David Bruce

Archive for September, 2010

September 22nd, 2010

10 Reasons To Buy A Home!

Enough with the doom and gloom about home ownership. Brett Arends explains why owning a home is a good thing in this Wall Street Journal online article.

Enough with the doom and gloom about homeownership.

Sure, maybe there’s more pain to come in the housing market. But when Time magazine starts running covers that declare “Owning a home may no longer make economic sense,” it’s time to say: Enough is enough. This is what “capitulation” looks like. Everyone has given up.

After all, at the peak of the bubble five years ago, Time had a different take. “Home Sweet Home,” declared its cover then, as it celebrated the boom and asked: “Will your house make you rich?”

But it’s not enough just to be contrarian. So here are 10 reasons why it’s good to buy a home… Read the rest of this entry »

September 7th, 2010

Jumbo Loans More Available!

A year ago, even the most creditworthy borrowers struggled to secure home loans of more than $729,750—the cutoff for conventional conforming loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But since this spring, the interest-rate spread between conforming and jumbo loans has narrowed and the number of lenders offering the loans has jumped.

As of late July, lenders were offering jumbo loans at a typical rate of about 5.5 percent, down from almost 7 percent a year earlier and not too different from what’s available for conforming loans, according to data available on Bankrate.com. NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a late-July press conference that sales of existing homes priced at $750,000 and above jumped 30 percent from mid-2009. “Credit was extremely tight a year ago, but now it is beginning to loosen up,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »