Moving In: Portland
Posted on May 24th, 2011
After looking at 10 houses in Glastonbury, Steve and Sharon Kirsche thought they found what they were looking for.
“The inspection process was a real eye-opener, and it turned out to be a disaster,” Steve Kirsche said. With a tree growing in the septic tank, termites and other problems surfacing, the couple walked away from the deal.
Disappointed, the Kirsches, who were living in a 1,750-square-foot home in Wethersfield, continued their search for a larger home .
“We wanted a place we could settle in for the next 20 years and raise a family,” said Steve Kirsche, 33, a development officer at Yale University in New Haven.
Spring Home-Buying Season Hits Sluggish Start In Greater Hartford
Posted on May 16th, 2011
The spring home-buying season — traditionally the busiest of the year — is off to a slow start in Greater Hartford, which doesn’t bode well for a broad-based housing recovery in the area this year.
Closed sales of single-family houses plunged 34 percent in April, compared with a year earlier, and pending sales — a key indicator of sales that will take place in the next two to three months — fell 38 percent in the same period, according to a report Wednesday from the Greater Hartford Association of Realtors. The association tracks a 57-town area from Enfield to Middletown.
The sales report was not unexpected. With slow job growth in Connecticut and stricter borrowing requirements, most experts didn’t expect much of a rebound in housing this year. Across
Support For Nontraditional Credit Data Rebuilding Mortgage Applicants’ Credit Scores
Posted on May 13th, 2011
Some credit experts call it the best-kept secret in home mortgage finance. Others say, so what?
Millions of Americans whose credit scores have declined in recent years because of economic stresses could start rebuilding their scores if their rent, utilities, cellphone, insurance and other monthly accounts were reported to the national credit bureaus.
But typically they are not, and as a consequence fail to show up as positive factors on credit scoring systems such as FICO or VantageScore. These on-time payments essentially go to waste for consumers, even though monthly rents often can be as large as mortgage bills, and years of utilities and other payments are widely recognized as strong indicators of creditworthiness.
Now for the best-kept secret: Under federal law, these unreported accounts need not go to waste.
Tags: Credit Scores, Scores
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Moving Out: West Hartford
Posted on May 8th, 2011
Six months after being laid off, Rex Roberts found a new job in the Washington, D.C., area doing audits for the Discovery Channel.
He immediately put his West Hartford house on the market, thinking it would sell quickly, as his last house did seven years ago. But conditions were different. It was the second week in December — right before the holidays, and not a great time to sell a house. Then the never-ending snow seemed to obliterate everything that was great about the property: the friendly neighborhood, the proximity to I-84, the nearby schools and Wood Pond.
The months dragged on, with not even an offer. The Robertses dropped the price from $409,000 to $389,900.
Surfing the Internet one day, Roberts’ father saw that Money magazine was looking for homes to feature for an article about selling in a tough market. T
Tags: Hartford, West Hartford
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Moving In: Old Lyme
Posted on May 1st, 2011
Lori Gruen had no desire to move out of the multi-family Victorian she had bought in 2001.
A Wesleyan University philosophy professor and department chairwoman, Gruen was happy in her New Haven neighborhood. Comfortably situated on the second and third floors of the house, she enjoyed the city’s great restaurants, museums and brisk pace.
But she longed for a quiet getaway where she could do her writing in the summer and on weekends, a tranquil retreat, preferably near the water, where her dogs could run and she could unwind. “A shack on the beach” is how Gruen, 48, described it to real estate agent Mick Marsden of Page Taft GMAC Real Estate’s River-To-Shore Group.
Marsden found Gruen a small house near the beach, but it was way better than a shack.