“How much money can I get to buy a home?” It’s a common question that often leads off a buyer’s conversation with me. What they’re really trying to learn is, “In what price range should I be shopping?” The answer to this question provides a target for the buyer to do their search, and …

  VA is making a change to the types of loans that will be approved through the automated underwriting engine, and those changes are not friendly to new borrowers. Currently, people applying for a VA loan can sometimes get an approval with debt-to-income ratios as high as 56% (assuming the lender doesn’t have overlays reducing …

Here in Skagit County, many of us just received our new “Notice of Value”. This letter states what your old assessed value was and what the new assessed value is going to be. Many people mistakenly believe that means that their home has dropped in value. In fact, your home may have increased in value …

HARP 2 was recently announced. This new and improved, completely revamped refinance program is a reworked version of the original HARP program, first launched in 2009. The original HARP program was intended to help more than 9 million U.S. households. However, fewer than 900,000 were able to take advantage of this program. HARP 2 will …

We’ve been talking about how credit scoring works and the things you can do yourself to improve your score. But what if you need a little more help? You can have a credit reporting company actually help you improve your credit score to help you qualify for your mortgage loan. Let’s assume that we have …