On Thursday, October 22, the President signed an executive order called “Decreasing Housing Costs for the American People.” The headline piece is mortgage insurance: a pilot program that cancels your PMI automatically once you have enough equity, based on what…
A parent wants to sell the house to their son. The house is worth $500,000. The parent says, “Hey, I’ll knock $100,000 off for you.” Everybody shakes hands on $400,000. It sounds simple. It is the setup for one of…
Your client is buying a bigger place and keeping the old one as a rental. To qualify them, we want to count that rent. For as long as anyone in this business can remember, the way you did that was…
USA TODAY ran a piece last week on home equity lines of credit, and they asked me how one actually works. The answer I gave is the same one I give in my office. A HELOC is not one loan…
There are 23,947 condominiums for sale in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County right now. More than ten thousand of them have already cut their price. Thirty-four are advertising a rate buydown. Thirty-four. Out of twenty-four thousand. This week Bill…
The Fed raised rates Wednesday for the first time in three years. Mortgage rates ended the week right about where they started it. America is drilling more oil today than at any point in its history, and gas went up…
The UAD 3.6 appraisal report lands November 2, and it changes shape for the first time in over fifteen years. Not how your house gets valued — how it gets written up. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are replacing the…
On November 3, Florida votes on Amendment 3. It would raise the homestead exemption by $200,000 over two years, and it needs 60% of the vote to pass. Almost every number you have heard about it is attached to a…
Every Broward County property owner got a notice in the mail last month. Most people opened it, saw a number, decided it was bad news, and put it down. That notice is the only chance you get all year to…
On Wednesday the Treasury Secretary went out to buy back bonds. The program was supposed to be four billion dollars. He bought six, and told the market not to bet against the house. Rates went up anyway. Then on Friday…
