Testimonials for Blog

The time is limited for homeowners who want to ensure they aren’t hit with a big tax bill because they had to walk away from a mortgage obligation. At the height of the housing crisis, when foreclosures across the country began a troubling increase, Congress passed the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007, designed to provide at least some consolation to folks who had lost their homes.   But it gets complicated. If you borrow money and the lender then cancels or forgives the debt, you generally have to include the canceled amount as income for tax purposes. As

California experienced a small rebound in its real estate market in August, outperforming July and August 2010, and just a ten thousand homes shy of hitting the average number of sales on record for the month according to statistics provided by DataQuick. The average price of homes has dropped in the state and more than half of the sales are comprised of distressed homes that were short sales or in foreclosure, but good news is welcome in a state that has been battered by the slumping sales in the U.S. housing market.  An estimated 37,734 new and resale houses and

Nearly one in four homes in Virginia with a mortgage attached to it is “under water” – with the property owner owing more than the home currently is worth – according to new figures from the second quarter of the year. Virginia’s rate of 23.3 percent is nearly a full percentage point higher than the national average, according to new statistics released by CoreLogic, a California firm that tracks real estate data and trends. In addition to the homeowners in Virginia whose mortgages exceed the current value of their properties, an additional 6.1 percent are in the “near-negative” category, where

Starting Oct. 1, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will cut the size of loans they buy from lenders. That will force many future borrowers into more expensive and harder-to-get jumbo loans. The Freddie and Fannie limits, which are generally $417,000 for single-family homes nationwide, were raised in 2008 in some high-cost housing markets to stimulate the economy. In many areas, the limits rose to $729,750 and next month they’ll fall to $625,500. Limits will drop more sharply in some areas and less in others.  Major lenders, including Bank of America, Wells Fargoand JPMorgan Chase, have stopped taking new applications for affected loans so that those in process