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Showing posts from January, 2016

You May Already Have Your Next Home Down Payment

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A Fannie Mae survey last year found that as many as 15 million homeowners underestimate the equity in their current homes despite rising home values, and don’t realize that they could be able to buy a home. So many potential borrowers have a “negative perception gap” of their home values that they say it’s actually suppressing the home buying and mortgage market activity across the US! At the time, 37 percent of homeowners believed that they had more than 20 percent home equity, but 69 percent actually had much more significant amounts than they thought. This “negative perception gap” or “appreciation gap” means people are reluctant to consider buying a home, in part because they underestimate how large a down payment they can make with their home equity, their chances of qualifying for mortgages, and their opportunities for selling their current homes to buy different ones. But accurate equity estimates also require accurate liability values, and homeowners also appea