Daria’s Latest Articles
A home purchase is a major undertaking that requires you to make many decisions and interact with different real estate professionals as you navigate the process, from agents and brokers to inspectors and mortgage underwriters....
Choosing a home often boils down to value, in terms of both the price you pay and the enjoyment you’ll get from owning your home. The average home price reached $501,700 in the second quarter of 2024, according to the St. Louis...
Continued high demand and low inventory pushed home prices to a record high of $426,000 in June, according to the National Association of Realtors. Clearly, sellers still have the upper hand.One way you can use that to your adv...
Your credit score reflects how well you’ve handled debt in the past and how likely you are to repay debt in the future. The scores come from formulas called scoring models, the most popular of which is the FICO model from Fair ...
Real estate buyers and sellers have many documents to contend with before and during closing, but one of the most important is the deed. Without it, ownership can’t pass from the seller to the buyer. What is a deed? A...
Over 58% of borrowers with home purchase loans and 56.2% of borrowers with non-cash-out refinance loans used mortgage points last year, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mortgage points allow you to lower t...
Conventional and FHA loans are the two most common hom loan types, totaling over 250,000 loans granted in the third quarter of 2023, according to Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. These popular loans serve different types of b...
The total cost of financing a home purchase takes some borrowers by surprise. If you apply for a conventional loan and put less than 20% down, you’ll usually have to pay for private mortgage insurance (PMI) — a likelihood for m...
Mortgage rates have a major impact on how much home you can afford, and maybe even on whether or not you can afford to buy at all. While it’s never a good idea to try to time the market, understanding mortgage rate trends ...
Unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank, you’ll need a mortgage loan to finance the purchase of a home. If you’re thinking of taking out a loan, you’re not alone. According to the 2023 National Association ...