We’re bombarded by information about the US housing market, both good news and bad. The challenge for most homeowners is figuring out what information is real, what is applicable to your local community and how it affects you personally. Many homeowners have accepted that selling their home in today’s economic environment doesn’t make sense. The question is how will you know when the market changes and you can pursue selling your home.

My sister, a new fairly new realtor in Maine, asked me to join her at a planning workshop taught by Alan Reed Rice, operating partner of Keller Williams Realty in Bedford, NH. While I’ve got lots of homeowner experience buying and selling homes, it was invaluable meeting and learning with more than 50 folks involved in real estate. What I learned are the 5 statistics every US homeowners can use to monitor the real estate market where they live. READ MORE

The appraisal is key to determining how large a mortgage a home owner can get to finance their home. While you may get your mortgage through a bank, these mortgages are packaged up and ultimately purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) has established a new set of uniform appraisal guidelines to govern all loans sold to these agencies, i.e. all conventional loans (does not apply to FHA, VA or USDA loans).

The industry is in an uproar because these guidelines will create many new problems while trying to solve existing ones. The bottom line is the bank controls the appraiser assigned to each transaction and there is to be no communication between the appraiser and other parties involved in the transaction. This is scary because you have little insight into what is happening or why. READ MORE