This post is written by John Allasio and comes to us from our partner site QuickenLoans.com.
Right now is the most popular time for people to buy a home, and if you’re looking to sell or refinance your home, one of the things you’ll have to deal with is the appraisal. If your appraisal doesn’t go [...]

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This guest post is from William Cowie, who has contributed to Get Rich Slowly and other personal finance blogs. He also blogs about investing and offers a free Investing Basics course on Bite the Bullet Investing.
Everywhere you look, the story’s the same: the value of your house is going up. The National Association of Realtors [...]

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Now for a somewhat controversial subject, at least in financial planning circles: paying off your mortgage early.
A great deal of conventional wisdom says you should never pay a mortgage off early. I’ve gone against that conventional wisdom. Twice. I don’t know if that means I lack conventionality or I lack wisdom, but it seems to [...]

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If you’re old enough, you may remember when Americans were, by and large, pretty responsible about money management.
They scrimped and saved, and stashed money into savings accounts. They squirreled away cash for vacations and home improvements, rather than funding those purchases with credit cards. And their belief was you kept on paying the mortgage on [...]

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In response to my post earlier in the week about the latest Chase Freedom bonus categories, a reader named Steph wondered how many credit cards is too many?
She’s apparently planning on buying a house later in the year and is concerned about the possible impact of opening new credit card accounts on her credit score, [...]

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Over the past few years, mortgage rates have been falling, falling, falling… Just when you think they can’t go any lower, they do. During this time, a huge number of people have refinanced. And many have refinanced again. And again.
While refinancing your mortgage isn’t a terribly hard thing to do, it’s enough of a hassle [...]

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Would you ever borrow money to invest? That is, would you take out a loan such that you could put more money in the stock market or other investments? Think carefully. You might already be doing it without even realizing it.
And I’m not just talking about people who use leverage to amplify the returns from [...]

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This is a guest post from Sarah Gilbert.
The story of one mortgage
I got my mortgage statement in the mail a few weeks ago. I bought my Portland, Oregon home 10 years ago on a busy street in an up-and-coming neighborhood with what I thought was a super-low interest rate: 5.25%. It was a five-year ARM, [...]

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My job is requiring me to move to a new town. So, my wife and I are faced with what seems to recently be the newest typical American family dilemma. What should we do with the home that we bought almost four years ago? While it can be hard to figure out whether to buy [...]

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The latest news on the mortgage front is that Bank of America is testing a new program where they turn (former) homeowners into renters. Yes, really. It’s called the “Mortgage to Lease” program and it aims to convert those who are behind on their mortgages into leasees.
When I first hear this news, I was blown [...]

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