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...

Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC, $6.50) is being acquired by Bank of America (NYSE: BAC, $38.42). The deal is a stock swap. Shareholders of Countrywide will receive 0.1822 shares of Bank of America for every Countrywide share, the equivalent of about $7 per share of CFC.

Bank of America is getting a very good deal. Goldman Sachs has a 2008 earnings estimate of $1.50 a share for Countrywide. Argus says Countrywide will earn $1.40 in 2008. With Bank of America now involved, those earnings estimates look a whole lot more realistic. Bank of America is paying just five times these 2008 earnings estimates. Even if the estimates turn out to be too high or at least premature, Bank of America will be looking good in a short while. I won’t be surprised if the deal is accretive for Bank of America’s earnings in the first year after the deal closes. Keep Reading...