Tag: News

Incase it ever snows… Help Protect Your Home!

Help Protect Your Home: Clear Your Roof of Snow

Help Protect Your Home: Clear Your Roof of Snow. Plenty of homeowners in the United States live with the harsh realities of winter. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, residents in Rochester, New York, receive about 8 feet of snow each winter. Homeowners in cities such as Cleveland, Minneapolis and Denver typically can …

Continue reading

Mortgage Bills May Soon Be Simpler to Grasp

Mortgage Bills May Soon Be Simpler to Grasp. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed a standardized mortgage statement that sets out to make it easier to understand the information about your loan on one page. The proposed mortgage statement, released last week, includes a breakdown of such items as the amount paid from the …

Continue reading

Property sales up in the US

Property sales up in the US and building sector confidence increases

Property sales up in the US and building sector confidence increases. Residential property sales in the United States edged upwards for the seventh month in a row in January, according to the latest RE/MAX national housing report. It shows that real estate sales are now 3.4% above levels seen a year earlier in the 53 …

Continue reading

Agents: Attracting Business

Agents: Attracting Business to You Every Time You Leave the House

Agents: Attracting Business to You Every Time You Leave the House. Most real estate prospecting strategies focus on the pursuit of business, or going out there and actively looking for targets to prospect. Fair enough. But you can also generate a significant amount of business for yourself using attraction-based strategies that don’t require you to …

Continue reading

Housing Affordability Reaches New Records

Housing Affordability Reaches New Records. Housing affordability rose to a record high during the fourth quarter of 2011, which means a home buyer’s purchasing power is greater than it ever has been before, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index. The index showed that 75.9 percent of all new and …

Continue reading

Home Builders Are Feeling More Optimistic

Home Builders Are Feeling More Optimistic.   Signs are improving in the new-home market and builders are feeling more optimistic about where the real estate market is heading, after coming off last year’s worst year on record for new home construction. For the fifth consecutive month, builders confidence in the single-family home market increased in …

Continue reading

Could the Mortgage Deal Lead to a Jump in Foreclosures?

Could the Mortgage Deal Lead to a Jump in Foreclosures?

Could the Mortgage Deal Lead to a Jump in Foreclosures? A $25 billion mortgage settlement announced between major banks and state and government officials is supposed to bring aid to troubled home owners, but it could also bring a wave of new foreclosures, CNN Money reports. During the yearlong negotiations, some banks slowed down repossessing …

Continue reading

30-Year Mortgage Rates Hold at Record Lows

30-Year Mortgage Rates Hold at Record Lows. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.87 percent this week, matching last week’s all-time record low. As for other rates, they ticked up slightly this week, but still hovered around record lows compared to historical standards, Freddie Mac reports in its weekly mortgage market survey. “A strong January employment …

Continue reading

States Negotiate $26 Billion Agreement for Homeowners

States Negotiate $26 Billion Agreement for Homeowners After months of painstaking talks, government authorities and five of the nation’s biggest banks have agreed to a $26 billion settlement that could provide relief to nearly two million current and former American homeowners harmed by the bursting of the housing bubble, state and federal officials said. It …

Continue reading

Flowers for Curb Appeal

Flowers for Curb Appeal

Flowers for Curb Appeal. Are you fighting a bad case of cabin fever this Winter? If so you’re not alone! Dormant flower beds all across the nation are begging for some splashes of color. Here’s a list of the top 10 inexpensive, easy-to-maintain flowers that will please those beds, your budget, and your neighbors. Curb …

Continue reading

Beat the Competition in Buying Foreclosures

Beat the Competition in Buying Foreclosures. While bank-owned homes are plentiful in many markets, they aren’t always easy for a buyer to get. Foreclosure sell at bargain prices — sometimes at 35 percent discounts when compared to non foreclosures. These ultra-low prices are attracting investors and all-cash offers, which makes it difficult for other buyers’ …

Continue reading

What Customer Service Means Today

What Customer Service Means Today. There was a time when providing great service in real estate meant getting an understanding of the lifestyles of clients and teaching them what they didn’t already know. Simply providing them with information on homes for sale, pricing, current mortgage rates and data relevant to the transaction gave practitioners a …

Continue reading