Archive for January, 2009
Tampa Area Inventory Heading In The Right Direction
For the last year we’ve had an incredibly high number of homes on the market. Because of competition to get homes sold a high inventory volume tends to bring home values down. February ’08 was our highest inventory volume at 20,486 homes for sale in the Tampa area. Since February we’ve seen inventory volume decline [...]
Fannie Mae & Countrywide Tackle Shortsales
Fannie Mae is testing a new way to handle short sales. In this new pilot program Fannie Mae will test a new process by which Fannie Mae pre-approves the list price. Then if a buyer make a full price offer the lender will accept the offer as long as the transaction meets standard requirements. For [...]
Where is your money safest?
Every year Global Finance magazine releases it’s list of the “World’s Safest Banks”. The banks are selected through a comparison of long-term credit ratings and total assets of the 300 largest banks around the world. Most of the top ten for 2008 you probably wouldn’t recognize as they’re from other countries but there is one [...]
Mortgage Rates No Longer At An All Time Low… But They’re Close!
Last week’s mark of 4.96 percent for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage were the lowest since Freddie Mac started it’s survey in April 1971. This week the rates are still very low but not that low. Thursday Freddie Mac reported that average rates on a 30-year fixd rate mortgage rose to 5.12 percent. Does this [...]
Got Citizens Insurance? Can you afford to keep it?
A task force is recommending that Citizens Property Insurance be allowed to end a three-year rate freeze and start aggressively hiking homeowner rates. The task force recommended that the Legislature caps Citizens’ annual rate increase to 10 percent on average statewide. They are urging that Citizens’ begin raising rates in January 2010. It seems a [...]
Florida’s $2.6 billion budget deficit gets final approval
Cuts totaling $1.2 billion most heavily hit education, health care and social services. Gov. Charlie Christ is expected to to sign the measure with just a few line-item vetoes. While school districts were warned of the cuts months in advance, its still not going to be easy for them. Teachers in one district were asked [...]
Lots of fun heading to Tampa Bay
Tampa is always full of activities but this year has a bit more in store for us. With Super Bowl, Gasparilla, the State Fair and the Strawberry Festival coming there’s no shortage of activities. Super Bowl XLIII – February 1stMost everyone is excited and anxious about this year’s Super Bowl which is being held at [...]