Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) is a mortgage lender’s insurance policy against highly-leveraged homeowners. It’s typically required when homeowner equity is less than 20 percent at the time of closing.

With PMI defaults up 40 percent over last year, though, private mortgage insurers are taking big losses.

They’re also taking outsized steps [...]

As the stock market dips then jumps then dips again, it’s important to remember that markets are unpredictable and nobody knows what will happen tomorrow.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the analysts from trying.

An obvious example comes from May of this year. As the price of oil crossed $120 per barrel on its way to [...]

For homeowners with soon-to-adjust adjustable rate mortgages, the recent banking turmoil worldwide may lead to budgetary pain.

This is because most conforming ARMs made since 2003 are based on a borrowing cost called LIBOR and LIBOR is up an uncharacteristic 2 percent since September.

LIBOR stands for London Interbank Offered Rate and is the rate [...]

With home heating costs expected to increase 20 percent over last year, The Today Show offers 10 tips to reduce home heating costs this winter.

The advice ranges from the well-known to the obscure, but every little bit is meant to put money back in homeowners’ pockets:

Replace your air filter [...]

Given the stock market’s recent performance, it’s not surprising that gasoline’s falling prices are garnering very little attention. That doesn’t make it any less relevant, however.

Since peaking in July, gas prices are off by 20 percent.

Falling gas prices are an important positive for the U.S. economy because less money [...]

Buyers are returning to the housing market.

Each month, The National Association of REALTORS® tracks homes under contract to sell, but whose closing has not yet happened. It calls them “pending sales” and publishes a monthly report to quantify them.

The Pending Home Sales report is important because it’s meant to [...]

The Federal Reserve made an “emergency rate cut” this morning, dropping the Fed Funds Rate by one half-percent to 1.500 percent.

The move is meant to stimulate the U.S. economy.

When the Federal Reserve changes the Fed Funds Rate, it often takes 9 months for the changes to work their way through [...]

Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed below the psychologically-important 10,000 level for the first time since 2004.

Despite the milestone-marker breach, however, there was a large group of Americans with reason to cheer. As stocks sold off, mortgage markets rallied to the benefit of home buyers everywhere.

Conforming mortgages [...]

In this 4-minute video, turf grass specialist Carmen Magro demonstrates the proper way to prepare your lawn for Spring.

His tips include:

How to seed “worn down” areas of a lawn How to control thatch to promote a healthy lawn How to fertilize a lawn without “overdoing it”

The [...]

In an effort to provide “the most market support possible”, Fannie Mae is cutting one of its mandatory loan fees by 0.250 percent, effective immediately.

Fannie Mae introduced the Adverse Market Delivery Charge in December 2007 to offset foreclosure and delinquency losses. The initial fee was a quarter-percent of [...]