Author: Anthony Bird

My name is Anthony Bird, an owner of Riverbank Finance, a Grand Rapids Mortgage Company, based here in Michigan. I am a graduate from Grand Valley State University majoring in both Business Management and Marketing. I have been a mortgage professional in Michigan for 6 Years with experience as a retail bank loan officer as well as for private mortgage companies. Riverbank Finance is a local mortgage company that values community and the West Michigan Area. We hire only licensed loan officers that can custom tailor loans for our client's needs. If you have any real estate or mortgage questions, call me at 616-365-5792 or email me at info@riverbankfinance.com and I will do whatever it takes to help. Learn more about me on my Google Profile: About Anthony Bird. I look forward to hearing from you soon!

National Housing Market Status

Home many times have you heard on the news or read in the paper of the past five years how the housing market is struggling?  How many times have you joked with friends and family about the market when inside you’ve though how dark of a time the market is in?  Now yes, the housing… Read more »

Pre-Approval Process to Buy a Home in Michigan

Previously we went over the process of picking the proper real-estate agent for your home hunting needs so the next step is to determine the best mortgage program.  Most people do not have thousands of dollars in savings to buy a home with cash so a mortgage will be necessary.  A statistic from the National… Read more »

Fed Rates to be Low Until 2014

The feds have just announced that they will be keeping the Federal Reserve rates low until 2014.  In the past they announced that rates would remain low until the middle of 2013, which helped the market confidence and ensures recovery.  The recovery has been present however it has not been as “booming” as economic analysts… Read more »

HARP UPDATES March 2012

We’ve lightly discussed the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) on this blog in the recent past.  To freshen up your mind, HARP was instated to allow for those homeowners who are currently “underwater” to potentially refinance and get themselves into stress-free position regarding their mortgage rates.  HARP is beneficial to countless homeowners but that number… Read more »

How to Find the Best Real Estate Agent in Michigan

When you’re out on the hunt for a new home it’s very likely you’ll encounter situations that could be best assessed with a professional real estate agent.  As a buyer, you have full-access to an agent at no cost to you.  For those of you who don’t know, the seller of the home pays real-estate… Read more »

Finding the Right Home for You

In the last article of our series for homebuyers we went over how to establish an actual dollar amount of what type of home you can not only afford, but will fit into your monthly budget.  This is possibly the most difficult part for first-time homebuyers though.  Attempting to select one home out a list… Read more »

Affordable mortgage refinance through HARP

In conventional mortgage refinance, you should have substantial equity in your home, in order to become eligible for mortgage refinance, but the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) has been aimed at helping the homeowners to refinance their mortgages even if their outstanding balance is more than the current market price of their home. This particular… Read more »

What House Can You Afford?

First-time home-buyers encounter an onslaught of hurdles before they reserve the right to say they truly are home-owners. That is why Riverbank Finance is introducing a new blog series to explain what you can do in-order to prepare yourself for purchasing your first home. Enough jib-jab though. Let’s jump right into things with our very… Read more »