For parents with children in college, or nearing college age, this video from NBC’s Today Show is worth watching.

Investing in collegiate housing is not for everyone, but if the angle interests you, don’t forget to purchase an accompanying personal liability insurance for injuries that may occur on-site.

Economists worry about rising oil prices because it tends to generate higher pump prices for Americans. With more money spent on gasoline, there’s (theoretically) less money available to spend on goods and services.

Today, GasBuddy.com says that the average price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline is $2.792, up from $2.344 last year [...]

The National Association of Realtors® released its monthly Existing Home Sales report for August 2006 and, as usual, you should be ignoring it.

The report discusses real estate on a national level and we all know that real estate is a local phenomenon.

It’s not that the report isn’t helpful — it is. [...]

In a study of 2,036 U.S. adults commissioned by Visa USA, nearly half of all Americans are losing track of their money.

An average of $45 in cash is “lost” each week in what Visa dubs “mystery spending”.

Mystery spending is Visa’s version of “I know I had this money in my [...]

As if home financing isn’t complicated enough, The Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 included new tax code for homeowners.

The act grants itemized deductions for private mortgage insurance (PMI) and government mortgage insurance (MIP) expense premiums paid in 2007.

For all loans “started” in the 2007 calendar year, mortgage insurance [...]

As we’ve discussed a few times lately, the Federal Reserve does not control mortgage rates.

When the Fed makes headlines for “lowering rates”, that is a reference to the Fed Funds Rate, a special lending rate between banks.

Sometimes, mortgage rates will fall when the FFR falls, but not always. Consider what happened [...]

Prime Rate is currently 7.750%.

Prime Rate is the “shorthand” name for the Wall Street Journal Prime Rate, a variable interest rate that is used in pricing many types of consumer loans.

These loans include:

Home equity lines of credit Credit card loans Auto loans

Prime Rate’s variable nature is tied to the Fed [...]

The Fed lowered the Fed Funds Rate by 0.50% yesterday. A rate decrease was expected by most market participants, but the 50 basis points movement seemed to catch some players off-guard.

Mortgage rates dipped in the wake of the announcement, but the real winners are homeowners with balances on their home equity lines of credit [...]

It’s all eyes on the Fed today; the market anxiously awaits the central bank’s 2:15 P.M. ET press release.

Some of the market bias towards a 0.50% rate cut has decreased in favor of a 0.25% cut. This shift is largely psychological.

Markets are trying to “get inside the head” of Fed [...]

Once September hits and the kids head back to school, real estate markets enter the “Shoulder Season”, a time in which markets are neither in their strongest nor their weakest cycles.

Shoulder Season is exemplified by a trip to Disney World after Hurricane Season, but before Winter Break. The crowds are smaller, the hotels [...]