• ingdirect.com - Orange mortgage - no closing costs or PMI
• hud.gov - first time home buyer programs by state

Kimberly, one of Clark’s producers, is now a homeowner. Everyone else on the staff owns instead of rents, and now Kimberly has taken the plunge. She was able to secure a loan with no closing costs through ING Direct and now is recommending it to everyone. In addition, she is not required to pay PMI, even though she did not put 20 percent down. ING handles its own books, so the company doesn’t have to charge PMI if it doesn’t want to. Lenders often play games with people, telling them there is no such thing as “no closing costs.” That simply isn’t true. Or, they offer no closing costs but somehow still add those charges back into the loan. But lenders are now catching on to the fact that people want to be treated fairly and offered what they are told. Many now offer guaranteed low closing costs, no closing costs at all and no surprises at the closing table. ING only offers ARMs, so Kimberly will have to refinance if she stays there longer than five years. But that is something to think about down the road. The good thing about refinances is that they are cheaper and often easier to do.

Consumer Reports has come out with another restaurant issue and Clark wants to share the results. In the steak house category, the upscale restaurants were The Capital Grille, Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s. In the mid-price range, Longhorn got top honors. In traditional American category, Houston’s was No. 1 and J. Alexander’s was No. 2. The best Italian chain was Carrabba’s and McCormick & Schmick’s got top seafood honors. The restaurant also got the best overall score of any restaurant. In the “unusual dinner houses” category, Rainforest Café and P.F. Changs got high honors. The lowest score out of all 103 restaurants went to Friendly’s.

Clark likes to monitor ads and the prices in them. Recently, he’s been keeping an eye on LCD televisions. He saw them recently for $699, which is a fraction of what they’ve been. And, according to the Asian edition of Business Week, the industry is in some difficulty. There is too much inventory coming into the market, so prices are going to drop even more. The LCDs will be available in 32-inch screens and larger sizes for much lower prices. On Black Friday especially, prices will be amazing. You can get a 20-inch for $299 and 32-inch screens for $499. The larger sizes will be in the same range as DLP, which is considered to have the best picture. As for HDT, this will be the last year on breakthrough pricing. This fall, HDTV will be affordable in Clark’s opinion. Now, you don’t want to buy one unless you’ve figured out how to get the programming. And, if you’re looking for a cheap regular television, people are having trouble giving them away.

Rebates are something people both love and hate. Rebate prices are great, but filling out all the paperwork is never fun. As a result, Best Buy has been selling laptops at an "instant rebate" price. The company is going to phase out the regular rebate program and just offer instant rebates. In addition, BJ’s and Costco allow you to file your rebates electronically,which is very easy. Clark filed a BJ's rebate recently that took 72 seconds. Many people still have trouble with rebates, especially when attempting to buy cell phones online. One company, Inphonic, has received thousands of complaints for making it "impossible” for consumers to get the rebate. One deal required that the phone be at least 120 days old before the rebate was filed, but the information had to be mailed in before that. So, it was mathematically impossible. One of Inphonic's affiliate shopping sites - Firefly - was on Clark's site for awhile. But we took it down because it was so difficult to get the rebates on the site. In total, the BBB has received 2,210 complaints against Inphonic, which is huge. Try to avoid buying rebated cell phones online if at all possible.

Do you know where your kids are? Clark’s daughter drove about six hours to his beach house with a friend last night and he was worried about her the whole time. Cell phones have helped concerned parents by installing GPS in their systems, and now Sprint, Nextel and Verizon all offer tracking technology. They’re about $10 a month, unless you step up to Verizon’s $20-a-month boundary software. It designates a “safe zone” for kids. So if they go outside that area, parents are alerted immediately. These services are very profitable for cell phone companies because parents are taking full advantage of them. It means that the costs will eventually go down, which is good news.

About a third of people rent instead of own these days because renting has been a great deal lately in a lot of cities. Interest rates have gone up so much in the past year that people have decided to keep renting or start renting for a change. As a result, rents are going up between 10 to 30 percent. The Wall Street Journal evaluated 69 markets in the country, and 60 of them are experiencing rising rents. So, if you’re renting, your landlord could boost your rent. If you shop the market and are willing to leave for good, you still have a lot of power. Use the leverage of what other more vacant properties are offering and your landlord may not raise your rent. But you have to be willing to walk. Then, if a landlord isn’t willing to match a deal you’ve found, you can leave. The best deals going right now are from speculators who bought condos or homes solely to “flip” them. They haven’t been able to do that, so these “involuntary landlords” are not getting any money and are probably willing to make a deal. That kind of landlord won’t be the most responsive, but that’s something you may have to deal with to get the good deal on rent. So, check out speculative condos for the best deal!