DFW Area Home Prices Climb According to Latest S&P/Case-Schiller Index

Good news DFW! The Dallas/Fort Worth area pre-owned homes showed a price increase this past November, up 1.4 percent from a year previous, according to the lastest statistics released by the Standard & Poor's/Case-Schiller Home Price Index. This is the first positive increase in DFW in the past 2 years. The Dallas area also placed 1st out of 20 cities tracked monthly according to the index. Based on the numbers, our area has been on a steady increase since the market bottomed out in March 2009.

It's not time to celebrate yet however. There is still much speculation about mortgage rates increasing if the Fed stops buying mortgages and mortgage backed securities this April. 30-year fixed rates have already risen by one-quarter of a percent this past month to around 5.2%, according to HSH Associates. This could be the beginning of a steady rise in rates. With this in mind, NOW is the time to lock in your mortgage on the purchase of your next home or a re-finance of your current home.

Visit BW Home Team to find all the homes available on the market today, whether it is homes in Frisco, homes in McKinney, or homes in Flower Mound, pre-owned or new construction. Quit searching and start finding with us!

The Borrowers Right to Inspect Closing Documents Act of 2009

A new bill was introduced to the House of Representatives late last year. This bill, titled "The Borrowers Right to Inspect Closing Documents Act of 2009" was co-sponsored by Reps. Melissa Bean, D - Ill., and Shelley Moore Capito, R - W. Va. The bill, if passed, would require that borrowers receive their closing documents at least three business days before their scheduled closing. This would mean that the lender would be required to provide the title company or other settlement agent:

• the completed promissory note
• the deed of trust or other mortgage instrument
• all items needed to complete the uniform settlement statement
• the final closing instructions

at least four days before a borrowers scheduled closing in order to allow the settlement agent time to prepare the closing documents and get them to the buyer within the required 3 days prior to closing.

Like most pieces of legislation, this bill is a double-edged sword in my opinion. Most legislators blame the housing crisis on predatory lenders having taken advantage of sub-prime borrowers ignorance of the paperwork they were signing and the terms they had agreed to. I give borrowers I little more credit than this. Having sat through many closings, settlement agents do a good job of explaining the paperwork in layman's terms that all but the dimmest can understand. "A 5 year ARM will keep your payments at this level for 5 years and then your interest rate will increase by no more than a certain percentage (stating what that percentage number is) PER YEAR, which will increase your payment to this, etc."

I believe everyone should have the right to read what they are signing and are smart to do so. A large amount of lenders are notorious for getting paperwork to the title company/settlement agent as late as the afternoon of a borrower's closing, if not later. Closing documents are generally stacked together in a pile a good 6 inches thick, with several documents being full of legalese and the buyer is expected to get through a closing within the scheduled hour to hour and a half. Thus, in a Utopian society where all runs smoothly in the world, this bill would seem like a good idea. However, here's the other side of the sword. We do not live in a Utopian society and like good ol' Murphy stated, if something can go wrong, it will. Most buyers arrange their movers or rent their moving vans for the day of closing. If they are selling a house and do not negotiate a temporary lease back, they have nowhere else to put their belongings. Will these lenders be able to keep up with these new guidelines or will this cause the process to bottleneck even more? It seems smart and logical to get to the root cause of the bottleneck. I don't have faith that our legislators can even comprehend this concept. I believe that if required closing documents were more universally standardized between all lenders, closings could be more streamlined. Buyers could compare apples to apples when looking at good faith estimates and all the lenders would need to do is fill in the blanks. Borrowers could review blank closing documents before they ever get into contract on a house and hidden fees would not be so hidden anymore.

Only time will tell if this legislation will pass and if these new requirements will further bog down the closing process. The good news is, the home market is looking up in 2010! There are lots of homes for sale in Frisco, homes for sale in Highland Village, homes for sale in Southlake, and homes for sale in Flower Mound , along with other areas of Dallas/Fort Worth that are just waiting for that new buyer to move in, that is, as long as they get through the closing process first!