Looking to buy a bigger house? Now might be the best time to do so.
Although waiting a few years to sell a home will likely mean a higher sales price, the cost of a bigger new home will increase as well, according to an analysis by Redfin. Financially, it makes more sense to capture today’s [...]

WASHINGTON – Oct. 25, 2012 – Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have issued new rules effective Nov. 1 that will allow short sales for underwater borrowers who have never missed a mortgage payment. Previously, Fannie and Freddie allowed only homeowners who had missed payments to qualify for a short sale.
However, eligible short-sale owners [...]

Short Sale – now is the time to act!
A short-term IRS program that ignores lender-forgiven mortgage debt ends Dec. 31; if you need to short sale your home, you should consider listing now!
You may owe federal income taxes in 2013 if you have a short sale, foreclosure after this year. Now is the time to [...]

After a year of fewer foreclosures, as bankers reeled from revelations that they were falsifying documents in foreclosure cases, the latest monthly numbers suggest banks are starting to repossess houses again.
Here is an excerpt of an interesting article from the Bradenton Herald on this topic:
The big banks are back in the foreclosure business.
 After a year of [...]

Bank of America, the nation’s largest mortgage servicer, is offering Florida homeowners up to $20,000 to short sale their homes rather than letting them linger in foreclosure.
The limited time offer has received little promotion from the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank, which sent emails to select Florida Realtors earlier this week outlining basic details of the plan. [...]

From time to time the IRS releases tips designed to help people with their taxes. Some of these are quite useful.
If you have a gain from the sale of your main home, you may qualify to exclude all or part of that gain from your income. Here are ten tips from the IRS to keep [...]

Home sellers probably won’t be too happy, but housing experts in an article at CNNMoney say that underpricing a home by 10 percent may help it sell faster. And while sellers may lose out on thousands from the sale, they likely will avoid months of carrying costs from the home lingering on the market to [...]

The market share of vacation- and investment-home sales held steady in 2010, although the sales volume declined with the overall market, according to the National Association of Realtors® (NAR).
“Despite extraordinarily tight credit conditions for purchasing a second home, the market share for vacation and investment homes held steady,” says NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “A [...]

The tightening of credit by lenders across the country continues to keep more buyers from securing a mortgage. Nearly a quarter of people who apply for a mortgage are rejected, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve.
“Good borrowers with one or two blemishes on their credit are being denied credit,” says Lawrence Yun, [...]

Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) Program

Many homeowners may feel that they can no longer afford their home, but want to avoid the negative effects of foreclosure. The Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) Program offers homeowners, their mortgage servicers, and investors an incentive for completing a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure. With these options, under [...]