The first step in the home buying process is to find out what you can afford to pay for a house, condo or co-op. This will depend on the amount of cash you have available for a down payment, your credit, income, assets and overall financial situation.
Mortgage qualification is easier for buyers who work as […]

The latest federal statistics on housing prices in hundreds of local markets reveal patterns that haven’t been making the nightly news: While on a national basis, homeowners have lost more than $1 trillion in equity since the end of the boom, the overwhelming majority of local markets continue to show net cumulative value growth over […]

Five or 10 years from now, when the financial crisis has ended and housing prices are up smartly once more, we will look in the rearview mirror and realize that we missed a golden age for first-time home buyers.
Then, everyone who sat on their down payment savings accounts for a few years too long will […]

If we just had some extra cash, now would be a great time to get into the stock market, right?” Actually, if you have some extra cash, now is the best time in five or more years to … buy a home.
  Thanks to the concept of “leveraging,” purchasing a home is by far the […]