Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Buying or selling a home in 2012? Here’s what you need to know.

View Photo Gallery — How does your city stack up?: The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index offers a monthly assessment of how home prices are faring from city to city. In the most recent report, only one city saw an increase in prices for the month.

By Amanda Abrams,

Matthew Branch and his wife Rachel Sayre decided to finally put down roots in Washington. After several months of searching for a house, the couple just made an offer on a detached home in the Northwest neighborhood of Takoma. Branch, 32, doesn’t seem particularly anxious about diving headfirst into the area’s housing market. “I think it’ll probably appreciate, but it’s anybody’s game,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to see what happens.”

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Tuesday, January 3, 2012

More parents helping kids buy homes

By Les Christie @CNNMoney December 9, 2011: 11:34 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Hey, baby boomers! Pondering what gift to get your kid who's all grown up? For many of your peers, the answer is a house.
One in five baby boomer couples have already given at least one of their children the means to purchase a home -- either buying it outright, furnishing the down payment or co-signing the loan, according to a survey from Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate.

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Mortgage rates fall to record lows

By Les Christie @CNNMoney December 15, 2011: 1:44 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Mortgage rates sunk to record lows again this week.
The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage fell to 3.94%, matching the all-time low hit in early October, according to Freddie Mac's weekly mortgage rate survey. Meanwhile, 15-year fixed-rate loans hit a new record low of 3.21%, surpassing the record set on October 6.

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Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Staging to sell: Tips for homes that need a little sprucing up

View Photo Gallery — Some homeowners pay staging professionals to help make a home more appealing to buyers.

By Ellen Ryan, Published: November 30

Need to sell your house? Your broker may well recommend staging it — usually meaning winnowing down the furniture and accessories to a well-chosen few, artfully highlighting your home’s selling points, and neutralizing paint and personal touches so buyers can imagine it as theirs.

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Thursday, December 1, 2011

When is an offer on a house a contract?

By Harvey S. Jacobs, Thursday, December 1, 1:07 PM

Dear House Lawyer: My wife and I are in the process of buying our first home. On a Monday, our licensed real estate agent prepared our offer using the local standard residential real estate contract. We completed all of the blanks, initialed where indicated, signed all documents and delivered the offer, along with our $10,000 earnest money deposit check, to our agent. He delivered the offer to seller’s real estate agent in person. The list price for the home was $400,000. Our offer was for $350,000. On Wednesday, the seller’s agent e-mailed the seller’s signed counteroffer agreeing to sell the home to us but changed the price to $375,000 and inserted a clause stating that the home gym equipment would not be included.

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A smaller house will make a big difference

By Carla Fried, Janice Revell, Donna Rosato and Tali Yahalom @Money November 14, 2011: 1:19 PM ET

(MONEY Magazine) -- Last year the economic forecasting firm Fiserv predicted that home values would sink around 5% in 2011, and that prices in three-quarters of the nation's major metro areas would fall. The bad news is, the firm wasn't that far off the mark. The good news: In the coming year, Fiserv thinks 95% of the 384 metro areas it tracks will see prices rise.

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Pending-home sales up by most in almost a year

Rick Bowmer / AP

This Nov. 28, 2011 photo, shows a home with a sale pending sign, in Portland, Ore. The number of Americans who signed contracts to buy homes jumped in October to the highest level in a year.

By Reuters

Pending sales of existing U.S. homes surged in October by the most in nearly a year as Americans took advantage of low interest rates for mortgages, data from a real estate trade group showed on Wednesday. The National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in October, rose 10.4 percent to 93.3 from 84.5 in September.
That was the biggest monthly gain since November 2010.

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