Jeffrey Samuels's Blog

Despite several big-name banks pulling the product from their respective home loan offerings, reverse mortgages remain a popular mortgage choice among homeowners aged 62 or over. A reverse mortgage is exactly what it sounds like -- a mortgage in reverse. Rather than borrow a fixed amount of money...

If you're actively preparing to list your home for sale, resist the temptation to make major home improvements. Nationwide, home improvement projects recoup just 58 cents on the dollar, says Remodeling Magazine. Rather, for a better return on your time and money, focus on the minor projects inste...

Planning to close on your home at the end of May? Plan ahead. Memorial Day is coming and the holiday may delay your closing. Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer and the 3-day Memorial Day weekend is a popular vacation time in real estate-related industries. Real estate agents tend t...

Been shopping for a mortgage rate? You may want to lock something down. Tomorrow morning, mortgage rates are expected to change. Unfortunately, we don't know in which direction they'll move.  It's a risky time for home buyers to be without a locked mortgage rate. The action begins at 8:30 A.M. E...

Home prices started the year on an upswing.  According to the Federal Home Finance Agency's Home Price Index, home prices rose by a seasonally-adjusted 0.3 percent between January and February 2012. The index is up 0.4% over the past year, offering a counter-story to the Case-Shiller Index's asse...

Regardless of your hometown's climate, outdoor gas grill cooking can be a four-season endeavor. Just remembe to keep your grill clean. According to Weber's annual GrillWatch Survey, less than 40% of grill owners clean their equipment with any bit of frequency, and 6 percent admit they've never cl...

America is stuffed with world-class "big cities"; New York, San Francisco and Chicago make for three great examples. But beyond the biggest cities, there are some wonderful small towns, too. Smithsonian.com highlights 20 of them on its website. Focusing on cities with 25,000 residents or fewer, t...

In March, for the second straight month, home resales slipped nationwide. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, March 2012 Existing Home Sales fell to 4.48 million units on a seasonally-adjusted annualized basis -- a 3 percent drop from February. An "existing home" is a home that's ...

According to foreclosure-tracking firm RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings fell to 199,000 in March 2012, a 17 percent decrease from March 2011. Last month marks the first time since July 2007 that foreclosure filings numbered less than 200,000 on a monthly basis -- a span of nearly 5 years. The gen...

Tuesday, the government released its March 2012 New Residential Construction report.  The report is made up of three sections, each related to a phase of the "new home" market. The report's first part is Building Permits; the second is Housing Starts; the third is Housing Completions. Of the thre...