Scott Wall's (ask2agents) Blog

Got a spare $121,197? That's the household income required to buy the typical DC/VA/MD home (estimated price tag: $371,000) in 2007's third quarter, according to the Center for Housing Policy. That ranked DC/VA/MD as No. 25 for biggest salary needed to buy a home among 201 major U.S. markets. (Sa...

Think it's hard affording a home here? Pity the poor renter.Last year a Northern Virginia worker needed to make $24.73 an hour ($51,438.40 a year) to afford the average $1,286 fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment, says the non-profit Center for Housing Policy in Washington, D.C. That is o...

Countrywide Financial has halted withdrawals on some home equity lines of credit because owners have little or no equity left, reports the Los Angeles Times. In some cases the owners owe more than the home is worth based on Countrywide's computer modeling. Other lenders are taking similar actions...

New Century Financial, the bankrupt Irvine-based subprime lender, filed a liquidation plan that fails to say how it will repay $35 billion claimed by creditors, the Associated Press reports.Documents filed in U.S. bankruptcy court in Delaware on Saturday contained blanks where the company was sup...

Wonder why those contractors are knocking on your door and even returning phone calls? One hint lies in the January national jobs report (COPY HERE) ...Last month's unemployment rate for U.S. construction workers is 11%, up from 8.9% a year ago and 9% in January 2006. Now, to be fair, constructio...

As a follow-up to my letter, The Graphics of a Sub-Prime Mortgage, let's take a look at why the sub-prime mortgage process is filled with "opportunities" of failure. Following is an annotated version of the BBC graphic.Anyone wondering why there was so much fraud happening need only look at the a...

I recently posted a letter, "Boss Hog Bail Outs!" justifying why we should bail out the sorry homeowner.  However, as we get past this, we need to understand what happen so that the same mistakes don't happen again.  The BBC has a good article called The US sub-prime crisis in graphics.The US sub...

It's a political year and I've been hearing a lot on Talk Radio regarding the "what to do about the real estate market."  Many folks think it's a stupid idea to bail out some "idiot" homebuyers who stretched their budgets beyond anyone's wildest imagination.But as I watch a parade of curious arra...

Black & Decker has this to say ..."Sales in the Hardware and Home Improvement segment decreased 4% for the quarter. The lockset business, which posted a sales increase in the third quarter, passed the anniversary of its 2006 price increases and could not overcome the effects of lower U.S. housing...

I wish foreclosure watcher from Irvine, RealtyTrac, stopped publishing its misleading "foreclosure filings" number that's a mishmash of default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions. It already has a better mousetrap, its count of the number of unique homes that were hit with some ...