Loren's Blog

There have been a lot of comments on AR the past few weeks regarding looking at your 2009 Business Plan (I've written a few myself!). As we've all witnessed and experienced, particularly over the past several months, the economy is in constant flux-day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month-and the...

A lot of economic data will come out during this short week ahead. Existing Home Sales will be released today. The first revision to third quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will come out on Tuesday. GDP is the broadest measure of economic growth. Wednesday will be a huge day with Durable Order...

Lawmakers under political pressure to "do something" to stimulate the economy and stop the slide in housing prices must act carefully and reject proposals that will do more harm than good. Among the bad ideas circulating are proposals for a new $22,000 home buyer tax credit, legislation overturni...

If you have clients planning on waiting out this housing downturn, intending to buy a home when the coast is clear, the first step for them is to start checking their credit reports now. There may be some surprises waiting. Credit card companies are reducing credit limits on some borrowers. And f...

A lot of inflation data will highlight the Economic Calendar next week. The important Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation report will come out on Wednesday. CPI looks at the price change for those finished goods which are sold to consumers. The Producer Price Index (PPI) will be released on Tues...

HUD today released their proposed changes to the HUD-1 settlement statement. If you haven't seen it, I've got a copy of the website page below to take a look at it.  http://www.namb.org/images/namb/GovernmentAffairs/RESPA/hud-1.pdf  The good news: easier for clients to read. The bad news......it ...

Here in Minneapolis-St. Paul, we are still a 2 newspaper town. It's interesting to see how each looks at some Real estate trends that surfaced this morning. The St. paul paper has an above-the-fold headline, " Over One-Third of Homeowners Lose Money on Homes". Of course, that caught my eye....bei...

Today's mortgage market reaction to the weaker than expected Employment report appeared to be counterintuitive, as mortgage rates rose a little after the news, offsetting some of the rate improvement seen earlier in the week. The explanation is that the jobs data was so bad that investors now exp...

After publishing an article last week titled, "Understanding FHA," I received quite a few comments regarding FHA - Rehab loans. Here is a summary of more detailed information on the Rehab loan. Section 203k loans are a key part of the FHA's efforts to rehab and repair owner occupied, one to four ...

There are those who make things happen, those who watch what is about to happen and the rest who wonder what happened. Some people instinctively know what to do next in order to progress and succeed, and yet the high majority has to be shown the way. The former are the leaders and the latter are ...