According to the US Census Bureau – that bunch who make every party worth attending – the homeownership rate for the first quarter of this year is 64.2%. In comparing that number against the same time last year, they stated, “The homeownership rate of 64.2% was not statistically different from the rate in the […]

  Recently, a friend of mine sent me a link to a story with a note that read, “This will make you laugh.” My friend hasn’t been wrong before, so I clicked on the link and gave it a read. I’ll recreate it here and let you decide if my friend chose well. The author […]

  Someone much wiser than I once told me that there are always three sides to a story: Party A’s side, Party B’s side, and the truth. In the mortgage/real estate world, that’s especially poignant. On a recent transaction, the real estate agent representing the sellers was eager to get the appraisal ordered –we had a […]

  Each week, I’ve tried to take both simple and complex mortgage-related topics/issues and put them into terms here in this newsletter that make them more easily understood.  Since I’ve been doing that for quite a while, I have to be honest and admit this: I’ve come up dry this week on what to talk […]

  Full disclosure: this is a reprint from a few years back – I’ve updated the numbers to reflect the conditions occurring in the market today. The New York Federal Reserve’s economists conducted a study and published the results: changes in down payment requirements have MORE influence over homebuyers’ willingness to buy than changes in […]