Jeffrey Samuels's Blog

Do you clean your refrigerator regularly, or only after you've run out of space? If your answer is the latter, your refrigerator may be harboring dangerous bacteria that can make you, your family, and your house guests ill. Refrigerators should be cleaned monthly, inside and out, ideally. The pro...

Standard & Poors released its March 2012 Case-Shiller Index last week. The index is meant to measure changes in home prices from month-to-month, and from year-to-year, in select U.S. cities. According to the report, home values rose in 12 of the Case-Shiller Index's 20 tracked markets, and one m...

Beginning Monday, June 11, the FHA is changing its mortgage insurance premium schedule for the second time this year. Some FHA mortgage applicants will pay lower mortgage insurance premiums going forward. Others will pay more. The new premiums apply to all FHA mortgages, both purchase and refinan...

When you preview homes as a home buyer, you can get a good feel for the home's visible traits -- its finishes, its room counts, and its landscaping, for example. What you can't get a feel for, though, is the home's "bones". It's for this reason that real estate professionals recommend that you ha...

As the calendar turns to June and the temperatures start to rise nationwide, we begin to spot more bugs, insects and pests as compared to during the winter. Hiring an exterminator is one way to limit the number of ground-based bugs in your home. For example, periodic treatments can help to keep a...

The housing market took a breather in April. After forging past its benchmark value of 100 in March, April's Pending Home Sales Index dropped back to 95.5, its lowest reading of the year. The data suggests fewer home resales nationwide in the months ahead. A "pending home" is a home under contrac...

Foreclosures filings fell 5 percent between March and April of this year, and by 11 percent as compared to one year ago. The data comes from RealtyTrac. The foreclosure-tracking firm tallied fewer than 189,000foreclosure-related actions last month -- the fewest number since July 2007. Rapidly-de...

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer and, in many parts of the country, weekend weather was indistinguishable from what one might expect in August. Temperatures climbed into the 90s throughout the Southwest, South Central, Midwest and Southeast and even crossed 100 degrees in parts o...

For the fifth consecutive week, conforming 30-year fixed rate mortgage rates have dropped to new all-time lows. According to this week's Primary Mortgage Market Survey from Freddie Mac, "prime" mortgage applicants willing to pay 0.8 discount points plus closing costs can secure a mortgage rate o...

The April New Home Sales report suggests that the market for newly-built homes is as strong as the market for existing ones.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of new homes sold rose 3.3 percent in April to a seasonally-adjusted, annualized 343,000 units sold -- its second-highest r...