MORTGAGE RATES » Home Mortgage Loan News

It has always been a dream of mine to become a landlord. I know that that sounds a little funny to some people, but real estate can be a good supplemental investment to a well diversified portfolio.

Not only will real estate provide you with an additional income stream from the rent you collect, but it can also eventually appreciate in value if you hold it long enough. However, real estate investing is not for everyone. It is a venture that should be carefully considered. Here are some of the things that a prospective investor should contemplate before taking the plunge:

If you’re suffering from an underwater mortgage but continue to make all of your payments on time, the FHA may be able to bail you out. The administration is offering a refinancing option that could help homeowners whose home values have dropped far below their loan amounts via a new program.

The FHA Short Refinance Option

Plaid shirts, torn jeans and a jacket tied around the waist. Though you may try to hide it now, many of you Generation X-ers who grew up idolizing bad boy Dylan McKay, All-American sweetheart Kelly Taylor and the salt-of-the-earth Walsh twins must have smirked when you noticed today’s momentous date–September 2, 2010, or rather, 9/02/10.

Everyone knows that home values are plummeting all over the nation. Foreclosure rates have skyrocketed and people are walking away from their homes as a result. People are choosing to hand over the keys on their over-priced homes – especially when they’re underwater mortgages – and leaving banks to clean up the mess and take the losses. It’s not just homes in middle-class or lower-middle class neighborhoods, either – decaying foreclosed homes are now a common sight in those expensive exurb developments that sprouted up in just about every state in the nation. But what most people don’t realize is that now even the banks are walking away from foreclosed homes, because they’ve lost so much value that they’re simply not interested in repossessing them and trying to resell them at losses. Instead, banks are canceling foreclosed home auctions and handing the keys back to surprised owners.

Bank walkaways are nothing new, but have always been exceedingly rare. Nowadays, however, the bottom just keeps falling out on the housing market in many parts of the nation. This is especially true in older, poorer neighborhoods which saw home values rise somewhat with the speculative bubble, but were the first to plummet when the bubble burst. In fact, the decline in property values in these communities predates the current real estate collapse, and in hindsight might even be seen as early warning signs that the boom times were about to come to a crashing halt. A few years ago, lending giant Fannie Mae even attempted to slow the bleeding by offering homeowners in foreclosure rental options.

Home, sweet home. We all need a place to call our own, but which one is the right one for you? To find out, try a spin at The Game of HOME! Based on the popular classic Life by Milton Bradley, the Game of HOME let’s family and friends pick out their dream homes and race to the finish.

Some prefer the simple bungalow lifestyle and the carefree nature that comes with it. Others prefer the mega mansion that comes with a side of a mega mortgage. Whatever you do, make sure you have enough money left over to pay your bills at the end of the day.

Lynnae McCoy is a freelance writer, homeschooling mom, and frugal living enthusiast. She writes about frugal living at Being Frugal.net and about balancing work and homeschooling at Freelance Homeschool Mom. When she has a rare spare moment, you can find her on Twitter.

Buying your first home is an expensive process. When you add up the down payment, various fees (loan application, credit report, notary, attorney, etc) and things you need to buy for your new home, such as appliances, you may be looking for ways to curb the outflow of money.

The weekly report from Freddie Mac shows mortgage rates have once again hit a record low, but does it even matter? With housing still looking to get worse before it gets better, it seems that the new 4.36 percent rate for the 30-year fixed mortgage is going to waste.

Mortgage Rates Drop Even Lower

Despite the fluke increase in 30-year fixed mortgage interest rates seen last week, we’ve watched rates continuously decrease since the spring.

A new report shows that existing sales sank 27.2 percent in July, which is the biggest one-month drop ever. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), this percentage represented a seasonally-adjusted annual rate drop to 3.83 million sales from 5.26 million the month before.

The Market Continues to Lose Sales

When it comes to the housing market, two things get talked about regularly: the bottom and a recovery. However, these two terms mean very different things and don’t occur at the same time.

Some have predicted that we have yet to see a housing bottom, while others say we may have hit the bottom and a recovery is on the way. It’s possible, however, that a recovery may not occur at all. Let’s take a look at why this may be the case.

Only a couple of years ago, house flippers reigned supreme. However, as the housing market collapsed and home prices plummeted, many of these savvy investors had to retreat and wait for better times to arrive.

According to a CNN Money report, those times exist now. Also known as “vulture investors,” real estate investors have returned to take advantage of cheap house prices (they have dropped as much as 70 percent) and record-low mortgage interest rates. This time, instead of flipping homes as they did in the past, they’re buying low-cost or distressed properties and renting them until home prices increase again (CNN Money).