KCM Blog

Posts tagged as:

Interest Rates

To Refi Or Not To Refi….THAT Is the Question

September 2, 2010

Holy Cow! Have you taken a look at where interest rates are these days??? There are Ten Year Mortgages in the 3.75% range for heaven’s sake! Yes, 3.75%!!! What are some of the issues to consider as you (and all of America) contemplates a refinance? 1.  Does it make financial sense? If you are considering [...]

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Where Are Home Prices Headed?

August 18, 2010

We are building a home for real estate information here at the KCM Blog. Our job is to accurately reflect what is taking place in the residential housing market in this country. The entire team takes this job very seriously. With the market evolving so rapidly, it has become a daunting task. We looked at [...]

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Why Are Interest Rates Going Down?

May 27, 2010

For months the alleged experts (including me) espoused the logic that after the Fed exited the Mortgage Backed Securities Purchase Program on March 31, interest rates would move up.  But here we sit, 60 days later, and rates are at their lowest point of the year.  What’s up with that? Let’s start with some general [...]

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Supply and Demand Post Tax Credit

May 21, 2010

The big question in real estate is what will happen now that the Homebuyers Tax Credit has expired. Did the tax credit kick-start a housing recovery? Would the momentum continue throughout the year? Any market is determined by the supply and demand for the product involved. Today we want to look at those two items as the [...]

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6 Factors to Consider When Pricing Your Home

May 11, 2010

Yesterday, we showed how even the experts are having trouble determining price in the current real estate market. There are so many moving parts and each part is evolving rapidly. Today, we want to look at the major determining factors in establishing the current value of a residential property. If you currently have your house [...]

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To Pay Points Or Not To Pay Points?

May 6, 2010

That is a question I have heard for all my years in the mortgage business.  There is no black-and-white answer to this question; hence, the reason for the discussion today. Let’s begin with a definition of “points.”  First the expression “points” is a shortened version of the more technical name “Discount Points.”  Discount Points will [...]

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The Price Is the Same, It Just Costs Less

April 26, 2010

The papers will be full of articles urging homebuyers to purchase a home this week before the Homebuyer Tax Credit expires. The articles will be correct. Getting a home into contract by this Friday, April 30 will enable you to collect on the tax credit. However, it is not just the tax credit that makes [...]

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Interest Rates – Two Weeks after the Fed’s Exit

April 20, 2010

Everyone in both the real estate and mortgage industries waited to see what reaction the mortgage market would have to the Fed exiting its purchase of mortgage-backed-securities last month. Would there be ample demand from the private sector? At what price? The predictions of where 30 year mortgage rates would settle were all over the [...]

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Interest Rates a Week after the Fed’s Exit

April 9, 2010

As the Fed was planning to exit the mortgage market at the end of last month, more and more experts were calling for the exit to be uneventful. Their belief was that there was ample demand sitting on the sideline ready to replace the Fed’s role. Well it is now a week later and let’s [...]

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How Do Rising Interest Rates Affect Affordability?

April 8, 2010

I have long been irked by mortgage “pre-approvals” that say a borrower is qualified to purchase a non-specific home for a specific loan amount.  Why?  Because, lenders don’t qualify borrowers based on the Purchase Price of a home, we qualify them for a particular Mortgage Payment (and payments vary based on a number of factors [...]

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