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).

The Ratchet Effect is one of the few economic theories that has any relation to reality. As President Harry Truman succinctly observed, if you laid every economist end to end, they would point in every direction, and only be able to explain things after they have happened.

I want to dispel one myth right away, and that is, Realtors do not utter the sentence “It’s a great time to buy” 365 days a year.

I have been working on a newspaper column for the Denver Post and I am uncovering some critical information that I thought I should pass on to my home buyers NOW before the column comes out.

Here we are, only three weeks into the New Year and already my phone is ringing off the hook with that old familiar question, “Dan, what is the real estate market going to do this year in Denver?”

HUD has issued the following guidelines (ML 09-52) for a homeowner who wants to obtain a FHA mortgage after a short sale or short payoff

No one can predict where interest rates will be in the future. If rates shoot up sharply, homeowners who purchased or refinanced during this time of historic lows with a FHA mortgage may have an advantage when they go to sell.

It’s time to ring in a New Year and for many people, this could mean a lot of things. For me, it always symbolizes a fresh start and a new beginning.

Mortgage rates shot up sharply this week. The benchmark 30 year fixed rate mortgage was at 5% according to one survey of national lenders.

I closed a $222,000 FHA streamline loan for a client last week at 4.25% for a thirty year mortgage. The client had no closing costs and received a generous escrow credit.