Blog Posts - Gulf Shores Real Estate - Orange Beach Homes For Sale

Pending Home Sales Fall in December

March 10, 2008 by Malcolm Bond

Pending Home Sales Fall in December The pending home sales index, based on contracts signed but not closed in December, was down 24.2% from the prior year’s period, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The index, which is considered a leading indicator of existing home sales, had also declined […]

Bi-Weekly Mortgage Payments: Don’t Pay Fees

March 9, 2008 by Malcolm Bond

Bi-Weekly Mortgage Payments: Don’t Pay Fees The "magic" of a biweekly (every two weeks) mortgage payment is that you end up making the equivalent of 13 full mortgage payments in a year rather than the usual 12, reducing the time needed to pay down the mortgage and cutting interest payments substantially. But a biweekly […]

Beware of Bad Advice About Foreclosure

March 8, 2008 by Malcolm Bond

Beware of Bad Advice About Foreclosure A very disturbing and potentially damaging trend seems to be emerging in several real estate markets across the country. Especially those markets with flat or even declining values. The trend? Well, it seems that some very less than scrupulous folks have resorted to promoting foreclosure to people […]

Are you Worried About Recession?

March 7, 2008 by Malcolm Bond

Are you Worried About Recession? With all the gloom and doom over the past year about falling home prices, foreclosures, sharply higher gas and oil prices and bad job reports, are you truly concerned about a recession in the U.S. right now? Home prices have plunged by 10 to 30 percent in some […]

Recession in Richmond VA Real Estate?

March 6, 2008 by Malcolm Bond

Recession in Richmond VA Real Estate? What Happens When There is a Recession and No One Comes? It looks like 73 out of 150 metropolitan statistical areas did not get invited to doomsday, showing increases in median existing single-family home prices from a year earlier, including 11 areas with double-digit annual gains and […]

Survival Strategies: Recession-proof Your Life

March 5, 2008 by Malcolm Bond

Survival Strategies: Recession-proof Your Life Falling home values, rising unemployment, declining confidence among consumers and businesses and, lately, a swooning stock market. We may or may not be entering an official recession (defined as two consecutive quarters of shrinking economic activity), but either way 2008 has gotten off to a scarier start than most […]