Mortgages and Real Estate

The proof, they say, is in the pudding. Maybe it ought to be in the foreclosure rate?

Yes, I know we are being told on Sunday morning power-breakfast talk shows that the nation's economy is improving. But the latest survey on the delinquency rate for mortgage loans from the Mortgage Bankers Association would seem to indicate otherwise.

You can read the report itself for the hard numbers, but, the bottom line is, the delinquency rate has now broken the record set just this past quarter.

"This will be a very slow recovery," says Jack Kyser, founder of the Kyser Center for Economic Research at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. In a telephone interview with WalletPop, Kyser said that "small- and medium-sized businesses still can't get loans from banks." It is, says Kyser, "the perfect stalemate" -- unemployment continues to rise, businesses (especially smaller ones) suffer, and banks don't want to risk lending out their money.

This is the last of a five-part series about how the writer and her husband, Charlie, tackled a major overhaul of their home and the pitfalls they faced along the way. To read the first installment click here.

The workers are gone, the dumpster was picked up, and we are touching up the stain and paint. Now that things are finished, we are so glad that we put in the quality finishes and the extra touches we wanted. The total cost was around $55,000 -- twice as much as we had originally planned.

The investment is definitely worth it. Now we have new plumbing throughout the house, updated electrical, refinished floors, and a state-of-the-art kitchen -- all upgrades that are bound to boost the value of our home if we ever decide to sell.

This is the fourth part of a five-part series about how the writer and her husband, Charlie, tackled a major overhaul of their home and the pitfalls they faced along the way. To read the first installment click here.

We continue to eat dust and stumble through piles of stuff. In spite of the inconveniences, I was starting to feel positive about the progress -- that is, until a large semi-truck pulled up to deliver the dome that goes over the tub.

Rick, our contractor, and my husband soon discovered the dome weighed close to 400 pounds. With daggers in their eyes, they asked, "And just how are we suppose to get this thing out?" Fortunately. I remembered reading on the website that the dome was actually quite light -- it was the packing that was so heavy. Grumbling and swearing under their breath, they emerged about 15 minutes later with a fiberglass dome to be temporarily stored in the living room.

Tom's Take: It always makes sense to add the cost of a few visits with your chiropractor to every home improvement budget.

This is the third part of a five-part series about how the writer and her husband, Charlie, tackled a major overhaul of their home and the pitfalls they faced along the way. To read the first installment click here.

The situation is deteriorating fast. A large part of the problem is our fault, we're falling victim to an all-too-common disorder in the industry called project creep.

It works like this: If we are going to put in a new hallway floor, why not rip up the carpet upstairs and do all the floors there, too? And if we are going to do the upstairs, then it only make sense to do the downstairs as well. Since we got such a good deal on the granite, why don't we put new counter tops in the kitchen? For that matter, why not get new appliances? After all, the plumber and electrician are already here. They can get things hooked up. Don't you think the whole thing will look lousy if we don't re-tile the kitchen back splash? Why not, it already has a hole in it from the plumber. And so on...