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Articles from Austin Real Estate Blog

Classic 3-2 home just north of Hyde Park for 345k 2007-08-26 10:52:35 Classic home with beautiful hardwoods & vintage tile, well maintained, remodelled second bath, xeriscaped front yard, deep backyard, nice trees, large porch, spacious rooms, plus 200sf workshop For more details on this property contact Austin Real Estate Group at 512-740-7762. For information on other featured real estate listings visit our- Featured homes list ...

Cute 3-1 on large lot near Crestview - 205k 2007-08-26 09:11:54 A small cute 3-1 home near the Crestview Neighborhood. The house is located on 303 Brentwood. The front room is currently used as study with french doors, classic kitchen, wood floors throughout the house. The house sits on a large lot that measures 9660 square feet. For more information contact the Austin Real Estate Team at 512-740-7762. For information on other featured homes visit our- Featured homes list ...

Seven Steps of the Loan Process 2007-08-24 15:10:30 The first time you are getting a loan, it can be confusing what all is needed and how to start. This outlines the steps to getting a loan from picking a lender to closing. 1) Picking a Lender. Comparing lenders can be daunting. All the components of a loan including the interest rate, origination fee, points, and other miscellaneous fees are hard to sort through. Fortunately, you can get the Annual Percentage Rate (APR) from each lender for each of their programs. The APR is basically an interest rate calculated with the base interest rate plus all the closing costs, so basically, if you have zero closing costs, then the interest rate and the APR will be equal. Zero closing costs would be great, but it is typical to have an origination fee of about 1%, credit application fees, document preparation fees, and the appraisal fee. When comparing rates, the lower the interest rate, the less interest you will pay over the life of the loan. When comparing the APRs, you are comparing th ...

Lowering Your Monthly Mortgage Payments 2007-08-24 13:42:37 When you decide to buy a home, getting the best possible loan is important. It can save you thousands of dollars. How you can keep your monthly mortgage payments down? These are the different components of the loan that can affect your monthly mortgage payments. 1. Down Payment: The down payment is how much cash you will put down up front. The rest of the price is how much you will finance with the lender. For example, if the purchase price is $300,000, and you are putting 20% down, that means you will be putting down $60,000, and the loan amount will then be $240,000. The more money you can put down, the lower your monthly payment will be. Basically, the less you finance, the less will be amortized over the life of your loan. Also, you usually get a better interest rate when you put down at least 20%, so that helps out as well. 2. Loan Life: The number of years the loan will be amortized over affects the monthly payments. The longer the life of the loan, the less you pay ...

The Benefits of the 15 Year Loan 2007-08-24 12:48:20 Recently people have been interested in a lot of the more exotic loan programs from no interest loans to negative amortization. There has been some negatives associated with these loans with the changes in the mortgage industry. So I wanted to take some time to talk about the almost forgotten 15 year loan. Some people see the 15 year loan as drab and boring compared to all the fancy loans out there, but there are a lot of benefits of the 15 year fixed-rate loan. For one, you pay the loan off in half the amount of time you would with a 30 year loan. So if someone is currently 30 years old, they would pay off the loan when they are 45 instead of 60. Because it takes half the time, people frequently think that the payment on a 15 year loan is twice as much as on a 30 year loan, but this is far from the case. For instance, if we look at Compass Bank today a 30 year $160,000 loan will have a monthly payment of $1037.75. On the other hand, a 15 year loan is $1382.80 a month. This sh ...

July Stats for the Austin Real Estate Market 2007-08-23 23:58:14 The July stats are out. Compared to last year prices are up. We saw an increase in the median price go from 178k in July 2006 to 190k for July 2007. The amount of inventory compared to last year is also up. Personally I never like to see the amount of inventory go up but the amount of inventory on the market last year was insanely low. If one considers that any average market has about 6 months of inventory Austin is still in a healthy market. Currently Austin has 3.57 months of inventory on the market which would indicate we are currently in a sellers market. Central Austin currently has 2.48 months of inventory on the market. Below is a graph breaking out the months of inventory for the different central Austin MLS areas. I generally don't put too much weight into average prices by MLS area because the sample sizes are too small. But taking that into account its still interesting to look through. Here are the stats for July 2007 for the different central Austin MLS ...

Possible Countrywide Bankruptcy Part 2: Bank of America to Invest 2 Billion dollars 2007-08-22 15:14:34 Let's start off with a little back story. Countrywide spent the real estate boom times growing to be the largest mortgage company in the United States. They had very lax restrictions on who they gave loans to. Consequently now that people are worried about homeowners not paying their loans, investors have been focusing on Countrywide. A lot of investors on Wall Street have been selling Countrywide short assuming a looming bankruptcy. The problem is a Countrywide bankruptcy could have an extremely negative affect on the financial markets not to mention weakening the national real estate market. Having the largest mortgage company go bankrupt could lead to a massive loss of investor confidence and a run on other banks not affected by Countrywide's problems. People already started pulling money from Countrywide over the last week. So apparently I am not the only person worried about a Countrywide Bankruptcy. Bank of America made an equity investment of 2 billion dollars afte ... America

Will Buffett save Countrywide from a Possible Bankruptcy 2007-08-21 16:23:03 Poor Poor Countrywide Financial. They've been under the gun for the last few weeks. After the fall of American Home Mortgage, there has been alot of focus on Countrywide from Wall Street. Things got really bad on August 15th when a Merrill Lynch analyst raised the prospect of a Countrywide bankruptcy in a research note. During the boom times, Countrywide was known for their relatively lax lending practices. Their stock, once as high as, 45.26, closed at 19.81, Ausgust 20th, a slide of over 55% percent. Additionally, since the bankruptcy possibility was raised, Countrywide customers have started to pull out. Customers that attempted to withdraw their money over the phone were met with long wait times and a recording message about Countrywide being FDIC insured. With all the negative speculation about a possible bankruptcy, Countrywide had some good news today. There is growing speculation that Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, is interested in buying parts of Count ...

Hi my Name is Crazy 2007-08-15 21:22:58 Every so often I get some crazy email. I never know how to respond so I usually don't. My favorite emails are ones that plant me as part of some far reaching conspiracy. I like conspiracy theories and doubly I like it when I am in them. For instance I get emails every so often along the lines of "You don't have any houses for sale on the East Side" (I do) and you and your cohorts are trying to keep east side prices low (The east side has appreciated much faster than most of Austin over the last few years and I own stuff there). Then the rant digresses to weird personal experiences that don't seem to relate to real estate or me. At that point I get bored. Anyway, maybe all the realtors have some secret meeting and I never get invited. That or the person writing me has an active imagination. Anyone else get interesting emails or calls? Or am I just lucky. Ki Gray works for Escapeso Austin Real Estate. He is not part of any far reaching realty conspiracies but sometimes wis ...

The Mortgage Crisis and the Austin Real Estate Market 2007-08-14 11:31:15 So there has been a lot of talk about the mortgage crisis over the last week. I wanted to write a short summary of what is going on. Earlier this summer, we had changes in sub-prime lending. Basically before the changes, if someone could wander into a mortgage office, they could probably qualify for a loan. So people with bad credit had a pretty easy time getting qualified for home loans. Not surprisingly, a lot of these people didn't pay and defaulted on their loans. This led banks to 'rethink' their policy on sub-prime loans. The rethinking went along the lines of "Hey maybe if you have a history of credit problems, we shouldn't give this person a loan". To be honest, I think it's a good thing. Why? Not so much because I care about banks but because I think it doesn't benefit people to give them loans they really can't afford. They get a house they can't really afford and struggle to make the payments for 2 years and then get foreclosed on. It would be better fo ...

The Benefits of Buying Real Estate in a Bad Neighborhood 2007-08-07 13:12:35 When people call me, typically one of the first requests they make is for a house in a "nice" neighborhood. And this makes sense to want a neighborhood that is safe and enjoyable. But there are some benefits to buying real estate in the rough part of town or on the wrong side of the tracks. This article highlights some of them. - There is less worry of your neighborhood going downhill because it is already downhill. Good neighborhoods can get bad and bad neighborhoods can get better. Since the price usually reflects the current condition, buying in a neighborhood that has room for improvement might be a good idea. - If you are buying a rental, you usually get better cash flow in rough neighborhoods. If you are renting your property, there are more renters and they are more long term. It's difficult to rent in good neighborhoods because fewer people are looking to rent and those who do are generally there short term while they look for a house to buy. - You can look better in c ...

Have Expensive Resort Towns been affected by Real Estate Slowdown? 2007-07-31 21:38:44 Ok so this is a question to anyone that have knowledge about these areas. I'm visiting some friends in a little resort town on Long Island. Most of the homes here are second homes at 1.5 million plus. The whole town closes in the winter. The real estate market seems pretty strong here. I was wondering if any active rainers work on or have intimate knowledge of similar markets. Are the markets still strong or has the market slowed down. The reason I was interested is the market seems pretty specialized. The population that buys 2 million dollar vacation homes is not exactly middle class. Kim lives in Austin Texas and works for Escapeso Austin Texas Real Estate . The average price for homes is 190,000. If we added a 0 to that my business would be a little more profitable :) ...