The Best Home Affordability in a Generation Isn’t Helping the Housing Market
May 21, 2011 by Isabelle Bolliger · Leave a Comment
Recent housing data released by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and the Commerce Department points to a weak housing market that will continue to be weak in 2011 and into 2012. Consumers haven’t responded to mortgage rates that are near record lows and housing is more affordable than it has been in a generation. Current conforming 30 year mortgage rates are averaging 4.71% as reported by MonitorBankRates.com. (continued below) Your browser does not support IFrames, check out monitorbankrates.com/mortgages for current mortgage rates. Find today’s mortgage rates and refinance rates by searching our rate tables at MortgageRates.MonitorBankRates.com. No Continue reading…
Seattle projects win design awards
May 18, 2011 by Sofia Camfield · Leave a Comment
An image from the gu vision for Seattle.
Imagine Seattle with bubble wrapped buildings and wildlife feeding on grass growing in the street.
That vision, called [gu] (Growing Urbanism), won an Images that Provoke Award last month in the International Living Future Institutes Living City Design Competition.
And, last week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that it and the American Institute of Architects had chosen three affordable-housing projects, including one in Seattle, for the HUD Secretary’s Housing and Community Design Award for excellence in residential housing design.
Gundula Proksch, a member of zeroplus architects and assistant professor of architecture at the University of Washington, led the [gu] team, which included Joshua Brevoort, Lisa Chun and Lucky Lanphere from zeroplus, Lauren McCunney from the the University of Washington and Cameron Hall from STAVE studio.
The Seattle of 25 years from now redefines the relationship between the built environment an the natural world, according to the project. T
Drop in foreclosure filings not necessarily good news
May 11, 2011 by Sofia Camfield · Leave a Comment
Foreclosure filings continued to fall in April, but not necessarily because fewer people were behind on their mortgages, according to a new report.
“Foreclosure activity decreased on an annual basis for the seventh straight month in April, bringing foreclosure activity to a 40-month low,” James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of foreclosure data company RealtyTrac, said in the report. “This slowdown continues to be largely the result of massive delays in processing foreclosures rather than the result of a housing recovery that is lifting people out of foreclosure. Filings were down 16 percent in King County and 34.3 percent nationwide from a year earlier and down 22.6 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively, from March, RealtyTrac reported. There
Institute for Systems Biology opens SLU headquarters
May 8, 2011 by Sofia Camfield · Leave a Comment
The Institute for Systems Biology has opened its new global headquarters in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, the Institute and Vulcan Real Estate announced Monday.
Our new facility will enable the accommodation of additional faculty, researchers, and laboratory space, which provides us the opportunity to further increase the depth and breadth of our scientific capabilities,” the research institutes co-founder and President Leroy Hood said in a news release. ISB has a long-standing tradition of sharing our discoveries in computation, technologies, and related areas of systems biology research with others, so we are excited to move to this regions life sciences research and technology hub. Th
Can You Get a Mortgage Loan with Bad Credit
May 3, 2011 by Jesse Spivakovsky · Leave a Comment
There are a lot of different things that a loan advisor will look at when deciding whether or not to accept or reject your loan and your credit score is one of those things. If you know that your credit score is going to be a problem, you should start taking steps to repair it right away. If you want to improve your credit, limit the number of credit cards that you have, the amount of debt that you carry, the number of credit checks that are done on you and the number of late payments that are made. A good credit score is going to get you a better interest rate, but just because your credit is bad, doesn’t mean that you won’t get a mortgage.
If there is no hope for your credit, you need to look for other ways to buy a house, because a mortgage probably won’t ever be granted to you. Continue reading…