Twin Cities Real Estate Blog

The housing market continues to change and one of the largest changes in 2009 was the resurgence of FHA financing.  As lenders have tighted up financing requirements and increased down payments from 0% a few years ago to predominantly 10% today, FHA’s more forgiving standards and lower 3.5% down payment requirement have made it a very [...]

We’re barely into the new year and it is cold…. very cold…. outside.  Why would I be suggesting sellers put their house on the market?
The chart below shows that January historically has a stronger showing activity than November and December and due to the 20% decrease in houses for sale in the last 12 months, there’s [...]

A reader of this blog asked a good question this weekend: what happens to sales when rates rise?
This is an intriguing question.  While I had my suspicions, I wasn’t sure what I would find so I put together this little image from Twin Cities MN Pending Sales and the 10 Year Treasury Note.  While the 10yr [...]

Columbia Heights just revised their down payment assistance program to expand it to cover many more borrowers and properties.  Please call me with questions.  Search homes for sale in Coon Rapids now!
Make Heights Your Home
Columbia Heights Down Payment Assistance Program
Program Summary
Down payment assistance for homes purchased with a 203K loan or other similar financing. The [...]

Fellow local blogger and awesome mortgage broker Alex Stenback has a great post explaining how few people are being helped by the Marking Home Affordable program, which has only helped 93,000 borrowers so far when original estimates suggested up to 7 million could be helped.
If we could do more successful loan modifications and short sales [...]

Freddie Mac has released a 2 minute video with suggestions on what you will need to provide for a mortgage loan modification request.  If you have everything prepared beforehand, the process will be quicker and smoother than if you do not prepare.  As mortgage modifications can take weeks or months to complete, having everything upfront [...]

Jim Cramer on Tuesday’s show stated that we’re at a housing market bottom nationally (article).  Below is the video of this segment.

While time will tell if Jim Cramer is right, on a local level I’m not ready to call a housing market bottom.  I do believe however that foreclosures have price-bottomed in our market. Unfortunately [...]