Why Pay Rent? In previous posts, we covered an early bill introduced in Congress to provide grants, not tax credits, to certain individuals to use towards a down payment. Joe Biden had proposed a tax credit, but the plan morphed a bit. Now those wacky politicians plan to top themselves! It’s common for government programs to try to pick winners […]
What is a QM Loan? If you’ve read our prior posts or read in more detail Winning Mortgage, Winning Home, a Qualifying Mortgage is one which has to meet a number of tests concerning underwriting, pricing and Ability to Repay (ATR). Why is this important? Lenders prefer to write QM loans because they are easy to sell and they provide […]
Forbearance jumped into the forefront of housing issues in March 2020 with the beginning of Covid. The federal government immediately enacted a plan to allow homeowners to defer payments on mortgages. While it had the ability to do that on mortgages controlled by the federal government, it did not have the authority to do so on private mortgages. The federal […]
The Federal Reserve has propped up markets over the last decade and especially over the last 3 years. It bought $5 trillion of loans in the last two years, more than he prior 23 years combined.. Now the great Fed Unwind is upon us. It’s buying has been a pillar supporting recent jumps in inflation to multi-decade highs. It doesn’t […]
Who hasn’t gone to the Zillow website to look at a house value estimate or to pretend your house is worth what they say or more? Zillow put all that data to use buying homes. When web surfers searched more frequently about a particular submarket, Zillow’s AI concentrated bidding for houses there. The computer algorithms created a ”Zillow Effect” where […]