As rates are inching up but still very affordable, buyers should remember that there is an alternative to a fixed rate mortgage that can provide the lowest cost of housing for the homeowners who understand the parameters.

A $300,000 fixed-rate mortgage at 4% has a principal and interest payment of $1,432.25 per month for the entire 30 year term. A 5/1 adjustable mortgage at 3% has a $167.43 lower payment for the first five years and then, can adjust, up or down, based on a predetermined index.

Another interesting fact is that the unpaid balance on the ARM at the end of the first five years is $4,624 lower than the fixed-rate mortgage. The total savings in the first five years on the ARM is $14,669.00.

Adjustable rate mortgages are not the right choice for everyone but buyers should at least consider the options based on their individual situation. It could be an obvious choice for a buyer who is only going to be in the home for five years or less.

Use the ARM Comparison worksheet to see what possible savings you could have based on your actual numbers. A trusted mortgage professional can help you to understand the advantages and disadvantages based on your situation. You need the facts to make the best decision.

Access Teri’s one-stop Orlando FL home search website.

Teri Isner is the team leader of Orlando Avenue Top Team and has been a Realtor for over 24 years. Teri has distinguished herself as a leader in the Orlando FL real estate market. Teri assists buyers looking for Orlando FL real estate for sale and aggressively markets Orlando FL homes for sale.

You deserve professional real estate service! You obtain the best results with Teri Isner plus you benefit from her marketing skills, experience and ability to network with other REALTORS®. Your job gets done pleasantly and efficiently. You are able to make important decisions easily with fast, accurate information from Teri. The Orlando Avenue Top Team handles the details and follow-up that are important to the success of your transaction.

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It seems fairly innocuous; a friend or family member wants you to co-sign on a loan because they don’t qualify. They assure that they’ll make the payments; they’re quite convincing and very appreciative. You don’t want to disappoint them and after all, it’s not like it’s going to cost you anything…is it?

Think of it this way. They couldn’t get a loan unless you co-sign for them. If they don’t make the payments, the lender is going to look to you to repay the loan plus late and collection fees. The lender may be able to sue you, file a lien on your home or garnish your wages.

And it’s not just money that you could be losing, it could be your credit too. Co-signing a loan is a contingent liability that could affect your debt-to-income ratio and your ability to borrow.

Co-signing is an obligation to repay the debt if the other signer is unable. You could be out the money and unable to recoup the loss because you don’t have control of the asset. The impact on your credit could take years to recover.

Before you obligate yourself, consider all of the ramifications involved in co-signing a loan for someone.

Access Teri’s one-stop Orlando FL home search website.

Teri Isner is the team leader of Orlando Avenue Top Team and has been a Realtor for over 24 years. Teri has distinguished herself as a leader in the Orlando FL real estate market. Teri assists buyers looking for Orlando FL real estate for sale and aggressively markets Orlando FL homes for sale.

You deserve professional real estate service! You obtain the best results with Teri Isner plus you benefit from her marketing skills, experience and ability to network with other REALTORS®. Your job gets done pleasantly and efficiently. You are able to make important decisions easily with fast, accurate information from Teri. The Orlando Avenue Top Team handles the details and follow-up that are important to the success of your transaction.

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According to the latest Beracha, Hardin & Johnson Buy vs. Rent (BH&J) Index homeownership is a better way to produce greater wealth, on average, than renting. The BH&J Index is a quarterly report that attempts to answer the question:

Is it better to rent or buy a home in today’s housing market?

The index examines that entire US housing market and then isolates 23 major markets for comparison. The researchers at use a “’horse race’ comparison between an individual that is buying a home and an individual that rents a similar quality home and reinvests all monies otherwise invested in homeownership.” Ken Johnson, Real Estate Economist & Professor at Florida Atlantic University, and one of the index’s authors states: “The U.S. as a whole is still in clear buy territory. The cities of Cincinnati, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York City are deep into buy territory.” Miami and Portland had been inching closer toward renting being the better option but have “pulled back from the edge.” Johnson goes on to say, “that’s a good sign for home pricing as it suggests prices are going to level off in these metro areas.”

Bottom Line

Buying a home makes sense socially and financially. Rents are predicted to increase substantially in the next year, so lock in your housing cost with a mortgage payment now.

Access Teri’s one-stop Orlando FL home search website.

Teri Isner is the team leader of Orlando Avenue Top Team and has been a Realtor for over 24 years. Teri has distinguished herself as a leader in the Orlando FL real estate market. Teri assists buyers looking for Orlando FL real estate for sale and aggressively markets Orlando FL homes for sale.

You deserve professional real estate service! You obtain the best results with Teri Isner plus you benefit from her marketing skills, experience and ability to network with other REALTORS®. Your job gets done pleasantly and efficiently. You are able to make important decisions easily with fast, accurate information from Teri. The Orlando Avenue Top Team handles the details and follow-up that are important to the success of your transaction.

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The National Association of Realtors (NAR) recently released their July edition of the Housing Affordability Index. The index measures whether or not a typical family earns enough income to qualify for a mortgage loan on a typical home at the national level based on the most recent price and income data. NAR looks at the monthly mortgage payment (principal & interest) which is determined by the median sales price and mortgage interest rate at the time. With that information, NAR calculates the income necessary for a family to qualify for that mortgage amount (based on a 25% qualifying ratio for monthly housing expense to gross monthly income and a 20% down payment).

Here is a graph of the income needed to buy a median priced home in the country over the last several years:

And the income requirement has accelerated even more dramatically this year as prices have risen:

Bottom Line

Some buyers may be waiting to save up a larger down payment. Others may be waiting for a promotion and more money. Just realize that, while you are waiting, the requirements are also changing.

• Hiring a Real Estate Professional to buy your dream home, or sell your current house is one of the most ‘educated’ decisions you can make!
• A Real Estate Professional has the experience needed to help you through the entire process.
• Make sure that you hire someone who knows current market conditions & can simply & effectively explain them to you & your family!

Access Teri’s one-stop Orlando FL home search website.

Teri Isner is the team leader of Orlando Avenue Top Team and has been a Realtor for over 24 years. Teri has distinguished herself as a leader in the Orlando FL real estate market. Teri assists buyers looking for Orlando FL real estate for sale and aggressively markets Orlando FL homes for sale.

You deserve professional real estate service! You obtain the best results with Teri Isner plus you benefit from her marketing skills, experience and ability to network with other REALTORS®. Your job gets done pleasantly and efficiently. You are able to make important decisions easily with fast, accurate information from Teri. The Orlando Avenue Top Team handles the details and follow-up that are important to the success of your transaction.

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Buying a condo can be a good experience if you know what you are getting into. If you enjoy the easy life but you still want to own your own home, buying a condo may be just the thing for you! Today, we will look into a few things you may want to consider when buying a condo.

• Get to know your HOA if there is one. Find out what you can and cannot do in and around your new condo. Many people take getting to know about their Homeowner’s Association for granted until it is too late and they run into a problem.
• Look into the bylaws of the condo you are thinking about purchasing. You can find out about rules regarding pets, parking, maximum occupant guidelines as well as finding out about things you can and cannot change in the unit if you decide you would rather rent for a while.
• Have the building inspected to see if there will be any need for repairs before you purchase it. This will help you in the long run avoid spending needlessly on things that could have already been fixed before you move in to your new condo.
• Find out what your voting rights might be as a condo owner. You can check this by again looking into the HOA and those that govern it.
• Check into the finances of the condo to see that there are reserves for building maintenance that may come into play in the future.
• Go door to door and get to know your potential neighbors. You will be living in close proximity to your neighbors if you do choose condo life, so spend a little bit if extra time getting to know those around you.

Condo life can be great if you are an empty nester or if you are single or an older individual looking for a more relaxed lifestyle than typical home ownership offers you. The last thing you want to be doing in your later years is worrying about keeping up a house and all that it entails. Start looking into condo life today by doing a bit of research online for condos in your area for sale or rent. There are pros and cons to owning your own condo so be sure to do your research and figure out if living in a condo works for your lifestyle. You may find that you have found the gold at the end of the rainbow by purchasing your own condo.

Access Teri’s one-stop Orlando FL home search website.

Teri Isner is the team leader of Orlando Avenue Top Team and has been a Realtor for over 24 years. Teri has distinguished herself as a leader in the Orlando FL real estate market. Teri assists buyers looking for Orlando FL real estate for sale and aggressively markets Orlando FL homes for sale.

You deserve professional real estate service! You obtain the best results with Teri Isner plus you benefit from her marketing skills, experience and ability to network with other REALTORS®. Your job gets done pleasantly and efficiently. You are able to make important decisions easily with fast, accurate information from Teri. The Orlando Avenue Top Team handles the details and follow-up that are important to the success of your transaction.

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Most folks these days are living paycheck to paycheck and are having a hard enough time trying to pay all of their bills on time. This is one of the biggest reasons many people are looking for some sort of down payment assistance when it comes time to purchase a new home. For many people owning their own home cannot become a reality because they simply cannot afford to come up with the down payment needed. Rest assured if you are one of those people who have a hard time coming up with enough money to pay bills much less enough money for a down payment on a house, there is hope for you! Below are a few ideas for down payment assistance and what you need to do to qualify for it.

• Figure out what your adjusted gross income is so that you will know if you can or cannot qualify for down payment assistance.
• Complete a HUD application at your local HUD (The US Department of Urban Development) office.   In order to qualify for HUD your adjusted gross income must not be more than 80 percent of the local median income.
• The down payment assistance program from HUD has a limit of 6 percent of the home’s purchase price or $10,000 so be sure that you know what size and price range you are looking for in a home before you apply for assistance. Knowing some of these things beforehand will possibly save you a lot of hassle in the long run.
• You may possibly qualify for a grant that you do not have to pay back such as with the American Dream Down Payment Initiative Program. This program is known as the ADDI. If you need assistance with your home down payment be sure not to let this particular program slip through your fingers.

Hopefully these few ideas for down payment assistance will get you started in the right direction when looking for a home of your own. It is important that you don’t get discouraged and give up when looking for these types of assistance programs. They are out there for the taking you just have to be diligent to look for them and see which ones may be able to assist you in your home buying experience. It is all too easy to give up and not look deep into all the different home down payment assistance programs but I promise you if you do enough research you WILL likely find one out there that is just waiting to help you.

Access Teri’s one-stop Orlando FL home search website.

Teri Isner is the team leader of Orlando Avenue Top Team and has been a Realtor for over 24 years. Teri has distinguished herself as a leader in the Orlando FL real estate market. Teri assists buyers looking for Orlando FL real estate for sale and aggressively markets Orlando FL homes for sale.

You deserve professional real estate service! You obtain the best results with Teri Isner plus you benefit from her marketing skills, experience and ability to network with other REALTORS®. Your job gets done pleasantly and efficiently. You are able to make important decisions easily with fast, accurate information from Teri. The Orlando Avenue Top Team handles the details and follow-up that are important to the success of your transaction.

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As a follow-up to a recent blog post,Your Credit and Your Home Purchase, I want to share a tip from a credit restoration company I know…

“As Shakespeare almost put it, To Pay Or Not To Pay, that is the question:

When it comes to your credit scores, paying the right account or the wrong account can make a massive difference in your credit scores. Let’s focus on what not to pay. One would assume when paying off bad debts on your credit report, the credit scores would always increase. However “one” is not always correct. Paying off items like your utility collection, or your cell phone collection will most likely decrease your scores. This is despite the popular belief that having a $0 balance on your collection accounts must be better than owing money. Balances on collections are irrelevant, for example you could have a one million dollar medical collection or a one dollar medical collection and if everything else is the same the scores would also be the same. The reason why your scores generally decrease when a payment is made is because by making a payment you reactivate the account causing it to report as new again. This is shown as the ‘DLA’ on a credit report. This ‘DLA’ or ‘Date of Last Activity’ represents the weight of the account AND the seven year statute until the item will fall off naturally (which is a whole other problem, but we will save that for another day).

The reasoning behind this madness is that the algorithms that calculate scores cannot discriminate against wealthier/poorer individuals. So the fact that a wealthier person has the ability to pay off a certain dollar amount more easily than a poorer person would be discriminatory on algorithm calculation.”

Confused? Contact us and we’ll put you in touch with a reliable lender who can answer your questions.

Access Teri’s one-stop Orlando FL home search website.

Teri Isner is the team leader of Orlando Avenue Top Team and has been a Realtor for over 24 years. Teri has distinguished herself as a leader in the Orlando FL real estate market. Teri assists buyers looking for Orlando FL real estate for sale and aggressively markets Orlando FL homes for sale.

You deserve professional real estate service! You obtain the best results with Teri Isner plus you benefit from her marketing skills, experience and ability to network with other REALTORS®. Your job gets done pleasantly and efficiently. You are able to make important decisions easily with fast, accurate information from Teri. The Orlando Avenue Top Team handles the details and follow-up that are important to the success of your transaction.

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When buying a home it is prudent to know about your credit score. According to a recent survey by Experian, many of those in the market for a home are already aware of the importance of their credit score. However, only half of recent buyers said they checked their credit when they first considered purchasing a home.

1. 67% of buyers are NOT pre-approved
2. 45% of buyers delay their purchase (ultimately) to improve their credit

That is almost HALF of buyers who delay the purchase based on information they should have known prior to shopping for a home.

This survey underscores how important the pre-approval loan process is. Even if just to give buyersan idea of what their credit report contains, what their rate and payment would be and how much they can qualify to buy. Too often, there are situations where people cannot qualify once under contract and it would have been quickly uncovered during a pre-approval.  This represents wasted time for the realtor, buyer, seller and all involved.

Lesson learned? Pay attention to your credit year-round, and understand that what you do today impacts how your credit works for you in critical purchase moments like home buying.

Information provided by Orlando Realtor Teri Isner.

Access Teri’s one-stop Orlando FL home search website.

Teri Isner is the team leader of Orlando Avenue Top Team and has been a Realtor for over 24 years. Teri has distinguished herself as a leader in the Orlando FL real estate market. Teri assists buyers looking for Orlando FL real estate for sale and aggressively markets Orlando FL homes for sale.

You deserve professional real estate service! You obtain the best results with Teri Isner plus you benefit from her marketing skills, experience and ability to network with other REALTORS®. Your job gets done pleasantly and efficiently. You are able to make important decisions easily with fast, accurate information from Teri. The Orlando Avenue Top Team handles the details and follow-up that are important to the success of your transaction.

Get Orlando Daily News delivered to your inbox! Subscribe here!

Are you an unmarried couple hoping to buy a home together? In today’s culture, more unmarried couples are purchasing their first homes together. Mark Sheets, real estate author and blogger, offers some good advice about potential pitfalls to research before you buy.

Financially, ownership of your home can be very advantageous. However, it can be more difficult to end a co-ownership than it is to get a divorce. So, you need to prepare in advance. You want to make sure the process gives both of you the outcome that you expect.

When making the decision to purchase a home with your significant other, you and partner must know that a property agreement is a legal contract. One of the more important aspects of purchasing a home together is determining how the investment will be split. In many cases, one partner may initially invest more money into the home than the other.  Unequal ownership can be handled, but it has its own set of problems.

Another issue to confront in the process is filing for a Joint Tenancy With Rights of Survivorship (JTWROS).  A JTWROS allows for the home and assets to be passed to the surviving partner if the other were to pass away. This lets the partner avoid inheritance taxes, as the home won’t go through an estate.  Married couples are automatically granted JTWROS whereas unmarried couples are not.

If the relationship were to end, a dividing of the assets needs to take place.  Although everyone in a relationship hopes for the best, preparing for the worst-case scenario will alleviate a lot of pain in the future. The goal is to anticipate different scenarios under which you may want to dissolve the co-ownership.

When the time comes to apply for a mortgage, the lender needs to run both of your credit scores.  This can backfire if one of you has a great credit score and one has a not-so-good score.  If this is the case, then you may not get the loan. Investigate ahead of time to know where you stand. You will also want to check your individual state’s laws regarding an unmarried couple purchasing a home together, as some states don’t allow it.

An option to co-ownership might be for you to form a business partnership or a limited liability company to own the property. They are both legal business entities that can take on many forms. The business would then own the property and collect rent from the individuals living in the home. This eliminates any issues with state laws that prohibit co-ownership of unmarried couples. It potentially also makes transfer of ownership easier at a later date.

In any case, you must first consult a real estate attorney in your state to determine the pros and cons and to determine the best legal form of ownership to accomplish your goals.

Information provided by Orlando Realtor Teri Isner.

Access Teri’s one-stop Orlando FL home search website.

Teri Isner is the team leader of Orlando Avenue Top Team and has been a Realtor for over 24 years. Teri has distinguished herself as a leader in the Orlando FL real estate market. Teri assists buyers looking for Orlando FL real estate for sale and aggressively markets Orlando FL homes for sale.

You deserve professional real estate service! You obtain the best results with Teri Isner plus you benefit from her marketing skills, experience and ability to network with other REALTORS®. Your job gets done pleasantly and efficiently. You are able to make important decisions easily with fast, accurate information from Teri. The Orlando Avenue Top Team handles the details and follow-up that are important to the success of your transaction.

Get Orlando Daily News delivered to your inbox! Subscribe here!