SI Real Estate Tampa and The Beaches

By and large, we saw a healthy housing market last year – but what should we expect as we embark on a new real estate journey in 2017?  For home buyers, this is your que to strike while the iron is hot! If you’ve been waiting for the right time to buy your new home – your wait is over! Increase your buying power by taking advantage of these lower mortgage rates before we see an increase between 2017 and 2018. As Bill Dallas, CEO at Cloudvirga explains, “We expect GDP [gross domestic product] to increase 2.1% in 2017 and 2.0% in 2018, which in turn would cast an upward pressure on mortgage rates”. Alternatively, sellers are also at an advantage. For those with changing household sizes, moving up or downsizing may be a motivating factor for selling your home. Our current seller’s market, combined with buyers seeking low interest rates, makes for a swift and profitable seller transactions! As Theresa Williams-Barrett, Vice President of consumer lending and loan adminis...

Flipping through the television channels and social media, you may have noticed that many people are shifting towards downsizing their living space. Shows like  Tiny House, Big Living  and  Tiny House Nation  document the trending transition to tiny homes. So why are so many Americans jumping on the tiny home bandwagon? According to  TheTinyLife .com , the average home is 2600 square feet – compared to the minimal square footage for tiny homes, averaging between 100 – 400 square feet! Those joining the Tiny House Movement are doing so to protect the environment, live frugally and have the freedom to travel. With their petite structure, m any tiny house homeowners have found financial freedom that would have been difficult to achieve had they opted for a mortgage on a traditional home. The savings from high property taxes, lower maintenance costs and less major repairs are illustrations of many sources of household savings through  Tiny Homeown...

It’s time to take the next step and buy your first home. Where to begin, you ask? By and large we find ourselves scouring the internet for real estate listings and then driving by potential homes only to find that it’s been sold, or doesn’t live up to those beautiful online photos. Here’s the good news! Before getting too wrapped up in the home searching process, there are a few steps you should take to save yourself time, money and lots of disappointment. First and foremost: Prepare Your Credit for Mortgage Approval .  Now that you’ve decided to turn those rent payments into mortgage payments, the natural tendency may be to start looking for your dream home. But taking a step back to analyze your finances will be of absolute benefit to you when it comes to the mortgage approval part of the process!  The preliminary home search stage is the perfect time to check your credit score and the contents of your report.   If needed, you may dispute any erro...

Real estate mortgage holders in the Tampa Bay area, and across the country, can now seek relief on their mortgage with a new Federal Housing Administration (FHA) refinancing program. According to a press release FHA Launches Short Refi Opportunity for Underwater Homeowners dated August 6, 2010, “Starting Sept. 7, 2010, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) will offer certain ‘underwater’ non-FHA borrowers a new FHA-insured mortgage. To qualify, an owner must be current on his existing mortgage, and his lender must agree to write off at least 10 percent of the unpaid principal on the first mortgage.” This is a drastic effort to help responsible homeowners who, like so many, owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth, which therefore puts them in the so-called “underwater” category. The effort is one of many real estate and financial remedies employed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help bring stabilization to the housing market and the overall e...