Feeling house-rich and cash-poor? Many homeowners find equity both gratifying and maddening. They own a valuable asset with tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of untapped equity, but accessing that equity is neither easy nor cheap. The first…
At the peak of the Great Recession, a quarter of U.S. homeowners were underwater on their mortgage. By 2020, Attom Data Solutions reported that only 6.2% of homeowners with a mortgage were seriously underwater. But that still comes to 3.4 million…
For real estate investors, juggling multiple property deals and loans can get complicated. Blanket loans often help simplify matters. Borrowers take out a single loan to cover multiple properties. Even so, blanket loans come with their own quirks and have…
It’s all too easy to feel alone and ashamed when you fall behind on your mortgage. You don’t tell anyone, you don’t ask for help, and you don’t know what to do. Yet the truth is nearly 1 in every…
Just because you have bad credit doesn’t mean you don’t dream of owning your own home. You can absolutely buy a house, even with bad credit. But the worse your credit, the more challenges you’ll face in buying a home. As…
Sometimes, home sellers find a buyer eager to purchase but unable to finance the property with traditional mortgage financing. Sellers then have a choice: lose the buyer, or lend the mortgage to the buyer themselves. If you want to sell…
The last place you want to find yourself is forced to relocate but unable to sell your house. Carrying two housing payments at once is a surefire recipe for financial stress. If you can’t sell your house, you can always…
Depending on who you ask, hard money loans are either the easiest and best source of funding for real estate investors or nightmare loans of last resort. Who’s right? Hard money loans are neither inherently good nor evil; they’re merely…
If you see a line for “PMI” on your monthly mortgage statement, you’re paying for private mortgage insurance. But what is it actually for? Who has to pay for it, and who doesn’t? Most importantly, how can you avoid it…
Getting a mortgage is overwhelming. You have seemingly endless loan options, all of which read like a foreign language. And each type of mortgage comes with its own separate set of rules, which add even more confusion. If you’ve never…
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