By now we’ve all heard buzz about the supposed “credit crisis,” with tales of all Dallas real estate buyers being required to put 20% to purchase a home and then still having to search to find a lender who will write a loan. It seems the press just can’t get enough of all the “misery” in the Dallas real estate industry. But is this really what is happening?

To be sure, we are in the middle of what might be considered the biggest disservice ever perpetrated on potential home buyers. The truth is that mortgage money is as available today as it was a year ago and loans are being made every day with little or no money down. Who are these lenders and where can you find one? They may be right down the street - you just have to know where to look!

Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans are making a huge impact on the mortgage industry; recent estimates show that about one out of five mortgages is an FHA loan. Although FHA loans never “went away,” their re-emergence is a result of the collapse of the sub-prime market. Technically, FHA doesn’t require a minimum credit score; in reality, however, lenders typically will not approve an FHA loan with a credit score below 500 in Dallas Texas. That is still a far cry from the notion that an 800 score is the only thing lenders care about.
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I recently wrote a post about how to use a house value report. In that post I briefly mentioned using one for determining the value of your home improvement projects. Since writing that article, I have received a lot of requests for more information about this. Understanding the true return on your home improvement investment is mostly science with a little art mixed in.

Before you start a project, there are 3 steps to determining the value of your home improvements.

1. Step One - Find a good Dallas area Realtor that really knows your area or hire a professional appraiser. An appraiser is expensive (around $300) but will be more accurate than a Realtor. Plus, many Realtors have never done a TRUE comparative market report, opting only to compare bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage so they do not understand the intricacies that go into this science called an “Appraisal”.
2. Step Two - Have your Realtor or appraiser prepare a comparative market analysis or full appraisal to determine the value of your home compared to other homes in your neighborhood. Once that first appraisal is completeld, have them provide a second house value report comparing your home with future home improvements to homes in your neighborhood with those same improvements.
3. Step Three - (more…)
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Every day, we receive over a dozen requests for a free house value report for homes across Dallas Fort Worth (strangely enough, a large percentage are for house values in Frisco and Keller Texas… does that mean something? huh). The vast majority of the house value requests are for home owners thinking about selling their home. They want to see what their Dallas Home would potentially sell for compared to what they own it for. Did you know that this is only one of many examples of how a free house value report or comparative market analysis (aka CMA) can be used?

Here Are 5 Ways To Use a Dallas House Value Report aka CMA

1. Selling Your Dallas Home- The first and most obvious way to use the free comparative market analysis that you receive from Texas Home Central is to compare your home against other homes that have sold in your neighborhood. I wont go into too much detail here since this one is pretty obvious. What I would like to add here is that an “automated CMA” is not enough to give you a clear picture of what your home will sell for. Sometimes you will get a false sense of value and be too high or too low by thousands of dollars. Price too high and people will not bother looking at your home, too low and people will think something is wrong with your home and try to negotiate you even lower or again, not even visit. It’s imperative that a professional that knows the real estate market take the time to do a deeper analysis, comparing more that just bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage. A good agent will also compare lot size and location, upgrades, home features as well as what other homes have that your home may not have. (more…)
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It’s smart to take advantage of all of the free mortgage calculators available on the web when deciding to buy a new home in Dallas Fort Worth. When deciding to buy a new home, most home buyers work backwards. They start by looking at homes, then get pre-approved for a home and many times find out that they can’t get approved for the homes they spent months looking at and visiting.

Ideally, a home buyer should first create a budget to determine what mortgage payments they can afford comfortably and still have money left for savings. Once you know your budget and have a monthly mortgage payment in mind. You can use our mortgage payment calculator to determine how much home you can afford within your bedget. You should then contact a lender like our very own Texas Mortgage Team to get pre-approved for a home mortgage. I don’t mean pre-qualified… they are not the same thing. Pre-qualified just means that a lender says IF you make what you say you do and IF your credit is as good as you say it is, THEN you are qualified up to a certain dollar amount. No one pulls your credit and that letter is really quite worthless. A pre-approval is when your credit is pulled and a lender is willing to stand behind you and say, “This buyer IS qualified AND approved to buy this home”.
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As a REALTOR, we have the pleasure of meeting with a lot of homeowners who are interested in selling their home. Many have tried listing with other agents in the past before giving up. Do you want to know what two of the biggest questions homeowners have when they are selling their home?

1. I am losing ALL of the equity I have worked so hard to build over the last few years. How can I keep more of my equity and still sell quickly?
2. I can’t wait 6 months with my home on the market wondering if or when it will sell. I don’t have that much time. What I can I do to sell my home faster without dropping the price below all of the competition?

In an effort to answer those questions once and for all, Texas Home Central has done away with the traditional 6% listing and moved to a flat-fee, full-service listing. There are other companies that offer a flat-fee listing but also greatly reduce their services. Not us! It’s full-service or nothing.

How does that answer the two questions mentioned above?
First, by moving to a flat-fee listing, we can save you thousands of dollars of hard-earned equity on your Dallas Fort Worth home. We will market your home harder than almost any other Realtor in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. (more…)

Aside from interest and rental rates, perhaps the next question you need to ask yourself as a home investor in Dallas Fort Worth is, “what are the ideal mortgage terms” or “how many years you want your mortgage to be”? The answer to that really depends on your goals as an investor as well as your financial situation.

With the market today, your only real choices on an investment property are fixed rate loans with 15, 20 or 30 year terms (you COULD technically do an ARM, but the rates are about the same as a fixed rate loan). What you have to ask yourself is, am I in this for the short term (do I just want to cash flow the property monthly and flip it in a few years) or am I going to keep this property for the rest of my natural life (and pay it off and keep it). The answer to those questions, along with your financial position, can help you determine the best term for you.

As an investor, chances are you are going to be putting money into the property to fix it up. If you are short term, you probably need a lower payment to keep your cash free so that you can make the improvements. In this case, the 30 year term is most likely a better bet for you. This would allow you to possibly be in a positive cash flow position every month, have lower monthly payments, and let someone else pay all of your mortgage payment. The disadvantage to a 30 year is that you do not pay your principal balance down as fast, but you are banking on buying the house right, making solid improvements, and a good Realtor to market the house for lease and sale to make your money.
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On March 12th Fannie Mae announced further loan level pricing adjustments ON TOP OF the loan level price adjustments that went into effect on March 1st of this year. Basically, the new LLPA’s mean that, if your credit score is below 720, you are going to be paying a higher rate than if your credit score is over 720.

Listen, I don’t claim to be a smart man but this new stuff WILL NOT FIX OUR PROBLEMS! This is a total overcorrection of the floodgate lending that has been going on the past few years. Our goal should be to put GOOD credit borrowers into the glut of houses that are available. We don’t want to make it TOO easy but for goodness sakes we don’t want to make it overly restrictive either! We need to stop trying to nickel and dime good borrowers. If you would have told me that I would have a hard time with a 700+ borrower putting money down and fully documenting his income I would have told you that you were crazy but that is what I see happening.

My only hope is that these new restrictions, along with the new guidelines for Mortgage Insurance, don’t squeeze an already slow market even further.

Craig Pollard is a mortgage professional and owner of Texas Mortgage Team. He specializes in the Dallas Fort Worth area and is a frequent voice on Texas Home Central’s blog. Craig can be reached at 972-317-9900 or emailed by clicking here.

An article in CNNMoney this week reported, correctly, that 30 year fixed interest rates were rising and as a result, mortgage applications were falling. However, if you were to read the fine print, you would realize that the information contained in the report was almost a WEEK old!

See, the problem with our age of instant information is that in some cases, by the time the data is collected, it is OUTDATED! Taking that a step further is people who only read the headlines… if you ONLY read the headlines and not the articles you would think there is not a stitch of good news going on anywhere! A good example of this is when we put rates in the Real Estate section of the Dallas Morning News. I have to submit those rates early on Wednesday, and often before some lenders even post their rates for that day. Well, the section of the paper where the rates are posted in doesn’t come out until Friday and sometimes they are posted on the weekend! That can be up to 3 DAYS from the time I submitted my rates! I have seen lenders change their rates by almost a full point in 1 day, let alone the market swings that can happen in 3 days!

My point is, if you want to know instantly what is going on in the mortgage and real estate industry, consult a professional. Right now is a good time to have one in your stable of trusted people. You have a doctor, maybe even an attorney that you deal with as necessary, and chances are that person doesn’t change through the years. Now is a great time to find a real estate professional (Texas Home Central is a GREAT place to find one) as well as a mortgage professional (Texas Mortgage Team is full of them) who will give you up-to-the-minute advice on rates and the market, and look out for your best interest, not only on this transaction, but for future transactions as well! I look forward to speaking with you soon!

Craig Pollard is a mortgage professional and owner of Texas Mortgage Team. He specializes in the Dallas Fort Worth area and is a frequent voice on Texas Home Central’s blog. Craig can be reached at 972-317-9900 or emailed by clicking here.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, mortgage applications rose another 7.5 percent last week compared to the previous week.

This increase was due in part to a rush to refinance when the Federal Reserve cut rates by three-quarters of a percent as a response to recession fears. The refinance share of last week’s mortgage activity was 73 percent, up from 60 percent the previous week.

Mortgage rates rose:

• 30-year fixed-rate mortgages increased to 5.6 percent from 5.49 percent.
• 15-year fixed-rate mortgages increased to 5.04 percent from 4.96 percent.
• 1-year ARMs increased to 5.7 percent from 5.51 percent.

We are seeing a lot of our past clients in McKinney, Plano and Frisco refinancing their homes. We have also seen an incredible increase in website traffic with people looking for homes in the Flower Mound and Grapevine area as well as in the North Dallas areas.

If you are interested in purchasing a home in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex please call us at 800-326-9011. If you are interested in refinancing your home or would like to get pre-approved for a new home, fill out our secure online mortgage application for a free pre-approval.

In my last post, Good News for Home Buyers, I talked about how the Fed continuously lowering rates was something to get excited about. I didn’t mean to leave out home owners and home sellers. I believe it’s reason to celebrate for everyone in Dallas Fort Worth!

It’s true that we haven’t seen the pain in Dallas Fort Worth like the rest of the U.S. has but still, the news headlines can scare anyone into remission. With the latest fed cut, real estate analysts are expecting improvements in home sales across the U.S. I have already seen a sizable increase in home buyers visiting the home search feature on our real estate website.

For home sellers, this is great news for multiple obvious reasons. First, lower interest rates means more home buyers that can get approved to buy your home. More home buyers mean competition which equals increased sales prices (hint for home buyers, if you wait, prices will be going up, not down so act now). That is great news for anyone that has their home on the market.

Even for home owners not interested in selling, this is great news for you too! With mortgage rates at a low, this is a great time to refinance and get out of a high interest rate loan or an adjustable rate mortgage. You can easily get approved with our preferred lender Texas Mortgage Team.

Like lowering taxes, lowering interest rates will boost the economy. More money in the consumer’s pocket equals greater consumer confidence which equals more spending that in turn improves the economy. Don’t you just love economics?

Best of luck in selling your home… but in case you want more than luck in selling your home in DFW and are looking for an agent that will market your home the right way, please contact me at 800.326.9011 or email me here. Thank you.