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Since 2007, foreclosures have dominated real estate news. You can’t turn on the news or open a paper without some foreclosure-related story.

But for all of the discussion, foreclosures continue to be geographically concentrated.

Adding up the latest stats from RealtyTrac.com, more than half of the country’s foreclosure actions from March occurred [...]

It’s Tax Day today and who among us doesn’t love a legitimate tax deduction?

The IRS expects to process 138 million tax returns this year and accompanying those returns will be a melange of tax deduction requests.

Most will be run-of-the-mill including such staples as mortgage interest, vehicle mileage, and child care deductions. Others, however, [...]

Shopping for low mortgage rates is a game of luck.

Some days, mortgage rates are favorable. Other days, they’re not. And while you can sometimes make an educated guess about where rates might be headed, you’re not always going to guess right.

Even the experts get it wrong more often than they’d like.

But [...]

For the second week in a row, mortgage markets started the week strong and then ended with a fizzle. In the holiday-shortened week, rates were exactly flat overall.

There wasn’t much economic data to move rates last week, incidentally. The market’s up-and-down action was largely based on two events:

A reputable analyst said banking-sector optimism may [...]

When conforming mortgages adjust, they’re often tied to an interest rate index called LIBOR.

LIBOR is an acronym for London Interbank Offered Rate. But what LIBOR stands for isn’t as important as the role it plays.

LIBOR is an interest rate at which banks borrow money from each other. Therefore, when banks feel the banking system [...]

There are 138 million taxpayers in the United States and, according to the IRS, 20 percent of them file their taxes within 7 days of April 15. In a holiday-shortened week, that means that 27 million people had better get a move on.

And while a portion of this year’s last-minute filers will file with [...]

April 4, 2009, marked the official start of the Making Home Affordable refinance program.

Expected to help 5 million homeowners, the Making Home Affordable program “looks the other way” with respect to falling home values, approving mortgage applications based on borrower payment history and benefit to the homeowner.

Not every homeowner is eligible for a Making Home [...]

Mortgage markets were up-and-down last week as rates fell Monday and Tuesday before surging higher from Wednesday through Friday.

In some case, after touching all-time lows, conforming mortgage rates added a half-percent in the second half of the week, ruining some homeowners’ chance to refinance.

It was the second week in a row that mortgage rates worsened.

One [...]

Thursday morning, homeowners in different parts of the country awoke to find similar-sounding newspaper headlines:

Rates on 30-year mortgages sink to 4.78%, a new low (LA Times)
Mortgage rates at record low for 2nd week (Miami Herald)
Mortgages hit another record low (San Francisco)

The underlying story was that Freddie Mac’s weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey showed the lowest, [...]

The number of homes under contract to sell is rising, another signal that the housing market may be regaining its footing.

As reported by an industry trade group, the Pending Home Sales Index gained 2 percent in February. The report measures MLS-listed homes in “pending” status — sold but not yet closed.

Pending Home Sales is [...]