Skip navigation

Realtors Choose
VARbuzz
The Real Show
Virginia Association of Realtors » »

News

Mortgage insurers’ troubles — and why they might ripple

Posted by Andrew Kantor
Oct 31 2011 - 9:39am

Interesting column from Reuters’s Agnes Crane, “U.S. housing has added problem: mortgage insurance.” Why interesting? Because the trouble she describes hits right in the issue of down payments — specifically, the idea of a 20 percent-down requirement for the best rates.

Realtor.com adds apartment listings

Posted by Andrew Kantor
Oct 31 2011 - 9:07am

NAR’s Realtor.com website has added multifamily homes to its searchable listings. Move, Inc., owns both Realtor.com and Move.com, and those listings are coming from the latter.

That is all.

Q3 Virginia home sales show increasing stability

Posted by amanda@varealtor.com
Oct 27 2011 - 11:10am

The 3rd Quarter 2011 Virginia Home Sales Report has been released, with many indications that we may be starting to see some stability in many housing markets throughout the Commonwealth.

The annualized pace of home sales started to increase again in the 3rd Quarter of 2011. This increase is the first such improvement in this long-term trend since late 2009 and early 2010 when the federal home buyer tax credit was helping to produce market improvements.

HUD study: Better neighborhood = better health

Posted by Andrew Kantor
Oct 26 2011 - 4:25pm

A 16-year study by the Department of Housing and Urban Development of families in poverty found that simply moving to a better neighborhood reduces the incidence of obesity and diabetes.

The study involved 4,498 volunteers living in public housing; some were given vouchers so they could afford to live in middle-class neighborhoods, some had vouchers to live in the same neighborhood but got help with rent, and some got neither.

In other words, the only significant change to the living situation was neighborhood, not income. And the study found that

HARP 2.0 guidelines in plain English

Posted by Andrew Kantor
Oct 26 2011 - 10:12am

There’s a useful post over at Dan Green’s The Mortgage Reports that explains who is eligible for the new, revamped HARP.

Click here to read “The Complete, Revamped HARP / Making Home Affordable Eligibility Requirements.”

Nine of the top-25 housing markets are in Virginia

Posted by Andrew Kantor
Oct 26 2011 - 9:41am

Nine Virginia cities — all in Northern Virginia — are among the top 25 housing markets in the country according to Bloomberg Businessweek. In “The Obama Effect,” it looked at which parts of the country have seen the greatest value increase since Obama took office. Virginia was by far the most-represented state on the list.

Here’s what made the list:

  • Leesburg (#24 best housing market since 2009)
  • Sterling (19)
  • McLean (13)
  • Chantilly (11)
  • Reston (9)
  • Ashburn (8)
  • Herndon (6)
  • Vienna (5)
  • Burke (4)

(No Virginia city made the list of 25 worst markets since 2009 — Florida pretty much owns that.)

Refinancing made easy: HARP revised

Posted by Andrew Kantor
Oct 25 2011 - 9:35am

The issue is one we’ve covered before: A lot of underwater and struggling homeowners could benefit tremendously if they could refinance at today’s crazy-low rates. But they can’t refinance because the value of their property has dropped so much.

So now the Obama Administration has revised its Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), which was designed to help five million underwater homeowners but has only been used by half a million.

Americans are literally sick of foreclosures

Posted by Andrew Kantor
Oct 21 2011 - 9:52am

imageA new study published by Univ. of Maryland researchers in the American Journal of Public Health finds that the housing crisis — especially foreclosures and mortgage delinquencies — is having significant effects on people’s health.

We’re halfway there, as Senate votes to restore higher loan limits

Posted by Andrew Kantor
Oct 21 2011 - 9:32am

You should know the loan-limit issue by now: In 2008, Congress raised the maximum amount of the loans the government (through FHA, Fannie, and Freddie) could back. But on October 1 those limits dropped back to their old values, despite the lobbying efforts of a host of industry groups, including your Realtor associations.

VHDA scoops up four awards for housing efforts

Posted by Amanda Arwood
Oct 20 2011 - 11:28am

Every year, the National Council of State Housing Agencies gives a series of awards to the state agencies that have done the most to promote and protect affordable housing. In 2011, the Virginia Housing Development Authority took home four of the 17 awards. Check it out, yo: