Freddie Mac said Thursday the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage fell to 3.89 percent. That’s below the previous record of 3.91 percent reached three weeks ago.

Records for mortgage rates date back to the 1950s.

The average on the 15-year fixed mortgage ticked down to 3.16 percent. That’s down from a record 3.21 percent three weeks ago.

A FHA 203(k) or FNMA Renovation Loans, allows you to purchase, repair and update properties all on 1 mortgage. Most short sales and foreclosures are in need of some work.

You love the home, but you are short on cash for repairs or changes. Don’t walk away, go with the two in one loan and solve the problem.

Can be used on single family, condo’s and some commercial. The process is simple, the time is right to innovate for greater profits.

Contact me for more info on this or any other real estate topic.

If you’re one of the millions who has an eye on 2012 as the year in which you’ll buy a home (first or not), here are five things you can do now to put yourself on the right path:

1. Check your credit. Take my word for it: there is no bad surprise worse than a bad credit surprise. Okay, maybe there is one thing worse – a credit surprise you receive while you’re in the midst of trying to buy a home!

2. Do your research. The more rapidly the real estate market changes, the more it behooves smart buyers to study up before they jump in. And now’s the time – you can start doing online and in-person research into topics ranging from:

· Target states, cities and neighborhoods. Whether you’re relocating or simply trying to narrow down the local districts to focus on during your 2012 house hunt, December is a great time to start your online research into decision-driving factors like tax rates, school districts, neighborhood character and even prices in various areas. Resident ratings and reviews sites like Trulia and NabeWise can help you make the neighborhood-lifestyle match.

· Real estate and mortgage pros. If you don’t already have your pros picked out, now is the time to get on the horn or drop an email or Facebook message to your circle of contacts, asking them for a referral to a broker or agent they love. Follow up by: checking whether these pros are active in answering questions on Trulia Voices, searching for their name and seeing what sort of feedback on them you can cull from the web, then giving them a ring and launching a conversation about whether you and they might be a good partnership.

· Short sales and REOs. Distressed property sales are not for the unwary. If you want to target upside down or foreclosed homes, or are planning to house hunt in an area where many of the listings are described as short sales or foreclosures, get educated about what you can expect from a distressed property purchase transaction before you get your heart set on a short sale.

· What you get for the money. Online house hunting is a powerful tool – especially when it’s cold and wet! But there comes a point in your house hunt where you’ve got to just get out into the actual physical homes you’re seeing online in order to get a strong, accurate sense of what home features, aesthetics and location characteristics correlate with what price points.

· Mortgage musts. You can read a bunch of articles about mortgages and get yourself pretty far down the path toward qualifying for a home loan, but you can only get a personalized action plan for a smooth road ‘home’ by talking with a local mortgage broker and having them assess your basic financials. They might say you need to move funds around, pay a bill down or off or produce some sort of documentation from your employer. And the time to start all that is now.

3. Fluff up your cash cushion. So, you’ve saved up your 3.5 percent down payment. Perhaps you saved a little extra for closing costs. Or maybe you’re even one of those uber-aggressive 20-percent-down-ers. No matter how much you’ve saved, you’ll find that you could use more once you activate your home buying action plan. Mark my words – after closing, you’ll crave extra cash to do some repairs, upgrade a couple of things, buy appliances or even just to hold onto in order to minimize your anxiety about depleting your savings!

So, if homebuying is on your personal 2012 action plan, don’t go hog wild on holiday gifts. Instead, wait until next year and give yourself the gift of a home.

4. Shed some stuff. Sell it. Donate it. Give it to relatives who’ve always coveted it. Just get rid of it. If you do it before year’s end, you can kill three birds with one stone: (a) getting some cold hard cash to go toward your savings, (b) getting some tax receipts so you can deduct the value of your donations in January, (c) minimizing money spent on holiday gifts for loved ones and these two bonus birds – clearing the mental clutter that physical clutter creates and prepping for your move in advance.

5. Sit very, very still. Sometimes, the best way to further our goals is to stop tripping ourselves up. In that vein, commit right now to refrain from making any major financial moves until you buy your home. Don’t quit your job to start that personal chef business (yet), don’t pull a bunch of cash out of your savings account (without getting clearance form your mortgage pro first), and don’t start buying cars and boats on credit – even if you do love the idea of putting the red bow on the car you give your wife, like in the commercials.

I assure you, the bow you’ll be able to put on that house or condo will be much bigger, redder and more tax-advantaged!

Excerpt from blog by Tara-Nicolle/Trulia

The other thing we desperately need is for the banks to move faster on short sales and foreclosures that continue to hurt families, communities and markets.

Principal reductions under HAMP began in October 2010, serving as an alternative to a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure for cash-strapped home owners. Only loans not guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are eligible for a principal reduction.

“The median loan-to-value ratio on modifications that went through principal reduction was 158 percent,” HousingWire reports in a recent article. “After the workout was complete, the borrower held an LTV of 115 percent, meaning he or she owed 15 percent more on the mortgage than the home was worth rather than being 58 percent underwater.”

Banks may find a principal reduction is better for them financially too. Banks report an average loss rate of 60 percent whenever borrowers complete a short sale, and an average 70 percent loss for homes in the foreclosure or REO process, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

Source: “Principal Reduction Outpaces Short Sales Under HAMP,” HousingWire (Dec. 12, 2011)

The speculative investors used low downpayments and subprime credit in buying up multiple homes at once, the report says. Their actions attributed to home prices in some areas being inflated, researchers say.

“This may have allowed the bubble to inflate further, which caused millions of owner-occupants to pay more if they wanted to buy a home for their family,” researchers note in the report.

House flippers made up a big piece of the real estate market during the housing boom. According to the report, more than one-third of all home mortgages from 2006 were to people who already owned at least one home. What’s more, “in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada, where average home prices more than doubled from 2000 to 2006, investors made up nearly half of all mortgage-backed purchases during the housing bubble,” the Associated Press reports. “Buyers owning three or more properties represented the fastest-growing segment of home owners during that time.”

When home values began to fall in 2006, investors defaulted on their loans in large numbers, accounting for more than 25 percent of seriously delinquent mortgage balances, according to the report. In investor hot-spots like Arizona, California, Florida, and Nevada, investors accounted for more than a third of seriously delinquent mortgage balances from 2007 to 2009.

The report urges lenders and regulators to take action to limit speculative borrowing in order to avoid a future housing downturn.

Source: “Flippers’ Housing Bust Role Larger than Thought,” The Associated Press (Dec. 12, 2011)

As of today, Dec 13, 2011, the forecast is a dry, sunny 78 degrees. There are 323 foreclosed properties (bank owned) in Pinellas County, the best part of the Tampa Bay area, where some of the most fabulous beaches in the world are located.

163 of those are single family residences, 119 are condos, and the rest are either townhomes or villas.
Contact me if you’d like to look into a foreclosed deal and get your own piece of paradise.

I love what I do. You’ll love the results!

I have found a method that has worked for me; I treat my loved ones with the same respect I like them to treat me, even when they don’t. When I’m most upset, for example, at my husband, I think of him as a stranger, someone that I just met that has done something I disapprove of, or a client, or my boss. Would I immediately go on a screaming rampage and insult that person in the middle of the street or the office? Probably not, I’d be embarrassed to do that, I’d probably feel that I have no right to insult them, and I’d be a little afraid of the consequences. I could lose my job, lose that account I’ve worked on so hard. I could be dealing with a crazy person, perhaps someone with a gun that is not going to take it.

But I know my husband will. I know that he loves me and that he’ll forgive me, and that no matter how ugly I get with him, he will not hold it against me and definitely will not hurt me.

So we abuse love. Most of us do not “act up” in public, but we think that it’s perfectly OK to do it at home, in front of the ones we love. Even in front of our children, who look up to us for guidance and learn from our behavior.

It all comes down to respect, and self control.