Author Archive

Don’t Wait Too Long When You’re in Trouble »

The owner of the barn where I board my horse recently lost one of his properties to foreclosure.  Unfortunately, it’s the property adjacent to the barn, so we’ve been using the pasture for the horses and as a makeshift riding arena.  The loss of this property is going to have a huge impact on my [...]

Why Do Mortgage Brokers Have to Be Licensed? »

You may have noticed that the mortgage brokers you are  communicating with are all licensed.  Actually, in order to function as a broker, they have to be licensed, which is an important tidbit to know if you are talking to brokers about getting a home loan.
The licensing requirements are laid out by the SAFE Mortgage [...]

Home Office Deduction as Mortgage Help »

I found this recent article to be very interesting: Apparently the current economy is expected to generate a rise in the number of taxpayers claiming the home office deduction, not because people are being dishonest, but for a variety of reasons:

More people are being forced to work from home in order to make ends meet,
More [...]

Why Subprime Lending Screwed the Rest of Us »

There has been a lot of talk about subprime lending over the last few years, but never as much as in the last month or so, since the banks started failing and cause the stock market to fall into limbo.
Unfortunately, as many of us have found, subprime lending and the greed of big financial institutions has [...]

Financing Your Backyard Pool »

You want a backyard pool, but you aren’t sure where to get the money.  You know you and your family will enjoy it, and you know that it’s a good investment as far as the value of the real estate goes.  But how are you to finance it?
The question of financing is an important one, [...]