Since the start of the housing downturn, the number of Web sites and foreclosure-prevention companies claiming to offer help to struggling borrowers has greatly increased. While some of the businesses are legitimate, others are fraudulent and offer services that consumers may be eligible to receive free of charge. This month, Fannie Mae – the government-sponsored [...]
Part of the financial reform bill signed into law by President Obama includes the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will write new rules and monitor problems and abuses in areas such as residential real estate settlements, credit scores, “truth in lending,” and equal credit opportunity. KEEP THIS IN MIND • Before the [...]
A new report estimates that nearly one in five mortgage defaults through the first half of 2009 were “strategic,” where borrowers who appeared to have the capacity to pay their mortgages stopped doing so. The research follows on an earlier report by Experian and Oliver Wyman that first aimed to quantify the share of mortgage [...]
Fannie Mae today announced it is updating several policies impacting the future eligibility of borrowers to obtain a new mortgage loan after experiencing a preforeclosure event, including a preforeclosure sale, short sale, or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure. Among the changes is the amount of time that must elapse after the preforeclosure event before a borrower is [...]
According to a news release, the government is giving homeowners another year to refinance their loans under a little-used program designed to help borrowers whose homes have plummeted in value. My experience with clients who have tried to refinance their homes have had a total horrible experience with their mortgage holders. The Obama administration effort, [...]
Incentive Part of Ongoing Effort to Stabilize Neighborhoods Fannie Mae (FNM/NYSE) announced that people purchasing a Fannie Mae-owned
Banks are reaping what they sowed. As you know, during the housing boom, all the banks wanted were more and more mortgage loans. They loosen the rules that so low that credit scores did not seem to matter, as long as you were breathing and had a pen to sign mortgage documents. So now they [...]
You would think that putting more money down when buying a home would entitle you to a lower interest rate. Not so according to an article in the New York Times. Take, for instance, borrowers who want to buy a $400,000 home, and who have a credit score of 720, which is considered very good. [...]
Fannie Mae (FNM/NYSE) announced today that the company is providing information to servicers regarding changes to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) that permits refinancing of existing Fannie Mae loans with loan-to-value (LTV) ratios up to 125 percent. The loans will be eligible for delivery on or after September 1, 2009. “This step aims to [...]
What the figures show for April of this year is that residential sales are about the same number as it was for April of last year. However, we’ve had a further decline in medium residential home prices of minus 23 percent. Here are the stats for sales in Nevada County. There were 67 residential [...]
