The lowering of Boynton Beach mortgage rates is providing an undeniable stimulus for area buyers—so any change in how lenders look at credit scores is automatically of interest. In that sense, this should come as interesting news: FICO is about to introduce two new scoring models!  

But actually, it’s likely to produce barely noticeable ripples. Among other reasons, the gradual introduction of the new FICO Score 10 and Score 10T won’t happen until this summer—and most lenders will wait a while before adopting them (if they use them at all). The difficulty confronting consumers seeking to track relevant details in the credit rating universe is well known. For instance, FICO 8 is still the most commonly used, even though its successor—FICO 9— debuted six years ago. Further complicating the picture is how the three credit bureaus use specialized FICO versions (a different story entirely!).

Basically, FICO scoring has to do with how different factors are weighted in formulating any given “score”—the number meant to predict the risk a lender would take when funding a loan. Each new model attempts to further refine the available data. Such improvements become possible as more information is made available—and in today’s Boynton Beach, the all-encompassing electronic nature of our day-to-day dealings creates more and more data.

Among other factors, the new FICO 10 will give more weight to personal loans. It will penalize borrowers who take out loans to consolidate debt if they then continue to rack up more debt. FICO 10T will tabulate “trended”...

As soon-to-list Boynton Beach home sellers may tell you, tracking the national home sales trends is one pastime that’s been less than exciting of late. The National Association of Realtors^® monthly compendium of activity has long been mired in utter predictability. For month after month, the reports have been variations of familiar themes. The pace of sales is mildly positive, or stalled, or mildly negative. Prices inch up—but barely (owing to a seeming perpetual lack of inventory). And the future? That looks like more of the same…

It's been enough to make the most dedicated Boynton Beach real estate trend-watcher skip the reports. That’s why, for those still paying attention, last Wednesday’s NAR recounting of key indicators for home sales must have come as a jolt of unexpected good news:

• December’s home prices rose 7.8% compared with the previous year’s. Per the report, “Price appreciation has rapidly accelerated.”
• Pace of Sales. Forty-three percent of homes sold last month had been on the market for less than a month. On average, properties remained on the market for five fewer days than...

This is the time of year when Boynton Beach pet owners start to hear reminders that the holidays usher in Danger Season for family pets. It isn’t only that Fido is liable to pull the Christmas tree into the fireplace or that Puss’s snow globe attack carries the danger of swallowing the antifreeze inside it. More prominently, Boynton Beach pet owners are warned to steer clear of holiday plants and berries “because they’re deadly” for cats and dogs.

Such warnings serve to remind everyone that family pets can interact with the strange new decorations in unpredictable ways. When conscientious dog and cat lovers first bring a new puppy or kitten into the house, they are careful to keep potentially dangerous objects up and out of the way—as we do for human babies. We “childproof” everything at first—until the growing child has demonstrated appropriate levels of common sense about household dangers.

Perhaps because of that example, we may tend to lower our guard once an animal has passed infancy and made peace with the home environment. But that’s not taking into account that, unlike little humans, pets don’t understand the meaning of Christmas or Hanukkah—only that something alien is invading their corner of the world. They can decide that the brightly festooned holiday gear looks tasty. Or threatening. Or just worth climbing onto/jumping up on/chomping into.

So the holiday pet warnings should be welcome for reminding everyone that this is the season to think twice about our four-footed family members before we install the festive paraphernalia. Yes, mistletoe (especially European imports) can...

Boynton Beach real estate investors who are taking a hard look at this autumn’s Boynton Beach listings can be counted on to have some blend of two objectives in mind. They’ll be looking for a property that will bring in cash on a regular basis, or one that grows in collateral value over the long haul—or some combination of both. Experienced investors can do a quick estimate of how most Boynton Beach properties will meet their objectives—although they will be working through more exact projections once they’ve winnowed the field down to a few candidates.

If financing is to be involved, the acronym “DSCR” enters the picture.

The DSCR (Debt Service Coverage Ratio) won’t matter if the investor plans to pay cash upfront or will apply for a loan based on his or her personal assets and income. But if the loan will be collateralized on the investment property itself, its DSCR will be key.

It's a calculation that makes perfect sense. Using Motley Fool’s broad definition, it is the quotient of the investment property’s NOI (net operating income) divided by its debt obligation.

That means that a DSCR of 1.0 is a shorthand way to describe a break-even situation—one where the investment can exactly pay for itself with nothing left over. If the DSCR is accurate, such an investment property stands to build equity without costing the investor anything beyond the original down payment.

Similarly, a DSCR of less than 1.0 means that the investor will have to add cash to keep the investment above water; just...

On Sunday, the end of Boynton Beach daylight savings time will have us all regaining the hour we lent ourselves last spring. That’s a realistic way to look at what we’re actually doing when we set our clocks backward. We should enjoy the extra snoozing time—we’ve earned it, and get to keep hold of it until next March 8.

If you’re wondering why the “d,” “s,” and “t” aren’t capitalized in that opening sentence, it’s because of the prodding of the British qa.com educational site. When it comes to daylight savings, we might think of them as the grammar police (although they’d probably rather have that, “grammar constables”).

British grammarians frequently share their exasperation at the way their language is mistreated by the rest of the English-speaking world. “Daylight Savings Time” seems to present a ripe opportunity.  They open the critique by declaring that the phrase is technically incorrect, despite its universal use throughout Australia, Canada, and the U.S. They say that the plural “savings” only became popular because of its similarity to everyday phrases like “savings account.” They point out that even “the U.S. Government Publishing Office style guide” agrees. For the record, that title should be “Government Publishing Office Style Manual.” Take that, qa.com!

But qa.com also wants all of Boynton Beach to straighten out and fly right—to start saying, “Daylight Saving Time,” no matter how weird that sounds. And that’s not all. They want everybody...

You don’t have to convince local homeowners about the wisdom of owning your own Boynton Beach house—but for a while a couple of years ago, that wasn’t universally agreed upon. There was a while there where financial analysts were pointing to the costs of maintenance, interest on mortgage payments, relatively low rental rates, and a bundle of other factors in an argument against owning your own house.

Those voices have been hard to find of late—the numbers make that case pretty hard to support. More common are the analyses like the one CNBC’s The Oracles published last week. The Oracles are “a mastermind group of the world’s leading entrepreneurs.” They assembled a list of 9 reasons that support their contention that owning your own house is a financially canny decision. Actually, their claim is stronger than that.

They say that real estate is still the best investment you can make today.

Some of the reasons are rooted in common sense—like “People will always need a place to live” (#8) and “You get six-figure tax breaks” (#5).

Reason #1 was a personal endorsement by TV’s Shark Tank judge Barbara Corcoran: “Buying real estate has made me rich!” Having reasoned that she needed a place to live “somewhere anyway,” she wound up parlaying a “few bucks” invested in “an itty-bitty” studio apartment into a 10-room penthouse on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.

Other reasons elaborated on the long-term history of financial results, like #4—“Buying...

For astronomers and TV weather forecasters, this Monday marked a red-letter day. It now seems as if the same could be said for Boynton Beach’s market prospects.

In the wee hours, the Sun arrived at one of the two places in every year where its path across the sky crosses the celestial equator (the imaginary line above Earth’s equator). Of course, for Boynton Beach residents, the reality is that it’s pretty much a non-event. Weather-wise, the equinox is an abstraction. The change of seasons creeps slowly, day-by-day, Monday being no exception.

Still, at Tuesday’s dawn, the last day of Boynton Beach’s summer has passed. Whether you call it ‘autumn,’ ‘fall,’ ‘Indian Summer,’ or anything else, the new season is upon us.

And in Boynton Beach real estate terms, it brings new reason to suspect that this fall could be a busy one. One indicator came last week, as Reuters noted that U.S. home sales “unexpectedly rose to a 17-month high” in August.

More directly, last week’s second straight cut in the fed funds interest rate augurs well for Boynton Beach sellers and buyers alike. With lower Boynton Beach mortgage rates “continuing to encourage buyers off the sidelines” (Reuters), it wouldn’t be surprising if the market continues to heat up. Despite the Sun’s ducking down past the Equator, it looks to be a propitious time to buy or sell Boynton Beach homes. That makes it an equally propitious time to give me a call!  LOL  Alfredo Ruiz, REALTOR  (561) 350-6923

 This summer’s Uber driver controversy came to a boil over one particularly notable real estate market item. Whether or not Boynton Beach residents have ever had occasion to use the web-based taxicab alternative, lately it’s been hard to avoid reading about the noisy dispute.  

The controversy has to do with the publicity generated by a group of Uber drivers in their campaign to embarrass company bigwigs into granting them higher wages. They’ve been arguing that since they own their own vehicles, pay for their maintenance, fuel, and taxes—and since they also pitch in all of the driving labor—it’s only reasonable they be proportionately compensated. They say that the Uber company itself supplies only the communications and organizational structure, so the relative split of what riders are charged is grossly unfair.

Uber management points out that there would be no fares without their contribution.

Since both points seem valid, the argument continues.

This summer, a real estate sale entered the picture just as each side was working hard to gain public sympathy. Uber management had been pulling all available public relations levers to portray itself as having the more reasonable position. Then company co-founder Garrett Camp decided to buy a house.

This in itself would probably not raise anybody’s hackles. Boynton Beach homeowners, for instance, rightly view their own homeownership as the time-honored cornerstone of community participation—certainly no cause for embarrassment. Boynton Beach homeowners...

The government thinks that Americans are sorely lacking when it comes to key homebuying information. It’s hard to say whether that’s true of the Boynton Beach homebuying population—but Fannie Mae’s latest study explains some good reasons why it might be.

In Fannie’s recently issued publication, 3,600 respondents were ‘largely unsure’ or just plain wrong about current homebuying realities. This, despite the significance of homebuying as the most important purchase most people make. The overriding factor creating this illogical situation is the fact that it’s also a purchase seldom made. Homebuying is such an infrequent transaction most people don’t focus on data when it’s available.

Another contributing factor is “a fundamental lack of financial literacy across the country.”

The majority of those quizzed hadn’t a clue about credit score requirements. Even fewer were aware of debt-to-income ratio guidelines. Fewer than one in four were aware that low down payment programs exist at all (with almost none of them aware that the actual minimum down payment percentage is 3%).

 One bright spot was the fact that a powerful majority (91%) of the Americans questioned favor homeownership over renting. As any Boynton Beach schoolteacher will tell you, motivation is essential to learning. If 9 out of 10 of the 3,600 respondents who are in the dark about homebuying basics really do understand the personal benefits of homeownership, the motivation is already there.

In Boynton Beach, the simplest way to access all the latest relevant homebuying information won’t...