We assist people with understanding and improving their credit scores with great regularity. One of the questions that comes up frequently is why credit scores go up and down so frequently? Credit Scores are made up of five main components.
The first is making your payments on time (35% of your score). If you make, even one late payment in the very recent past, your score will drop dramatically. The second component is called your utilization ratio (30% ...
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And you know what that means: It’s time for my annual Real Estate & Mortgage Predictions! After researching my mortgage knowledge base for 2019, the following is my take:
–Interest Rates are not moving a whole lot – Between the trade wards, fears of an impending recession, and continued low inflation, we have a formula for rates staying steady.
-ARM’s will garner more market share – With fixed rates up around a percentage point higher, home ...
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Explore These Options to Finance.
Whether you are looking to freshen up or expand your existing home or a new home you are considering purchasing, the question always comes up about how to pay for this. The answer to this question depends somewhat on how much you are talking about financing and how long you believe it will take you to repay. Let’s take them one at a time. If you are trying to renovate the home you ...
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If you are thinking about purchasing a home in the next year, the sooner you start looking, the better. Why start so soon? There are a lot of moving parts to buying a home. Getting a plan in place is the key to success.
Let’s look at all the moving parts:
– Make the decision to purchase and set an ideal time to close on a home. For example, when does your lease expire?
– Look into a mortgage pre-approval. ...
Continue Reading →In this second video entry, Scott discusses the advantages of consolidating your debt when you refinance your home.
Until Next Time!
The FMT
1.15.2019
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Oddly enough, long-term interest rates started the year just slightly higher than they were one year ago. We had a few periods during the course of last year where rates were slightly above 5% for a 30 year fixed. With the recent volatility in the stock market and analysts starting to predict a recession in the next couple of years, interest rates have come down significantly since October, when they last peaked.
We now stand in the mid ...
Rent Before You Buy – It is always a good idea to get a year or so under your belt as a tenant so you can understand some of the challenges that come with homeownership. Put yourself in the shoes of your landlord. Lenders like to see a track record of making housing payments prior to application and to get you used to making a house payment prior to owning.
Check Your Credit Report & Scores – ...
Buyers are Still out in Force – There is still very strong demand for housing, which means that you do not have to wait for the spring buying season to get ample interest. We are still seeing multiple offers frequently.
Less Sellers – Since most people believe they should wait and told spring to sell, there is less competition.
It is Still a Perfect Time to Move-Up – With rates moving down slightly over the last ...
• Get a copy of your credit report through www.MyFico.com. This will give us your true mortgage scores without a hard inquiry on your credit. You can also get a free copy of your report through someone like www.freecreditreport.com but it won’t give you the scores we use. There are 48 different FICO scoring models but only one that mortgage lenders use. No surprise, that this model is more conservative than most.
• Through an educational process, we can assist with ...
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