Everybody's got to live somewhere. And – as the world now acutely knows – its usually better to do business in person as well.
In this section, you'll find our real estate posts, research, and calculators. And remember: location, location, location.
Editor: This article was first written in 2013. The dollar amounts have changed but the relative location discussion holds. When our friend SSS from Save. Spend. Splurge. asked us if we were interested in shining a spotlight on value-for-your-housing-buck in the Bay Area of California and explore where a newcomer to the Bay Area should […]
We've got a treat for you today - a spiffy graph we created with Google Drive (née Documents). Thanks to comments from fellow Burbed commenter SEA on this article, we decided to take another look at the relationship between mortgage rates and home prices. Thought we did it once before? Not quite - we had […]
About a month ago, my colleague Cameron penned an article about the Mortgage Interest Deduction - namely, whether it is a good idea or not. For an itemizing taxpayer in the 25% bracket, he pointed out, "The bank receives 4.0% interest, the homeowner pays 3.0% and the taxpayer is left footing the 1.0% difference." Right - and the bank ends up pocketing the subsidy.
There is a mortgage strategy variously described in different corners of the internet where a mortgage is refinanced... and payments stay steady. For this strategy, a borrower is currently paying some monthly payment, and will continue to pay the exact same monthly payment after their mortgage is refinanced. The benefits are usually explained as an acceleration of mortgage payments and a "guaranteed investment return". You may find yourself in a situation where you are considering this form of accelerated mortgage payments. Is it worth it? Let's run the numbers and find out!
Conceptually, it's easy to grasp why and when you should refinance your mortgage. In practice, inertia is the main reason people hold back from refinancing. With that in mind, we present these mortgage calculator which will allow you to see how your current mortgage will compare with the mortgage you are considering. Perhaps if the math is enticing, you'll shop around? Enjoy!
We'd like to thank Hugh Chou for compiling the equations that we needed to create this calculator, and Ironman at Political Calculations for providing the calculator framework.
In our last article, we promised you a calculator so you can copy our methodology and calculate 'affordable' houses by determining what an acceptable monthly payment would be. In our current article, we deliver! Thanks to Ironman at Political Calculations for the calculator creation script, it was very useful once again!
Is it okay to welch on a financial commitment? Yes, I know that 'welch' is a gambling term - and we're about to talk about mortgages. If an unproportional amount of recent mortgages were actually bets that house prices would continue to increase, maybe 'welch' is the right term after all? Anyway, Pew recently polled people to ask their opinion on the practice of 'walking away' from mortgages.