Archive for January, 2019
Please Don’t Move To Pensacola
Please don’t move to Pensacola. Seriously. I know it has superficial attractions like miles of clean beaches, real estate costs which are a third, or a fourth or a fifth of home values in hip-and-happening major metro areas and sure, you can easily park on the streets downtown, but do you really want to […]
Mortgages: Should We Jail Optimistic Economists?
In Italy seven people have been indicted for failing to predict an earthquake that killed more than 300 people. “Six Italian seismologists and one government official will be tried for the manslaughter of those who died in the earthquake that struck the city of L’Aquila on 6 April 2009,” reports Nicola Nosengo with Nature News. “The […]
Toxic Loans: The Coming Storm
It’s been a very good century for real estate, at least so far. According to the National Association of Realtors, the typical home that sold for $139,000 in 2000 was worth $208,700 in 2005. Not only have home values increased, unit volume has also grown. There were 5,152,000 existing home sales in 2000 compared with […]
April 15th: The Right Way To Figure Taxes
With April 15 now upon us a question lingers: Isn’t there a better way to deal with this annual effort to find receipts, stubs and numbers that balance? My interest in taxes is both economic and genetic. My late father was a CPA for more than 60 years and at age 90 or thereabouts was […]
Books by Peter G. Miller (OurBroker)
In response to many inquires, here is information regarding books by Peter G. Miller. More than 300,000 Miller books are in print. 1- The Common-Sense Mortgage: How to Cut the Cost of Home Ownership by $50,000 or More First published by Harper & Row in 1985, this book was widely considered the standard guide to real […]
What’s A Qualified Mortgage (QM)?
One of the better ideas to come out of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was to create something called a “qualified residential mortgage.” You want to know about such financing because most lenders offer little else. Under Wall Street reform several federal agencies have worked out a definition of the term “qualified mortgage” or […]
Is The Dow A Good Measure of Stock Market Success?
Like oxygen, reports on the daily doings of the Dow Jones Industrial Average are everywhere. It’s the fastest way to check Wall Street’s pulse. It’s the one benchmark most likely to be quoted in the morning paper and the nightly news. There are 30 companies which comprise the DJIA, but not the same companies all the […]
The Story of America’s First Christmas Tree
Christmas trees now sparkle in millions of homes, but did you ever wonder how the tradition began? No doubt there are many stories regarding the start of this custom. So, as we do each year, here’s one we’d like to pass along. At first, celebrating Christmas in America — with or without a tree — […]
How Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac Were Taken Over By The Government
In the summer of 2008 the federal government said at the height of the mortgage crisis that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had unfledged assets of $1.5 trillion. On September 7, 2008 the government announced that it was seizing control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A Few Weeks Later On September 7, […]
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