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Zillow Mortgage's major flaws

By Jack Guttentag, Monday, July 7, 2008.

Zillow, the popular real estate site, now has a complementary mortgage site. It is also complimentary (with an "i") because neither participating lenders nor borrowers pay for the service.  more...

Buyer overpaid because of appraisal error

By Benny Kass, Monday, July 7, 2008.

DEAR BENNY: I own a home that I bought approximately three years ago. I was going through my paperwork and realized that my initial appraisal was done on the house and indicated that it contained five acres. However, I bought only 2.5 acres. It appraised at exactly what I bought it for, so what does this mean? I have a loan based on a house that would not have appraised at the selling price when I bought it. --Sherina  more...

Phone book referrals bad for business

By Barry Stone, Monday, July 7, 2008.

Dear Barry,

In one of your columns, a buyer was annoyed that her agent would not recommend a home inspector by name. I'm a Realtor, and our company has a policy against recommending any service providers, and that includes termite inspectors and home inspectors. We simply hand our clients the Yellow Pages and point out the section where inspectors are listed. Past experience has shown us that this is the safest way to do business.

If a home inspector that we recommend makes a mistake, we could be sued for making that referral.   more...

Economies are tanking everywhere

By Lou Barnes, Monday, July 7, 2008.

The immediate credit market response to a wave of new economic data is as-was, lowest-fee mortgages 6.5 percent, 10-year T-note just under 4 percent.

However, last week marked very significant change: Economic decline here and in Europe is now beyond argument, and the decline is fighting inflation for the Fed and the European Central Bank, neither of which needs to raise its rate further.  more...