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Q: You recently pointed out a slew of problems now faced by borrowers who took out home equity line of credit-style loans, or HELOCs, before the financial crisis.
Q: I am over 55 and living on Social Security. I do have money available to me and want to pay cash for a condo.
If there are bees in your car, the smart thing is to pull over, open the doors and let them out. Everyone will be happy.
When my husband and I started gardening on my family's farmstead more than 13 years, ago, we inherited the trees planted over the past century by my parents and grandparents.
Q: My son and his girlfriend have been renting an apartment for the last four years
A spate of positive economic reports helped push average fixed mortgage rates this week to their highest level of the year.
Potluck suppers come naturally to a gardener, because a gardener leads a potluck life.
You have identified the mortgage lender with whom you wish to work, based at least in part on a price quote. You probably know that the price quote doesn’t mean anything until it is locked, but few borrowers know all the steps required to get to the lock and the possible costly missteps in the process.
Every homebuyer has a dream house: the one that offers the perfect combination of location, size, condition and price.
Q: Who is responsible for the damage if a golf ball strikes a home and breaks a window? Or what if the ball hits a person on the property?
Mortgage rates rose slightly this week on mixed economic news, with Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of lenders showing the average rate for a conventional 30-year fixed loan at 3.68 percent, up from 3.65 percent last week.
Senior homeowners looking to shop the HECM reverse mortgage market for the best price, meaning the lowest interest rate and origination fee, have a major problem.
Q: We live in a nice neighborhood, and recently a neighbor a few doors away painted his house a garish yellow and purple.
Q: We have a rental property that we’re trying to sell to our tenant. He’s having problems with financing, so we want to give him a short-term loan.
Q: I have read statements by you regarding “live mortgage pricing,” but I am not sure what it means or why it is important?
Q: I recently rented a condo in Boca Raton, Fla. Last weekend there was a major sewage backup outside the building, and the apartment above mine got flooded and leaked through to my unit. Almost everything in my condo now needs to be replaced — the carpeting, drywall and even some of the own…
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau deplores the fact that almost half of the home buyers it recently surveyed did not shop for a mortgage but dealt with a single loan provider
Mortgage rates rose this week on news of an improving economy, Freddie Mac said, with lenders offering conventional 30-year home loans at an average of 3.69 percent compared with 3.59 percent last week.
Once upon a time, home technology — alarm systems, vacuums and the like — was pretty much all about function.
The days are longer now, and the sky is brighter. Houseplants next to our sunny window are starting to perk up and grow, but some of the best gardening action is happening in the dark.
Donna Smallin’s book "Clear the Clutter, Find Happiness" (Storey Publishing, $10.95) is practical. You can open to any page and find a quick tip that will help you get a handle on the things you own — and shouldn’t.
The regulator for bailed-out housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac told lawmakers Tuesday that new programs to back mortgages with down payments as low as 3 percent had enough safeguards to make them as safe as loans with higher down payments.
Q: For the last five months, I’ve been renting a house that has been in foreclosure since 2011. I received a notice in the mail that the property is going to foreclosure auction next week. I have seven more months on my lease, and the rent is great. What happens to me?
Mortgage rates declined for the third straight week, with lenders on average offering 3.63 percent on a 30-year fixed loan, Freddie Mac reported Thursday.
LEWISBURG — The Lewisburg Garden Club is looking for candidates for its annual Garden Tour of Lewisburg event to be held on June 6.
Mortgage rates keep falling, and that has borrowers rushing to close a deal.
Whether to rent or buy a home is an easy decision for many people. But for those who have the means and motivation to do either, the choice can be difficult to make.
A reader caught me off guard the other day by saying that she had counted 28 articles on adjustable rate mortgages on my website, but all of them pertained to standard mortgages.
Area real estate agencies applaud the following newsmakers
Q: We bought our home a year ago and are trying to renovate it. Our contractor just told us that we can’t get the permit until some old permits from the prior owner are closed out. What can we do?
When you own a home and want to sell it to buy a place that’s nicer, you are likely to confront two obstacles:
Does is matter which day of the month your mortgage closes?
January marks the slow but unmistakable start of a fresh growing season. This beginning takes the form of the arriving seed catalogs, still fun to hold in one's hands, to leaf through, in this digital age.
After mortgage rates stayed surprisingly low in 2014, who knows how they will shake out in this new year?
After mortgage rates stayed surprisingly low in 2014, who knows how they will shake out in the new year?
Closing out a year of surprisingly low mortgage interest rates, the average rate for a conventional 30-year home loan was 3.87 percent this week, Freddie Mac said, up slightly from 3.83 percent a week ago.
Are you a confident consumer, or do you have much learn about the art of hiring smart?
One important reason the home loan market works so poorly is that borrowers have no reliable way to select the loan originator — the individual who takes the borrower through the loan process.
Sales of previously owned homes tumbled 6.1 percent in November, a far larger drop than Wall Street expected.
Mortgage rates have hit a fresh low for the year.
The home-building business is closing the year on a down note.
Area real estate agencies applaud the following newsmakers:
Because of the widespread belief that homeownership is valuable, the recent decline in the homeownership rate has generated some dismay.
Q: We’ve been turned down repeatedly for loan modifications and have been stuck in foreclosure for several years.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Monday spelled out the terms under which they will accept mortgages with down payments of as low as 3 percent from first-time buyers, but it may take time to see how many lenders will sign on.
Financial planners are assiduously courting seniors whose wealth is large enough to generate attractive fees for the planner who gets to manage it but not large enough to eliminate the possibility the senior will run out of money. A favorite planning tactic is to calculate an annual asset li…
Q: I have been a resident of a condominium for many years. For the last several years, one of my neighbors has constantly flaunted the rules, bothering visitors and getting drunk and belligerent at the pool. Our board has warned him to stop and has fined him, but he did not pay the fine and …
