It’s the great credit divide in American housing: If you buy a home and pay your mortgage on time regularly, your credit score typically benefits. If you rent an apartment and pay the landlord on time every month, you get no boost to your score – zip. Since most landlords aren’t set up or approved to report rent payments to the national credit bureaus, their tenants’ credit scores often suffer as a direct result.
As a home buyer or seller, do you really understand real estate commissions? Do you know how much a real estate agent who lists a house for sale typically gets? Equally important, how much the agent who brings you in as a buyer gets paid – in other words, how the total commission pie gets sliced up?
Connecticut is slowly waking up to the depths of its affordable housing problem, panelists at a discussion sponsored by the Connecticut Mortgage Bankers Association said today.
The Great Recession, as it has been called, is now solidly in the rearview mirror, but it casts a long shadow. Across the country, the headlines trumpet a solid recovery – unemployment is dropping, home prices are climbing and consumer confidence is making steady gains. But within those macro trends are smaller stories of lost jobs, gutted savings accounts, stagnated wages and destroyed retirement portfolios. The recession may be over, but the people are still recovering.
The strong end to 2014 is giving many local lenders and agents hope that something might be on the horizon that the Connecticut market hasn’t seen in years: A normal spring market.
On a recent group coaching call for new agents, one woman asked, “What should I leave behind at my listing appointment? I\’m afraid that if I do all this work that they will give it to another agent and I won\’t get the listing.”
A closely watched index that tracks mortgage credit availability – lender requirements on credit scores, down payments and other key loan terms – has some good news for potential homebuyers: Things are finally loosening up.
Tax reform is revving up again on Capitol Hill, with the heads of key committees pledging to work toward a simpler and fairer tax code, possibly one with lower tax rates. Sounds intriguing.
When “CBS This Morning” co-host Norah O’Donnell asked the CEO of Zillow last week about the accuracy of the website’s automated property value estimates – known as Zestimates – she touched on one of the most sensitive perception gaps in American real estate.
One lousy experience with a real estate agent may have been the spur that got Candace Adams into the industry, but it’s been her own drive and ambition that have carried her to the top. Recently named one of the top 200 most powerful people in the industry in the Swanepoel Power200 rankings, she spoke to The Commercial Record about what she looks for in an agent.
Strong optimism in the growth prospects for the 2015 housing market was the unifying factor at panel of housing economists at the Inman Connect conference this morning in New York City.
In a wide-ranging talk Thursday morning at the Inman Connect conference in New York City, Rupert Murdoch reassured real estate agents that his acquisition of Move Inc. was intended to form a partnership with the industry, one that doesn’t include challenging the existing real estate model but rather leveraging NewsCorp’s other media assets to take advantage of the growth he expects in the sector.
Call them the prodigal Millennials: Statistical measures and anecdotal reports suggest that young couples and singles in their late 20s and early 30s have begun making a belated entry into the home buying market, pushed by mortgage rates in the mid-3 percent range, government efforts to ease credit requirements and deep frustrations at having to pay rising rents without creating equity.
When the federal government’s consumer protection agency for financial matters tells you how to shop for a good deal on a home mortgage, you should follow the advice, right?
After weathering a tough 2014 marred by a sluggish housing market, lenders see a brighter picture ahead in 2015, with many industry observers describing themselves as cautiously optimistic about the coming year.
If you saw the White House announcement of lower insurance payments on Federal Housing Administration home mortgages last week, you might have wondered: Does this matter to me as a potential home buyer or refinancer? Who specifically will benefit from the decrease in fees?
Could a controversial new program set for launch nationwide this month by giant mortgage investor Fannie Mae lead to slower and costlier home sale closings and more disputes over prices between sellers and buyers – busting deals when the appraised value comes in below what the parties agreed to in the contract?
For David Foster of Chicago, it was a stunning and welcome early Christmas present for him, his wife and three young children. The Senate\’s 11th-hour extension of the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act through Dec. 31 will save Foster, who works for a nonprofit ministry group, from having to pay the IRS about $28,000 next year on $100,000 of mortgage debt canceled by his bank as part of a short sale on his condo.
Jim Wilson has seen it all in the mortgage banking industry. Born and raised in Connecticut, he\’s worked for several local banks, helping them to build national lending platforms. He sat down with The Commercial Record to discuss his role in the industry and why, in the post-crisis lending landscape, Farmington Bank is choosing to concentrate on its own backyard.
Perhaps the biggest news to come out of a relatively sedate annual meeting for the National Association of Realtors (NAR) earlier this fall was a push by the national trade group to help agents offer better options for consumers searching for a home on their websites. But some in the industry suggest that the group may be shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted, with more and more consumers migrating their real estate searches to smartphones and tablets, and using apps provided by the big portals to do so.
