FHA Loses Fight to Increase Down Payment Requirement from 3.5% to 5%

Thanks to the NAMB (National Association of Mortgage Brokers), the fight to hold the minimum down payment for a FHA purchase at 3.5% instead of bumping it up to 5%, has been won. Today, the fight turns focus to keeping the annual mortgage insurance costs that FHA charges on loans at .55% instead of moving it up considerably. The mortgage insurance is calculated by multiplying .55% times the loan amount, and then divide that by 12 to get your monthly cost.
My worries about this aren't that it just goes up, but typically this is not something that is temporary...once the market regains strength, why should everyone continue to pay the high cost for mortgage insurance. After all, why not wait a little while and see if all the new changes help offset troubles first. Like that commercial says, "this is how FHA sticks it to the man", but this time, American home buyers are "the man". To hear a live version of the story, go to the Think Big Work Small website.

6 Easy Steps to Shop for Your Mortgage and Be Successful

After 8 years helping families find the right loan for their needs, I want to tell you how I would shop for a loan if I were no longer in the business. Please note, if a good deal to you in buying a home is saving a couple hundred dollars in closing costs in comparison to another lender's offer of the same interest rate on the same type loan, this message is not for you. You might want to read the book, How Do I REALLY Decide What's Important in Life for Dummies, and then come back to this message. (wink wink) Now back to a more serious note, follow these steps and you will likely be more successful in choosing the right lender.

1. You need to figure out what loan officer you genuinely like the most first. However you come up with your list, get your list of lenders you plan on shopping for your mortgage. Some suggested best ways to derive your list are as follows; referral from a friend, referral from a Realtor, check with your local bank. Now, use your best people skills as you make first contact with each of these contacts at the lenders office (loan officers) to REALLY LISTEN to the "person" that answers your question and not so much the detail of the answer. You want to be a great listener in this first communication to find out who sounds more trusting and compatible with you. Maybe even try to get off the subject of mortgage just a bit. In this first communication, you might ask some mortgage questions to make sure they know their business, but interview them. (this step does not require a face to face appointment, so don't waste their time setting an appointment just yet) Once you've talked to your list of loan officers and decided who you like best, this will be the lender you target as your hopeful transaction coordinator and leader in your financing process. Lets call him your #1.

2. In most cases, when you are buying a home, you will have already gotten to your #1 (your #1 is the chosen/preferred lender) BEFORE you have found a house, because most Realtors won't show you homes on "their dime" unless you can show them you are pre-approved...and they have VERY good reason to make sure you are pre-approved before they take you out as well. Now that you have your #1 selected. You have a goal and you want to put that goal in the responsible hands of your #1. Your goal is to get pre-approved, get comparable offers from your list of lenders, get the answers to all your lending transaction questions answered, and find out what your prospective monthly payment and dollar out of pocket at closing estimates are. Just FYI, the dollar out of pocket at closing is NOT to be used at any point as a detail used in determining what lender you use...do not use a "bottom line" on an estimate sheet from a lender to compare lenders. Schedule a time to meet with your #1, face to face if possible, or at minimum, by phone. Allow your #1 to run a credit report, collect ALL of your income and asset documents to underwrite your loan, and in the end, complete your pre-approval. PLEASE NOTE, YOU HAVE NOT STARTED YOUR "SHOPPING" AND COMPARING COSTS YET!!!

3. At a point in time between meeting with your #1, mentioned above, and before you are ready to make a bid on a home, you need to get some numbers from your list of lenders for shopping purposes. Listen very closely here! You do not need, and you should NOT ask for a Good Faith Estimate, Initial Fee Worksheet, or any other template form that the lender has in his system to come up with the variables you need for shopping at this point. To compare lenders, you need to know 3 things: 1) Interest rate, 2)Points (origination and/or discount), 3) total of lenders fees. So get out a writing pen and paper and ask all three lenders what their total of lender fees are that you will incur by doing business with them, what is the current interest rate for the program that you and your #1 decided was the best loan program for you, and how many points do they charge for that interest rate. Your notes might look like this: $1190 total lender fees, 4.875% interest rate on a 30 yr FHA loan, and 1% origination (point). If you go against my shopping plan and ask for a GFE or Initial Fee Worksheet and think that you'll just pull out what YOU know to be the right fees and variables for shopping a lender, then you open yourself up to trouble. I'm not going to bother with the huge number of ways in which that can be used against you, and if you are not willing to take my advice about this, then it won't matter anyway.

4. Now that you have gathered the necessary numbers to compare your lenders, hopefully your #1 was sitting right "in the mix" with the other lenders. If he was .125% higher in interest rate than your other lenders AND the lender fees and origination were higher, you might need to have a talk with your #1, and if the fees were higher by much, you need to work with #2. There is nothing wrong with paying $200-$400 higher in fees and points for a similar or same interest rate if you are going to enjoy the process more with your #1, have confidence that all is going to go well while you and the family are packing everything you own to move, and your sure that #1's experience and advice is going to get you to your destination smoothly and with less collateral damage costs in the end. You are buying a house after all, and not a car, or a stereo system at a pawn shop...$200-$400 in extra fees and $8-$15 extra a month for a slightly higher interest rate is not a bad sacrifice to pay for comfort in the transaction, and to make sure you do not end up paying collateral damage costs at the end of the transaction because you chose a lesser expert to handle your business. (collateral damage costs may be for example: you don't close on time, so you have to pay $100 a day to your moving company while you wait for your loan to be ready, or your contract needs to be extended because your loan wasn't done in time and the seller wants you to put up more cash to make it worth their waiting on you).

5. At this point, you have compared your lenders by interest rate, lender fee total, and points associated with the offered interest rate. You now should have located a property you want to buy, and have an executed contract on that property. You now have an exact purchase price, and a selected title company in which was selected on the contract in the negotiation. Give your shopping lenders the exact purchase price of the home, and the name and number of the title company that was used (if the number is not on your contract, ask your Realtor for it), and give them a copy of your contract...the contract should tell them if there is a survey fee, and seller contribution and all that. Ask them for a Good Faith Estimate in return and that you will be deciding on locking in the next day or two...whether you are or not (this will keep them honest). The 2010 Good Faith Estimate is designed so that you can easily compare lenders, and if the costs in the Good Faith Estimate end up being higher by fee or rate at closing, the lender will be required by law to "EAT THE DIFFERENCE". When you ask these lenders for their GFE's, they will probably want to know what your credit score is and so forth. They may in most cases need that to give you an accurate estimate on your loan. As long as your credit score is above 700, it more than likely will not hurt you to let them pull their own credit report. They'll need to know your income and asset information too, just like you gave your #1, so you might try and have that in email or fax-able form. If your lender can not get you an estimate in 24 hrs, you really need to think about the availability this lender will have in answering your questions during the process, and therefore thinking about that being a reason to NOT use that lender. If they can not get you an estimate in under 48 hours (assuming normal business hours, not including Saturday and Sunday), you REALLY might think about not using them.

6. Now that you should have all your GFE's from the different lenders, just make sure that the lender you chose as your #1 is close or better than the other offers. You might even just ask your #1 to match it and in turn you would work with him. Lastly, while comparing deals, if any one of the lenders has an estimate where the interest rate is more than .375% better than the others and the costs are similar, be very leery and get additional advice from your Realtor or ask him directly why his rate is so much lower. Lastly, make your decision on whether your #1 can compete so you can work with him, or pick the next best option in line.

If at any point along the way you did not like your #1 anymore and the other options were not good either, find another lender to throw in. If you run into discomfort and can not find a lender you like after trying a variety of lenders, you might suggest taking yourself out of the "equation", and allow yourself to be advised and directed. Controlling personalities end up, in many cases, with 2 outcomes. 1)They end up working with someone willing to let the buyer run the show (inexperienced Loan Officers work with anyone), where in turn the buyer won't "let go of the steering wheel", so the inexperienced buyer leads everyone through a very bumpy ride where the entire process is like running a mile with an anchor on your back, or 2) the buyers expectations are underachieved throughout the entire transaction because they did not allow the expert to set the expectations because they thought they could control the process themselves...even if it is your 3rd or 4th time to buy a home, you have no business setting your own expectations in a loan transaction. Loan officers live a life directly related to how the market moves, and if tracking their income as it goes up and down like a roller coaster from year to year is not enough to tell you how the market changes and how often it changes, listen to the news. That being said, a loan transaction today is very dissimilar from one a year ago.

Best of luck in your home search, and shopping!

Future for Texas Housing Market...2010

After reading an article in CNN this week, it sounds like the guru's of the housing market think that research on the cost of home owning versus the cost of renting, can determine what Americans can expect in the outlook for housing in America for 2010. Thats a sensible statement, right?

Lets start with the common sense reason why we can track the rent vs home price to do our homework on the future of the housing market. Plainly, people generally need a good reason why they might benefit from leaving their lease when they compare and contrast owning and renting for what they give up in monthly out of pocket costs each month. Shawn Tully wrote in the CNN article, "And the surest sign that prices have fully adjusted arrives when the ratio of what people pay in rent versus what owners spend on the same property returns to its historic average." So, that is where it starts.

Through research of rents vs homeownership, they found that in 1999 renters were paying 87% of what homeowners were paying monthly. All in all, Americans are ok with paying a little higher monthly when it came to the benefit of owning...13% higher to be specific in 1999 (the case study was called the REIT research team done by Deutsche Bank...REIT=Ratio of Rents to Ownership Costs). Later studies showed drastic changes in that ratio as the housing bubble was growing in areas like California. Home owners prices drop compared to what renters paid in the bubble times.

When the cost to own is "overpriced" by the rent to own ratio, when comparing out of pocket monthly costs, you typically will see that the housing market will tend to fall more until the ratio of rental to owning is more equal...like in the 1990's. In more recent studies, like the one in 1999, we see that the majority of Americans still pay an "over priced" amount for owning than renting today. This research leads the experts to believe we will see a hopeful and final fall in overall national housing market of 5% more in 2010. (My hypothesis is that Texas will not follow that statistic as close and we'll see much less or even small gain in 2010).

203K Rehab to Purchase a Fixer Upper or Help List Your Fixer Upper

Frisco and the Surrounding Collin County home buyers should look into the FHA 203K home loan when trying to buy that short-sale or foreclosure...refinances are elgible too!!! When trying to establish the appraised value, the value will be "subject to completion". So for example: A home that has a market value of $150k because it's at the lowest end of value of it's "like" sqr footage among comparables, may get an appraisal value on the 203K loan program for $175k when it has the most upgrades and updates for the homes similar in age and square foot in it's market, even if the sale price was $150k. Now you can use that difference in $150k sale price and expected appraised value to determine the loan to value.

Maximum LTV
• Purchase: Maximum LTV is 96.50%.
• Rate/Term Refinance: Maximum LTV is 97.75%. Maximum CLTV is 100%.
HUD's $100 Down Payment homes are also eligible for this program.

Requirements for 203K purchase or 203k refinance loans below:

• All improvements must be performed by a third-party builder. Self-Help is not allowed. (builder or contractor...must be insured contractor)
• The builder’s contract must not be signed before the 5th day after the written application.
• A 10% statutory retainer must be withheld from each advance to cover any claim notices from subcontractors or suppliers. The entire retainer, representing 10% of construction costs, will be retained for 30 days after final completion. (Subcontractors and suppliers have only 30 days after completion to notify the borrower of nonpayment claims) This money is also rolled into the loan with other costs if requested by borrower, and the 10% is calculated off the amount used for fix ups and 203k specific closing fees...EXAMPLE: IF $10,000 is the amount request for fees and fix-ups, you take 10% of $10,000, which is $1,000, and roll that into the loan. If it is not used, the 10% retainer fee will be used to pay down principle of the loan.
• Subject property must be used as the primary residence...this loan IS NOT DESIGNED FOR FLIPS OR INVESTMENT PURCHASE!

Examples of eligible home repair, replacement, or improvements under the FHA 203K are listed below, however, this is not an all-inclusive list:
• Repair/replacement of roofs, gutters and downspouts.
• Repair/replacement/upgrade of existing heating, ventilation & air conditioning systems.
• Repair/replacement of plumbing and electrical systems.
• Repair/replacement of flooring.
• Minor remodeling that does not involve structural repairs, such as kitchens
• Exterior and interior painting.
• Weatherization, including storm windows and doors, insulation, weather stripping, etc.
• Purchase and installation of appliances, including free-standing ranges, refrigerators, washers and dryers, dishwashers and microwaves.
• Improvements for accessibility for persons with disabilities.
• Lead-based paint stabilization or abatement of lead-based paint hazards.
• Repair/replacement/addition of exterior decks, patios, porches.
• Basement waterproofing.
• Replacement of window and doors and exterior wall re-siding.
Most improvements are eligible provided they add value and are permanently affixed to the foundation. Improvements to detached structures and luxury items are not allowed.
Luxury items include: Swimming pools, hot tubs, tennis courts, gazebos, barbecue pits, etc. Repair work to these items is also not allowed.

For more questions regarding the 203K loan, email Brad Lynch directly at blynch@pnlending.com or find me on Twitter at Frisco_Mortgage

Brad Lynch You Tube Mortgage Clip Introduction

Who is Brad Lynch, and at what angles does he go about business as he works with First Time Home buyers, Move Up buyers, VA prospects, and FHA prospects in Frisco, Plano, McKinney, and North Dallas to best help families buy or refinance their home?

It's a first time "go round", and the video and audio didn't match up when I uploaded it to You Tube.

Sell Your Home Before Spring This Year Says Experts!

If you have even considered to sell your home to the extent that you took a moment to share the thought with just about anyone in the last couple years, you probably got an ear full. You heard things like; it's a buyers market, don't sell in a buyers market...home prices are depreciated and you are going to lose your tail-end if you sell now. All of that could be right, but Real Estate forecasters and experts are starting to see the positive side. Francesca of Forbes.com makes it clear what her expectations are when she says, "Homeowners should buck the idea of selling in the Spring".

Typically it has seemed most reasonable to prepare to sell in the late winter so that you can be first on the board for the rush of buyers that show up in the Spring and early Summer...thought to be brought on by the school breaks for children and lively atmosphere of the fresh weather of the season.

This year, experts predict that selling your home early in the year, rather than waiting for Spring, may bring the quickest and best desires that sellers strive for.
That means, if you are ready and just waiting for the right moment, prepare your home now to be listed by end of this month or next by calling your trusted and loyal experienced Realtor to effectively stage your home to the extent that buyers choose your home rather than the one your neighbor lists "For Sale By Owner". Staging your home leaves no question unanswered to what the buyer is suppose to do with the different amenities and rooms of your home. The key to selling ANYTHING is easy and simple when you prepare for it. Sell benefits, not features...customers/buyers don't want to know how it works as much as they want to know how it will benefit them. Example, if you have a raised area/stage in your 2nd living area and do not put anything on it, the buyer may think that is wasted space...your Realtor/expert stager will know to stage that area so the buyer doesn't ask to himself subconsciously, "what is this wasted space for", but rather will say, "that is a good idea, we can put our ???? there also."
Best of luck selling or buying this year! GO win in 2010!

So we have a positive forecast for the bailout money that was used to bailout the mortgage industry. The TARP that is used to help create jobs and so forth is foreseen to be a loss. We have a decision to make lets say. We are going to turn a profit in the end from it. As a business owner say with a large bit of debt, do you A) Take the profit and pay down your debit and hope that business continues to produce so you can continue, or B) take your profit and immediately apply it to a part of your business that isn't producing in hopes to get the entire "engine" efficiently making money? If you put the money into a part of the company that is not producing and it continues to not produce, you lose that money right?
The Democrats support plan B above and the republicans support plan A. There is a chance that both options turn out positive, but I guess the argument is, which one will work more...I'm assuming the economy turns around that is.

Tax Credit Extension...Almost There and It Includes Move Up Buyers

The Senate has done their part in a 85-2 vote to move the tax credit forward. Now, Obama can put his blessing on the bill this week or next and it'll be official. This makes it a farely certain deal now.
For move up buyers to qualify, they have to have owned a home for 5 years of the last 8. Stay tuned for more when it lands.
The income qualifications were raised, and that should help include more folks.

Word on Extending Tax Credit for 2010

Have you been wondering, will the First Time Buyer Tax Credit stimulus package really go away as the timeline by law defines, or will they extend it?
Without disclosing the name of the person who forwarded the letter to me, and who was addressed on the letter, I did see the official letter from Washington that was written on October 5, 2009 that talked about this. My understanding of the letter lead me to believe that it would be possible that as the current tax advantage opportunity expires, there is possibility that a new one would be set forth including not just First Time Buyers. The new one MIGHT increase the amount one might get for the tax credit, and it would include anyone buying a primary residence rather than just the first time buyer.
Keep your fingers crossed!

Fannie Refi or Refinance Plus

Are you looking to see if you fit into the guidelines for the Fannie Mae program designed to help current home owners with a good pay history on their current home loan but may not have enough equity in their home due to poor market conditions, but want to take advantage of the super low rates our market is offering?
The Fannie Mae Refi Plus very possibly is your answer. This loan provides a competitively-priced, streamline refinance option to qualified borrowers who currently have a Fannie Mae® loan. This option is only available to Fannie Mae customers who have demonstrated their ability to repay their mortgage and have verified their information as part of their original loan. As a result, these borrowers may qualify to refinance with minimal documentation requirements.
If your existing loan did not come with monthly mortgage insurance, you may refinance under this loan and have a new loan to value over that 80% threshold that normal would call for a demanded mortgage insurance, but you will not be required to have it...that is if your middle credit score from the three credit bureaus is above 700. In general, this loan is available for new borrowers with a minimum credit score of 620.
Here is a list of loans that can NOT be paid off with the refi plus:

• 2nd liens
• Interest-only loans
• 3/1 Fixed Period ARMs
• Balloon mortgages
• MyCommunityMortgage®
• HomeStyle® Renovation
• Flex 97
• Loans subject to any outstanding repurchase request from Fannie Mae

The cost for this refinance can be slightly cheaper than a normal refinance due to the possibility of having appraisal waivers or exterior appraisal needs only.

Too see if your loan is a Fannie Mae loan and possibly eligible for this opportunity, go here.
If you are interested in seeing if your home is eligible and you are approved, my team can do that work for you if you would just call us at 469-450-2723...we'll need your current loan number from your current mortgage statement, your current interest rate, the balance on any loans you have on the property, and the type of loan you have.
"DON'T KEEP US A SECRET"!

Halloween Riddles

Q: How do you mend a broken jack-o-lantern?
A: With a pumpkin patch.

Q: What did one ghost say to another ghost?
A: “Do you believe in people?”

Q: Why don’t mummies take vacations?
A: They’re afraid they’ll relax and unwind.

Q: Why didn’t the skeleton dance at the party?
A: He had no body to dance with.