Rick Kellow's (dad4_2) Blog

The Chicago Bears head coach Lovie Smith, clearly upset about the Bears' recent losing record to the Packers, decides to find out from Mike McCarthy what his secret is. So, Lovie travels up to a Packers practice and asks McCarthy, "Coach, how is it that your team is so good? What's your secret?" ...

Fannie Mae held 86,155 foreclosed properties on its books at the end of September, while its sister company, Freddie Mac, held slightly less: 74,897. Both GSEs have a stated policy of selling their REO to owner occupants first, and when that fails, disposing of them in bulk to investors. "We only...

  Building Equity Through Housing--FHA vs. Building Equity Through Housing (B.E.T.H.) Let's start by comparing one of the most popular loan programs on the market today...the FHA Loan.  FHA Loan$150,000 Purchase PMI = Private Mortgage Insurance 3.5% Down Payment $5,250.00 1.0% Pre-Paid PMI $1,447...

Go Pack Go... You gotta love those Packers... what a game... the super bowl will be exciting

The Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development have released New Residential Sales data for December 2010. New Residential Sales data provides statistics on the sales of new privately-owned single-family residential structures in the United States. Data included in the press re...

Sometimes it makes sense to add cash or shorten the term when you refinance. Before the housing bust, homeowners often saw soaring real estate values as an opportunity to get cash out of their home by refinancing or taking out a home-equity loan. But now that home prices have headed in the other ...

A credit score is a number that lenders use to determine the risk of lending money to a given borrower. Credit card companies, auto dealerships and mortgage bankers are three common examples of types of lenders that will check your credit score before deciding how much they are willing to lend yo...

Six hundred days. That's how long, on average, mortgage loans in the foreclosure process in New York have been delinquent. That's the longest average in the nation, but not by much, according to LPS Applied Analytics, in Jacksonville, Fla. Loans in foreclosure in Florida, New Jersey, Hawaii and M...

Few factors affect the mortgage lending process as much as a borrower's credit score. Mortgage bankers and their Wall Street counterparts have long relied on the FICO score to judge the ‘credit worthiness' of the borrower.  When determining pricing on the sale or purchase of millions of dollars o...