John Lemos's (jplemos) Blog

On June 23, 2016, voters in the United Kingdom (UK) voted to leave the European Union (EU).  This is commonly referred to as “Brexit”. Although the UK only accounts for about 4% of global economic activity, Brexit is having a domino effect on US mortgage rates.  Here’s why:  Mortgage rates in th...

The federal government requires mortgage lenders to disclose the "annual percentage rate" (APR) whenever they advertise a loan program. But what is APR, and does it really matter to you?  Here's the thing: APR lumps all your "finance charges" into your interest rate. As you can see from Figure 1,...

 A lot of discussion about “sequencing of distributions” has been taking place recently in financial planning circles.  “Sequencing of Distributions” looks at the order in which you take distributions from your retirement account.  This matters because the order in which you take distributions ha...

 There are several factors to consider when determining if you should buy vs. rent.  These include: How long do you plan to live in the home? What’s your expected annual rate of house price appreciation over that timeframe? What are your expected sales expenses when you sell the house? What’s the...

According to a recently released report by Harvard University, the inflation-adjusted increase in rents from 2013 to 2015 was the highest increase over any two-year period since 1987.  The official government numbers cited in the report are supported by private research, which show an even larger...

Most retirement plans created over the past 30 years have assumed that government bond yields during retirement would be a lot higher than they are right now.  As illustrated in the chart, the yield on the 10-yr US Treasury Note fluctuated between 4% and 8% during most of the 1990s, and between 2...

Home ownership is more affordable today for first-time homebuyers than it has been at any point over the past three years according to data recently released by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).  Here is a chart illustrating NAR’s Housing Affordability Index for First-time Homebuyers.  ...

One way for you to potentially improve your cash flow during retirement is to use a home equity conversion mortgage (also known as a "HECM" or "reverse mortgage").  The HECM is a mortgage loan made by a private lending institution such as a bank, credit union or mortgage company.  The loan is in...

Could a recession be too far off? It’s always hard to forecast, especially when people are saying the job market is so strong. When looking at the chart below, it shows the history of the unemployment rate and recessions, which are the red shaded areas.Preceding every recession on the chart, the ...

1 – Don't accept the highest price offer without asking the right questions.  For example: How strong is the buyer's financing approval?  Even the buyer claims to be "pre-approved", the deal may fall through because of financing conditions unrelated to the property itself. Is the buyer willing t...