Mortgage Reform Unlikely in 2007

Homeowners unable to pay monthly mortgage bills and facing foreclosure shouldn't count on help from Washington this year.  Regulators and lawmakers seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach as they confront the fallout from several years of lenders making too many home loans to people with inadequate credit.

The foreclosure rate nationwide is rising at an annual rate double that of two years ago.  Nearly 2 million adjustable-rate mortgages are forecast to reset at higher rates over the next two years, suggesting the foreclosure rate has not peaked.

Federal lawmakers and regulators say they are balancing how to make sure high-risk borrowers can still get loans against efforts to rein in abusive lending practices.

We'll keep you posted here on anything new that might help if you're struggling with, or facing, possible foreclosure.

Fix-ups That Can Speed Your Home Sale

You don't have to spend a fortune renovating your house to ensure a quick sale at the best price. Some of the most effective fix-ups are also the cheapest.

Spending just $400 to $500 on fresh landscaping, for example, can boost your home's value by $1,600 to $1,800, according to a survey of real estate agents conducted by HomeGain, an Internet real estate service. Spend another $300 on cleaning and de-cluttering your home, the survey found, and you could add another $2,000 or more to the sale price.

To pinpoint the projects that make the most sense, start by touring your property with fresh eyes, as if you were a prospective buyer. Drive or walk up to your house and see how it appears from the street. Walk through the front door and take a look around. You might ask a trusted friend to help you spot problems, clutter and weird smells that you've long since stopped noticing. Keep a pen and pad handy to list the projects that need to be done.

Here are some more tips to watch for and think about…

Landscape Tips for Home Sellers

If prospective buyers looked at your house today, what would they see outside?   By spending $500 to $3,000 on plants and materials and a few hours of time, you can achieve a well-landscaped look without shelling out for professional help.  Besides the personal enjoyment you'll get from a prettier yard, landscaping adds more value than almost any other home renovation.

Edge the beds Cutting fresh edges where grass meets mulch makes the lawn look well kept.  Also, if your foundation plants are overgrown, widening the beds by two feet will make the shrubs seem smaller.

For truly lush turf, ideally you should start regular fertilizer treatments a year before listing the house. But you can green up the lawn with just a single application.  Expect each monthly application to cost about $20 (for straight fertilizer) to $30 (with weed killer).

For about $1 a plant, you can blanket your yard with petunias, impatiens and other small annuals that will flower throughout the current growing season.  Also invest a few hundred dollars in some larger perennials and in shrubs that stand at least four feet high.

A distinctive yard will make your home more appealing to buyers, so replace plants that don't flower, or provide interesting foliage with eye-catching alternatives, like a patch of blackeyed Susans, a flowering crabapple or a cutleaf Japanese maple.

If you're planning to stay put, you don't need to spend hundreds of dollars for big plants. You'll save 50 percent or more by buying small ones and waiting a few seasons to get the full visual impact (when planting, make sure to space them based on the mature size listed on the label, not how they look now).

Just a few hours and a little planning, and your home can be transformed into an eye-catcher, rather than an eye-sore.