Adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) can be difficult to understand with a language of their own. So learn your cap, index and reset terms. Here are 10 of the most important terms. The first is “Cap” which is the top limit on the amount the interest rate can increase during a certain period of an adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM. Every ARM has two caps: a periodic cap, which limits the periodic changes to the interest allowed in the loan agreement, and a lifetime cap, which governs the total increase that can be imposed during the life of the loan.

click here for article

search for : adjustable-rate mortgage

These days, approximately one in five mortgage applicants opts for an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM). The element of an ARM least easily understood is the index. With an ARM, two main factors determine the rate you pay: the index and the margin. The index is a rate set by market forces and published by a neutral third party. The margin is an agreed-upon number of percentage points that is added to the index to determine your rate. A thorough mortgage shopper will run across a bunch of acronyms to denote various ARM indexes, such as COFI, LIBOR, MAT and CMT. Each index responds at its own peculiar pace to the economy’s ups and downs.

click here for article

search for : adjustable-rate mortgage, ARM

Homeowners today treat their houses like piggy banks, readily transforming their equity into cash and credit. You have home equity loans (still sometimes called second mortgages), home equity lines of credit and reverse mortgages. Then there’s cash-out refinancing. It usually doesn’t make sense to refinance a higher amount at a higher rate. If your current mortgage is at a lower interest rate than you could get now by refinancing, it’s probably better to get a home equity loan.

click here for article

search for : piggy bank, home equity loans, second mortgages

Title insurance — for a lot of homebuyers — is a mystery. You go to settlement, and among the many items you have to pay is a large sum of money for Owners and Lenders Title Insurance. You pay it, primarily because the title attorney tells you that you will not get your loan unless the lender has adequate insurance. Several months later, your insurance policy is mailed to you by the settlement company. You tuck it away with the rest of your home-purchase documents, and then forget about it.

click here for article

search for : Title insurance, Owners and Lenders Title Insurance, settlement company

Two weeks ago, the 10-year T-note traded under 4.65 percent; yesterday it touched 4.9 percent. Mortgages — as always, following the 10-year in lockstep — were trying to break 6.25 percent going down; now they are trying to hold 6.5 percent while going up. The case for holding is poor. Rates are rising because the global economy is taking off. Forget all the thoughts of drag from concerted tightening by central banks, Europe to top out, America to slide near recession on weak housing and manufacturing, Asian exports to be undercut by American weakness.

click here for article

search for : 10-year T-note

New houses are much more durable. Modern copper water pipes, for example, will easily last the life of the structure, which certainly can’t be said for the rust-prone galvanized steel pipe found in most older homes. And the “engineered lumber” used in today’s houses — much of it made from mill waste that used to be thrown out or burned — is stronger pound for pound than the solid-sawn lumber used by builders of yore. Even modern glass is better: While the French doors in old houses contain plain glass that shatters into dagger-like shards, the tempered glass required in modern doors crumbles into harmless little granules when broken.

click here for article

search for : engineered lumber, French doors

Nationwide, the number of foreclosures is up more than 60 percent compared to this same time last year. It’s not quite a crisis in our area, but there are many folks facing the possibility of losing their home. That can leave them vulnerable and promises of foreclosure rescue often wind up leaving them in ruins. For a family that doesn’t want to be named, though the answer came with a knock at the door and a company willing to step in. They claim the company offered to talk to the mortgage company for them, take over ownership of the home and leave the mortgage in their name — then rent the home back to them at a price that was lower than their mortgage. The homeowners would also have the chance to re-buy the home after a couple of years.

click here for article

search for : foreclosures, foreclosure rescue

I have owned a two-unit apartment building for the last four years. I have month-to-month tenants in one of the units that started renting there after I bought the building. They have a clearly written agreement that states they are the only two tenants and no subletting or other tenants are permitted. However, we are about 90 percent sure that someone else has moved in for the last nine months. He never comes or goes and yet he’s there day and night, seven days a week. How do we prove it and what recourse do we have?

click here for article

search for : apartment building, subletting

Lack of communication is often one of the biggest complaints that many boards receive. Yet, good communication is a fundamental imperative of every homeowner association. If the board is to succeed with its objectives, it needs cooperation from the members. How is this cooperation best obtained? The board needs to identify priority targets to aim for. Hitting each target requires a process to achieve a positive objective that will improve the HOA.

click here for article

search for : homeowner association, HOA

Following the subprime mortgage market collapse, new loans are down, and lenders are turning back to safer – less profitable – offerings. But with tougher competition and a shrinking market, they’re getting a little more creative. In January, more than 60 percent of all mortgage loans were made to prime customers with FICO scores of 650 or more. Those customers most often go the traditional 30-year fixed-rate route – a simple, unsexy product that offers lenders little room to differentiate or to squeeze more profits out of their loans.

search for : subprime mortgage, 30-year fixed-rate route

Recently buyers who were in contract to purchase a home in Oakland, Calif., asked the seller to credit them money in escrow. The money was to be applied toward repairs that were recommended in the course of the buyers’ inspections. The sellers were offended. They had agreed to sell for significantly less than their asking price. They weren’t inclined to make any further concessions. So they turned down the buyers’ request and told their agent to put the house back on the market. The buyers, realizing that they were buying the house at a fair price, removed their inspection contingency and the sale went through.

click here for article

search for : credit them money in escrow, inspection contingency

Recently listed is this one of a kind, 2.87 acre Waterfront Lot with a beautiful view of W. KERR SCOTT LAKE.

It features easy lake access and is dock approved.

The lot is alredy cleared and is ready for building your beautiful home.

Important for lake lots, the property has been “Perc” tested and approved for a septic system for a 3 Bedroom 2 Bath home.

$400,000 for this unique NC lakefront property.

Contact Greg Stikeleather, Broker, 704.880.5247 or email Greg at grstike@charter.net

click here for more information

Americans, it seems, are rediscovering the pleasures of their own backyards. For many what was once a place for casual barbecues with friends has now become a full-fledged room with all the amenities of the indoors: gourmet appliances, light fixtures, cushioned furniture and even flat-screen televisions. In colder parts of the country, homeowners are putting in heat lamps and fireplaces so they can lounge outside almost any time of year.

click here for article

search for : backyard, barbecue

A mortgage broker is just the ticket when you are a “story loan.” What I mean by that is the lender has to understand your circumstances in order to approve the loan. Because a mortgage broker can access multiple lenders a lot more efficiently than you can on your own, story loans often benefit from using a mortgage broker. I’m a fan of using an upfront mortgage broker, a term coined by Jack Guttentag and explained by him in the Bankrate column “Want your mortgage wholesale? Try an upfront broker.” You should be able to get a loan secured by the equity in your home; you’ll just pay a higher interest rate based on your poor credit score.

click here for article

search for : mortgage broker, Bankrate, Want your mortgage wholesale?

Thanks to abnormally low mortgage interest rates, home sellers had an extremely favorable “seller’s market” for the last few years. That means there were more qualified home buyers in the market than there were homes available for sale. Homes often sold in just a few days or weeks. Typical home sale prices appreciated 10 percent or more annually for the last few years in many communities. Since 2000, the average U.S. home has doubled in market value, according to the National Association of Realtors.

click here for article

search for : mortgage interest rate, home buyer

More so than with any other room, remodeling a bathroom can increase your home’s resale value. In fact, a moderate-sized bathroom remodel, which costs about $10,499, brings a 102 percent return on your investment, according to the 2005 Cost vs. Value Report published by the National Associa-tion of Realtors in REALTOR Magazine and by Hanley-Wood in Remodeling magazine.

click here for article

search for : remodeling a bathroom, home’s resale value, bathroom remodel

The woods are full of agents these days, and many are beginners. Here are the eight questions you can ask to separate the average agents from the experienced heavy hitters. Whether you’re buying or selling, the difference between having an average real-estate agent or a superstar can mean thousands of dollars in your pocket. It can mean selling your home for top dollar (stellar) or losing the house of your dreams to a more organized buyer (decidedly not stellar).

click here for article

search for : real-estate agent

One out of every three low-income borrower falls behind on bill payments in a typical year, one out of every four now pays more than 40 percent of their income on debt payments and the total debt held by low-income households has soared by 308 percent during the last 15 years. A recent National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC) survey found consumers universally ignore the fundamentals of sound financial management, such as budgeting and tracking expenses, ordering free credit reports, and managing debt. In another study by Bankrate, Inc. researchers found 34 percent of home owners do not know what type of mortgage they own. The study also said 34 percent of homeowners with adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) do not know what they will do when their loan readjusts.

click here for article

The whole sorry mess of high-interest-rate mortgages and excessive foreclosures among buyers of low-cost starter homes is too big and complex to pin on mortgage brokers alone. Months of investigating and numerous stories by Observer reporters have uncovered instances of inflated home appraisals, erroneous financial information on mortgage papers, and high-pressure sales tactics, as well as a lack of resources for counseling to avert foreclosures. The result: Foreclosures in this region are at record levels. In some neighborhoods excessive foreclosures are lowering property values. It’s all part of a national wave of foreclosures so big it’s chilling the whole lending industry.

click here for article

search for : high-interest-rate mortgage, foreclosures, low-cost starter home

The question is, can you really afford to pay for a house and still save for retirement. Will you have sufficient income to pay the mortgage, insurance, real estate taxes, utilities and maintenance costs and still sock away enough in 401(k)s and other retirement plans so you’ll have an adequate nest egg when you retire? That can be a tough call. For one thing, you’ve got to have a sense of how much of your annual income you should be saving for retirement. You’ve also got to factor in future earnings prospects. After all, things could be tight now and for the next couple of years. But if your salary is likely to rise significantly in the not too distant future, then you’ll probably have a lot more wiggle room after housing costs, allowing you to ramp up your retirement savings effort.

click here for article

search for : mortgage, insurance, real estate taxes, retirement savings

Many North Carolinians enjoy buying, restoring and occupying older homes. Today’s NYTimes home section contains an interesting story about Bob Weinstein, a happy homeowner in Sag Harbor, in the little gray house on Suffolk Street he had owned for a decade. It was a quiet second home on a lot thick with old-growth trees, away from the busiest parts of the roughly 260-year-old former whaling village on the South Fork of Long Island, but a short walk from a downtown lined with restaurants and small shops.

click here for article

The first place to go to after a natural disaster is to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s online listing of Federal Disaster Areas to see if your area has been declared as a disaster area. This announcement is what gets the ball rolling on whether you can declare deductions on your taxes from loss of uninsured property and for losses not covered by your homeowner’s policy. There have already been 26 Presidentially-declared disaster areas in 2007. These are locales where damage to property and life exceeded the normal damage from natural disasters.

click here for article

search for : Federal Emergency Management, uninsured property, homeowner’s policy

During the home-buying process, there’s more to negotiation than just price and terms. In the market of the past, buyers had nothing to go for except the highest price as possible, no home inspection, and a home warranty if they wanted to buy it themselves. Today, buyers have a lot more negotiation on their side, but even if the seller balks at some of your requests, it still makes sense to put certain protective clauses, warranties and insurance policies in place to protect your most valuable asset.

click here for article

search for : home-buying, home inspection, home warranty

Increased real estate ownership is a national goal which has produced helpful and useful national policies. For instance, we encourage homeownership by tilting the tax system to favor owners. As a property owner you can write off property taxes, you can deduct mortgage interest in most cases and when you sell you can shelter profits of up to $500,000 if married and $250,000 if single from federal taxes. We do these things because we believe that ownership gives people a greater stake in local communities and because owning a home affords individuals a certain ego, status and financial standing. We also encourage ownership for a very simple reason: Money. In addition to all the good qualities associated with ownership, each real estate transaction generates substantial transfer taxes, brokerage commissions, loan fees, insurance charges and legal fees.

click here for article

search for : real estate ownership, homeownership, mortgage interest

As anyone who’s ever tried to sell a house will tell you, bad weather can definitely affect your ability to sell a home. If the weather is terrible, nobody comes out to shop, nobody makes offers, and sales numbers fizzle. Well, we’ve just witnessed the “bad weather” impact on a national scale. After three straight months of steadily rising home sales nationwide, the stretch of stormy and frigid weather that hit many parts of the country in the early Spring took a chunk out of home sales numbers for the month — they were down by 8.4 percent. The chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, Dr. David Lereah, said the sharp decline was not a total surprise. “For months,” he said, “we’ve been expecting a weather ‘hit’ on home sales” — and it finally arrived with a solid punch.

click here for article

search for : sell a house, home sales numbers, National Association of Realtors

A counteroffer is a rejection of the offer (or a previous counteroffer) to which it is a response. This is an important point for sellers to remember in this “normal” market in which we now find ourselves. Of course, it is an important point for buyers to remember as well. A recent memo from the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) legal department emphasizes the point that, when one makes a counteroffer, that constitutes a rejection of the earlier offer.

click here for article

If you’re looking to cut back on household expenses, a good place to start is with those nagging bills that never go away for good. We’re living in the age of surreptitious bill-creep. Rising energy prices and our growing collections of gadgets gradually push utility bills higher. And extras like text-messaging on cellphones, digital cable and credit-card rewards programs add little fees that nevertheless add up. At the same time, the Internet, with sites like LowerMyBills.com, is supposed to make it easier to hunt down deals and comparison-shop for low prices.

click here for article

As the start of the home buying season kicks into gear, there are five things every first-time home buyer should think about before actually purchasing a new home. The first thing you should do is to check your credit report and find out what your score is. Knowing what your credit looks like will give you an idea of what kind of terms you’ll get from lenders. The higher your credit score, the better loan terms and interest rates you’ll be able to get. If your credit is low, say in the 620 and below range, it may be wise to take steps to improve your credit score before getting a mortgage for a new house.

click here for article

search for : first-time home buyer, credit score

Owning a second home in Europe is surely many people’s idea of a dream come true. Problem is, the commute can be a nightmare. But a new crop of airlines may offer a solution for second-home owners willing to shell out a couple of thousand dollars for a quick trip to their weekend getaway. There are now four all-business-class airlines operating primarily between New York and Paris or London, with some flights to London from Washington and Las Vegas as well.

click here for article

search for : Owning a second home, second-home owners

If you watch local news or spend time on the Internet, you may have heard alarming stories about a new way of lock-picking called “lock bumping” or “key bumping.” Security experts in Europe and, more recently, the United States have declared lock bumping a clear and present danger to anyone who secures their valuables using pin-tumbler locks, which happens to include the vast majority of American houses. But what is lock bumping? And will the possible proliferation of lock bumping really affect the average American, or is it just one more bogus, media-fueled boogey man a la killer bees and Y2K?

click here for article

search for : lock bumping, key bumping