With an 81 to 16 vote, the Senate passed an amended version of H.R. 5140, a $150 billion plan to jumpstart the economy with temporary tax breaks for consumers and businesses, extended benefits, and most importantly, two provisions designed to assist the housing market. According to CNN, the House is expected to consider and pass the amended bill as early as tonight, which could put the bill on the President’s desk as early as Friday.

The bill temporarily increased the size of loans that may be purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, raising the current level of $417,000 to reportedly up to $730,000 in the highest cost regions of the housing markets. The bill also increases the size of loans the Federal Housing Administration could ensure. Once the bill is signed into law, the changes need to be implemented by the lenders themselves which will probably take at least 30 days. It is not clear what areas will be eligible for the increased loan limits. Once I find out what areas are eligible in Delaware, I will post it here and also post when those changes will be available for loans. So if you have a loan over $417,000 for conventional this is very exciting news! Keep Reading...

New Castle County has sent out the sewer bills and the first thing you will notice is that they are considerably higher than they were last year. Why? Because New Castle County needs to pay for its inflated government jobs and its very liberal pension plan that we flip the bill for. Oh yeah, they also raised your property tax and will do so again next year. Way to go Chris Coons.

New Castle County calculates your sewer charges based on water usage data provided by your water supplier. Four quarterly readings are compared – usually, those from the fourth quarter of 2006 and the first three-quarters of 2007. New Castle County uses the two-quarters of lowest consumption, adds them together and doubles this sum to create an annual billing consumption. Keep Reading...

Surprisingly, most homeowner’s insurance claims are not made because of fires, storms, or other news-worthy natural disasters. Instead, the culprit is almost always a small maintenance problem that is neglected or ignored until it grows into a large and costly repair.

That is why preventative maintenance is one of the best investments that a Delaware Homeowner can make.  If you spend a little money now to look after a leaky toilet, which might take an hour or so, you could prevent serious and expensive damage to floors and walls, which might take days to clean up and repair. Keep Reading...

Delaware Mortgage Rate Update – January 16, 2008

Bonds are trading worse today as traders take a profit. The reading on inflation was not good, so this gives the Feds a reason to only drop the Fed Funds rate 0.25% instead of the anticipated 0.50%. A cut of 0.5% is already priced into the mortgage market so if it is cut only 0.25% then the rates will get worse.

The Consumer Price Index which is a very good measure of inflation has been trending higher for the last 3 months and came in higher today.  The Feds have another report coming out at 2:00 PM today which is a read on the current economic conditions in the market place. Keep Reading...

“If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute”…That’s a saying heard often in places where the weather can turn on a dime, making it very difficult to forecast. And while the weather patterns can change direction quickly, the recent movement of stocks and bonds rivals the rides at an amusement park.

“Turbulent” and “volatile” best describe the action in the markets. Stocks and bonds have had wild swings of late as the possibility of a recession loom. The Federal Reserve is concerned about a recession but doesn’t want to cut rates too deeply because it may stoke the flames of inflation. Keep Reading...