In the final act of the movie The Pink Panther Strikes Again , Inspector Clouseau visits a quaint country inn located in the Bavarian Alps where he and the innkeeper use English as their common language – the accents are cheesy, to say the least.   At any rate, as Clouseau has picked up his room key from the innkeeper and is making his way out the door, he spies a dog lying in the doorway.   Clouseau turns to the innkeeper and asks, “Does your dog bite?”   Taking the pipe out of his mouth, the innkeeper gives him a very nonchalant, “No.”   Clouseau kneels down and reaches his hand out to pet the dog while saying, “Nice doggy.”   (I’m guessing the common language between Clouseau and the dog was English, too.)   Just as he does this, the dog starts barking furiously and snaps his teeth onto Clouseau’s hand.   Upon recovering his hand from the dog’s jaws, Clouseau stands upright and shoots a very stern look at the innkeeper and says, “I thought you s...

This is a reprint from about nine months ago, but I thought the timing is right to revisit this subject.   Recently, I saw this gentleman at the gym whose upper body was almost entirely covered in tattoos.   I struck up a conversation with him and learned that it took well over 100 hours, and it cost $85/hour.   As we continued to chat, I was doing the math in my head: $85 X 100 hours = $8,500 !   Being the mortgage geek that I am, my next thought was, “I’m staring at a walking, talking down payment on a house!”   There’s a huge misconception floating out there that 20% is required as a down payment.   There are those products that do require such an amount, but there are so many others that don’t.   A very popular loan option only requires 3.5%.   In the case of my new gym acquaintance, $8,500 represents a 3.5% down payment on a $242,000 mortgage – that’s not a palace, but that amount of money could buy a modest home in a nice neighborho...

When a real estate agent hears the term “low inventory” these days, 9 times out of 10 you’ll see them make a face like they’ve just been told they’re about to receive a mandatory colonic.   (Quite often, that tenth person really enjoys colonics, so it’s sort of hard to gauge how they feel about . . . all that.)   We’ve reached sort of a weird spot in the housing market right now: house values are on the rise, the economy is displaying signs of good health, interest rates are still really good, down-payment-assistance options are more abundant, and yet the availability of houses is relatively scarce.   THIS is where we separate the GREAT agents from the good ones! If the local housing market were represented by a pie, let’s keep it simple and cut it up into four pieces: great homes, good homes, bad homes, and worse homes.   Because inventory is so low, the first two slices – great and good homes – are getting gobbled up, if you will, straight out of the ove...

Buckle up and get ready to have your mind blown!   Okay, it’s not THAT mind blowing – some of you might even say, “well, duh” – but it’s still interesting. The economists (that’s a fancy term for “the smart folks”) at the New York Federal Reserve published the results of a study, which reveal that changes in down payment requirements have MORE influence over home buyers’ willingness to buy than changes in rates.   Follow me on this – you’ll be glad you did! Surveying both buyers and renters, those smarty pants at the Fed found that the effect of interest rates may be overrated when compared to changes in down payment requirements.   The study found: • Dropping the down payment from 20% to 5% INCREASES the willingness to purchase, on average, by 15% among buyers and 40% among renters • Decreasing the interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate loan only raised the willingness to purchase by 5%, on average If you’re straddling the fence between BUY RIG...