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Mortgage

How Bad Would It Have to Get For You to Strategic Default?

March 8, 2011

According to data released this week (CNBC), 23 percent of US borrowers (over 11 million families), were holding “underwater” mortgages.  That equates to over $750 billion of negative equity.  That amount of mortgage debt is staggering.  Taking a step back and contemplating the shear magnitude of this number, I was thinking about just how bad [...]

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Study: 33% Needed Thousands Extra to “Cash-In” Refi – Could You Do It?

October 28, 2010

You’ve gotta have money to make money, right?  Well, apparently, you’ve gotta have money to SAVE money also.  As this recent report shows fully one third of homeowners refinancing last quarter had to do “cash-in” refinances at closing.  Dropping home prices and tighter underwriting standards are driving this trend.  It’s gotta be a real kick [...]

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Mortgage Rates Break New Records – How Low Can They Go?

October 7, 2010

Today, the benchmark 30 Year conventional rate fell to a fresh low of 4.27%, down from 4.32% last week.  Meanwhile the 15 Year rate was down to 3.72% from 3.75% last week.  This data comes from Freddie Mac each Thursday and the averages include points, usually in the 0.6-0.7 point range. What’s Driving These Insanely [...]

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Beware: Realtors Do Better for Themselves than Their Clients

August 22, 2010

A few years back, the esteemed author of Freakonomics reviewed and provided commentary on a study showing that when realtors are selling their own homes (correcting for several factors so as to not influence the study), they leave their home on the market longer and get more money for their homes, all other things being [...]

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Strategic Default Community Blog

August 16, 2010

The Newly-launched community blog StrategicDefault.com offers hope to homeowners facing difficult decisions concerning their underwater homes. The website provides a place for homeowners to share their stories and find solace in knowing that they are certainly not alone in this struggle. StrategicDefault.com is dedicated to underwater homeowners –struggling to make payments, contemplating strategic default, attempting [...]

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Mortgage Rates Could Go EVEN LOWER – Here’s Why

July 23, 2010

Before I provide the plausible scenario in which mortgage rates go even lower than the current historical lows, consider a NY Times article from April which proclaimed “Interest Rates Have Nowhere to Go but Up“.  Now that sound pretty authoritative, especially coming from one of the most prolific financial publications in the world.  Unfortunately, many [...]

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Should I Refinance? How Much Lower Should Your Rate be to Make Sense?

June 24, 2010

Should I Refinance? That’s a common question that is often answered a little too brazenly by rules of thumb that don’t necessarily make a lot of sense.  It’s kind of like saying “You should buy and house and not rent” or “you should own stocks and not bonds”.  It kind of depends on your personal [...]

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House Hunting: New Home Construction vs. Existing Homes

June 15, 2010

For some time, my wife and I have been mulling over a move.  Honestly, our current house is fine and if we never moved, I think we’d be perfectly happy.  However, there are a few drivers that have us considering a move.  Primarily, we want our kids to have the best school experience (Is Private [...]

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VA Loans Pending Legislation

June 1, 2010

Amendments to a new bill which is currently making its way through the United States Senate may have unintended consequences for military families who currently own a home or are considering purchasing their first house. Called the Financial Services bill, the piece of legislation attempts to provide additional protection for home mortgage borrowers and close [...]

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Strategic Defaults Are Going Mainstream. Shameless.

May 17, 2010

The Term Strategic Default is “the new black” in the world of homeowners who bought in to speculative real estate markets with the bare minimum down payments during the real estate boom.  These are homeowners that are well-paid, employed and completely capable of paying their mortgages, yet they’re walking away from their homes and their [...]

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