If you think you’re about ready to purchase your next home or even your first home, maybe you have looked around for a real estate brokers and maybe you have even done some preliminary things to check on your finances.  Have you considered searching for an eco-broker, someone to help you find an energy-efficient home that will save you money on your gas water electric bills maybe even on your commute?

Real estate brokers are just starting to turn on to a new concept known as the eco-broker so that they might help to strengthen their own franchise in real estate.  In eco-broker is a real estate broker that specializes in helping clients buy or sell homes that are eco-friendly.

Now an eco-broker may not be for everybody, but with oil prices remaining over $100 a barrel in gas prices push you towards for five dollars a gallon and inflation just around the corner it may not be such a bad idea to minimize the amount of money that you have to pay on energy costs with your future home.  People purchasing very large houses of 2, 3, 4, or even 5000 ft.² will also have a great deal of space to manage permanent energy perspective.

From the cost of million dollars in covers three or 4000 ft.², paying a premium to save $1000 a month on energy loss could well be worth it.  Having the peace of mind to understand that your home is as good as it can possibly be and as efficient as it can possibly be when it comes to energy costs may be the prime here.

Here are some Reminder or Refresher Tips that we can all benefit from to help continue to manage our credit card debt effectively.  As a general rule of thumb these need to be executed with the overall strategy of paying down and off all credit card debt as rapidly as possible.

1. When Setting up the card, choose a convenient due date that fits your cash flow cycle or incoming paychecks.
2. Schedule a new due date if your cash flow cycle or paycheck cycle changes
3. If you mail your payment, send it at least 5-7 days before the due date. 
4. If using a bill pay service do not rely on the services’ scheduling software to get your payment there a day before hand.  Again make payments several days before the due date to allow for problems or delays from your bill paying support system.
5. If your payment gets close to the due date or if it goes past the due date, call the company and pay over the phone if they allow you to do that.  Be sure to ask them to forgive the late payment and dismiss late fees when you pay over the phone.  Use your ability to pay over the phone as leverage to get these items corrected "Will you remove late fees and keep my interest rate at the same level if I can pay you over the phone right now?"
6. Review Your Statements regularly to insure that you do not go over your credit limit and to insure that your credit has not been hijacked to buy energy pills or take a vacation around the world.
7. Work to stay at least 5% under your credit limit at all times and for maximum credit try and stay below 90 - 50% of your credit line.  Zero percent of course is the absolute best.
8. If your balance takes your percentages over these levels, consider calling to ask for a rate increase, but do this only while considering the other ramifications on your credit, such as the number of credit inquiries that you have had in the last 90 - 180 days.

So the Federal Reserve dropped its rates that are charged to banks and you would expect that mortgage rates from those banks to consumers would drop as a result.  After all that is the pattern of cause and perceived effect that has taken place in the mortgage industry for about the last 16 years.

There are unfortunately two big problems that are actually causing mortgage interest rates to fall Up, as in rates are going up not down.

Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, reported Thursday that 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 5.88 percent for the week ending April 3. That was up from last week’s 5.85 percent and was the highest since the middle of March, when 30-year rates stood at 6.13 percent.  ~ Associated Press

The first is that banks are finally starting to recognize the risk that their consumers bring to the table.  You may have good credit or even decent credit or maybe you have sketchy credit.  But the bank looks at a pool of borrowers, and right now at this moment in history foreclosures are rising in many areas.  Like a group of people trying to warm up a pool together, the risk that banks take on in aggregate is being heated up by the people already in the pool letting go of their mortgage obligation.  So the bank has to pay for that loss, and the only way they can do that is by reflecting the new rate of real risk in their mortgage rates.

Then there is an even bigger problem that is starting to hit banks albeit more slowly.  Its called inflation.  You can see it at the pump and you can see it at the store when you buy a gallon of milk for $5.75 a gallon(local Wal-Mart price last week off sale).  Banks have to set mortgage interest rates to cover the risk of the borrower and they have to set interest to cover the risk of inflation and the decline in value of the dollar.  Well guess what, inflation is slowly coming and the dollar is dropping in value.  That means if you borrow $200k today and pay back $200k tomorrow, the bank is going to lose a little money on the transaction.  Spread those payments out over a normal mortgage period and they will lose even more in the short to medium term.

So that has mortgage rates going up.  The trend of where this will fall out is anyone’s guess.  The Fed’s reductions normally can take 3-6 months to actually have a direct effect on the mortgage rates offered to consumers too.  So that means that the recent reductions the banks received may not show up in offers to you until July.  However, if the banks risk increases during the same time and inflation increases, then the Fed’s drop in rates may be completely consumed and you will not notice a positive move at all.  So if you were hoping to pay for some good vacation deals this year based on the money you would save on a lower mortgage rate, you might have to think again and instead find some ways to tighten up your belt buckle to ride this one out at home.

Over the last seven years the Republican administration of George Bush and the Republican led Congress (up until 2006) were so bad at managing the nations finances that it was hard to conceive that anyone, anything or any other party could be worse.  Democrats seem to be working to prove that they are just as bad at helping Americans and the US economy as their Republicans cohorts on Capital Hill.

This week, the two sides are arguing over a Sub Prime bail out that seems designed to bail out no one, yet it will spend $300 billion dollars.

What it might do

1.  Give funds to local communities to go fix up empty foreclosed homes. 

Why?  Who knows, maybe it will give the mice and the looters something fresh to compete over.

2.  It will replace a borrowers existing mortgage with an FHA backed mortgage and will give the Federal Government partial ownership of your home. 

Why? Who knows, maybe the Federal Government hopes to get a foot in the door on legal grounds in case they want to perform a search or seizure of your property without a warrant with a warrantless wire tap.  The last thing the fed wants to do is go into the real estate business again having to comply with local ordinances and bylaws on maintenance and upkeep.  Wasn’t the United States set up in part so that people could get away from governments that owned all the land?

3.  It would require banks to write down the principal amount of a mortgage balance to recognize new home loan values in various areas. 

Why?  If you currently owe more on your home than it can be sold for in the market, financially you will have the incentive to walk away and leave the bank with the bad deal.  That increases defaults, drops property values further and creates more instability for all of your neighbors who might soon fall into the same problem.

What it will not do

1.  Allow Bankruptcy Judges to do what they used to do and negotiate better interest rates and principal amounts to avoid a total default and loss by the home owner and the banks.

2.  It will not help people facing foreclosure avoid foreclosure.  (But they will fix up your house real nice after you are kicked out by the local sheriff)

3.  It will not bail out speculators that gambled on the value of your home as collateral.  But it will back their remaining investments with an FHA guarantee so that they can take their money and run to another investment arbitrage opportunity, maybe something in grape seed extract commodity contracts.

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