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Before You Buy A House – Top 10 Tips
1. Pre-qualify for a mortgage. Now you know how much house you can afford before you start looking. This will narrow your search and keep you “real” and not disappointed on houses you can’t afford.
2. Find a good neighborhood. Know the school...
Marketing Tips For Real Estate Agents
1. Add value to your message
The more value you build into your offer, the more likely prospects will be to respond to it. Give your prospects a reason to call you. Offer a buyer's or seller's information kit.
Know an interior decorator?...
Real Estate Marketing Online -- The Power Of Headlines
Real estate marketing online is about getting people to stop when they visit your website.
Then you must get them to follow a desired path through the site. This path leads to your ultimate goal, which involves the reader contacting you directly...
Selling A Home – What Attachments Stay or Go?
The home selling and buying process can be confusing. This is especially true when it is a FSBO (for sale by owner) operation. It’s even tougher when neither the seller nor the buyer is in the real estate business. This article sorts through what...
Visions of Sugar Plums and Holiday Safety
Ho, Ho, Ho, Holiday greetings to you!
Every year at this time I can't help but notice the beautiful holiday lighting and adornment. It's great to see that even homes with a "For Sale" sign on the front lawn have been bedazzled with lights! But...
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Home Equity – Let The Market Eliminate Your Private Mortgage Insurance
In decades past, most people who were interested in obtaining a home loan were required to put down at least 20% of the purchase price. Those days are gone, and as home prices have risen faster than incomes, the average down payment required by lenders has dropped. In fact, it is often possible to buy a home with no down payment at all. Nationally, the average down payment is a 3%. It’s nice to be able to buy a home with such a small amount of ready cash, but there is a downside – if the down payment is less than 20%, the lender requires that private mortgage insurance (PMI) be added to the house note.
No one likes to pay PMI; the payment doesn’t go towards paying off the house and the payments aren’t tax deductible. And the PMI payments aren’t trivial; the monthly PMI payment on a home priced at the U.S. median price of $206,000 with a 3% down payment is $129. Lenders require that borrowers pay PMI until the borrowed amount becomes less than 80% of the value of the home. In years past, this has meant that homeowners had to pay PMI until they had paid enough of the loan balance to reduce the debt to less than 80%. Times have changed, however, and many homeowners may be eligible for a faster way to avoid the monthly PMI payments.
The exploding real estate market has driven home prices higher than ever. Not only are the prices high, but the rate at which they are increasing is astonishing. In some parts of the country, home prices have doubled or even tripled in the last five years alone. The
savvy homeowner should keep an eye on the price of housing in their local market, as the equity in his or her home may rise above 20% through market appreciation alone. In most markets, this is often happening quickly enough that homeowners may be able to eliminate PMI less than two years after purchase, even if they put a minimum amount of money down on the home.
A home appraisal is required to establish the equity to debt ratio of the loan, and this typically costs several hundred dollars. As that figure represents only a few months’ PMI payments, most everyone would be glad to pay for an appraisal. Before doing so, contact your lender, as some lenders require PMI for a specific length of time before it can be dropped. No one likes to pay for private mortgage insurance, and thanks to an unusually aggressive real estate market, few homebuyers today should have to pay it for very long.
About the Author: ©Copyright 2005 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier is the owner of Retro Marketing, a firm devoted to informational Websites, including http://www.End-Your-Debt.com, a Website devoted to debt consolidation information and http://www.HomeEquityHelp.net, a site devoted to information on home equity loans.
Source: www.isnare.com
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