Lenders are offering traditional 30-year mortgages for 4.875% in all but one of the 10 cities we checked in our January home loan survey.

Although that’s a little higher than we found in our November survey, it’s substantially less than you would have paid to buy or refinance a home last summer.
In June you couldn’t find [...]

Home prices are going to decline another 5% to 10% in 2010, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s economy.com.
That’s because Zandi expects another 2.4 million foreclosures will continue to flood the market with cut-rate inventory at the same time high-unemployment will limit the number of potential buyers.
The four states with the biggest foreclosure [...]

Making your home bigger, or nicer, always makes it more valuable. But some projects payoff better than others.
The average return on improvements has fallen for four straight years, slumping to 63.8% in 2009, which means every dollar spent now boosts a home’s value by an average of 63.8 cents
To determine which projects provide the best [...]

Mortgage rates are at their lowest levels in decades, which makes it a great time to buy a home. But it could be an even better time to refinance.
The average 15-year fixed-rate mortgage, a popular term for refinancing, is 4.46% APR — more than a half-point less than the average cost of a 30-year mortgage.

If [...]

Rates on home equity lines of credit haven’t changed much since mid-October — and that’s a good thing.

Homeowners with pretty good credit and a chunk of equity in their homes should be able to get a HELOC for 5% or less in most parts of the country.
While that isn’t as cheap as they were last [...]

If you have good credit and a down payment (or some equity if you’re refinancing) there’s no reason to pay 5% or more for your mortgage.
The best deals we could find on 30-year, fixed-rate loans in 10 major cities now range from 4.875% to 4.625%.

This the first month that every single city we’ve looked at [...]

Interest rates on the safest and most popular types of mortgages fell to record lows this week.
The average cost of a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage was 5.06% in Bankrate’s latest weekly survey of major lenders — the lowest average since the survey began in 1985.
In every market we checked, we found lenders offering these loans [...]

Congress has extended the popular tax credit for first-time homebuyers and created a new tax break for homeowners looking to trade up.

When President Obama signed the Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009 into law earlier this month there was an audible sigh of relief from the real estate industry.
The first-time buyers’ tax credit [...]

If you’re thinking of purchasing a home, don’t go with just any real estate agent: Get a full-time buyer’s agent.

One of the biggest advantages of working with a buyer’s agent is that you’re less likely to have any conflicts of interest.
Unlike agents who represent buyers and sellers, buyer’s agents won’t steer you towards a home [...]