Many people use these terms interchangeably, but there is an important difference, especially if you are selling your house and are trying to evaluate whether a buyer can qualify for a mortgage or not.

‘Pre-qualified’ means that a mortgage broker has spoken with the buyer, taken information over the phone, and has run a buyer’s credit. The mortgage broker deems the buyer “pre-qualified” if all the information the buyer has…

Inventories in the Atlanta market continue to be high. Even if no more houses went on the market, it would still take 11 months for the houses currently on the market to sell. The highest inventories are in the million + market, which has a 26-month supply of homes for sale. The “under $200K” market is much closer to balanced with a 9.7-month…

New legislation was recently passed which provides that each county must mail a Tax Assessment Notice to all property owners once a year. If the homeowner does not agree with the value on the assessment, he/she will have 45 days from the date on the Notice to appeal the assessment. Here are the answers to frequently asked questions:

1. Is there a form to use for the appeal?
At this…

Not so fast….What the 3Q stats show is that we’re not out of the woods yet. Bumping along the bottom, yes. In full recovery, no.…

Time to party! According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, The Great Recession is over. Yipee! In fact, apparently we should have started partying since last summer. People who track these things say the recession has been over since June 2009. Who knew?

Here’s something cool and oddly comforting:  if the economy takes another downturn, officials will consider it to be a brand new recession.

And in case you…

If you’ve been kicking yourself for missing the tax credit last Spring, listen to this:

You are actually better off buying now without the tax credit than back then with the tax credit.

How can that be, you ask? It’s all about interest rates. Interest rates have dropped so low – we’re talking historic, all-time lows – that buying now is like getting the tax credit and so much…

I got my Certified Distressed Property Expert designation last week. There are 1.2 million real estate agents in the US and only 25,000 of us have earned this distinction. What I’ve been trained to do is help distressed homeowners find a way out of what seems like an impossible situation. And pretty much everybody these days knows someone in an impossible situation: lost a job, can’t find a new one,…

Leading up to the deadline for the tax credit, things got pretty wild. At 9:00pm on April 30th, three hours before the tax credit expired, I was still negotiating a deal. After the clock struck midnight, there was a bit of residual activity for a week or so – for example, people whose homes went under contract now needed to find a home. But mostly, things just got really, really…

But if things have just felt better than that, you’re right – for particular areas, that is. In the Buckhead area, sales were up a stunning 38%…

This is the last week to qualify for the tax credit!  Here are the details to get you up to speed.

If you’re a first-time home buyer or haven’t owned a home for three years:
You are eligible for an $8,000 tax credit. Remember, this is not a deduction, it’s a true tax credit. For example, let’s say that after you do your taxes next year, you owe the government…