When my husband and I bought our first house, we had to come up with about $8,000 for a down-payment and our interest rate – with great credit – was 8 percent.  We went from renting a duplex for $325 per month to a house payment of about $750 every month.

At today’s rates, the house payment would be about $510 per month (and that includes insurance and taxes)!  Florida agent Marco Giancola also recalls the days of high interest rates when he bought his first home,

It all hit me about a month later as I wrote the check for the first mortgage payment and discovered the interest rate was 18%. This memory popped into my head as I read that Freddie Mac announced on Thursday that the mortgage rates ticked up to 4 percent from 3.99 percent on a 30 year loan. Six weeks ago, it dropped to a record low of 3.94 percent, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

If you can qualify for a home loan, have good job security, a good down payment (and we’ve said this before here at the Shak), NOW is the time to buy!

While I do not believe my family is underwater in the value of our home, after almost nine years of living here, we are only at the “break even” point.  That is absent any real estate agent fees that would be paid if we chose to sell.  That is if there is no further job loss.  That is barring any major medical problem and falling behind on payments.

According to MSNBC.com, 29 percent of all homes are now underwater.

Homes with underwater status are often considered risks for future foreclosure, since owners could have trouble refinancing or selling and may opt for a foreclosure via “strategic default” if they feel they will never regain their lost equity.

[Stan] Humphries estimates that home values will bottom out in 2012 at the earliest and said the foreclosure market will remain “robust” for the next two to four years.

There are a lot of unknowns in this  never-before-seen housing market, but it will eventually return to normal.

However, in the informal world of the feel of everyday man on the street, there actually has been a peep of consumer confidence by some long-time businessmen in my community. There is now talk of developing a small shopping area behind one of our local grocery stores.

The stigma of marketing a house via short sale for sellers can cause fear in the pit of your stomach.  However, Cathy McAlister, a real estate agent from Sacramento, points out that there IS life after a short sale,

I just closed escrow last week for a very nice couple; repeat clients who were short sale seller’s only three years ago. In the winter of 2007 I received a lead for a young couple who were facing the prospect of a short sale.   They owned a small 3 bedroom townhome which had been purchased in 2004.  Great couple with a good outlook on life and an amazing amount of patience and trust.  Life events had happened that necessitated a short sale.

Cathy reports that two months ago her former sellers became buyers again when they closed .  The dream of home ownership is not dead for people who have been forced to sell via short sale.  There is hope!

There are three things that will sell a home – even in this market that has me crying in my coffee: price, condition, and marketing.  Agent Tyson Reeves of Keller Williams makes the pitch for hiring a Realtor with a good marketing plan,

You need a Realtor who believes in his own marketing plan. Wait let me back track first you need a realtor with a marketing plan, then he needs to believe in it. You can tell by asking him about his plans to get the home sold, ask him what he and/or his team does to get the home sold. If he can’t confidently rattle off a good plan then likely he doesn’t truly have on. It need to be more than putting it in the MLS and displaying it one a bunch of websites. There needs to be out reach, and a proactive approach. Today, while money is short, less and less Realtors properly market homes, thus adding to sell headache.

Yes great photos and descriptions on the MLS are a great first start, but dig deeper when you find an agent to list you house. See if they are putting out flyers, doing outreach with other agents and other firms, sending postcards to neighborhoods, hosting open houses.  Learn the marketing plan.  And hold the agent to it!

Dressing as homeless people and mocking the predicament of the nearly 20,000 homeowners they foreclosed on in 2010, New York law firm owned by Steven Baum apologized today for its poor taste.

After denying to the Times that employees had mocked those who had lost their homes, the firm has in recent days acknowledged the costumes were inappropriate and apologized for last year’s Halloween party.

The news comes as foreclosures continue to create a drag on the American economy and protests have erupted around the nation to protest what activists say is rampant corporate greed and influence on government that maintains a crippling disparity between rich and poor.

When a primary component of a business is to handle a large volume of foreclosures (especially when many homes have been lost due to the bad economy) and employees laughingly mock the misfortune of the people they play a role in evicting, then yes… an apology is in order. Given the thousands of people who stood in line today in middle Tennessee for a job fair… an apology is in order. If it was me – and this is only my personal opinion – I would be mortified to be seen in the law firm Halloween photos that are all over the Internet.

Just paying bills on time may no longer be enough to keep a good credit score.  According to RIS Media, things are about to get very personal,

But in an attempt to develop a more well-rounded picture of a person’s finances beyond credit, tools are being developed to help the lending industry dig deeper.

Fair Isaac Corp., or FICO, the company behind the widely used scoring formula, and data provider CoreLogic last week announced a collaboration that will result in a separate score that will be available to mortgage lenders and incorporates information that will include payday loans, evictions and child support payments. In the future, information on the status of utility, rent and cellphone payments may also be included.

Apparently lenders want to know a whole lot more about the financial stability and history of a borrower.  Big Brother is here to stay!