Tag: Home Buying
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“The Lending Environment Shifted Under Their Feet”: War Sidelines Mortgage Seekers
Turmoil in Iran is causing lenders to get stricter with mortgage loan applicants. Now, FICO scores that would normally pass muster are winding up in some lending companies’ rejection piles. The conflict is now widely projected to batter global economies for many months to come. An increasing number of U.S. lenders look at this situation…
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Getting Title Insurance? Don’t Assume a Property’s Physical Conditions Are Covered
A few months back, an interesting case came out on Georgia title insurance law. It clarified the allowable claims against title insurance. People buy title insurance on closing day to guard themselves against unknown title problems affecting a property’s market value. That is, a title policy exists to protect a deed holder’s marketability of…
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Which Is Better: Warranty of Title, or Title Insurance?
Great question! First, a warranty of title is stated in a warranty deed. And most any buyer in a regular home sale gets a warranty deed. So your question could also be posed as: “I’m getting a warranty deed. Do I still need an owner’s title insurance policy?” Let’s break this down.
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How Will War-Inflated Oil Prices Impact Home Sales and Mortgage Rates?
Spoiler: Mortgage rates at the 6% level may be looking awfully good a few months from now. The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran could “derail the crucial spring housing market as oil prices soar,” Realtor.com said as oil prices spiked above $100 a barrel. The website, owned by the National Association of REALTORS®, has bluntly stated:…
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Zillow Removes Climate Risk Scores From Home Listings
Zillow®, the online real estate powerhouse, has made a change on its website. And people are talking about it. Visitors no longer see a home’s risk score for climate factors like flooding or wildfire potential. Just last year, Zillow adopted calculations from First StreetTM, which assigns risk levels to specific homes. The risk scores rank…
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Seeking Housing Market Info? Today, 61% of Home Buyers Check AI First.
Artificial intelligence is transforming real estate deals, says a new Realtor.com® survey. Through that survey, the National Association of REALTORS® found that eight out of ten U.S. home buyers use artificial intelligence (AI) when making their plans and navigating their home purchases. The top two AI models for buyers are OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.…
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Federal Reserve Poised to Start Rate Cuts: What’s Next for Mortgages?
Mortgage rates are dipping down in advance of the Federal Reserve’s discussion of rate cuts this week. Freddie Mac shows the average rate on 30-year, fixed-rate home loans is just about 6.3% as of mid-September, down from 7% at the start of 2025. Two weak U.S. employment reports pushed the average rate down. In response,…
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Q&A: Cash Offers and Quitclaim Deeds
Quitclaim deeds are typically used within families, between spouses or ex-spouses, or from individual owners into businesses. A quitclaim is a useful tool to transfer real estate when no payment’s expected. What we rarely talk about is a quitclaim combined with a cash transaction. There may be times, though, when a quitclaim and cash come…
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How to Use Mapping to Buy a Home
Thinking about buying a home? Online maps can offer plenty of details about the major investment you’re about to make. Let’s get started, because there’s much to map.
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Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: No Need for Home Buyers to Walk Away Over These Common Issues
Understandably, house hunters look for “issues” as they search for the right homes. They wait with bated breath to scour the reports from inspectors, appraisers, and title reviewers. Any time a mortgage is involved, a lender requires a title search. Through this process, the deed’s history is traced, to check its integrity. The key question?…
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Your Home’s Measurements Differ From the Description. Now What?
Maybe your property is smaller than the way it’s presented in the legal description. Maybe it’s bigger. Maybe you don’t own the home yet, but your agent has noted that the lot size, as described, is off by a few yards, or a certain percentage of an acre. The legal description of the property…
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The Resilient Deed: What Property Buyers Should Know About Climate, Weather, and Insurance
We all live somewhere on Earth. Today, that means we all deal with some measure of climate-related risk. The “new normal” involves highly abnormal weather patterns, stronger storms, hotter heat. Florida, California, and Texas are frequently in the news for this reason. But even “climate havens” now deal with tornadoes and major floods. All this…
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Was Your Seller Inspired by Pinocchio? Buyer Remedies for False Disclosure Statements
In a recent survey, more than half of sellers admitted to not disclosing a known problem with their property. Although this is just one survey, the point bears noting. Buyers should probably expect to find issues with their homes. A home buyer can sue over a material defect that wasn’t disclosed by the seller.
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Title Talk: What’s a Municipal Lien Search?
You might think a title search is an all-in-one exercise. It’ll show any outstanding liens against the title to the home you’re buying, right? Not necessarily. Not all municipal liens get filed with the county recorder of deeds’ office. Unrecorded liens don’t appear in a title search. And they might or might not be found…
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Should Brokers Keep For-Sale Homes Hidden?
It’s the Real Estate Industry’s Latest Debate — Pocket Listings Our regular readers know about recent changes in real estate practices. The big changes came out of settlements by the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) and large brokerage firms in response to class-action court cases. NAR had to give up its long-running practice of having…
