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Is Spring Really the Best Time to Sell a House?
 We’re in the middle of winter right now, but interest rates are going down a bit, leaving sellers wondering when the best time to put their home on the market might be.
During the height of the pandemic, typical seasonal patterns disappeared from the housing market because the demand was so high that any time was an excellent time to put your home on the market.
The market has stabilized and cooled a bit, so timing has to become a consideration again.
Overall, research and data show us that you will probably get the best outcomes if you sell your home during the late spring and early summer. You can earn
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MORTGAGE RATES
U.S. averages as of April 2023:
30 yr. fixed: 6.42%
15 yr. fixed: 5.68%
5/1 yr. adj: 5.74%
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thousands of dollars more on selling your home if you wait until the peak months—May, June, and July.
The slowest for home sales, according to a report from
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Should You Rent to Someone with a Damaged Credit Report?
 Being a landlord means more than just renting out a property, but for those who are going to rent out a unit for the first time, some of the nuances can be overlooked and only encountered later, often times to the owner’s chagrin. We’ve discussed in this column before the importance of performing your own due diligence when it comes to evaluating a rental application. Owning investment real estate means taking on additional risks. One that comes to mind is what you can do when the tenants stop paying or are consistently paying more than 30 days past the due date.
Depending upon the location, some states are relatively liberal as it relates to tenant eviction. In others, it might seem impossible to evict someone due to non-payment. There can be some
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Lease Purchase: Is This a Thing?
 One way for future buyers to come up with some down payment and buy a home of their own is through what the industry refers to as a lease-purchase. As the name implies, it’s a process whereby someone leases out a property with a pledge to purchase the property at a future date, specifically when the initial lease period is completed.
There are some mechanics that need to be worked out as well as a couple of ‘gotchas.’ How does a lease purchase actually work? It’s similar to most any ‘rent to own’ program but it has to do with real estate. The process is essentially simple. Someone signs a lease agreement and at the same time agrees to buy the property. The practice is that a portion of the lease payment is set aside to be used as a down payment when it’s time to buy. That’s pretty easy to understand. But what needs to be considered at the outset is what many might overlook.
When it’s time to
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Pending Home Sales Improve, but Will It Last?
 Despite all the frenzied headlines about rapidly rising interest rates, there was a slight decline in mortgage rates in both December and January. According to a newly released data set from the National Association of Realtors, this gave a bump to pending home sales for the second month in a row.
The Pending Home Sales Index, which is a forward-looking indicator of home sales based on contracts signed, saw an 8% improvement in January. However, year-over-year, pending sales went down by 24%.
The last time we saw anything above an 8% increase every month in pending contracts was three months after lockdowns from the pandemic. Showings were at a complete standstill, and in June 2020, the pending home sales pace went up 17% compared to the month before.
Lawrence Yin, NAR Chief Economist, said buyers responded to more affordability stemming from declining mortgage rates in December and January.
The NAR is continuing to predict that the economy will keep adding jobs the rest of this year and into 2023, and they believe the 30-year fixed
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