If you are purchasing a home in Durham, you will need cash to cover your portion of the services it will take to close your mortgage loan. If you are a First Time Home Buyer – you might not know what those costs would be!

Those services and fees will include fees to the lender, the appraiser, the attorney, the court house, inspection fees, taxes insurance – and MORE! There costs are generally broken down into two different “buckets…” One Time Fees (like the Attorney and Appraisal Fees) and Pre-Paid Items (which are generally considered to be part of your on going payment like Insurance and Taxes.

Total Closing Costs For Chapel Hill Homes

The TOTAL closing costs for most Chapel Hill home buyers, purchasing an average home are generally about 3 to

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Today on Good Morning America, Zillow.com was referenced for a recent report they released where they analyzed the data in over 200 US metro areas and 7,500 cities to determine the actual time frame it would take to come out ahead if buying rather than renting. Unlike most analysis which typically only looked at price to rent when considering buying versus renting; Zillow new report factors in data such as taxes, tax deductions, down payments, utilities, appreciation/depreciation, maintenance, opportunity expenses and fluctuations in the rental market. These type of calculations would very extremely difficult for most people to accurately calculate with a high degree of accuracy (including even someone like myself) for a couple of reason, the most

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Most of us who wish to buy a home will do so by getting a mortgage. The first requirement is that we manage to save up enough money for a down payment. In addition, there are many other costs when purchasing a home — collectively referred to as “closing costs” which may include: mortgage application fees, attorney fees, inspection fees, home owners and title insurance, property tax and possibly homeowner association pro-rations, filing fees, and others. Equally important is having a good enough credit score to qualify for a mortgage and, unlike saving up your money which everyone understands, very often many people don't really understand how this works and what it will mean and how to improve their scores. If you are one of these folks, this is the

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I feel like the William Tell Overture should be blasting over my sound system as I look at the cover of this months Fortune Magazine trumpeting the return of real estate. Forget stocks, forget gold, and put your money where it's bound to grow over time good old real estate.

You can read the entire article for yourself, but honestly this comes as no real news to me, it simply mirrors what I've long been saying, as long as population continues to rise, there will always be a demand for real estate.

Real Estate Is Still A Top Investment Choice

It's simple, most of the planets land is either uninhabitable or undesirable, leaving a limited supply of places people can and want to live. If you don't believe me go online and take a look at some US

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Those of you who track me on Facebook saw the following posting earlier this week, you might have noticed this:

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither.

It was prompted by some of this weeks real estate news.

Just two weeks ago CBS featured a scathing expose on the foreclosure fraud being perpetrated by the nations banks on 60 Minutes.

This week the bipartisan Senate Committee of Investigations released the results of two years worth of work squarely laying the blame for the majority of the financial problems on Goldman-

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