Shawn Gerhardson Minnesotas Preferred Lenders Blog

Good News! Existing Home Sales Up And FHFA Home Prices Rise After months of reports of slowing home price momentum and forecasts of a lagging housing market, we are pleased to report an increased volume of existing home sales as reported by the National Association of REALTORS®. The Federal Housi...

Did You Know: Five Factors That Lenders Won’t Even Consider When Assessing You For a Mortgage Are you thinking about buying a new home? If you’re going to apply for mortgage financing, you can rest assured that your lender will be checking in to your credit history, income and other items in orde...

Moving to a New City? Tips for Finding a Family-friendly Community to Buy Your New Home In If you’re moving to a new city with children, one of your likely considerations is finding a family-friendly community where you can settle in and call home. In this post we’ll share a handful of tips that ...

First-time Home Buyer? Don’t Miss These Tips to Ensure Your Mortgage Application is Approved Are you buying a home for the first time? Congratulations! Buying your own home is an excellent way to build your net worth while living in a space that you can renovate and truly make your own. If you’re...

What’s Ahead For Mortgage Rates This Week – October 20, 2014 Last week’s economic highlights included the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Housing Market Index for October. The Commerce Department also released Housing Starts for September. Freddie Mac reported that the average rate f...

NAHB Reports: Home Builder Confidence Drops in October The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reported that home builder sentiment lost its momentum in October and posted a seasonally adjusted reading of 54 in its Home Builder Market Index. This reading was five points lower than expect...

Three Reasons Why Setting Your Listing Price is the Most Important Aspect of the Home Sales Process Have you decided to sell your home, perhaps to make an upgrade to a newer, larger house? Whatever your reasons for selling, you’ll have a number of decisions to make as you craft your listing and b...

Refinance Now or Wait? How to Determine the Best Time to Refinance Your Mortgage Refinancing your mortgage is a great way to reduce your monthly payments or take out some of the equity in your home to reinvest in renovations, upgrades or in other areas in your financial portfolio. Let’s take a qu...

What’s Ahead For Mortgage Rates This Week – October 14, 2014 Economic news was lean last week as the first week of the month tends to be calm in the aftermath of the rush of end-of-month reporting. Of note was CoreLogic’s report on housing markets, the release of the minutes from the most recent ...

The Pros and Cons of Buying a New Home Versus Buying Pre-owned Are you thinking about buying a new home? Congratulations! Buying a house, condo or townhouse is an exciting and rewarding time which tends to be a lot of fun. However, along the way you’ll need to make a number of decisions – includi...