According to the US Census Bureau  – that bunch who make every party worth attending  – the homeownership rate for the first quarter of this year is 64.2%.  In comparing that number against the same time last year, they stated, “The homeownership rate of 64.2% was not statistically different from the rate in the  first quarter 2017 (63.6%).”  While they may not find a .6% increase to be “statistically different”, I beg to differ.   According to this same bunch of party animals at the US Census Bureau, there are over 251 million people living here in the United States over the age of 18 years old.  When you multiply that number by .6%, you get over $1.5 million MORE people who became homeowners.  I’d say that’s VERY significant.   Before any of you get all technical and wonky on me by saying, “Well, sure, 64.2% is a pretty great number, but that means that there’s still 35.8% of us who aren’t homeow...

For those of us who are complete nerds and sat on the edge of our seats to see if The Fed would decide to raise the overnight lending rate again in their most recent meeting, we were both let down and excited  – no change, of course.  For those of us who aren’t quite so nerdy but do, in fact, care about  what interest rates are doing and will be doing, I wanted to take this moment and interject a little . . . calm.  Let’s take a look at a handful of things, okay? While interest rates today are creeping in the upper 4s to lower 5s, please remember that back in 1981 ( yes , I realize many of you were not even born, but I’m not asking for a show of hands) interest rates peaked just over  18.5% .  Yes, you read that correctly  – about FOUR TIMES the rate we’re dancing with at the mortgage disco today.   The average price of a new home back in 1981 was $83,000.  On a fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage for such a h...

Real estate agents and home buyers alike are feeling the squeeze from the lack of homes on the market.  Don’t despair!  For both real estate agents and home buyers, there’s a great untapped source for finding deals before they ever hit the market: your lender.  If any of you are a bit confused by what I mean when I say “your” lender, I mean . . .  w ell, us.   How do we do this, you ask?  Two words: equity watch.  For the real estate agent who helped their client buy a home, say, seven years ago, we let them know when their client has reached a certain level of equity in their home and prompt the agent to give their client a call with the good news.  It’s a good excuse for them to call, catch up, deliver the great news, and see if their client is ready to sell their home and either upgrade or downsize, depending on their station in life.  Statistics have shown that almost 70% of people sellin...

With my friend’s permission, I’m including an excerpt from a humor column he wrote a few years back.  I have a point, I promise, and I’ll make it below.   All  told, I believe there are at least 764 shades of the color blue that are completely indistinguishable to my eyes, but my wife has the innate ability to differentiate each and every one.   Stranger  still, when I tell her that Cerulean and Celestial look identical to me, she’ll say things like, “Oh, come on.   The  Cerulean has way more red in it, and the Celestial tends to be more yellow. ”   How can “blue” be red or yellow?   Aren’t  we talking about the three primary colors, the basic building blocks of all other colors? I would like to say that this truly shouldn’t matter to me, but I just spent my afternoon painting an entire wall Blue #429 – it has a name, I’m sure, but I dare not mention it for fear that one of you out there will ...

More than a couple of years ago, I witnessed something that makes me laugh and cringe at the same time.  Having lunch at a local restaurant, I spied a real estate agent and a loan originator having what I would characterize as a “first date”. I couldn’t help but overhear little snippets of their conversation, and as far as I could tell, things were going relatively well . . . at least until the agent asked the LO this question: “So, do you like to sit at open houses with agents?”  I immediately looked to the LO’s face awaiting the response.  I didn’t need to hear another single word coming out of the LO’s mouth because his face said everything:  you would have thought the agent had asked him if he enjoyed bobbing for apples in a pool of acid judging by the look on his face.  While his face was communicating complete revulsion, his lips said, “Yes, of course.”  And that’s when I looked over at the agent’s face to see, ...

Some time ago, in a science class I was required to take, I learned something that I actually remembered.   Here in the United States, manufacturers of food and other consumer products are required to list the ingredients in the order of their quantity in said substance, largest to smallest – and that’s the reason that when you look at the ingredient list of a lot of products you see “water” listed first.   And on those items that enter the health-and-wellness category like shampoo, you’ll see another listing on that back label that reads “Active Ingredient”.   In essence, even if the item is, say, 90% water, the active ingredient is the thing that makes the product do what it says it does.   For example, the active ingredient in Head & Shoulders shampoo is Pyrithione Zinc, and its job is to control and eliminate dandruff.   Here’s another way to look at it: if H&S had ALL the other ingredients EXCEPT Pyrithione Zinc, it would probably clean your...

Full disclosure: that’s as salty as the language is going to get in this week’s edition, I promise.   Further, I apologize if I shocke d you with that title, but I believe you’ll see my reasoning in just a moment.   Social media is ubiquitous.   (That’s a fancy word meaning “found everywhere”, and I chose to use it instead of “found everywhere” because it sounds cool – try using it at your next cocktail party to impress your friends.)   Whether we’re at work, school, place of worship, coffee shop, etc., we’re touched by some avenue of social media.   It’s sort of made us a “transparent” society, and there are many good things about that.   However, that transparency often leads to oversharing and the insistence that being rude should be accepted because someone’s “just being honest.”   Let me be honest here: that’s hooey!   (I told you I wouldn’t get salty.) Fire up Instagram or Facebook, and you’ll see people posting, for exampl...