BHHS

New home sales slightly up, while pending home sales are slightly down The annual pace of new home sales increased a bit more than expected in September, rising 5.7 percent from the previous month. At the same time, although economists had forecast a 0.4 percent gain, contracts for pending home s...

Hoping that higher conforming loan limits will help housing market Last week, the Senate voted to approve the high-balance conforming loan limit to $729,750 in wealthier neighborhoods, as part of a larger spending bill. As of October 1, 2011, the largest conforming loan (loans that are eligible t...

What more foreclosures and longer processing times may mean for the housing market (map from RealtyTrac.com) RealtyTrac® reported that foreclosure activity in the third quarter was up slightly (less than 1 percent) from Q2, and down 34 percent from the same period last year. September activity wa...

Expert tips on evaluating and managing the cost of your mortgage As mortgage rates continue to stay at record lows, the costs of obtaining a mortgage are going up — according to Bankrate’s annual survey of closing costs, the average origination and title fees have jumped 8.8 percent from August 2...

RealtyTimes reported that Freddie Mac’s weekly mortgage survey, the first since the Fed’s Operation Twist announcement last week, found the average rate for conventional 30-year fixed mortgages to be at an all-time low of 4.01 percent. As Ed Ferrara pointed out in RealtyTimes, these low rates are...