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Having purchased a home a year ago, I did [tag]80/20 financing[/tag]. The mortgage I chose was a [tag]2/28 ARM[/tag]. The housing market was doing quite well at the time. Since that time I am afraid the value of my home has dropped. My questions are: Can I [tag]subordinate my first mortgage[/tag] and refinance it when it is time for the loan to adjust or am I stuck? Is this possible without touching the second mortgage? |
North Carolina Town Tops List of 10 Best Places to Live
| The population of Asheville, N.C., is only about 70,000, but this midsize city ranked No. 1 on a list of the most popular places to live in 2007. [tag]Asheville, NC[/tag] made its second appearance on Relocate-America.com’s annual top 10 list, compiled each year since 1998. Though Asheville is best known as the location of the 19th-century Vanderbilt manse [tag]the Biltmore[/tag], the site highlights the city’s downtown, where “artists and street musicians converge with tourists and locals for a vibrancy rarely found in a city of this size.” The average home price in town is $265,000, according to the site, and the housing stock includes new construction, older Victorians, condominiums, single-family homes and town houses. |  |
Mortgage Ails: Too Much Information?
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Home buyers face to much information when trying to make pivotal decisions about which mortgage may or may not be the right one for them. According to a soon-to-be-released study, the Federal Trade Commission says that while consumers clearly benefit from information, they suffer from “info overloadus” when bombarded with stuff they don’t understand — or don’t care about. As part of its follow-up to 2004 research into the effect disclosures on how brokers are paid have on borrow choice — specifically how brokers are compensated by funding lenders in the form of yield spread premiums. The FTC said in a preliminary report last week that the disclosure of complex transactions, such as [tag]yield spread[/tag] premiums, may confuse [tag]borrowers[/tag] and lead to make a poor decision. |
Homes: Big drop in speculation
| After years of big increases in the buying of [tag]real estate for investing[/tag], speculators fled many housing markets last year. Second-home sales dropped from 40 percent of all home sales to just 36 percent, according to a report released Monday by the [tag]National Association of Realtors[/tag] (NAR). Total sales of all homes fell 4.1 percent for the year but Investment-home buying fell to 22 percent of all home sales last year compared with 28 percent in 2005. Vacation-home sales were up to 14 percent of all sales, from 12 percent the year before. NAR’s chief economist, David Lereah said the fall in investment buying was expected. “[tag]Speculators[/tag] left the market in 2006, which caused investment sales to fall much faster than the primary market.”[tag] Vacation-home sales[/tag], on the other hand, are less dependent on house -price trends; they are more likely to involve lifestyle choices driven by demographic trends. Boomers with disposable income and contemplating retirement are prime customers. |  |