A friend in Australia recently sought my advice about the usefulness or otherwise of a mortgage calculator. My friend was looking at refinancing her mortgage in Australia but was unsure as to the long-term benefits of such a move. She had heard about a mortgage calculator that could compare products and wanted to run her own scenario. We tracked down one mortgage calculator but this was a simple “how much can I borrow?” mortgage calculator which required you to input your salary and other liabilities or debts to work out your borrowing capacity. (more…)
Are you thinking of a house refinance? You are certainly not alone as millions of Americans have been refinancing their home mortgages for the past few years. But, before you begin searching for a lender to refinance your home here are 4 important questions to answer before making your decision. (more…)
Image via MSNBC Last Week: Rates were basically unchanged for the week as the collective markets digested a mixed bag of news - from huge writedowns and losses in housing related sectors (financials & home builders) to major earnings beats in the tech space, to some flight to quality activity which drove bond yields down ahead of the Fed meeting this week. This Week: All eyes on the Fed (the FOMC meets Wed/Thurs.) The markets expect a .25% cut to the Fed Funds rate. To a large degree, this cut has already been baked into the cake. If you’ll recall the last Fed cut on Sept 18th, mortgage rates (more…)
Quick sampling of the weekend real estate related stories from selected local publications. Easy to miss if you are an onlineatworkonly type of newspaper reader. Thanks a Million, Priciest Homes Still Sell [Strib] “While sales of existing homes in the Twin Cities metro area dropped a whopping 14 percent over the past 12 months, sales of homes priced at $1 million-plus jumped 4 percent…Life isn’t all peaches and cream in the upper-bracket market, though. Currently, there’s a 23-month supply of listings…” A ray of sunshine, sort of for our local RE market, though we’d like to see the origina (more…)
