If you’ve decided to buy a home, it’s tempting to jump right into your home search. However, rushing into home shopping before you’ve laid the proper groundwork can lead to mistakes, frustrations and expenses down the road. To give yourself a better chance for a smooth, affordable and stress-free home purchase, you need to prepare ...
Mortgage rates have been making a move. After a period of record lows that roughly spanned the previous two years, rates have been on their way up in 2022. The U.S. central bank has announced its intention to fight inflation with higher interest rates, which means mortgage rates seem poised to continue their rise. If ...
When moving to a new home, an important step is to provide your new address to everyone who needs it. However, remembering every person, company and institution that needs to know your address can be a challenge — especially when you’re in the middle of a move. While your exact list of necessary contacts may ...
Whether you’re looking to buy, sell or refinance a home or are simply curious about its value, online home value estimators are popular tools. Also known as automated valuation models (AVMs), they include services such as Zillow Zestimate and Redfin Estimate. AVMs work by using available data about a property to calculate a home value ...
Before you can get a mortgage to buy a home, your lender’s appraiser typically must agree that the home is worth at least as much as the sales price. If the home appraisal value comes up short, a situation called an appraisal gap is created, and you won’t be able to secure your loan for ...
