PMI Mortgage Insurance has a new tool for homeowners facing potential foreclosure on their home. The Mortgage Options Assessment Tool (http://www.homesafepmi.com/) enables homeowners to organize, calculate, and produce reports on their current financial situations prior to meeting their lenders or counselors to discuss solutions to foreclosure. This is a free online tool available to anyone.

According to the Remodelormove.com fall 2008 Remodeling Sentiment Report, an online publication of ABCD Publishing LLC, the amount of equity homeowners have is influencing their remodeling plans.

How many potentially life-threatening hazards do you have around your house?

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Insight has a page that provides links to a wide array of data on housing markets and housing finance at:

http://www.ofheo.gov/Research.aspx?Nav=110

This article was so popular that we decided to start a whole website centered around the concepts of value investing at www.buffettandmunger.com  It is of course named after the pre-eminent residents of Graham and Doddsville.

This graph was created from data obtained from the Federal Reserve.  In addtion to the 10 year, month by month fixed rate home mortage interest rate there is a 12 month moving average to provide a smoothed trendline. 

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is the national association representing the real estate finance industry.  MBA's research and economics group provides current and comprehensive data and benchmarking tools that make a difference in short- and long-term strategic planning. cover all real estate business areas - economic forecasting, residential, commercial and multifamily.

Katie Wethman's Thoughts on Washington, DC and Northern Virginia Real Estate has an excellent entry on the difference between a Conforming, Jumbo, and FHA loans.  I didn't realize that the point at which a loan became a "Jumbo" loan was when Fannie and Freddie could not buy the loan--the present limit is around $417,000.