Your credit report When you take out a loan, your lender will review your credit report from independent companies that monitor your credit. Your credit report is a compilation of three key factors: your credit history, information from employers, and financial information gathered from public records. Taken together, all this information is used to …
Category Archive: Everything Else
Jan 06
Signs of housing turn-around
Floor for home prices? Recent data, such as new-home starts and existing-home sales, have offered some glimmers of hope. The release of the S&P/Case-Shiller index for October shows additional slippage in prices. But the rate of decline in the index, which tracks home prices in 20 metropolitan areas, is expected to continue slowing, to less …
Sep 15
Mukilteo, Sammamish and Newcastle - Best Places to Live…
Mukilteo, Newcastle and Sammamish make CNN’s Top 25 Best Places to Live list… Mukilteo is #9, Sammamish is #15, Newcastle is #18. Click the cities for links to their web pages.
Jun 21
Housing fall greater than during Great Depression
The housing double dip is official: US home prices fell in the first quarter to a new recession low. “This month’s latest S&P/Case-Shiller price index report is marked by the confirmation of a double-dip in home prices across much of the nation,” said David Blitzer, chairman of S&P’s index committee. “The National Index fell 4.2% over the …
Jun 02
Video: Chase-Shiller Report on housing for first quarter 2011
Home prices hit a new low in March, nearly five years after they first started to fall, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices in 20 cities. It’s important to bear in mind that the report reflects sales that were recorded in January, February and March 2011. These sales were negotiated before that, so …
May 02
Mercer Island #2 on Forbes “Best Cities to Live and Learn 2011”
Mercer Island, WA Educational quality score: 99.12 Median home value: $708,740 Population: 24,351 “‘Play hard, work hard’ seems to be the motto on this 10-square mile speck floating in Lake Washington near Seattle…” Click the link below to read more from the article that touts the benefits and achievements of the Mercer Island Schools. One …
Apr 25
Price comparisons by King County cities/areas
Click below for a .pdf copy of a statistical comparison of median prices for Puget Sound cities. The comparison data shows the difference between March 2011 and March 2010. Also included are the number of closed sales by city. As you look at the number of listings per city/area, note how many numbers are negative …
Apr 12
Regulators pushing for minimum 20% down
Banking regulators are pushing for mortgage-lending rules that require homeowners to make minimum 20% down payments on loans classified as lower-risk, according to people familiar with the matter. The proposal is being floated as a way to rewrite the rules for mortgage lending to prevent a re-run of the housing bubble and financial crisis that …
Mar 17
For JOBS, education still matters
Looking at this graph showing the unemployment rate according to four levels of education, one is clearly struck that, yes, education matters regarding jobs. The data starts in 1992 and includes only one previous recession (the stock/tech bust in 2001). You will notice that early last year those with “less than a high school diploma” recovered a little better than the …
Mar 13
Six months of housing price declines…
The graph shows the national CoreLogic Housing Price Index data since 1976 with January 2000 = 100. CoreLogic’s January Home Price Index (HPI) shows that home prices in the U.S. declined for the sixth month in a row. According to the CoreLogic HPI, national home prices, including distressed sales, are down 5.7 percent over …
