Bob's Coto Blog

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 und...

Hello again, I was just looking at the listing inventory of available houses for some potential buyer clients of mine, and was struck by the thought in my headline - Whatever happened to the old adage of "Sell high, and buy low"?  That has always been a preferred position to be in, with regard to...

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 val...

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 which real estate transactions happ...

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 additional $1....

I've just read the latest Orange County Market Report, by my friend Steven Thomas, the President of Altera Real Estate Services.  Steven has a degree in quantum economics and for the past couple of years his bi-weekly report has been the most comprehensive compilation of real estate activity and ...

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 p...

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 gam...

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 leve...

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...