With home prices rising 20% nationwide in the past year and in some markets, even dramatically more, many homeowners are excited about the equity in their homes. In the past, most homeowners were not concerned about profit from the sale being taxed but some may be surprised. The profit homeown
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05/05/2022
People purchasing a used car have most likely heard of CARFAX vehicle history reports to help them avoid buying a car with costly hidden problems. Less likely are buyers to know that there is a way to discover some of the repair history of homes they are interested in. Lexis Nexis C.L.U.E. (Cl
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04/25/2022
Usually, it is easier to buy a home than to sell a home but that isn't necessarily the case currently. In today's market, it can be scary to sell your home before buying another because you could find yourself without a home. Most sellers will not accept a contingency on the sale of a buyer's h
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04/20/2022
While updating and remodeling certainly makes a home more enjoyable and livable, and increases the value, homeowners should not expect to recover 100% of the cost of the remodeling. Certainly, remodeling and updating makes a home sell faster, some of the expenditures will not return their full
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04/13/2022
You may not have heard of anyone assuming an existing mortgage for over thirty years and didn't know they were even possible any longer. The reason is simple, it didn't make financial sense but now that interest rates are increasing, it may be an opportunity for some homebuyers. Conventional l
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04/11/2022
Americans have seen the equity in their homes increase by 29.3% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2021 according to the CoreLogic Homeowner Equity Insights. The average home equity gained $55,000 during the same period. CoreLogic's Home Price Index reported a 19.1% increase in appreciati
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04/05/2022
Sellers try to rationalize not making needed updating and repairs to their homes before marketing them by saying they are going to let the buyers make their own personal choices. It is a convenient story to justify not going to the effort for the necessary market preparation to justify achievi
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04/05/2022
Have you ever been shopping on a website where you were looking at something that was on sale? You were interested in it but there wasn't a sense of urgency and maybe, you had a lot going on and didn't get back to it for a few days. When you did go back to the website, the price on the item ha
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04/04/2022
Appreciation and amortization are key factors in building equity for homeowners with mortgages. As the home goes up in value due to appreciation and the unpaid balance goes down due to amortization, the equity increases. Appreciation is the increase in value of a home and is usually measured y
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03/16/2022
Existing FHA and VA mortgages are assumable at the note rate to owner-occupied buyers who qualify. This can be an alternative to paying higher, current rates and benefit buyers with lower closing costs while saving money on the payment. For the last 20 years, rates have been steadily coming do
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02/28/2022
