Selling your own home is nothing new and it has been going on for years. When consumers hear that it is now a seller’s market, they get all excited, think they should save a few bucks, and maybe sell their homes by themselves.

Let’s take just a moment and define earnest money. Earnest money is a specific form of security deposit used to demonstrate an earnest good faith about wanting to complete a transaction; in this case real estate.

The start of 2013 is in full swing and it’s still a Seller’s Market in every sense of the term. At the years end there was just over 6,000 homes for sale in the Denver Metro Area. That’s the lowest we’ve ever seen in Colorado.

Ok, so you’ve been out looking at homes for a few months and you still can’t find anything you want to buy. It’s hard to believe that we are having this discussion today after the last four years of record high inventory.

Here we are again. I thought I wouldn’t be writing about this topic again for quite a while, but now that the pendulum is swinging in the other direction, we are finding buyers and sellers are at odds again.

“We won’t be using a real estate agent”, “We don’t need an agent”, “We can get a better deal if we don’t have a buyers agent“,”I can save money on the sale of my home without using a Realtor.”

If you hadn’t noticed, there is a groundswell of people becoming very anti-banking these days. Who could blame them? The banks are very financially healthy right now while average Americans are not.

When the market crashed in 2008, you heard story after story of homes that were priced at $500,000, but appraised at $425,000. There clearly was a shift in the market.

Is mortgage rate envy a sin? I have no idea, because I am a mortgage banker and not part of the clergy. But I do know that mortgage rate envy is usually based upon misinformation, and prevents mortgage borrowers from thinking clearly.

It has been some time since we have heard about a government agency dropping fees, but FHA is doing that for FHA mortgages that were insured prior to June 1, 2009. Remember that it may take up to 90 days after the note date for the loan to be insured.