Top 5 real estate posts of the day Monday 6/29/2009 is a post from: Tempe Real Estate - Short Sale Agent

Top 5 real estate post for 6/29/20091) New research on walking away – This report takes a look at when people decide to walk away from their home and let it go to foreclosure.

2) Banks suck at selling Phoenix real estate – Jonathan Dalton is one of my favorite reads every morning, and nails this one right on the head. This is a typical foreclosure transaction in Phoenix right now, and from what I understand it is not far off from what is going on in Las Vegas too.

3) A few mortgage thoughts of the week – HVCC, $8000 tax credit monetization, it’s covered here.

4) Calculating income of employed W2 borrowers for mortgage qualifying – Curious how your income works when getting a mortgage and how recent increases or decreases can effect it? This helps answer those questions.

5) FHA condo approval process – MAJOR guideline changes – Come October 1st there are going to be some major changes for FHA guidelines on condos. Make sure you know about them before they get here.

FHA increase should help with Tempe and Phoenix condo sales is a post from: Tempe Real Estate - Short Sale Agent

Prices of condos in downtown Phoenix and Tempe have come down over the last year, but the market was hurt even more when the FHA lending limits were reduced at the end of 2008.

FHA loan limits on a condo and single family home in Phoenix and Tempe were raised last March from $263,150 to $346,250. That increase from the Federal Government was only temporary though. Towards the end of 2008 the limits reverted back to their prior level of $263K in Maricopa County.

If you have done a search for a condo in downtown Phoenix or around Tempe Lake you know the $263K level is not going to land you to many of the available units. So if you were wanting to use a FHA loan to make your purchase you may have found yourself coming up short, unless you could put down a large down payment. Of course if you could afford that down payment, then you probably were not going for a FHA loan anyways.

During the last week we did receive better news though as the limits have been restored back to the $346,250 limit. So if you were looking for a condo a month ago in downtown Phoenix and Tempe and thought you could not get the unit you desired because of the FHA limits, you may now be in luck. Use our free home search any time or contact me for an automatic search.