Peter G. Miller is a syndicated real estate and personal finance columnist who appears 70 newspapers. For more information about mortgages, please visit http://www.Mortgage-Lenders-Plus.com
When it comes to lifetime markers getting a first mortgage is a major event. With a mortgage you''re magically transformed from occupant to owner and from tenant to titleholder.
After watching home values soar during the past few years it looks as if real estate reality is finally about to set in. The home-pricing forecast for 2006 is mild and modest with higher prices projected for the year but not the double-digit increases seen in 2005.
We take long-term mortgages for granted today, but it wasn't always that way. Long ago it was likely that if you financed a home you borrowed money with a five-year "term" mortgage -- and even then you needed 50 percent down. When the five years was up, you went and got a replacement loan.
It's not easy to buy a first home, so here's a suggestion that may be surprising: Instead of buying one residence, buy several. What I'm suggesting has nothing to do with late night infomercials or books that promise fast and easy wealth from real estate. Instead, many first-time buyers can benefit from an interesting quirk in the mortgage system.
If you bought a home in the past few years the odds are overwhelming that your equity increased. According to the National Association of Realtors, the value of a typical home grew by 12.6 percent last year. That means a house worth 184,100 at the end of 2004 was likely to be valued at 207,300 at the start of this year -- an increase of 23,200.
One of the great mysteries of our time concerns the matter of when to refinance. It used to be that borrowers would refinance only when rates fell by 2 full percentage points, a standard which makes no sense in today's marketplace.
Let's be honest: April 15th is a day of reckoning, the moment when we find out what we really owe for taxes. In households nationwide wallets are drained and many who were rich on the 14th are greatly impoverished by the 16th.
There's little doubt that we're borrowing more and there's also little doubt that credit is one of the great conveniences of modern life. That said, like Goldilocks you want to borrow the amount that's just right -- and no more.
Credit scores are enormously important to both borrowers and mortgage lenders. In the same way that doing better in work, sports or at school produces real benefits, the same is true with credit scores.
full story
printer version
