Mortgage Calculator

Exacerbating this trend is the equity line. People have been cashing in on rapidly rising housing prices with 2nd mortgages, often to pay off credit card debt:

Whilst I was there I got talking to the mortgage consultant. Seems that in this country there are 100% no deposit mortgages, though the interest rate is higher for these. For a 5% deposit, the interest rate is reduced or for the best interest rate, a 10% deposit. Beats Australia where its 10% minimum and you still have to pay for someone elses risk i.e. mortgage insurance.

I just gave our loan officer the go ahead on the mortgage for our house, so the first stressful thing is out of the way for me, at least for a day or two. Hopefully I won’t be second guessing myself on it. He gave us what seemed to be the best combination of payment/interest rate/closing costs and a loan program/process that I was sure I completely understood. At this point in our lives my two most important concerns were the monthly payment and the closing costs cause things are going to be a little tight on both of those. Things like whether we have to pay mortgage insurance, etc., were of high but slightly secondary importance. Next time around when we have some equity in our house and hopefully a more liquid situation in general I’ll spend more time finagling to get the very best deal.

Considering that Governor Doyle hauled in oil executives into a public hearing to lambaste them for their “obscene” profit of less than 10%, I will assume that MGIC will be similarly taken to task by Governor Doyle for their healthy profits.

Then I spent the rest of the day sorting/folding/putting away laundry, working on another website project, and looking at house listings in Surprise, Arizona. The company I work for is going to be relocating us down to Arizona this summer. They have opened up a new call center in Glendale and so we're looking at houses in the area - cities like Glendale, Surprise, and Peoria. The housing prices there are dramatically different than here in CA (of course) so looking at houses there means they're actually affordable for us unlike the houses here. A nice house out there goes for high 200's to low 300's - which is in our price range. Here in CA (Stockton, for example) that will get you a very old, 2 or 3 bedroom fixer-upper.

Of course the exchanges have these products targeted to homebuilders and other companies affected by bubble uncertainty, but individuals could use some hedging, too. What bubble-area homeowners need is a smart mortgage broker who can include options for managing your bubble exposure as part of the loan package.

Mortgage rates have raised and we are waiting for them to come down. We just bought a house (’cept the loan isn’t closed yet so we’re still not yet sure when to celebrate). We will be moving soon out of a house that we have lived in for 5 years (that’s a lot of shit to acquire…)

All these people, living off their imaginary equity! This is one of those times when it pays to be poor, because sooner or later, the bubble will pop:

Bankrate.com profiles 30 cities that are on analyst's housing buble radar screen. The report segregates the cities into three groups: 10 cities in which housing prices will continue to appreciate, 10 cities that will top out, and 10 cities where prices will deflate.

On March 9th Washington State’s Governor Christine Gregoire signed House Bill 2340 which will regulate all Loan Originators in the brokering of residential real estate loans. According to Washington Association of Mortgage Brokers the new legislation requires the following:

When people start defaulting on houses in "hot", overpriced markets, housing prices may collapse in those areas. Cheap houses will pour onto the market and depress construction of new housing.

Lenox Financial Mortgage and other dishonest mortgage brokers look for suckers who believe that they'll "never pay a nickel" in closing costs. Not true. The borrower always pays closing costs, in one form or another, at closing or after.

However, we are number 1 in “Purchase Loans Permitting Negative Amortization”. WOOT! #1!

Last week, Bankrate.com unveiled its forecast for the changing real estate market in the U.S. over the next few years - ten markets where housing prices and values will continue to remain strong, ten markets where appreciation will pretty much top out and the ten markets that are most likely to experience a decline. They talked to experts, studied public and private databases, analyzed market trends and examined the analysis of many others.

At a Risk Index value of 147, we're only about half as risky as the average top-50 metro, according to the latest figures (PDF file) from PMI Mortgage Insurance Co.

Anyway, the PMI Group, which collects real estate data and makes risk assessments of real estate markets is out with their latest (quarterly?) report, ranking US cities most likely to experience a drop in housing prices.

So, at tax time, who declares the kid as a dependent? Who deducts the mortgage insurance? Who deducts charitable donations?

Housing prices will just continue to rise (but is this true?)