Monica McNamara's Ocean City Blog

At this time of year I like to reflect and pause and thank the many wonderful customers and clients that we have worked with throughout the years. 

This year I thought I'd do something a little different. I am sharing a little piece of my home at the beach with you. (Click on "MY" to view).

Hope that you enjoy.

Happy Holidays!

Buyers, make sure you qualify for the mortgage loan you will be obtaining to purchase your home or condominium. The rules to qualify seem to be changing almost daily.

When you apply for a mortgage, most (if not all) lenders will sell your loan to the secondary mortgage market (a/k/a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac). In order for you to be approved to borrow monies, there are debt to income ratios (as well as other things) that are used to determine your ability to repay. Today we are talking about changes to these ratios.

In the past, there had been some leniency in Fannie Mae's debt to income ratio. Fannie Mae is making changes that will affect your borrowing power. They had been allowing up to a 55% total debt to income ratio.  Effective sometime this week (week of 12/7/09, they love to keep us guessing), they will be changing this ratio to reflect a total debt to income not to exceed 45% for almost all scenarios.

What does this mean to you the borrower? Well, the obvious is that you will either have to earn more money or have less existing debt in order to qualify for the same amount of a mortgage that you did as recent as last week.

If you had been pre-approved for a mortgage loan and have not yet secured your loan, you will want to contact your real estate agent and your lender and have them re-evaluate your qualifying criteria to make sure that you can still borrow the same amount of money.

Stay tuned. There is probably more change in store in the wonderful world of banking.

As an aside, don't let this newest information be a deterent in making your property purchase.  The overall benefits of owning a primary, secondary or investment property, far out weigh some of the push ups we now have to go through to obtain that goal.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Check out what is going on in Ocean City for the month of December.

The Beach isn't just for summertime!

Most folks I have found love this recipe that my husband Kevin and I prepare on a pretty regular basis. So as not to write it all over again.

Here's how the fixins go!  It's finger lickin good. Enjoy!

I feel very strongly about an extension being made on this all so important legislation. This is a re-print of an article that I placed.

Please read it and support and encourage your local Senator's to support this bill.

 The goal of home ownership is so important for every individual!

What is the current interest rate?  I am asked that question many, many times during the course of my day.

Thanks to wonderful fellow professionals like Paul Soule of Coldwell Banker Home Loans, I get the best information possible.

Check out the blog post I did today about our interest forecast for the week.

 Our Resort Market Is Hanging In There

There are currently 1,550 resale and new homes in Ocean City, Maryland as reported by Trulia, including 18 homes in the pre-foreclosure, auction, or bank-owned stages of the foreclosure process. That represents only slightly higher then 1% of the inventory. As compared to many areas of the country that is extremely low. Nationwide, foreclosures were up 57% from March 2007 to March 2008, and that trend has continued.

Our overall inventory has been leveling off since the beginning of 2009, which can be signaling that we are beginning to see that light at the end of the tunnel here at the beach. This would not only be good news for the housing sector, but our economy as a whole.

The average listing price for homes for sale in Ocean City MD was $470,356 for the week ending Jul 08, 2009, which represents a decrease of 1.4%, or $6,523, compared to the prior week.