The State of Foreclosures

Real estate expert Billy Procida and fbns Sandra Smith weigh in on the state of the real-estate market.

Mortgage Loan Tips.

Why Some People Almost Always Get The Lowest Interest Rate On Their Mortgage – For The Least Points – And No Junk Fees!
Mortgage Loan Tips.

Foreclosure Defense Secrets.

This Program Is A Necessity For Any Homeowner Facing Foreclosure Or Even Just Behind On Their Mortgage. Foreclosure Defense Secrets Was Written By A Foreclosure Attorney And Reaveals All Of The Legal Tricks That The Banks Dont Want The Public To Know. Foreclosure Defense Secrets.

Mortgage Foreclosure – The Family Farm

A look at the Crosby Mint Farm in St. Johns, MI, and how the foreclosure crisis is hurting them. Senate Bill 1306 would establish a moratorium on foreclosures and save this farm. The sponsor of this legislation is Senator Hansen Clarke.

Today’s Mortgage Rates: Which home loan is best?

Texas Mortgage Info: How your mortgage person structures your loan is more important than the getting a low rate. To get the lowest 30 year or 15 year fixed rate consider avoiding PMI (mortgage insurance) even though these loans have higher rates; they have lower payments.

New Housing Program Target for Fraud?

Mortgage Banking Solutions CEO David Lykken on why a proposed foreclosure prevention program is a bad idea.

Writing a Loan Modification Hardship Letter

There is relief available for those millions of homeowners who are struggling to make their monthly mortgage payments due to the recent downturn in the economy. Don’t wait until the situation is at the point of no return, contact your mortgage lender now to explore your options in terms of a loan modification. The bank will require 3 key pieces of information from you in order to consider your application for relief.

Before you start writing the letter, make a rough draft outline of the things that you need to cover so that you can use it as a guideline as you write your letter. It’s important that you don’t leave out something critical and that you include all the facts that will be pertinent for the bank’s review.

First, explain to the bank what happened to put you in your current financial situation. Did you lose your job? Did you go through a divorce? Did you suffer an accident or injury? The bank will want to understand what led to your inability to meet your financial obligations.

Second, demonstrate to the bank chronologically that you were making your payments regularly and on time up until this unexpected extenuating circumstance occurred. They will need to understand that but for the unfortunate event(s) described above, you were a good, responsible customer.

Third, show the bank what you plan to do to dig yourself out of this hole that’s been created. Create a budget and share it with your lender. If you are going to cut out luxury services such as satellite television service or cell phones, tell them that. Perhaps you need to sell off a boat of other luxury item. The lender will want to know that you are willing to make sacrifices in order to rectify and improve your financial situation.

Include details in your letter, but keep it succinct and objective, stressing how homeownership is important to you and that you are willing to work with them to modify your loan in order for you to continue to honor your debt obligations.

Deal with your Endowment Mortgages

For security most of the people go for Endowment Mortgage to ensure repayment of their big loans on lifetime investments. Simply said, a loan taker endows his or her life policy to cover risk of any untoward happening before repayment of the loan; and continues to pay regular paybacks as agreed.  This is a beautiful way to keep all involved parties, you, the loaning source and your insurer, at ease. Under this arrangement everybody’s interest is protected without any extra liability. Another big benefit of this system is that you leave no burden on your loved ones or deprive them from enjoying in adverse situations. You have just to be particular about meeting up monthly repayments.

In fact this all leads to your additional savings when your mortgaged savings accumulated in your policy over a period is greater than your loan liability. Perceived potentiality of such mortgaging was so intense during inception in 1980s that both loaning agencies and insurance companies took all efforts to promote it. Result was manifold increase in loan market due to inherent strength of concept.  However, a significant number of endowment policies went bad in repayment in later periods since holders stopped their obligatory premiums mid way. This does indicate toward other alternative the loan seekers have switched to. Also big block has been failure of stock prices to continue increasing. This has hit insurers of getting appropriate returns on investment in shares for generating sufficient capital.

Uncertainty of stock values regarding appreciation due to poorly performing stocks market was getting to be considered as miss-selling or wrong investment made by the insurers. As ethical duty of investors, insurers need to maintain procedure of informing of risk status within certain stipulated period. To protect their interest, loaning agencies also got into system of working out shortfall on each endowment mortgage loans. As a rule, loan providers are required to send ‘re-projection letters’ informing if your policy is sufficiently good to pay loan amount.

Shortfalls are customarily informed through colour coded letters to make the message clear and strong. Red coloured re-projection letters indicate very high risk of short fall. An amber coloured letter projects significant risk. A green coloured letter of course declares likelihood of your policy to cover full loan amount. One thing should be borne in mind that these letters do not mean a situation to be final. Changes are possible under market turn backs with returns well over amount loaned. In case your policy, in all probability, is not expected to perform, you require covering up the shortfall.

In such cases, don’t get unduly agitated. Do not worry since this is a common situation faced by many. There are possible alternatives to overcome the situation. First possibility is your lender asking you to increase monthly repayment amount to cover shortfall. Alternatively you can change over the mortgage loan by repaying interest plus part of principal amount. Always you can go for alternative investment plans to get better returns and payback the loan faster.  Insurers allow changing mortgage policies to loan repayment plans is also workable alternative. And of course, no body has to utter a word if you are able to payback loan amount before stipulated loan period through larger monthly paybacks.

Endowment Mortgages
Mortgage Blog

Should I trust a mortgage calculator?

When you are looking around at the various mortgage lenders you will probably come across a number of websites with mortgage calculators on them.  You might even have tried these out a few times and either really liked or really hated the results and now you are asking yourself if you should actually pay much attention to what the mortgage calculator told you.  After all, it’s a computer program, right?  How much could it have to do with the actual decision making process?  That’s all done by humans, right?

Well, yes and no.  The truth is that if a mortgage calculator wasn’t accurate to a certain degree there would be no point in the mortgage lender having it on their site.  A mortgage calculator is not designed to give you information of pinpoint accuracy about what you can expect from any particular product and if that is what you are expecting then you will find mortgage calculators disappointing.  A mortgage calculator is there to prevent you from wasting both your time and that of the mortgage lender.

There are so many variables to consider when looking for a mortgage that it can be very hard to choose the right product, and what’s more, to feel like you have chosen the right product.  This is a time consuming process, both for you and the mortgage lender, but it stands to reason that there are a lot of mortgages on offer that will absolutely not suit you at all, for any one of the number of reasons.  You may not earn enough, you may earn too much, you may not be able to afford that level of interest or want a shorter or longer term than that particular mortgage requires.  This is where the mortgage calculator comes into play.

When you come to a particular mortgage lender’s website you find a mortgage calculator and it will only take a minute or so for you to enter your information into the mortgage calculator.  It will then take a lot less time than this for the mortgage calculator to give you an answer about the particular product that you were asking about, or to let you know what kind of products you are eligible for under that lender’s policies.  This saves you time because you don’t have to go and talk to someone and go through the entire list of their products, and it saves the lender time because they don’t have to sit with you and go through the entire list of products.  A mortgage calculator allows you to narrow down the possibilities that exist with any particular mortgage lender to a manageable list which you can then take to a human being and talk about in detail.  Of course, talking to the human being will probably narrow the list down again quite swiftly until you are only left with one or two possibilities, but thanks to the existence of the mortgage calculator the list will have started off a lot shorter than it otherwise might have been and the whole process will have been made much shorter and easier.

What is a Loan Modification in Layman’s Terms?

“What is loan modification?” is certainly the question buzzing among homeowners across the country. As loan modification seems to be the option that is most supported by Obama’s Home Affordable Program for those worried about losing their homes, people are wondering just what is loan modification and how does it work.

Before delving into what it is and how it works, it’s important to know what it is not: A catch-all home saver. There are people seeking modifications that think getting one wipes clean all of their responsibilities, and that is simply not true.

The only way to get a mortgage modified is to express that you are willing to work with your lender and then do it. Lenders know when you’re jerking their chain and do not approve people who they do not think will come through on their part of the deal. The lender lowers your interest rate, and you make your payments – that’s the deal.

Lenders don’t want you to go into foreclosure, but giving a modification does make them lose money. The only way they approve is if they are sure you are going to at least pay them the new, lower amount.

So what is loan modification and how does it work? Your interest rate is lowered to an amount that you are able to handle, based on your debt to income ratio, property value, and credit. Some lenders also offer to clear part of the principle in their loan modification packages. Contrary to popular belief, a loan modification is nothing like refinancing, which is taking out a new loan to get some cash back. A modification simply alters your mortgage to a lower, fixed interest rate.

Lenders decide whether to grant a homeowner a modified loan depending on a variety of factors, and none of them have the same criteria. Almost all lenders look at the value of the home, credit, debt to income ratio, date the initial mortgage was taken out, whether it is the place of residence, and mortgage payment history. They all look at the same factors, but they are looking for different things.

It’s no secret that a loan modification can be helpful, but getting one can be difficult due to the rigid requirements lenders have on them. However, a homeowner may choose to either try to get one on their own or hire a professional or attorney to help with the application and negotiations.

Whatever the method to get it, whatever the interest rate you’re hoping for, you no longer need to ask “What is loan modification?”

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