Jeff Sipes's Blog

        Hiring a contractor to do home improvements can be a risky, often scary proposition for a homeowners, especially since horror stories of shoddy work and frauds abound.  So we tok the time to poll several contractors themselves, to give you their insider information and tips how to hire th...

The Federal Housing Authority released a statement on Friday revealing their plans to amend the waiting periods for potential borrowers who have been through a foreclosure, bankruptcy, deed-in-lieu, or short sale to as few as 12 months.   This would be a significant change from their current poli...

The 30-year fixed mortgage has been an American traditional like baseball, mom, and apple pie, but that could be going away if two controversial Bills get voted into laws.  The Housing Finance Reform and Taxpayer Protection Act of 2013 and The Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners Act wou...

This month, your friends at Blue Water Credit are committed to saving you money.  Last week we covered a financial checklist to savings and then 10 ways to save money on your energy bills.  This week we’re going to head into the kitchen to find you ways to save money.         Before you go down ...

  This month, your friends at Blue Water Credit are committed to saving you money.  Last week we covered a financial checklist to savings, and now we’ll look at ten ways to save big $$$ on your energy bills.   Before you go down this list in earnest, collect your monthly bills and put them in one...

Face it, we’re all looking to cut costs somehow, whether it’s just to make spend less than we make and get by, or because we should be putting more away for retirement and the kids’ college.  So your friends at BlueWaterCredit.com put together a comprehensive checklist of ways you could possibly...

An Oregon woman was awarded an $18.6 million from a federal jury in a highly unusual, and possibly precedent setting, civil lawsuit.  Julie Miller of Marion County was granted the mammoth settlement after struggling for two years to get the credit bureau Equifax Information Services to correct m...

These days it seems like a warming real estate market is all the talk, with appreciation driving prices higher with all of the vigor we saw a decade ago, before the real estate bubble let us all down.  However, appreciation comes and goes, but some markets hold their value no matter what the eco...

If we’re listening to Fannie Mae, the jump in mortgage interest rates over the last weeks will have little or no impact on home prices.  The mortgage giant released a report that studies the history of interest rates and the housing market all the way back to 1990, concluding that higher rates m...