Rarely is a movie sequel better than the original. I feared that HARP II (Home Affordable Refinance Program) would be another empty “cotton candy” promise from Washington with a lot of fluff and no substance.

Last week, I broke down the various price ranges in real estate and what we might expect for the coming year. I mentioned that the 400-800K price range might be the toughest price range to sell for a variety of reasons.

When our automobile needs a tune-up, it provides us with plenty of clues: hard to start, rough running, poor gas mileage, etc. But when a mortgage needs a tune-up it gives no warning.

Ok, it’s that time of year again to rub my crystal ball and foretell the coming year in real estate. I should disclose that I am not a professional crystal ball reader so take this interpretation for what it’s worth (totally free, unscientific guess).

Last week my neighborhood got about a foot of snow. While running around doing last minute Christmas shopping, I noticed the wiser, more experienced drivers took a slow steady pace and went forward with a minimum of frustration.

Here we are at the end of the year. It’s always a good time to sit back and reflect on the past year. I also like to make a quick list of the lessons I have learned over the last year in Real Estate.

Unfortunately, some of the terms in the mortgage industry are not applied uniformly. My favorite example concerns a mortgage that supposedly has no closing costs.

These days, when I put a buyer under contract with a home, I can almost write up verbatim what the inspection report will say. It seems that there are just a few items that always show up on an inspection report.

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has left loan limits unchanged for both forward (purchase and refinance mortgages), as well as Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECM).

About half of the mortgages I will close in December are for people who have an existing FHA mortgage and thought they could not refinance because of all the misinformation floating around about the current mortgage environment.