246 articles and videos on mortgage rates, the housing market and smart home financing, in plain English.
▶ VideoToday, I want to look at the way owning a house free-and-clear can help with your retirement planning. As of last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that the average person at retirement age has around $427,000 in retirement savings. When you consider how long life expectancies are and the cost of living, you…
▶ VideoLately, we are seeing a lot of these bank statement programs coming back and more clients taking advantage of them. Walter Neil, the owner of Franklin Loan Center helped me see what makes sense. I put together some numbers to see why a borrower might choose a bank statement loan instead of a full doc…
▶ VideoIn today’s video, I’m talking about new home construction. One thing that I am seeing is that many of these home sites are offering big reductions on interest rates. They are basically buying down a few points on your rate as an incentive to use their in-house lender and buy from their portfolio. It sounds…
▶ VideoI have a few industry updates to share with you today! First, Fannie & Freddie announced the 2024 mortgage limits for conventional lending. As most people know with these loan limits, some counties have high balances. The way it works is: throughout the entire US, you can get a conventional loan up to $766,550. There…
▶ VideoWishing you all a Happy and Healthy Thanksgiving! Even while the real estate and mortgage industries have experienced some craziness this year, we still have a lot to be thankful for.
Today, I want to pose the question: what’s your trigger? I’m wondering what it will take for buyers to make a move in the real estate industry. I keep hearing people say that they are waiting for rates to come down. For you: what is the point where you are pulling the trigger? This topic…
▶ VideoToday I want to talk about a topic recently shared in the New York Times: “Home Sellers Win $1.8 Billion After Jury Finds Conspiracy Among Realtors.” To summarize the case: realtors are being accused of fixing the prices and unnecessarily passing costs onto the consumer. Generally, in most real estate transactions, the sellers pay the…
▶ VideoToday I’m highlighting a great program that is unique to Franklin Loan Center. There are a couple of different community lending programs. What does that mean? A community lending program is geographically limited, which is the main detail that sets it apart from other lending options. There is one program that also has some income…
▶ VideoThis report came out a few weeks ago about current foreclosure data, showing that month-over-month foreclosures are up 34% and year-over-year they are up 28%. Those are big numbers – there’s no question that it’s a big deal. 3 Phases in the Foreclosure Process A few things that are important about these numbers on the…
▶ VideoI’m pulling up a chart that we put out every month. It’s one of my favorites to show housing trends. The red line on the chart is 21 years of 4.5% year-over-year growth. Looking at historical norms, it’s about what you can expect. The blue line represents what is really happening in the industry. We…
▶ VideoToday’s topic is one that comes up occasionally: what other states can Franklin help with home loans? We actually have quite a few! When I started out with Franklin in 2016, we were licensed in 2 or 3 states. It’s grown so much since then. Personally, I am able to help in Washington and California…
▶ VideoThe way property taxes work in California: you buy a house, then at some point in the near future the county will re-assess the house at the purchase price. But supplemental tax bills come into effect because the county doesn’t reassess it right away. For example, you buy a house for $800,000 today. Previously, it…
