Bob's Blog

Freddie Mac is reporting an average rate of 4.58% for a 30 year fixed-rate mortgage. This time last year the rate stood at 5.32%. 15 year fixed-rate loans are sitting at 4.2% According to Austin Kilgore of www.housingwire.com, rates are being driven down by an increased appetite for American bond...

According to the National Association of Realtors, pending home sales have plummeted 30% since the homebuyer tax credit expired. This fall comes after three periods of solid increases. Though the closing deadline for the tax credit was extended to September 30, with no government money to entice ...

The oil spill in the gulf could wreak havoc on an already weak Florida housing market. As of now, over 80% of all loans in Florida are underwater. In fact, half of all private label mortgages are at least 60 days delinquent, according to Fitch Ratings With unemployment settling at over 11%, the o...

Renting to college students can be a great source of recurring income, but there are several factors you need to keep in mind if you decide to go through with it. Location is absolutely key. While most large colleges have very efficient and effective public transportation designed to get students...

Today’s mobile lifestyle makes it possible to run your business from anywhere. While you can lead the life of a globetrotter and still run a successful business, first you must get organized and put some systems in place. A completely virtual office is pretty affordable on almost anyone’s budget....

According to commercial research firm, Real Capital Analytics, lenders are beginning to reclaim seriously delinquent commercial loans at an accelerated pace. During the first five months of 2010 lenders took back around $10 billion in commercial real estate and sold only $2.6 billion in the same ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have ordered their servicers to offer up to 6 months of forbearance to allow home owners with sulfur-laced drywall from Chinese manufacturers to remove the defective drywall and any affected fixtures before payments restart. The grant of time to correct the drywall prob...

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, released a new “scorecard” to relate the total picture of what is happening in the housing market each month. Since April 2009, 6.1 million American homes have been refinanced and 2.8 million have received a loan modification from either ...

Barclay’s has studied the impact of loan modifications on redefaults and has concluded that more recent modifications will probably be more successful, while older loan mods will default in higher numbers. A study by Fitch Data pegs the expected defaults within 12 months to be between 55 and 75%....

A recent Morgan Stanley report concludes that there are signs that could indicate a double-dip recession. They note that the low mortgage rates are a tell-tale sign of more economic stress to come after a few months of temporary improvement. Analyst Meredith Whitney sees a double-dip coming for s...