Choice Real Estate®'s Blog: Commentary

1) Know your wants & needs- If you’re not certain about your requirements and desires, then you may find they’re not met when the house is completed and you’re ready to move in. Try going room by room and figuring out what features of your current home are lacking or need improvement.

2) Know your builder- A great floor plan isn’t worth much if the builder doesn’t deliver what’s promised. Check past customers, suppliers and subcontractors for references. J.D. Powers and Associates conducts an annual survey of home-builder satisfaction in 24 large markets (www.JDPower.com). Small builders warrant a Dun & Bradstreet check by your agent to determine their financial soundness, especially under current market conditions.

3) Get it in writing- Make sure…

Buyers of newly constructed homes too often go it alone when they don't need to and probably shouldn't.  Yes, builders usually have a sales office with a friendly representative (who may not be a Realtor) who can show you home designs and site plans, answer questions and write up a purchase contract. 

What could be easier? Why would you want or need to enlist the assistance of a Realtor? Because going it alone isn't the best idea for a number of important reasons.  And having a Realtor on your side shouldn't cost you a dime, so why risk it? 

Just as with the purchase of an existing home, having the aid and counsel of a "buyer's agent" can help you get the most out of the process, while helping to prevent all kinds of problems.  To make sure that the…

Interest rates for 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages have increased from 4.9% to 5.6% in the last two weeks alone.

Yields on 10-year Treasury bonds have doubled in the last year--with no end in sight for further increases.

The Federal Government is overspending its resources this fiscal year alone by $2 trillion, will do virtually the same thing again next fiscal year, and will be running something like $1 trillion annual spending deficits as far as the eye can see.

The Federal Government already has a $13.4 trillion debt and an unfunded future liability whose present cost is already over an additional $100 trillion.

The Nation has a $10 trillion accumulated trade deficit which is growing at the rate of well over half a trillion additional dollars…

the Federal Reserve & the U.S. Govt.'s currency ownership - Opinion
The Federal Reserve's Alan Greenspan causes the housing market debacle by creating cheap credit and then his successor, Ben Bernanke, remedies the housing market debacle by creating even vastly cheaper credit?

And, of course, by flooding the National currency supply with hundreds of billions of new Federal Reserve Notes.

In fact, the present Federal Reserve interest rate is give-away credit, because a 3% interbank lending rate in an inflating economy which already has a 3% inflation rate is effectively interest-free credit.

This is either outright lunacy or simply Wall Street looking out for itself at everyone else's expense.

And the Federal Reserve isn't the Bank of the…

Proposed economic stimulus package -Opinion-
How can redistributing income from those who earned it to those who didn't  "stimulate" any economy?

If it could, we'd already have the most "stimulated" economy on earth because, over the last four decades, we've already redistributed at least $9 trillion from those who earned it to those who didn't.

If the $9 trillion redistribution had worked, the domestic economy would need no "stimulation".

And, if the $9 trillion redistribution didn't work, how's another temporary $150 billion redistribution going to work any better?

Indeed, the $9 trillion redistribution has de-stimulated the domestic economy, and another $150 redistribution will further de-stimulate the domestic economy.

One can't replace…

Commentary
Apparently the Congress is now poised to put the Federal Housing Administration in the business of insuring $400,000 home loans to buyers with $55,000 annual incomes who finance 98.5% of home purchase prices.

And apparently at subsidized interest rates too.  Incredibly, a Republican President supports this.

Why, after private lenders have already savaged national and international credit markets with reckless subprime home lending, is the Congress now directing the Federal Government, at taxpayers' expense, to either repeat the private lenders' mistakes and/or bail them out of their mistakes?

How does this advance anything?  Why should people making $55,000 a year be buying $400,000 homes with 1.5% down payments anyway?  And why should… Read Full Post

Commentary- U.S. home loan "bailout" for ARM borrowers
Where does the U.S. Constitution grant the Federal legislature the power to rescind otherwise legal mortgage contracts between private lenders and private borrowers?

Apparently, this proposal applies only to sub-prime borrowers who can presumably pay their mortgages before their mortgage interest rates adjust but presumably won't be able to after the rates adjust.

So, if you can pay your mortgage after its rate adjusts, you must do so.

But, if your neighbor can't, the Federal nanny steps in and prevents your neighbor's mortgage holder (and all the securitized investors behind it) from exercising their contract rights if they choose to do so.

So guess who's paying the cost of what otherwise…