With mortgage rates are hovering near all-time lows, lots of Americans are taking advantage of refinance and home buying opportunities.

The downside of today’s unexpectedly-low rates, though, is that mortgage lenders are ill-equipped for the rush of new business.

As a result, the process of underwriting and approving new mortgage applications is taking [...]

Lead and other toxic metals are in the products we use everyday and the surfaces with which we come into contact. Lightbulbs, for example, or painted window sills.

Unfortunately, washing your hands with soap and water — even with the use of a disinfectant — doesn’t cleanse you of dangerous lead dust.

Instead, [...]

If you’re in want of a cash out refinance, the most liberal cash-out program in town is about to make qualification more difficult.

Effective April 1, 2009, the FHA is reducing the maximum loan-to-value on cash-out refinances by 10 percent, dropping the loan size limit from 95% of the home’s value to 85%.

In [...]

The national housing market got its third piece of good news in 3 days:

Monday: Existing Home Sales up Tuesday: Home values appear higher nationally Wednesday: New Home Sales up

And although national real estate statistics are irrelevant to the local markets in [...]

Don’t look now but oil prices are climbing.

This should worry today’s home buyers and would-be refinancers because some of the same forces that helped to push crude past $50 for the first time in 4 months also cause mortgage rates to rise.

March 18, the Federal Reserve committed an [...]

Each month, the National Association of REALTORS® releases the Existing Home Sales report. It’s a detailed look at “used” home sale data from all four regions of the country.

Among the key findings of each Existing Home Sales report is something called the “median sales price”, the statistical price point at which half [...]

With the official start of Spring last week comes the official start of Spring Cleaning Season nationwide.

In some homes, Spring Cleaning is an annual ritual, tackled within one sweat-filled, rubber-gloved weekend. In other homes, it’s a less serious endeavor.

Either way, it helps to have a game plan.

Courtesy of Martha Stewart’s website, [...]

For the fifth time in a year, rate shoppers learned an important lesson this week: When mortgage rates plummet unexpectedly, they often recover just as fast.

Wednesday, the Federal Reserve’s newest $750 billion mortgage market pledge helped to push conforming mortgage rates near their lowest levels since WWII.

24 hours later, however, those rates [...]

The Federal Open Market Committee voted to leave the Fed Funds Rate unchanged today, within the target range of 0.000-0.250 percent. This doesn’t mean the Fed stood pat, however.

On plan to resurrect the economy using “all available tools”, today, the Fed announced a new, $1.5 trillion round of fiscal support for the treasury and [...]

There’s a mixed message in February’s Housing Starts data and it may be a good sign for home sellers in the near-term.

As reported by the government, new home construction rose by 22 percent last month. The press is running with the headline number, calling it evidence of