Before a borrower applies for a home loan, many factors come into play that will affect everyone involved. From seller and real estate agent to the buyer, banker and broker handling the mortgage will effect your loan. Problems are reduced to just a few with a direct 30 year mortgage from the local bank, but they still exist. See how five other factors besides the current mortgage rates will affect your loan.

For close to a year, the housing market in Florida has been showing gains. The fact that prices have continued to fall has certainly helped to increase sales and reduce inventory. But more important, in one segment of the market, it’s helped to push prices up. While we are seeing bidding wars on foreclosures and short sales in the low priced segment of the market, higher priced homes have quietly edged up 1.1% in price.

The latest housing down market has not only placed more apartments for rent but also more houses for rent. And you thought it's only the houses that are not selling. The current situation is putting renters to negotiate lower prices and get better deals on their rent.

Somebody has got to step up to the plate and proclaim that the real estate market in Florida has bottomed. Since I am not famous or well known in any way, I’ll proclaim, “Florida real estate has hit its nadir.” The next stop on the real estate trajectory is up.

New Nielsen poll shows that nearly 70 percent of the respondents in Australia support an amnesty to fix the housing problems of the indigenous people. The public wants a housing fix.

Auction sales of homes have been making the news lately. That’s because many banks around the country find that auction sales move their REO (real estate owned) inventory much faster than conventional sales. Approximately 10% of the foreclosures around the country are selling this way. But they’re selling not only to Americans, but to a large percentage of foreign investors.

During the last few weeks the media wrote few interesting stories about the growing power that the lenders have in regard to home appraisals and how the appraisals are becoming pricier. However, let's look into the issue deeper. What really house appraisal involves. Ravisankar Poduval reports.

Sales of new homes rose in July for the fourth consecutive month, rising 9.6 percent to an annualized rate of 433,000 units. There is so much excitement that Commerce Undersecretary Rebecca Blank said "these new numbers are another sign that we have put the brakes on the worst economic downturn in generations. Increased distribution of Recovery Act dollars at the end of the year should continue to encourage economic growth and support the gains that we are just beginning to see."

It's been almost five years since housing has looked this hopeful, but for the last three months, existing home sales have risen. While this doesn’t yet signal an end to foreclosures or short sales, it does indicate that housing is no longer languishing in the doldrums. In short: Housing is pointing upward as mortgage rates are low.

The WSJ yesterday published a front page article exposing the dichotomy between the high and low-end homes in the housing market. Due to significant amounts of government stimulus aimed at fixing the housing market, the low end seems to have clunked to a bottom. However, since the attention is on the foreclosure properties and inexpensive houses, the expensive homes are missing out the rebound.

Housing Statistics dominate the news this week. It is followed by information on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on Friday.

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke testified this morning and didn’t really bring to light any unexpected news about our economy. Labor markets are still weak and he intends to keep interest rates subdued for as long as possible without encouraging inflation. The housing markets need every possible incentive to encourage purchase activity.