How Many Times Can You Refinance

Have you owned your home for many years and have refinanced once and are thinking of doing it again? Many people question how many times home refinance is an option and the answer is that you can refinance as often as you would like. Of course, you could refinance often, but it wouldn’t be a good idea. If you refinanced your loan every couple of years, you will end up losing money because this process will take a few months to pay for itself.

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Risks of Home Refinance

Generally speaking, when you look into home refinance there are more benefits than risks. This being said, it is important to understand the risks and educate yourself to limit or eliminate some of the risks or pitfalls of refinance. Many of the people that suffer from these pitfalls are people who did not get all of the information that was needed about refinancing to make the best decision for their situation.

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Secured Home Loans: Your Home Is Valuable

Home is one of the great assets and it can act as a means of great monetary support in the time of financial crunch. If you have your own home then it is of exorbitant importance. You may have several desires but short of fund makes your entire plan failure. In fact, arranging fund at a time to fulfill all the dreams and desires is not possible for a middle income group. Secured homes loans are the way through which you can arrange the fund as per your need. Read more

Builders feel pain as house prices fall

House prices are sinking and housebuilders are first in the firing line for a property market downturn that is threatening to plunge the whole economy into recession.

The cost of an average home fell by 2 percent in June, data from HBOS, the country’s largest mortgage lender, showed on Thursday. Prices were 8.7 percent lower on the year, a bigger fall than at any time during the 1990s crash.

“It is fair to say we are now in the worst housing slide for over 50 years,” said Michael Saunders, economist at Citigroup.

Barratt Developments , one of the country’s best-known homebuilders, said it was going to lay off 1,200 people — a fifth of its workforce — because of the housing downturn. Nor would it pay a final dividend for 2007-08.

That took the total number of job cuts announced by homebuilders in the last week to around 4,000 as Persimmon , Taylor Wimpey , Bovis Homes and Redrow have all been warning of a sharp turnaround in business.

Austria’s Wienerberger , the largest brickmaker in the world, reported on Thursday a 10 percent drop in its core earnings for the first six months of the year, because of a collapse in homebuilding.

“The spread of the financial crisis to Great Britain triggered a slump in new residential construction beginning in April,” said Wienerberger.

SLUMP COULD GET WORSE

Hit by the global credit crunch, lenders have toughened up borrowing conditions, demanding as much as 25 percent of a home’s value as a deposit before making any new loans — until relatively recently 100 percent loans were commonplace.

Mortgage approvals have consequently collapsed, pointing to even sharper falls in house prices in the months ahead. Rising inflation, meanwhile, is preventing the central bank from offering any succour.

The Bank of England held interest rates at 5 percent on Thursday and analysts say it could be quite a while before they come down — experts are predicting a protracted and painful housing downturn.

Housebuilders could remain under pressure for a while and vulture funds are already circling them as their debt and equity prices fall.

With property market values sinking, housebuilders have been forced to write down the value of their land holdings. Barratt said it would cut it by around 85 million pounds.

Wienerberger Chief Executive Wolfgang Reithofer, meanwhile, said the company would close around 25 smaller plants in Europe.

He declined to give details, but added closures were most likely in weak markets such as Britain and Germany.

(additional reporting by Dan Lalor and Boris Groendahl in Vienna)

By Sumeet Desai, LONDON (Reuters)

Millions Will Pay Higher Road Tax

Nearly nine million motorists will pay more road tax under the controversial changes to vehicle excise duty, it has emerged.The Government says the reforms - which will cost around 44% of drivers more money - are aimed at penalising the most polluting vehicles.

A third of car drivers are likely to be better off.

Official figures predict that 8.7 million vehicles will see tax increased in 2009-10 - all in the six most-polluting bands. Read more