Why SKREAM?

1. A real estate transaction is complicated.
In most cases, buying or selling a home requires disclosure forms, inspection reports, mortgage documents, insurance policies, deeds and multi-page government mandated settlement statements. A knowledgeable guide through this complexity can help you avoid delays or costly mistakes.

2. Selling or buying a home is time consuming.
Even in a strong market, homes in our area stay on the market for an average of 190 days. And it usually takes another 60 days or so for the transaction to close after on offer is accepted.

You'd better not. The Senate failed to push back the Feb. 28 deadline to apply for this safety net.

Starting Monday, the jobless will no longer be able to apply for federal unemployment benefits or the COBRA health insurance subsidy.

Federal unemployment benefits kick in after the basic state-funded 26 weeks of coverage expire. During the downturn, Congress has approved up to an additional 73 weeks, which it funds.

These federal benefit weeks are divided into tiers, and the jobless must apply each time they move into a new tier.

Because the Senate did not act, the jobless will now stop getting checks once they run out of their state benefits or current tier of federal benefits.

Nearly one-quarter of US mortgagors owed more on their loans than the value of their homes for the quarter ending December 31, 2009. Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Michigan and California were the states with the highest percentage of negative equity borrowers.

“Negative equity is a significant drag on both the housing market and on economic growth. It is driving foreclosures and decreasing mobility for millions of homeowners,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist with First American CoreLogic. “Since we expect home prices to slightly increase during 2010, negative equity will remain the dominant issue in the housing and mortgage markets for some time to come.”

The City of Kirkland Public Works Department and Marilyn Dillard, owner of the downtown property that housed the Antique Mall for more than 20 years, have agreed on a plan that adds more than 90 public parking spaces to downtown Kirkland.

A record 2.8 million households were threatened with foreclosure last year, and that number is expected to rise this year as more unemployed and cash-strapped homeowners fall behind on their mortgages.

The number of households that received a foreclosure-related notice rose 21 percent from 2008.

The increase in King County was even more dramatic with the number of filings up nearly 60 percent. In Washington state, filings were up 35 percent.

But despite those increases, fewer homeowners faced foreclosure in the greater Seattle area than in the country as a whole.

Since 1996, KITH has held the 7 Hills of Kirkland bicycling fundraiser. It has grown from an initial 200 riders in 1996 to almost 1,500 last year, with cyclists attending from as far away as France and the UK. And, with thanks to all of our 2009 participants, they raised over $90,000, all of which went directly to low-income housing and services.

Please click here for more information on how you can become a part of this very important cause.

Eastside Baby Corner's mission is to make a positive difference in the lives of children and families in need by collecting and purchasing children’s items and distributing them, free of charge, through local service care providers.

That is the question many of us in the Real Estate and Mortgage industries are paying close attention to. While Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke said he doesn’t expect the central bank to sell its stock pile of mortgage securities anytime soon, Kansas City Federal President Thomas Hoeing, voted against the Fed’s latest statement, saying he thought economic conditions had improved enough so that the Fed should not be promising low rates for an “extended period”. He was the first dissenting vote among Fed policymakers since Jan 2009.

With unemployment expected to remain high, and a record number of foreclosures anticipated in 2010, some analysts are expecting a prolonged recovery for the US economy and the housing market. As foreclosures rise, it is believed that another plunge in the banking sector is around the corner, and that the bottom of the housing market may be further off than initially thought.