You can go places with good credit---and Hilton Head Island is a great place to be! Today’s mortgage finance market is all about credit for the best.  According to Bloomberg News, 2016 Q1 numbers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s consumer credit panel, 58% of the $389 billion in mortgage originations (or 51% of the total loans) went to those with an Equifax Risk Score of 760 or higher on a scale of 280 – 860. During the same quarter in 2004, the prime group received 23% of the mortgages.

Borrowers whose score fell within the range of 620 to 659, viewed by lenders as below-prime credit, received just 4.6% of the dollar volume of mortgages for 2016 Q1. This group comprised 6% of purchase mortgage applications during the first quarter of…

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Thanks to a committed staff at the Coastal Discovery Museum as well as conservationists and caring volunteers, the Hilton Head Island Sea Turtle Protection Project is gearing up for another nesting and hatching season which runs from May 1 through October 31.

• The Loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) is the state reptile of our state. Weighing in between 300 – 400 pounds as adults, they have brownish or yellow skin and top shells which can measure from 30 – 42 inches in length.
• Temperature and moisture of the sand determines optimal habitat and Hilton Head’s sandy shores make for great nesting.
• Females nest on all areas of the beach starting the first or second week in May with most nests laid along the open-facing beach.
• Females lay four…

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hilton head island real estateOwning a beach house or vacation villa on Hilton Head Island has always been in fashion and good taste, regardless of the trends of the time. Fashion, food, colors, cars—even real estate—follows trends, but Hilton Head real estate has consistently led the way in luxury homes, villas, and income-producing properties thanks to far-reaching and clear vision of the island’s early developers and designers. Determined to create a lasting luxury destination separate and apart from the more famous and trendy hot spots of the time, these early futurists were intent on building on what Mother Nature had endowed the island with rather than reinventing what was naturally available: the ocean and the lush landscape.

In the early-1950s, Island visionaries put in to…

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