A good credit score has always been important for anyone wanting to take out a mortgage, but it is a critical requirement for borrowers these days.
Remember a few years ago when taking out a mortgage was easy? If a lender decided a borrower was too risky, the potential homebuyer could likely find a subprime lender or a banker offering some loan options designed to get people with less-than-stellar credit into a home.
After a few years of somewhat freewheeling lending practices, we saw a lot of defaults starting around 2007. Some …

Back in 1974, Hiram Brown established a new radio drama — the CBS Radio Mystery Theater (CBSRMT).
The program owed much to old time radio (OTR) programs, even if it aired long after the Golden Age of radio had passed. From January 1974 through the end of 1982, 1,399 episodes were produced and broadcast every weeknight.  That fact leads to a question — how did the program find an audience at a time when OTR was virtually extinct?
Paul Chester of CBSRMT.com — a site dedicated to the preservation of CBS Radio …

In spite of five straight months of improving market conditions, homes sales in central Arkansas were down in December and for the year.
For the purposes of this report, central Arkansas includes five counties squarely in the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area — Faulkner, Grant, Lonoke, Pulaski and Saline — as well as Jefferson and White counties which are not properly within that MSA. In those seven counties, there were 633 single-family, residential units sold in December — down 2.76 percent from 651 closed transactions in December 2010 and …

The numbers are in and show that real estate markets improved last year in both northwest Arkansas and the Jonesboro area. In a nutshell, both average sales prices and the number of units sold improved in the Jonesboro area while more homes were sold in 2011 than in 2010 in northwest Arkansas, but the sales price dropped.
We’ll take a look at northwest Arkansas first. For the purposes of this report, northwest Arkansas is defined as Benton, Carroll, Madison and Washington counties which make up the extreme northwestern corner of the …

We’re making a change or two here at First Arkansas News and figured we’d pass them along to our loyal readers.
Specifically, we’re moving Dr. Zodiac’s horoscope and our Weekend OTR feature to another site, The Natural State Hawg. Why? Well, there are a couple of reasons for that.
First of all, The Natural State Hawg is more geared for such things. We’re talking about purely entertainment items when it comes to horoscopes and reruns of old time radio programs, and they’re kind of out of place on a news site. Don’t …

Here’s a newsflash – unemployment remains a concern.
In Arkansas, the unemployment rate was 8.2 percent in November – that’s down from 9.3 percent, but is still high for Arkansas. What that number means is that 106,500 people in the Natural State want jobs but don’t have them. That’s a large number, roughly equal to the population of Saline County.
That’s a major problem for the economy for the economy for a number of reasons, but we’ll just deal with one since this column focuses on real estate issues – how can …

Before getting into this week’s episode, we’ve got a bit of news to pass on to our readers — from this point forward, we will also post episodes from our Weekend OTR series on The Natural State Hawg.
Why? Call it simulcasting (if you want) or an experiment (if you prefer). Way back before Ethan C. Nobles started First Arkansas News, he established The Natural State Hawg and has essentially neglected it over the past couple of years. It makes sense to post some entertainment features over there, then, so that …

Not so very long ago, free programs came in roughly two varieties — buggy garbage and crippled applications that “teased” users by showing them what they could do if they purchased full versions.
Things have changed for the better over the years and it’s very possible to grab a full-featured office suite, an image editor, an audio editor and a PDF writer that can hold their own against commercial products out there. We’ll take a look at those programs in this article and point out up front that they all have …

Northwest Arkansas real estate agents voted down a proposal that would have created the largest board of Realtors in the state.
The three boards subject to the proposed merger are based in Benton and Washington counties. The Metro Area Board has 898 members and covers Madison County, Washington County and the western half of Benton County. The Rogers Board has 468 members in the Rogers and Lowell areas while the Bentonville-Bella Vista board has 178 members. Combined, the three boards have 1,544 members and represent 23.3 percent of the 6,637 Realtors …

It was a significant day for Arkansas football — the program announced its star running back in 2010 will be back in the fold when the next season starts and the University learned the team finished out the season fifth in the final AP Top 25 poll.
Knile Davis, in 2010, lead all running backs in the Southeastern Conference (SEC), having rushed for 1,322 yards and 15 touchdowns, but was forced out of the 2011 season because of an injury sustained in spring practice. The University of Arkansas issued a statement …