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There are a number of ways to lower your monthly payments on your mortgage. The most popular is certainly refinancing, because you can lower your rate, extend your mortgage back out another 30 years, or eliminate mortgage insurance. But refinancing often carries fees and can be an intensive process. Another common way people lower their monthly…

This is a common question I am asked by clients, and I would say it is a pretty good question to ask. If you watch the news, there are reports seemingly ever day which contradict each other on the topic of down payments. Some will say put at least 20% down to avoid mortgage insurance and have…

Mortgage preapproval letters have become a standard practice in the home buying process. Most sellers would like something of substance from a lender stating that you actually have the means to buy their house before making it unavailable to other buyers. Why take their house off the market and go into contract with you, when you could…

So we’ve discussed conventional and FHA mortgages, but an important type of FHA mortgage is the FHA 203k mortgage. The FHA 203k mortgage was created to help people buy houses which need repairs. Prior to the 203k loans, lenders were becoming increasingly strict when it came to lending on a house which needed work. But with the advent of this new FHA…

As I discussed last week, mortgage insurance is a necessary evil for many prospective home buyers, especially those who are first time home buyers. It is a tool which allows individuals to buy the home of their dreams even if their credit is less than perfect or their down payment is less than 20 percent. This insurance…

As the year comes to an end and we enter December, the crunch begins to meet year-end closing deadlines. There are a number of reasons why people want to close by the end of the year, but most of them revolve around taxes. And I find that every year during this first week of December,…

First Time Home Buyer Series Overview: Over the next couple of months I will be doing the most comprehensive blog series on becoming a “First Time Home Buyer” you have ever seen! We are going to tackle 9 different topics that are crucial to making an often-dreadful process, amazing! These topics include: What does it…

What does becoming a homeowner actually mean? For this entry of the “First Time Home Buyers” series we are going to talk about what becoming a homeowner actually means. For most people the perceived answer to that question is very simple: owning a home. Well… I hate to be the bearer of bad news but…