Charleston Real Estate Blog

  To understand how the market works, supply and demand will usually determine prices. If there are more buyers than sellers, prices will go up, if there are more sellers than buyers, prices will go down. Where there is an equilibrium, prices will be stable. With this simple approach, you can determine whether there is a buyers market or a ...

It's not that I haven't been working the Charleston real estate market this week, simply, the events of the past days have been so extraordinary and compelling that I haven't written about Charleston real estate lately. So while the world financial system seems to be on the edge of chaos, life still goes on. And I have a lot of faith ...

The simple answer. Take financial risks and leverage your risk to the maximum. Now, a little more detail. Let's use the Case-Shiller index that shows that homes have declined in value by approximately 15% across the country in the last year. Of course, regular readers will know that I think Case-Shiller overstates the decline by ...

The good news for the Charleston real estate market is that Charleston is not considered a declining market according to the mortgage insurers. A lot of the country is as mortgage insurers attempt to reduce risk. A big change is that borrowers can no longer avoid mortgage insurance by taking out the piggyback loan which has virtually ...

There is so much news about the growing problem of foreclosures, members of Congress and those running for President are tripping over themselves to figure out some way to bail out those who are likely to lose their homes to foreclosure. After all, the banks have gotten a little bail out, why shouldn't the poor homeowners get some help from ...

I wrote about the difficulty (or practical impossibility) of buying a short sale in this post. My friend, Larry Cragun recently posted a comment from Thomas Johnson, a realtor in Houston TX, relating a story of how the banks do not respond to short sale contracts and why. Click here to find out why short sale listings are bogus and ...

You really can't go more than a day without another headline talking about doom and gloom for the housing industry and the lenders. "Foreclosures up 75% for the last quarter" does not mean that 75% of all home have gone into foreclosure, it just means that 75% more homes went into foreclosure than the year before. As I said the other ...

Project Lifeline was announced as a companion to Hope Now to help those who need help to do something to avert foreclosure. Six mortgage lenders servicing over 50% of all mortgages including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Countrywide Financial, Washington Mutual and Well Fargo will pause foreclosure proceedings for borrowers ...

The window of opportunity for unbelievably low mortgage rates turned out to be 3 days. Mortgage rates are still very attractive but not the almost unbelievable 5.125% that was quoted as recently as Tuesday. Here's the story. When the global markets started dropping Monday and Tuesday morning, it was assumed that fears of a recession and ...

Global stocks dropped sharply overseas and the Dow is poised to drop over 500 points at the open today. It's been said that when the United States sneezes, the world catches pneumonia. Asian stocks led by developing countries like China and India have losses over 10% over the past 2 days, Oil is down $3 on slowing growth. Europe was off ...