice for some in foreclosure, but that doesn't mean it is yours. Before you throw in the towel, make an appointment in person to speak with your financial lender. You may be surprised how much help, assistance, or advice you may receive when doing so.
First and foremost, it is important to know that banks and other financial lenders are not evil. It may sound silly, but this is how many homeowners feel when facing foreclosure. Many want to know how another human being can force them to leave their own home. In the heat of the moment, many do not realize that banks want to avoid foreclosures just as much as homeowners do. Financial lenders often lose money ..
Source: Finance
Top 10 Highest Rental Markets in 2nd Quarter, 2008
The rise in rents across the country in major cities is going against the conventional wisdom of the market. You would think with a housing slump that a rents would be going down as inventory increases, but markets such as New York saw rents increase by 7.7% and San Francisco by 9.4%.
Sure you can rent a home pretty cheaply in outer suburbs, but that is why the housing market is crashing. Speculators caused over-development in the outer regions of the major metro markets. But if you want to live in the top cities in the country, expect to pay and then pay some more as rents keep soaring.
Top 10 Highest Rental Markets in 2nd Quarter, 2008
New York, NY $2,847 a month
San Francisco, CA $1,825
Fairfield County, CT $1,757
Boston, MA $1,646
Long Island, NY $1,521
Orange County, CA $1,520
San Jose, CA $1,504,
Northern NJ $1,460,
Ventura County, CA $1,409
Los Angeles, CA $1,408
via Bloomberg
Other Posts You May Be Interested ..
Source: Featured