California Mortgage Blog

Five Tips for Rocking Home Ownership in 2022   If you searched unsuccessfully for a home and suffered one heartbreak after another in 2021, 2022 hasn't necessarily greeted you with open arms either.  Near non-existent inventory in many areas, fierce competition and rising interest rates have all ...

Divorce Buyout Refinancing Explained   It's a sobering fact that nearly 50% of married couples will decide to go their separate ways each year. But what happens when there's jointly owned real estate involved? And what if that home has a mortgage on it as well? What's the process for one spouse "...

Is a No Cost Refinance a Free Ride?   Back in the '70's, Edgar Winter extolled the virtues of taking a free ride.  But since that time and especially when it comes to transactions in the financial world, most of us have been conditioned to know that nothing's ever free. So how does this square wi...

HELOC or Cash Out Refinance?   As a teenager in the '80's, our dilemmas were a little simpler --- should I stay or should I go? --- for instance.  But today's homeowner faces some additional complexities, especially when it comes to deciding the best way to finance a home renovation or other larg...

YouTube Thursday? That's the Way You Do It!  In keeping with the spirit of YouTube Thursdays, and adhering to my resolution to build a YouTube channel this year, I'm optimistic this post will count as my first contribution. This week, I'm covering the basics of cash out refinances, because as rat...

Making the Youtube Leap in 2022!  A few days ago, out of the blue, I got a call from Lynn Friedman, with whom I had last spoken years ago.  We were initially connected on Active Rain, and to the uninitiated, this is one of the true joys of the platform --- the ability to make a connection across ...

The Four Horsemen of Deals Dead  My wife likes to joke that all I do for my job is talk to people.  "I hear you in there yucking it up all day..." So maybe there is always an element of the truth in jest, but an aspect of these conversations that she does not take into consideration is the near-c...

Refinancing a Jumbo Mortgage After a COVID Forbearance  Despite some recent setbacks that see COVID cases increasing, many of us are optimistic that vaccination rates will continue to go up and all of America will eventually commit to getting the worst of the virus behind us once and for all. The...

Median Home Price, Meet Median Buyer  A very long time ago I saw an email address that read 'averageandhappy@...' and I thought, "Wow, here I've been my whole life trying not to be mediocre and then someone just goes and finds happiness in all of it." I wasn't sure if I should be resentful or rel...

Divorce Buyout Mortgages  I don't think it would have surprised many married couples to learn, as they worked from home in a room that may have doubled and tripled as a dining room, nursery and rec center, that divorce filings were up 34% over the first half of 2020 and as pandemic despondency se...