Mortgage

If you own a home in Florida, you need to have adequate homeowners insurance coverage. Nearly all mortgage lenders require it as part of the conditions for issuing a home loan anyway. However, as time goes on, you may find that you want to make certain changes to your homeowners insurance to create a better…

A letter arrives in the mail and tells you your mortgage has been sold. It also informs you to send your monthly payments to a new address. Don’t panic! This happens all the time, and you shouldn’t see many (if any) changes. So why does your mortgage get sold—and why can it happen multiple times?…

The average mortgage payment is about $1,500 per month, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, coming in at about the same amount as the cost of renting (the average cost to rent was $1,476 in October). Mortgage payments have decreased about 3% since mid-2018. They’re expected to get even lower this year, possibly 3.3% to…

Chances are good you know all about  your credit score. Also called a FICO score, this magical number is a major factor in many financial transactions, including qualifying for a mortgage and renting apartments in Florida. In October 2018, the Fair Isaac Corp. (the creators of FICO) announced a whole new scoring method called the UltraFICO.…

Unless you’re sitting on a ton of cold, hard cash, you’re going to need a mortgage to buy a home in Florida. Unfortunately, you can’t just show up at a bank with a checkbook and a smile and get approved for a home loan—you need to qualify for a mortgage, which requires some careful planning.…

After not increasing the maximum conforming loan limits on mortgages to be acquired by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for 10 years, the Federal Housing Finance Agency has now increased the conforming loan limit for the third straight year. The FHFA announced Tuesday that it is increasing the conforming loan limit for Fannie and Freddie…

If you're planning not to pay off your Florida mortgage before retirement, you won't be alone. Fewer than half of owner-occupiers in the age group 65-69 years were mortgage-free in 2015. What's in and what's out That record-low number came from an October 2017 study by Fannie Mae. But the report revealed something even more surprising:…