When you bid on a home, you usually open negotiations with a deliberately low offer.
Short sales are different.
Lenders must approve any deal that allows a home to be sold for less than what’s owed on the mortgage, and it can take weeks, sometimes months, for them to evaluate and approve (or reject) each offer.
That [...]

Lenders are offering traditional fixed-rate mortgages for less than 5% in nine of the 10 major cities we surveyed this month.

That’s quite an improvement from July when only one of the 10 cities we looked at had those loans available for less than 5%.
It’s nearly as good as what we found in November, when average [...]

Within three days of applying for a loan, you’ll get a “Good Faith Estimate” that lays out all of the terms and fees for the mortgage you want.

But are you getting the best possible deal?
On Jan. 1 the government required lenders to start using a new, standardized GFE that can help you decide.
On the last [...]

It’s been and up and down year for mortgage rates, but since a low point back at the beginning of December, we have seen a pretty steady rise in the national average of the 30-year fixed mortgage rate. However, this past week it seems to have reached its peak, and the rate has started to fall once again.

Averages Soar in December

Home prices are going to decline another 5% to 10% in 2010, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s economy.com.
That’s because Zandi expects another 2.4 million foreclosures will continue to flood the market with cut-rate inventory at the same time high-unemployment will limit the number of potential buyers.
The four states with the biggest foreclosure [...]