“How do I remove PMI?” First off, a definition. Private Mortgage Insurance, often abbreviated PMI, is an insurance policy that the bank may make you buy in order to get the loan. It is a monthly surcharge based upon a percentage of your entire principal balance. You pay for it, but the bank is the …
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What’s negotiable on a purchase? The short answer is everything. There may be standards and traditions in your area, the same as there are in mine. That doesn’t mean they are not subject to amendment by specific negotiation. Once you get outside legal requirements, anything is subject to negotiation. As long as both (or all) …
legal information on going through probate without money That was a search hit I got. The problem with this question is that you can’t go through probate without money. The deceased’s creditors want cash. The probate court wants cash. Attorneys and anybody else your executor has to hire want cash. Federal Estate tax may be …
The easy, general rule is that legitimate expenses all have easily understood explanations in plain English, they are all for specific services, and if they are performed by third parties, there are associated invoices or receipts that you can see. Let’s haul out the Mortgage Loan Disclosure Statement (California) or Good Faith Estimate (elsewhere), and …
Continue reading “Mortgage Closing Costs: What is Real and What is Junk?”
(This was originally published in March 2006) Doing my workout this morning I asked myself what’s next for the real estate market. The state of the market here locally is that prices are and have been in decline. There is no longer any mystery about whether they will decline, only how much and for how …
Continue reading “Looking Beyond The Bubble: What’s Next For Highly Appreciated Markets”
One of the most common questions in real estate is “What is this property really worth?” The easy answer is the same as the deepest, most profound one I can come up with, “Whatever you can get someone to pay for it.” It’s the answers in between that you’ve got to watch out for. The …
US News has an interesting editorial by Mortimer Zuckerman in their latest issue, having to do with the departure of Lawrence Summers and the downside for Harvard’s students. It seems that Summer’s celebrated episode of Hoof in Mouth Disease was only a public reason for the faculty turning on them. It seems he wanted the …
Power = capabilities X interest X will If any of the elements on the right are zero, power is zero, no matter how strong the other elements. If interest and capabilities to defeat an enemy are great, but will appears weak, then so is power. He also deals with the differences between actual will and …
One of the concepts I keep seeing without a decent treatment is the concept of leveraging an investment. Real Estate has this like no other investment. You go talk to a bank about leveraging eighty to ninety or even one hundred percent of your investment in the stock market, or the same percentage of a …
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From an email:I’ve been enjoying your blog posts on mortgages. I’ve learned more from you about what to expect than I have from any other source, and I’ve gotten 10 mortgages in my life. I was reading Larry William’s website this week, and on there I saw one of his newsletters from last summer:http://www.ireallytrade.com/http://www.ireallytrade.com/freestuff.htmthe May …
