Pending home sales, a measure of home contract signings, shot up in the month of November, reaching its highest level on record in two-and-a-half years, the National Association of Realtors said. It’s also the third consecutive month of sales increases. The NAR Pending Home Sales Index doesn’t measure home closings, but it does function as a forward-looking indicator by studying real estate contracts signed in order to gauge future closing levels. The index rose 1.7% to 106.4 in November, up […]

The new year is expected to bring about a brighter housing market, thanks to an improving job market and record-breaking mortgage rates. “Hopefully, we’ll look back at 2012 as a transition year,” says Steve Storti, a senior vice president of marketing at Prudential Fox & Roach REALTORS®. “Just as you can only declare a recession after the fact, maybe we’ll be able to say this is when it changed over.” Home values are moving up across the country. For example, […]

Fixed-rate mortgages ended the year by hovering near record-breaking lows and keeping home buyer affordability high, Freddie Mac reports in its weekly mortgage market survey. “The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.66 percent for 2012, the lowest annual average in at least 65 years,” says Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “Rates on 30-year fixed mortgages were nearly 0.6 percentage points below that of the beginning of the year, which translates into an interest payment savings of nearly $98,600 over the […]

The origination of Feng Shui is, unsurprisingly, from the far reaches of China more than two millenniums ago where its primary use was to ward off bad luck. Unlike most eastern spiritual processes, gay realtor reports Feng Shui has been adopted in western culture as well in a manner mixing both the essentiality of good luck with traditional ambiance. Feng Shui in its core is simply put as a fine way to decorate your house for those more organized minded […]

The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it will no longer be selling foreclosed homes to a land bank for $100 each because it believes the homes could get far more by selling them on the open market, The Plain Dealer reports. HUD’s National First Look Program was an effort to fight neighborhood blight in the city by allowing the Cuyahoga County Land Bank to acquire foreclosed properties and rehab or demolish them. The land bank, formed in 2009, […]

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In the absence of significant economic data or market movement, and in the presence of more economic and policy confusion than ever in my lifetime among civilians and professionals alike — here an early jump on prospects for the new year. All optimistic outlooks have housing as the primary ingredient, which is true as far as obvious thinking goes. We have all-time low rates and affordability, and the pig of distressed resales is departing the python in tidy bacon slices, […]

Process server Michael Root says that he knows how angry foreclosure notices can make homeowners — because one property owner almost killed him and members of his family. As it turned out, Root wasn’t even bringing a foreclosure notice when, he said, he was attacked in June by a homeowner in Wingdale, NY; it was a notice about a credit card bill. But according to Root, the man didn’t know that and he’d already been served notice of foreclosure on his […]

Full service buying and selling agent serving the East Valley. Buying a home can be an overwhelming task. There’s so much lingo, plus lending guidelines and standards keep changing nearly every day, and no one’s quite sure where housing values will be in 6 months, 12 months or longer. If you need some help making a decision to buy or not buy, invest now or later, or just want to chat about your options, you’re in the right place. Doug […]

Forbes partnered with Nextdoor.com, a social network for neighborhoods, to determine the friendliest towns in America. A total of 500 towns with populations between 5,500 and 150,000 were included in the study and ranked on the percentage of owner-occupied homes, crime rate, charitable giving, and percentage of college graduates. Studies have shown home ownership can increase neighborhood stability and college-educated people have been found to display more civic engagement. The following towns emerged as the top 6 friendliest towns in […]