The following is a guest post by Lewis Andrews who works for MortgageFit.com—a Web site that helps consumers learn more about mortgage options and find loan specialists. Online mortgage calculators can help prospective home buyers determine the appropriate amount to spend on a new Louisville home. “How much can I afford to spend on a house” is a relevant question that comes into the mind of thousands of homebuyers all over the world. To answer this question, the home affordability calculators offered by multiple lenders play an important role. When you are going to buy a n

Louisville, KY keeps raking up the national real estate accolades. Kiplinger and Forbes have been singing our city's praises lately. Recently Forbes ranked Louisville 37th in Nation for Housing Recovery. Then Kiplinger named Louisville the regional winner for home price stability. Then, to top it off, Forbes claims Louisville real estate is the 4th most affordable in the nation. Wow! Might be time to buy are larger trophy case? Today we look at a recent article by Kiplinger where they rank the Least and Most Expensive Cities For Living in the U.S.A. It's interesting to compare the

This post comes to you from James Kelley of VA Benefit Blog. A law school student at the University of Missouri, James Kelley works to educate the public on government financing options for home purchases. James works for USDAloans.com, the premier source for achieving your dreams with a USDA loan. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) supports specific home loans. These are called VA Loans and are available to veterans or active duty service members wishing to purchase a home. Since its inception, the VA loan program has helped nearly 18 million veterans and active duty service men and w

Here you see the entry into Shakes Run for Homearama 2010 Just a reminder, Homearma 2010 runs from July 10th to the 25th. So that means there are only a few days left for you to visit this great event. I recently visited Louisville's new home showcase on a hot and humid Saturday afternoon. Other than the sweltering heat, it was great fun. (At least for an avid new home junkie, like myself.) Rather than try and describe each home's great features, I thought I'd write about the current trends that I see in these new upscale homes and then cover a few of the innovations that I found i

Houses like this great ranch home in Douglass Hills are quite affordable when compared with the nation as a whole. The Forbes.com Web site confuses me. I know they're trying to have more pages, so each page can have more ads, thus more ad revenue, but as far as navigating it, I always find it frustrating. But what's not frustrating is that Forbes' analysts are high on Louisville real estate. So much so that again this year they rank our fair city quite high—4th in the country, in fact. Just last November, Francesca Levy had Louisville at #17 in her Best Bang-For-The-Buck Cities, w

This is a topic of great importance in today's changing real estate market and one that we will continue to cover here at LouisvilleHomesBlog.com consistently. Back in March, we asked Joe Manausa, who covers Tallahassee Real Estate, to look at this topic and he responded with, How To Find the Value of Your Louisville Home, which highlights the different ways in which a home can be valued. Just last month I wrote Determining Home Values, Zillow ‘Zestimates’ Are Fraught With Danger that warns against the dangers of using free online data to create a home value without digging deep

John Curran for Time yesterday published Is Mortgage Refinancing a Loser's Game? He makes a great point that I think many may miss. To wit, the way fixed-rate mortgages are structured the lion's share of your first decade's payments are for interest payments, not to build home equity. Each time you refinance you reset the clock to zero, starting the interest-heavy period all over again. If interested, read the whole piece because it includes a real life example.

This article was written by Joe Manausa with permission for LouisvilleHomesBlog.com to publish so that you can be better informed in all of your housing decisions here in Louisville, Kentucky. Joe writes for the Really Better Real Estate blog and his own Web site that focuses on Tallahassee Real Estate. I was having a conversation yesterday with a very intelligent person about the value of their home. It was during this conversation that I was reminded that while I think about the home valuation process quite often, most people do not. There are many Louisville homes for sale and determinin

Louisville follows the same real estate trends as other cities in our nation, only to a much lesser degree. But like I posted earlier this month, Louisville hasn't seen a drop in home values since before 1978. That changed in 2008 and 2009. How does the market respond? For the most part, the same as the rest of the country. For starters, new homes are designed smaller. Here's a snippet from Home Sizes Fall as Builders, Buyers Embrace Economic Reality. Data recently released by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) found the average size of a new home that was completed in

The CJ did a little piece on Monday about where the new construction numbers are and where they're heading. It should be no surprise to anyone following the situation that most of the action is taking place at the low end of the price range due to the Federal home buyer's tax incentives, but I did find this quote from a National Association of Home Builders economist interesting. “It's like, Louisville behaved really well at the party, but for some reason, you were as hung over as everyone else,” Denk said. So the numbers would lead us to believe that Louisville's housing market

This article was written by Richard Soto with permission for LouisvilleHomesBlog.com to publish so that you can be better informed in all of your housing decisions here in Louisville, Kentucky. Richard is a Dallas real estate broker with offices serving the Houston real estate and San Antonio real estate markets. Home staging can take your ordinary, ho-hum home and instantly make it feel larger, more spacious, warmer, brighter, more cheerful and more welcoming. It may be hard to believe that simple home staging can do all that, but it's true! Often times, it is as much about your fee

I've got another post on deck, but before we look forward I wanted to highlight some data I just found about Louisville's 3rd Quarter of 2009 in real estate. The first table shows total units for Greater Louisville, Region 3 of Kentucky. # SOLD 3Q 2009 # SOLD 3Q 2008 # SOLD % 3,519 2,993 17.57% As you can see, that's a pretty big jump; higher than many projected. Which brings us to the second table. Why was the increase that large? Probably because prices dropped so much. Median Price 3Q 2009 Median Price 3Q 2008 Median Price % $136,800 $

Are you looking for waterfront apartments in Louisville? Beware a Craigslist scam trying to prey on you. When in doubt, contact a professional.

Back in November I posted the helpful chart from NAR that outlines the changes to the home buyer tax credit that was extended by the Obama administration. And while that's good, it still doesn't address all the questions that people have regarding buying a new Louisville home. So I'm going to try and do my best to answer those questions, FAQ-style. [This information is accurate to the best of my knowledge but is not warranted.] Who is eligible to get the housing tax credits? Previously, the tax credit was only available to first-time homebuyers but now current homeowners may also be e

Just a quick post to let you know that we're up to 39 of Louisville's best neighborhoods over on my real estate Web site. When I add another one next week, that will make 40 neighborhoods spotlighted in 3 years. I'm not always the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but building Best Louisville Neighborhoods was a very good idea. I receive more compliments on it than anything else that I've built online. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well!

Now that it's law, I thought this information deserved its own post. If you have any questions about how this might apply to buying your next Louisville home, please don't hesitate to contact me. FEATURE Jan 1 – November 30, 2009 Rules as enacted February 2009 December 1 – April 30, 2010 Rules as enacted November 2009 First-time Buyer – Amount of Credit $8000 ($4000 married filing separate) $8000 ($4000 married filing separate) First-time Buyer – Definition for Eligibility May not have had an interest in a principal residence for 3 years prior to purchas

There is a lot of confusion about what constitutes a bedroom in real estate. There are many opinions and even proper definitions. Let's tackle them one at a time. Building Codes Every principality has official building codes. These codes go into great detail and are what inspectors use to verify certification. This is especially important for new construction as the home occupancy certification is needed before the home buyers can legally move in. In all cases, the local building codes are the most authoritative answer as to what constitutes an official bedroom. The following is the of

This article was written expressly for LouisvilleHomesBlog.com by Mortgage Loan Place so that you can be better informed in all of your housing decisions here in Louisville, Kentucky. The 2009 fiscal year is shaping up as the biggest on record for FHA loans. Applications for single-family home mortgages were up 50 percent from Oct. 1 through mid-August. Approvals have jumped 70 percent, to 1.67 million. FHA has carved out a huge chunk of the market in the last three years, from 3 percent in 2006 to a whopping 23 percent today. Borrowers of all stripes are turning to the FHA for help in

If all these tax credits are confusing you, never fear! Here's a simple, easy-to-understand source to make it all clear. In 2008, Congress enacted a $7,500 tax credit designed to be an incentive for first-time homebuyers to purchase a home. The credit was designed as a mechanism to decrease the over-supply of homes for sale. For 2009, Congress has increased the credit to $8,000 and made several additional improvements. This revised $8,000 tax credit applies to purchases on or after January 1, 2009 and before December 1, 2009. Read all about it, including frequently asked question

The New Home Tax Credit is a nonrefundable credit, up to $5000, against individual income tax allowable to a qualified buyer. As we had previously written about back in April, Kentucky Joins in Tax Incentives for Home Buyers, some changes have been made. Here's how to know if you qualify. You can claim the credit if all of the following apply: Your qualified principal residence is a single family dwelling; Your qualified residence is purchased to be the principal residence of the qualified buyer(s) for a minimum of two (2) years; You purchase a new home after July 25, 2009 and