All right, fine, it's not your only chance. Feel free to chime in anytime, actually. But treat this as your personal invitation to keep the How-to entries topical and useful. I like to cover topics of interest to renters, homeowners, buyers and sellers, so you fit in there somewhere.

If you'd rather not comment here, email me by clicking on the "Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins" link below this post.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

My fiancé and I have been touring homes since just before the holidays. We went in thinking we wouldn’t mind something that needed a little work here and there—we could make it our own and build equity at the same time. But when we started counting up the work that would need to be done and got a better idea of how much we’d be spending in fees just to settle, we changed our minds. You know, maybe we’d better go for a house that already has a washer and dryer. Perhaps we don’t want to worry about kitchen appliances for another two or three years. Maybe we should ask about including new carpet and windows in the deal.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Well, that may change.

A large swath of the state Senate has signed on to co-sponsor a bill to repeal the law. The point of the application was to flush out people getting the credit illegally -- landlords and the like -- but the "public backlash" has made politicians think twice, Tim Wheeler reports today. Sen. Edward J. Kasemeyer, the bill's sponsor, said the law was well-intentioned but is confusing and angering homeowners, Wheeler reports.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
                    

The Fed said in its statement that "downside risks to growth remain," generally a code phrase for "look for more rate drops in the future."

You can read the full statement HERE. The Fed also said:

Financial markets remain under considerable stress, and credit has tightened further for some businesses and households. Moreover, recent information indicates a deepening of the housing contraction as well as some softening in labor markets.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

The nonprofit Center for Housing Policy said yesterday that the price of a typical local home last summer was $269,000, too expensive for a nurse, an elementary school teacher, a police officer, a retail sales employee and workers in many other jobs. Though the median price of new and existing homes fell 2 percent from a year earlier, the decline was far too small to close a gap that widened markedly during the run-up in prices earlier in the decade.

With a 10 percent down payment, a Baltimore-area buyer last summer needed to earn about $88,000 to stay within the recommended limit for housing costs - no more than 30 percent of income, according to the Center for Housing Policy's "Paycheck to Paycheck" report.

Plenty of two-income families buy homes, of course. But the National Association of Home Builders says that the typical family in the Baltimore metro area could afford fewer than half of the homes sold last summer, compared with seven out of 10 in 2000.

The full impact of the slump is complex, of course. I included some examples of the affordability upsides and downsides in the story.

You can see the raw numbers for yourself HERE, or go HERE for the center's new online guide for state and local governments working on affordable-housing solutions.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
                    

The Commerce Department reported yesterday that sales of new homes dropped 26.4 percent last year to 774,000. That marked the worst sales year on record, surpassing the old mark of a 23.1 percent plunge in 1980.

The government reported that the median price of a new home barely budged last year, edging up a slight 0.2 percent to $246,900, the poorest showing since prices fell 2.4 percent during the 1991 housing downturn.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

Sun photo

Buy a house, and your lender will usually require you to get insurance. Rent one, and you’re free to choose as long as your landlord has no opinion on the matter.

So why bother, if you don’t own the place?

Because renter’s insurance is about your possessions, not the walls around them. It’s a lot cheaper than car insurance, if you’re smarting over that bill.

Premiums generally run between $200 and $250 a year, which works out to a monthly charge of $17 to $21, said Timothy M. Lipinskiµ, a risk portfolio manager at Kirby Insurance Agency Inc., a brokerage headquartered in Baltimore. If you opt for the same insurer handling your auto policy, you could end up with a multiple-policy discount that covers that charge, he said.

"It’s very inexpensive," Lipinski said.

The main point is protection against fire, theft, vandalism and liability. (An example of the latter is if you throw a party and someone injures him- or herself.)

Policies at the pricier end of the range should include coverage against other sorts of damage, such as identity theft or water flooding from a backed-up toilet, Lipinski said.

The Maryland Insurance Administration recommends that renters "seriously consider" renter’s insurance but notes that you’ll want to read through any policy carefully to understand what it doesn’t include. If you have a roommate, for instance, the state says that your policy won’t cover the roommate’s belongings or vice versa.

Read more about the administration's thoughts on insurance HERE.

Have any advice about insurance? Chime in.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 4:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

Andrea Siegel has a story in today's real estate section about how the show, or more specifically local builder Clark Turner Signature Homes, "compacted what would have been a five-month job into about one week -- actually 106 working hours."

So now you know what you have to do if you're facing a big renovation and can't stand the thought of five-or-more months of upheaval: Find a way to get on TV.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Businesses with some connection to housing -- furnishings, for instance -- are generally feeling the pain more than most, as this part of the story reminds us:

Workers at Dorman's Lighting & Design in Timonium began the year with the belief that business had to get better.

So far, signs of a turnaround are bleak. Traffic is down 30 percent this month, continuing a slowdown brought on by the slumping housing market. Even worse, more customers are window shopping instead of spending.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

The AP reports that a Russian woman returned home after an absence to discover that "her home was gone, torn down mistakenly by construction workers clearing a site."

"There was nothing left, not even a log," Lyudmila Martemyanova said, bundled against the cold and standing on a snow-covered lot in the center of the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod.

A local prosecutor, Nikolai Govorkov, said a construction company tore down the wrong building -- Martemyanova's, instead of one nearby that was marked for demolition.

Many Russians have faced what they say are unfair and inadequately compensated evictions from older housing being torn down amid the country's oil-revenue-fueled construction boom.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

The current cap is $417,000. Part of the fallout from the credit crunch that hit last summer is a lot less lender interest in making "jumbo" loans that top that amount. They can't be packaged and sold to Fannie or Freddie, and the Wall Street investor cash has dried up. That means higher interest rates for jumbo borrowers.

What exactly the new limit would be is a bit of an open question.

The idea is to make it easier for people in high-cost markets to buy and refinance. The Baltimore metro area isn't one of the places typically talked about as a prime beneficiary, but there are a fair chunk of jumbo-loan-priced homes here.

Fannie and Freddie are known as GSEs -- government-sponsored enterprises. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, which oversees them, isn't keen on the higher cap proposal. OFHEO Director James B. Lockhart issued this statement yesterday:

We are very disappointed in the proposal to increase the conforming loan limit as we believe it is a mistake to do so in the absence of comprehensive GSE regulatory reform. To restore confidence in the markets we must ensure that the GSEs’ regulator has all the necessary safety and soundness tools.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

The developer is also planning to revitalize a block in the neighborhood's commercial district along Washington Boulevard.

The developer, who unveiled the project yesterday before a city design panel, expects to build a mix of housing types and price ranges that would be affordable to working-class families, said managing partner Kirsten Brecht. She said the company expects the housing market to turn around by the time the houses are ready for sale, currently projected to be in 2010.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Home sales across the country fell about 13 percent last year, the National Association of Realtors said today. The number of sales -- not quite 5.7 million -- was the fifth-highest on record, the group notes. (That's another way of saying that sales dropped almost to 2002 levels.)

Unsold homes fell about 7 percent in December, a hopeful sign for sellers, though agents have noted that it could be temporary. Some sellers pull their homes off the market around the holidays with the intention of trying again during the stronger spring season.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Rates for 30-year fixed mortgages hovered around 5.5 percent yesterday, with some dipping into the 5.25 percent range early in the day, according to area brokers. That's just a hair above the record lows recorded in June 2003, when the housing market was flourishing.

When the Fed cut a key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point Tuesday, it had no direct effect on fixed mortgages. But it got consumers' attention. That, coupled with the lower mortgage rates, which have been driven down by their connection to 10-year Treasury bonds, sent homeowners on the hunt for deals.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

If you're searching online for a home, you've got a new option: Roost (roost.com) launched today with real estate search for 14 metro areas, including both Baltimore and Washington.

Why Roost and not, say, Realtor.com or Zillow or Trulia or Craigslist? You'll have to be the judge of that. Roost thinks people will want to search the site because it's partnering with local multiple-listing services to get the full raft of homes for sale through agents. (Search on "Baltimore" and you'll get 6,410 listings, or at least you would had you looked at 2:48 p.m. as I did.)

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

Quoting Greg McBride of Bankrate.com, she says folks with home equity lines of credit should see a drop in rates as early as next month:

The most creditworthy customers could see their rate drop 0.75 percentage points, the same as yesterday's cut in the Fed funds rate.

Higher-risk borrowers might see a quarter- or half-point cut, McBride says.

Adjustable-rate mortgages for creditworthy borrowers are tied to the one-year Treasury bill. This short-term bond moves largely in expectation of where interest rates are headed in the next 12 months, McBride says.

So, as the Fed has cut rates in past months, the one-year Treasury bill has dropped. The rate fell from 5 percent in July to 2.7 percent now, McBride says.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

The Fed's Federal Open Market Committee said in its statement that it is reacting to signs of "a deepening of the housing contraction as well as some softening in labor markets":

Appreciable downside risks to growth remain. The Committee will continue to assess the effects of financial and other developments on economic prospects and will act in a timely manner as needed to address those risks.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

Sun photo

Sometimes a seller's competition is an exact duplicate house, but sometimes it's simply the variety of homes in the same price range. How can you tell if you've picked a good price range to compete in -- or, if you're a buyer, to look in?

It doesn't hurt to find out how many homes are listed and compare it to sales. A little tally for the metro area in December shows some interesting results.

Overall, the Baltimore metro region had about 1,800 home sales in December and about 18,000 homes that were listed for sale, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. At that pace, it would take 10 months to get all the 18,000 homes from "for sale" to sold. The longer the time, the easier it is for buyers to make a deal if the owners really need to sell.

Everyone following along? OK.

Three price ranges did better than the metro average: $100,000 to $149,999 (eight months), $150,000 to $199,999 (seven months) and $200,000 to $249,999 (also seven months).

Three price ranges were right spot on the 10-month average: $250,000 to $299,999, $300,000 to $349,999 and $800,000 to $899,999. Yes, you read that last one right.

Just as the $800 range is an odd one out in the midst of the cheaper prices, the under-$100,000 range is an interesting one: 11 months. Perhaps people in the market for an under-$100,000 house can't qualify for a loan now, or perhaps they don't like the homes available for that price, or perhaps these properties are vying for attention from the now-much-smaller pool of investor-rehabbers.

Here's how the other price ranges turned out:

$350,000 to $399,999: 13 months

$400,000 to $449,999: 11 months

$450,000 to $499,999: 15 months

$500,000-$599,999: 14 months

$600,000 to $699,999: 17 months

$700,000 to $799,999: 16 months

$900,000 to $999,999: 19 months

$1 million to $2,499,999: 21 months

$2.5 million to $4,999,999: 98 months (one home sold, 98 listed)

$5 million and over: infinity. (Well -- probably not. But zero sold and 11 were listed.)

Curious to know what the months' supply looks like in your jurisdiction or ZIP code? Click HERE to go to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems' stats page, where you can get the numbers to do your own calculations.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 4:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
                    

Hong writes:

We do plan to buy again someday, on honest terms with a loan we can afford. We didn't expect to rent this long; our girl is 8, and we'd like to get into a house soon that she will truly feel is hers.

We know the wait will make it that much more thrilling to her when we move. But I hope the real reward comes years from now. Maybe she will remember our experience and think twice when people are again promising something for nothing, as they inevitably will.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 6:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Now they have something else in common.

President Bush, concerned that the country is heading into recession, in part because of housing-related troubles, said yesterday that he wants to send out rebate checks. Yup, like the 2001 checks mailed out to counteract the dot-com-fueled recession.

Here's a taste of The Sun's story today:

Acknowledging the toll taken by a housing slump and lagging consumer spending, President Bush urged Congress yesterday to rush one-time rebates to taxpayers and tax incentives to businesses to give the nation's economy a "shot in the arm."

Details have yet to be revealed, but the administration is putting a $145 billion figure on the plan.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Also new for Baltimore, the company says: "Neighborhood Pages" with information on affordability and other issues.

If you check out your home, chime in to say whether you think the value estimate is accurate -- and whether Zillow is showing it heading upward or downward.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 5:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
                    

Both projects are expected to be big contributors to the transformation of downtown from a predominantly business district to an area where people live and shop as well as work. They are part of the 3,265 rental units that have been added since 2000 downtown, which was double the number of downtown apartments it had a decade ago, said Bob Aydukovic, vice president of economic development for the Downtown Partnership. ...

Despite a slowdown in the for-sale side of the housing market, interest in leasing has grown and rents are rising, Aydukovic said.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

Just 43 percent of 1.8 million square feet of new office space completed in the Baltimore region last year was leased, according to a study by Colliers Pinkard, a commercial brokerage.

... Commercial real estate experts blamed economic jitters as well as a reversal of fortunes for tenants in sectors such as residential mortgages, who are abandoning or reducing office space.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 5:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Interested in the entire news release? Click HERE.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

You might be wondering if buying a home right now is a smart financial decision. The fact is, homeownership is key to building long-term wealth, no matter when someone buys. Studies show that, over time, most homeowners will steadily build equity. For example, during the past three decades, home values have increased an average of more than 6.0% per year.

The emphasis on long-term values means there's no need to mention the pesky fact that average home prices did not rise 6 percent last year, but presumably most people are aware of that already -- after all, the NAR's press release this week says "some potential home buyers are being kept on the sidelines as they react to national media reports about the housing market."

Click HERE for the press release and HERE for the page where you can find the ads. 

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 8:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Bankrate.com said mortgage rates have taken their biggest three-week drop since 1988. The average conforming 30-year fixed mortgage rate is down to 5.75 percent, according to the company's most recent weekly survey, which is where rates stood in mid-2005.

The average rate for a 15-year mortgage, common for refinancing, fell to 5.28 percent, while the average rate for a jumbo 30-year mortgage dropped to 6.98 percent.

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 6:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)