Mortgage Articles

Finance » Mortgage | By Peter Baptiste @ Tuesday, 19th August 2008 @ 6:33 AM

Are you about to lose your home, go through foreclosure, and destroy your credit? If so you're not alone. Countless families across the country today are dealing with the very same problem today. Consider one family's story - the LaVan family. They had a beautiful two story home in a great neighborhood and things were going great. However, first Ted LaVan lost his job, which started them in a spiral downwards. Then the economy grew worse, interested rates skyrocketed, gas price... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Rayven Perkins @ Tuesday, 19th August 2008 @ 1:55 AM

When it comes to financing or re-financing a home, families with stay-at-home moms may have difficulty based on the fact that one spouse has little or no visible income. This leads some financiers to try and swing loans or re-finances that are easier to approve initially, but may be detrimental to the homebuyer in the long run. An adjustable rate mortgage, or ARM, is commonly offered when interest rates are low, and the finance company is betting on the fact that the housing market... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Peter Johnson @ Monday, 18th August 2008 @ 2:04 AM

If you want to stop foreclosure now there are many things you can request to the bank or lender if you want to keep your home. The things you can do include a reinstatement plan, repayment plan, loan modification, loan refinance, loan forbearance, and more. If you really want to keep your home you should consider these things. 1 - Reinstatement Plan A reinstatement plan includes the late fees, the amount of money past due, and attorney costs if there are any. This is the amount of ... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Michael Branson @ Sunday, 17th August 2008 @ 11:29 PM

On 7/30/2008 President Bush signed HR 3221 into law which has many significant effects on homeowners. The Bill, in its final form, covered a number of subjects that Congress had been trying to resolve from the modernization of FHA, to foreclosure assistance for homeowners, to the shoring up for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The wires are burning up with stories from Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, and every other news agency on the signing of the Bill and while each article is coveri... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Michael Branson @ Sunday, 17th August 2008 @ 11:28 PM

On July 5th 2008, Robert Powell of the Wall Street Journal online posted an article which quotes the Chief Executive of The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Mary Schapiro, entitled Three Warnings for Hard Times: Beware of Strategies That Put Nest Egg at Risk. I really must admit that when I first read the title I thought, Here we go again, another article by another journalist knocking reverse mortgages. As I started to read and I saw the quoted expert, and as an individu... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Allen Wright @ Saturday, 16th August 2008 @ 5:16 PM

There are new federal regulations on mortgage lenders coming out way soon. Recently, President Bush signed a bill into law at the end of July that encourages state regulatory commissions to register all residential loan originators, and creates a national database of lenders that tracks fraudulent activity from state to state. This will keep lenders that have been shit down in one state from moving across the state line and opening up shop to commit the same crime again. This is currently a f... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Peter Baptiste @ Thursday, 14th August 2008 @ 8:20 PM

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have either been foreclosed on, or are facing foreclosures. Neither the banks, nor the homeowners want this to happen. Banks don't want it to happen because they're forced to write down foreclosures, which runs the risk of the bank failing. Homeowners don't want to lose their homes. The root cause of most foreclosures is bad lending practice at the start of the lending process, it used to be that home buyers had to show 30% of the list val... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Chris Esposito @ Monday, 11th August 2008 @ 10:01 AM

Getting a loan pre-approval from a lender is a quick, easy process. Typically, you fill out a few pages about your financial situation, the bank runs the numbers through a computer approval system, and you're pre-approved the next day. So, how do so many people mess it up so badly? Simply put, people lie (either to themselves or about themselves) when filling out a loan application. We'll look at examples from customers who applied for owner builder construction loans, ... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Nick Kent @ Sunday, 10th August 2008 @ 2:22 PM

There are a couple significant reasons behind the current crisis in our mortgage market. One is that mortgage brokers haven't been giving borrowers enough information to make an informed decision. The bigger issue is that borrowers haven't been asking the right questions! And how are they even supposed to know what to ask? School doesn't prepare us to make decisions regarding our home mortgages (unless you're studying to become a mortgage broker), so most of us are flying bli... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Ki Gray @ Saturday, 9th August 2008 @ 10:06 PM

Before we talk about what happened with mortgage rates this week lets do a quick recap of what happened last week. Last week mortgage interest rates made a sudden jump over the previous week. For the entire month of June and July 30 year mortgage interest rates only fluctuated from 6.09 to 6.45. Then last week 30 year mortgage rates suddenly jumped from 6.26 to 6.63. At the time we predicted that rates would probably fall this week because usually after big spikes in mortgage rates there is... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By JT Miller @ Saturday, 9th August 2008 @ 1:10 AM

If you're an older person who has been living in the same home for years then there is a good chance that your house desperately need some sort of home repair or home improvement but you simply don't have the money to pay for the construction costs or home improvement professionals needed to make your house a better place to live. Maybe you need a new roof or you need to upgrade your furnace or perhaps your home simply needs modern insulation and new windows and doors to make it more ... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Shaun Greer @ Friday, 8th August 2008 @ 9:50 PM

Considering the current state of the real estate market, it came as no surprise that the Federal Reserve would swoop in to regulate and tighten allowances on mortgages for homebuyers. The overhaul of the mortgage lending system is in full swing with consumer groups and lenders on both sides of the arguments. The hope is that these regulations will put the current mortgage lending industry in a more stable and profitable situation in the long-run. Currently, the extension of credit to hom... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Sal Farzin @ Friday, 8th August 2008 @ 11:01 AM

Many homeowners are now finding themselves in a situation where they cannot afford to pay off their mortgage any longer. This maybe because they had taken advantage of the short-term interest-only loans or had their properties valued lower than the loan they have obtained. In such an event, there are some options available to them rather than to go through the whole process of mortgage foreclosure and run the risk of being evicted. Short sale is a good solution. It involves the sale of yo... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Sal Farzin @ Friday, 8th August 2008 @ 10:57 AM

Mortgage foreclosure is an official, legal process wherein a person, a group, or a company owes money to a lender and can't pay. In which case, the lender would force the sale of a real estate property involved in order for them to pay off the loan completely. To know more about the foreclosure process, basic information about borrowing and lending money has to be tacked first. When you go to a bank and request for a loan, you have to sign several documents. These usually are the de... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Sal Farzin @ Friday, 8th August 2008 @ 10:51 AM

There are certain steps that a lender can undertake when the mortgage foreclosure has started. One of the main steps is called the trustee's sale or sheriff's sale. In states that use deeds of trust, this process is called non-judicial foreclosure. For example, the borrower misses a payment on his loan after the typical grace period of 15 days. At which point, he becomes delinquent on his mortgage loan. And primarily because of the fact that foreclosures can be very costly to th... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Chris Esposito @ Friday, 8th August 2008 @ 8:00 AM

Construction loans, especially owner builder construction loans, are tricky enough when the mortgage industry and housing market is doing well. Things got a lot tougher, though, when lenders tagged certain counties around the nation as being areas of declining values. These counties are known in the mortgage industry as soft markets, and they are having a big effect on your owner builder loan terms whether you recognize it or not. If an owner builder wants to build his home in a county t... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Jennifer Stromsteen @ Thursday, 7th August 2008 @ 7:46 PM

Phil Gordon, the Mayor of Phoenix, Arizona states that the housing bailout legislation is a great start but falls short to stop the mortgage meltdown being experienced today. Today Mayor Gordon will meet in Washington, D.C with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers to fight for additional funding for the first time home buyers. He states that the new housing bailout will help those with troubled mortgages but does not help the first time home buyers; something Mayor Gordon wants chang... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Christina Costa @ Monday, 4th August 2008 @ 11:58 AM

There are many questions that can be asked about home mortgage refinance. Let's take a look at what could be considered the top three things people want to know. This is a big decision you will be making and you definitely don't want to make any mistakes. If you are looking to refinance your mortgage, this is when you are taking out a new mortgage to pay off your existing one. First of all, how can a home mortgage refinance loan help you? There are many different reasons... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Chris Smith @ Monday, 4th August 2008 @ 5:47 AM

With interest rates at a 12-year high and lenders increasing their rates outside the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cash rate cycle, many borrowers are understandably feeling wary. The cash rate is Australia's official interest rate and usually lenders only move mortgage rates in synch with it, but this hasn't been the case over last few months. Economists are divided as to what will happen over the next 12 months, though most appear to believe the cash rate will remain fairly ... more...

Finance » Mortgage | By Mark Matheson @ Monday, 4th August 2008 @ 4:37 AM

It appears to be a widely-held view that one of our biggest financial commitments in life, if not THE biggest, is the mortgage we take on to buy our home. And though it is vital for someone to take advice on such a major expense, why can you still be left feeling confused AFTER having sought mortgage advice? Well, before giving the very simple answer to this question, let's briefly consider what "advising" means and if that matches our everyday experience. According to... more...