Cash sales of South Florida homes didn’t exactly go on total lockdown during April. But buyers sporting all-cash offers weren’t nearly as common the streets as before COVID, either. Just 11.1 percent of single-family transactions closed in Broward County were for cash during April, according to figures from Miami Realtors. That is off 44.1 percent from […]
One of the most popular goals for any new year is to finally get into a new home. The best way to start is by figuring out what has prevented you from doing it so far. Obviously credit and job history are a major stumbling block for many, but there are plenty of people who […]
Reach Home Loans hopes that you and yours have a Happy Thanksgiving! Gathering with friends and family is always appreciated. We won’t pretend we aren’t also looking forward to the huge discounts that will be available throughout the weekend as part of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday retail “holidays,” however. The mortgage industry […]
This week’s mortgage rates gravitated around the Federal Reserve…which seems like one of the more obvious sentences that we’ve ever typed. But what if we told you that rates also reacted to the state of the bond market? Yeah, still doesn’t seem like anything too dramatic, but don’t let the “normal” news mislead you: Rates […]
Who knows what to believe anymore? This isn’t a comment on political opinions (you can go to other blogs for that). This is a comment on finance, and what-the-heck is going on with mortgage rates. Not that we—nor homebuyers—should be complaining. All indications seemed to suggest that things were only going to go up from […]
One of the hottest topics of any given election season is the unemployment rate and which candidate is going to do more to improve it. The logic typically flows that voters will opt for the politician who has more promise for lowering that rate. Of course, if those voters are in the market for a […]
There’s no use trying to sugarcoat it this week: The trend is upward, not down. Predicting such things is usually a conservative game—don’t predict as much as report what’s already happened—but there doesn’t seem to be much chance of rates dipping below 4 percent again during 2017 (now, the reason why prognosticators take such a […]
You may have noticed during 2016—whether it comes to weather, sports, politics….anything, really—that the way you frame the news makes a huge difference in how others interpret it. The good news for you is that The Stephens-Brotsky Group doesn’t make money by creating click-bait headlines, so we’ll advise you in advance not to be worried […]
It’s been awhile since we report good news and kept on feeling good about it for any extended period of time but lo, that’s what seems to be going on this week. For the second consecutive week, mortgage rates have dropped on the whole. “Consecutive” is the key word, because it marks the first time […]
Happy New Year, as this is the first time we’ve chimed in on the news for 2017. “Happy” New Year might be a bit of a stretch, but it certainly hasn’t been an unhappy first few days of market activity, and that’s a relief to many. After all, December saw dramatic shifts—based on Federal Reserve […]
Mortgage rates are at their lowest points in more than two weeks! That opening line might seem a little overexcited (note the exclamation point), but that’s the general mood of casual market followers in the wake of two consecutive days of drops. Granted, the average rates you’ll be seeing are still in the 4.25 to […]
If you were hoping for a Christmas miracle as we approach the end of 2016, we’re sorry: The real world doesn’t work that way. The best we can offer is a Christmas “slight move in the right direction.” But it could be much worse. Since we’ve last spoken, rates have only continued to heighten in […]