Housing Market is a buyer’s market nowNow, if you are a home seller then you need to be weary of the situation. The housing market has become a buyer’s market. The prices are rock-bottom now. Above on that you may have to do lot of repairing chore before you can actually sell your house.

Buyers are becoming more demanding. Rock-bottom prices are just the starting point for them. They will ask for more and demand different things.  Some of the things that you, as a seller may have to do are-

• Repaving the cracked driveway
• New furnace
• Replacing the carpet
• Fill up the home’s heating oil tank (New England)
• Pay the closing costs (California)
• Purchase a home service contract that provides a one year warranty on all of the appliances in the house
• New air conditioning
• Condo association fee for one year
• Two weeks in Hawaii

There is no limit to what a buyer may ask the sellers to do.

Buyers are asking for more concessions and more from the deal. They know that they are in the driver’s seat and some buyers will surely take advantage of it. Buyers are making sure everything is in writing.

During bubble, the actual sales contract which generally contains safeguards for the buyer, was not followed.

But now, he buyers have expanded the contract by adding numbers of clauses. Such clauses now include various facilities and repairing and other matters which are for the benefit of the buyer.

According to the Hope Now coalition, it has helped a huge number of mortgage borrowers About 2 million at-risk borrowers were helped by Hope Now coalition, according to their report, to stay at home. They claim to fix almost 192,000 problem loans during July. This is a record for one-month and the numbers are 6% more than the June numbers.

Hope Now is a coalition of mortgage servicers, counselors, and investors who assembled with a mission to fight foreclosures. Even though they helped a huge number of people, still foreclosure is rising in the country. Almost 91,752 families were engulfed in […] Continue Reading…

 Housing fix, in the form of a new law, supposed to help buyers getting affordable loans. But actually happening?  We discussed about the quick fix law passed by congress in February. The economic stimulus plan has not been able to provide much help. The policymakers raised the mortgage guarantee levels of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from $417,000 to as high as $729,750. This move was supposed to help borrowers of jumbo mortgages by bringing down the mortgage rates which would have increased home sales.

Has it helped in any way? The answer is no. Just see the mortgage rates for […] Continue Reading…

Sales by homeowners increased more than expected in July, as median prices fell 7% from July 2007. But supplies still rise to a record high, pushing prices even lower.

During July, homeowners sold more homes than expected. The price fell 7% in July. The price was affected by the increasing supplies and was pushed lower. Inventory is increasing and so the price is decreasing.

According to, the National Association of Realtors, sales by homeowner was found to be 5 million. The same figure was 4.85 million in June. Though the sales were 13.2% lower than July previous year, but this is […] Continue Reading…

Underwriting control is not able to affect mortgage fraudThe housing market is turbulent and recently govt. has enacted tougher lending standards. So, the normal expectation will be of lowering numbers of fraudulent activities. But the scenario is not as expected.

Even after strict standards, the mortgage fraud is still occurring at a higher number.  According to a report by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute (MARI) such fraud cases are increasing.

If you see the numbers, then you will be shocked. In 2008, during the first three months, the number of fraudulent mortgage issued increased a whopping 42 percent from the last […] Continue Reading…