First Weber Group REALTORS®: Wisconsin Real Estate

What is the FHA and how could it help me buy property?

The FHA (Federal Housing Administration) provides insurance on loans made by FHA approved lenders. FHA is the largest insurer of mortgages in the world.  At a time when mortgages are harder to get, why not look at an FHA loan?  These loans typically have a lower interest rate, more flexibility in calculating payment ratios and may enable less money down too.

The FHA loan limits have been raised nationwide recently - What may have been considered a "lower income" type loan at one time is not anymore. Borrowers in the Milwaukee area, for example, can borrow up to $315,000 through 2008. These types of loans are replacing the risky subprime ones that contributed to the recent mortgage meltdown.   

If you are looking for a house, ask your agent or lender about FHA loans. 

The raised leding limits, as of this time at least, are only available through the end of 2008.  Yet another reason to get the "buy a property" ball rolling now.

Click here for information off the HUD/FHA website.

No one likes the way gas prices are going.  But in a strangely positive way, this could become a selling point for homes that are well located near shops, schools, public transportation, major cities etc.  Saving $300 or more a month on gas costs by buying closer to work and other conveniences may make the affordability of certain homes more doable for some buyers. 

While a postive for some, we realize it can be a negative for others. Just an observation sparked by The New York Times and Jim Duncan at Agent Genius

Just looking at the blogs statistics and April was a really great month for traffic! Over 3500 unique visitors. Some people type in blog.firstweber.com to reach us and some find us when they are conducting a web search on say, google.

A few people found our blog when they searched for "how up to date are realty listings?"  Well, we can't speak for every sitebut I can tell you about firstweber.com.

Our listings and participating co-broke listings are downloaded from 5 Multiple Listing Services at least once daily.  Our offices work throughout the day to update our own considerable amount of listings and First Weber listings are updated in real time.  We rely on the Multiple Listing Services for the data that populates our site for cooperating broker listings.  The MLS has rules that agents need to follow and fines if they don't.  So, the answer is a nutshell is listings at firstweber.com are updated daily, based on MLS information. 

Information on other sites, especially ones based on print advertising, can become outdated very quickly.  In these situations, information is entered into an ad publishing system which creates the magazine/ad and the same information is put on a website for 30 days or so.  That means the info is 30 days old.  When possible, go to a local real estate source for the most accurate information.