Home Mortgage: First Step to Purchase

It takes money to buy a home: yours or theirs. If you're not going to pay cash for a home, you need to find out exactly what you can borrow and what it will cost before you start looking at homes.
The mortgage process is not as clear cut a path as it was a few years ago. It is certainly more complex, takes longer and assumes that you're credit worthy. If you have less than stellar credit, a trusted mortgage professional can advise you how to improve your individual situation.
You are entitled to a free credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus each year. Go to AnnualCreditReport.com to get a copy of each from TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. Read the reports to determine if they're accurate. Surprisingly, about 90% of all reports have errors.
You can try to correct them directly with the credit bureau, but a trusted mortgage professional can help you with this process too. They have tools that are not available to individuals. Some errors may not be serious but others will keep a person from qualifying.
Housing affordability is at a near record height due to the incredibly low interest rates and low home prices. Some areas are experiencing absorption of the inventories which could impact price. If you're going to use "their" money to buy a home, the first step is to talk to a trusted mortgage professional. Call me for the name of a trusted mortgage professional.

Is It Time To Buy?

If you're sitting on the fence about the direction of the housing market, consider this from John Girouard writing in Forbes last week:

"Trying to time the housing bottom is as much folly as trying to time stocks or any other investment vehicle. In fact, it’s greater folly because if housing prices do fall further, it’s likely to be because mortgage rates are rising, which would mean that over the long term that slightly lower price you may have paid could end up costing more in carrying costs than you saved.”

The good news!

Did you know that 91.2% of mortgages are current and only 3.75% are in foreclosure? That's a different perspective from what we're getting in the media these days. Oh, and also to perk up your view of the economy, 87% of Americans who bought a home in the past year expect to easily meet their mortgage repayment obligations in the next year. The deleveraging has been ugly, but we're getting there!

Keep Track of Improvements

Energy Savings and Home Ownership

With the exception of a mortgage payment, the largest homeowner expense is utilities; and energy is the major component. There are lots of contributing factors such as air leaks, insulation, heating and cooling equipment, water heaters and lighting.




It's estimated that 75% of the electricity to power home electronics is consumed when the products are turned off. Computers, monitors, TVs, cable and satellite boxes, DVRs and power adaptors are spinning your electric meter even when they're not being used.



Unplugging devices can actually make a difference in the size of your electric bill. Plugging several of these offenders into a power strip with a single on/off switch may make the task easier. Most computers have options to put them into sleep mode or even turn off when not in use.



Take 3 1/2 minutes and watch Energy 101. Consider hiring a professional home energy auditor or do-it-yourself. The Department of Energy has a checklist with some valuable suggestions.

Converting a Home to a Rental

What's keeping you from taking advantage of the low prices and mortgage rates available today? Concerned that you may need to sell in a few years and won't be able to get your equity out of your home?

Suppose a buyer purchases a home and finds out that they need to move in two years. Instead of selling the home, they could convert it to a rental. It's possible that it could have a positive cash flow even with the small down payment. In most cases, the conversion would not accelerate the mortgage.

The price of homes and low interest rates combined with a very strong rental market in most areas has attracted a lot of investors. Non-owner occupied mortgages generally require 20-30% down payment compared to a 3.5% down payment for a FHA owner occupant.

The following example looks at a home that might have been purchased as a principal residence and then converted to a rental at the end of two years. There are certainly lots of variables to consider but the high indicated rate of return merits closer examination of the possibilities.

For the buyer who has good credit and ample funds for down payment and acquisition costs, there may never be as good a time to buy a home as now. For the buyer who is concerned that they might have to move in the near future, converting it to a rental might make a great investment opportunity.

 

Denver fastest moving real estate in country

Realtor.com: California metros dominate among most active markets. California metros dominated a list of 11 fast-moving real estate markets in July, reported property search site Realtor.com.Realtor.com released a list of metros with the lowest median age of inventory at the site -- a measurement of how long a property from a given metro area typically spends on the site. Denver, which topped the list in June, once again had the lowest median age of inventory among metros at a median 32 days. That's a 38.5 percent drop in the median year-over-year -- the biggest drop among the 11 most active markets. Six California metros made the list, with Oakland the fastest-moving among the six. Oakland's median age of inventory was 46 days. The six metros include a mix of markets hit hard by foreclosures -- Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton-Lodi -- and relatively high-cost metros in the San Francisco Bay Area -- Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco. Metros with lowest median age of inventory (July 2011)