St. Louis Real Estate - Mortgage News - Foreclosure

Summer is almost here! by Chris Scheer, Cornerstone Mortgage, O’Fallon, MO

After spending 5 of the last 7 days on the golf course, I realized (not for the first time) that my future is not in professional golf.  Thus I am resigned to continuing to help people achieve the American Dream of home ownership.  So what is going on in the real estate world you ask? 

Well we finally have the long awaited change in FHA mortgage insurance premiums coming into play. Therefore after July 14, 2008 it will be more expensive for borrowers with less than stellar credit to purchase a home.  The effect in most cases will be less than $20 per month, but when you are living paycheck to paycheck, $20 a month can be a lot of money! 

Foreclosures continue to rise!  That is to be expected, but what it has done is that over the past 10 years an appraiser could ignore a comparable sale if it was a foreclosure.  Now with the amount of foreclosures, they have to be treated as part of the marketplace.  Thus property values are declining in areas of numerous foreclosures.  The positive aspect of this is that those property owners who have been complaining about their rising real estate taxes will see a freeze on the rise and in some cases may see there property taxes come down in 2009!

For questions or comments on this post, please contact Chris Scheer at chrisscheer@stlouisrealestatevoice.com

Tags: St.+Louis+Real+Estate, Mortgage+News, First+Time+Home+Buyers, Home+Buyers, FHA, mortgage+insurance+premiums

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 6:37 pm and is filed under First Time Home Buyer, For Buyers, Mortgage News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.