When you buy a house and get a mortgage, you generally do so with a specific financial institution. And while many lenders will keep your mortgage for the full term of the mortgage, occasionally the lender will sell your mortgage to another lender or servicer. This transfer impacts who you pay every month, but should […]

It’s surprising to me how often people ask me about automatic payments. Something which, in the grand scheme of the mortgage process, seems so inconsequential can really get some people thinking. But while I consider the mortgage process from a processing and underwriting standpoint, the payment piece becomes the long-term concern for the borrower. So […]

On Tuesday, I wrote about the relative worth of mortgage insurance. For some, it is a welcome expense; for others, it is a needless expense best avoided. But for those who go the mortgage insurance route, it is usually not very long before they want to get rid of that extra monthly insurance payment. To […]

The value of mortgage insurance is different for every potential home buyer. To some, it is a way to get into a larger house or into a house, at all. For others, it is an unnecessary additional expense, only offering an unnecessarily large budget or small down payment. So the value of mortgage insurance is […]

The foreclosure inventory has waned over the last few years and the foreclosure price tags have come up. Where in 2010 or 2011 you could have purchased just about any Real Estate Owned home (foreclosure), it is now a much riskier gambit. This has led many of the talking heads to warn homebuyers of the […]

Many potential homebuyers I have spoken to have told me they are sitting on the sidelines until the fall or winter. The housing market jumped up tremendously last year, and is up again this year, meaning your dollar isn’t going quite as far as it did two years ago. Generally, as we leave the summer […]

As I discussed on Tuesday, FICO is changing some things in their scoring models. They will be excluding medical collections and paid collections when calculating FICO scores, meaning many people will see a significant increase in their credit score. So if you did not qualify for a mortgage a month ago, when these rules changes […]

FICO recently announced changes to how they will determine your credit score. These changes will help many borrowers on the cusp of eligibility, as they will now exclude  medical bills in collection and paid or satisfied collections when determining your score. What this means is that tens of millions of Americans will see their credit […]

For many, this housing season is a major indicator of what is to come with the economy. If we have another record year where house prices inflate another 20%+, it means the housing market is in full rebound and we are approaching pre-2008 values. If they suddenly plummet and lose all the ground they make, […]

When relocating, whether to the next town or the other side of the country, one of the most important considerations is school district. This is an obvious point for parents, as the school you send your child to is usually one of the primary factors in your location search. But even if you are not […]