October 18, 2016

How Your Student Loans Affect Getting a Mortgage When Buying a Home

The decision to balance student loan debt with homeownership is an audacious one, and quite satisfying if it’s well-executed. Find out how your degree type and student loan repayment program influence your ability to secure different types of home loans – and learn what you need to do to demonstrate your capability as a borrower. Purchasing your first home is a huge investment, and an even greater accomplishment. To ensure your success, it’s imperative to have your finances in order. In particular, there may be much speculation and concern surrounding the impact of student loan debt on home-buying achievement. Perhaps […]
November 9, 2016

Top 5 Things People Forget When Buying A Home

When it comes to buying a home, there is a lot to think about and a lot to plan. It can be easy for details to fall through the cracks or never be considered when choosing a house. Here is a list of the top five things that people often forget when they buy a new home. 1. Seasonal Changes When purchasing a home, many people forget what their new house will need or look like throughout the seasons. This might include the type of trees on the property (evergreen means no raking of leaves, but deciduous trees might create […]
December 24, 2016

How to Get Your Credit Report Ready for a Mortgage Application

When you apply for a mortgage, every point in your credit score matters. With DC real estate prices, even a small increase in your interest rate can cost you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here’s what you need to do to polish your credit report to get the best score and interest rate possible. Review Your Credit Reports as Soon as Possible Review your credit reports well in advance of when you plan to apply for a mortgage so you have time to fix any errors. Common errors include the credit bureau mixing up consumers with similar names […]
November 13, 2019

10 Ways To Tell If a Home Renovation is Well Done

DC’s housing market is full of houses and condos that have been recently renovated by developers. The quality of these renovations varies greatly, and we wondered if there was a way for house hunters to tell the good renovations from the bad. Martin Ditto has done his share of renovations while developing houses and multi-family buildings through his company Ditto Residential, and he gave us a few pointers. These tips are not foolproof: a home may have fancy appliances but shoddy workmanship where it counts, or be well done throughout but have mid-grade fixtures. Still, here are ten tips that […]
November 20, 2019

How Much Cash Do You Need to Buy a House?

In this post, we provide a brief outline of some of the up-front costs associated with buying a home. Here’s a rundown of the outlays. Earnest Money Deposit After making an offer and coming to an agreement with the home seller, a buyer is generally expected to pay 1 to 3 percent of the purchase price immediately. This earnest money deposit is held until the closing when it becomes part of the down payment. If the buyer backs out of the deal unexpectedly, the seller keeps the money. If the deal falls through due to a contingency that was previously […]
December 4, 2019

Red Flags Revealed During a Home Inspection

Home inspections are one of the more important aspects of the home buying process, and a thorough inspection may occasionally reveal problems that are severe enough to seriously concern a future owner. We wanted to run down a few potential inspection findings that should raise serious red flags. The following are a list of possible issues: Structural damage (usually determined by noting cracks in plaster, visibly shifted floors, doors, or windows; visibly shifted brick on the exterior, etc.) may require underpinning to the tune of $25,000-250,000 Water intrusion and grading problems (usually noted with visible water stains, visible presence or […]
December 13, 2019

The Biggest Changes Coming in 2020 Real Estate—and What Buyers and Sellers Need to Do

Ten years ago, many homeowners were desperately hoping to hang on to their homes. Others were doing everything they could just to scare up potential buyers. Meanwhile, said buyers were struggling to get financing from newly skittish lenders. Ah, memories. What a difference a decade makes! It has, in fact, been the most consequential stretch in American real estate history, one that has fundamentally altered the landscape. Cosmopolitan coastal cities are out; affordable midsize cities are in. Baby boomers and Gen Xers are no longer the dominant forces in buying, ceding that turf to millennials. Yet after all this time, […]
May 19, 2021

Urban Areas Still Appeal to Homebuyers

For more than a year, analysts have understood that the pandemic-related telework trend is shaking up the housing industry. Still, they have had to dig deeper to understand the ways those changes are impacting home-location preferences and to predict the potential permanence of such changes. Despite the rollout of vaccines and loosened social-distancing recommendations, remote work is here to stay for many Americans, and that will continue to impact the housing market, experts say.  A U.S.-based survey of 5,000 working adults found that four in ten workers expect to have some form of continued remote work flexibility post-pandemic, says Chris […]