New Home Affordable 125% Refinance Program

You have probably read that President Obama announced changes to the Making Home Affordable Refinance Program whereby a person can refinance a first mortgage that is upside-down.  The big caveat being that the mortgage needed to be owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac with the loan originated prior to June of 2009.

The changes announced yesterday extend the program to December 31, 2013,  and will allow a refinance of a first mortgage no matter how far upside down the home is.  The basics that were announced are below.  No lenders are offering the program yet although major lenders are working on it’s release. Read the rest of this entry

USA For Sale Wholesale; Visa Included

So many homes for sale along with our weak dollar have foreign citizens increasing their portfolio of US properties.  It is interesting that the government seems to encourage it and is even considering a new Senate bill designed solely to lure investors to buy even more.

The bill is sponsored by Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mike Lee (R.-Utah) and will grant a U.S. visa to foreign investors who agree to spend at least $500,000 on residential real estate here.

International investors have already spent $82 billion buying U.S. homes in the last reported twelve-month period that ended in March 2011. This is up approximately 25% from the previous year and represents nearly 10% of total U.S. sales.

In Florida, foreign buyers currently account for a huge 25% of recorded purchase transactions. Over 50% of condominium buyers in South Florida are now foreign investors and most of those sales have South American or Canadian origins. Hawaii, New York, California, Texas and Arizona also attract many foreign buyers. Read the rest of this entry

Shared Appreciation Mortgages: SAM’s Coming Back?

If you’re a keen follower of those endless hearings that are conducted in the vast oak-paneled rooms of the United States Senate, you might have heard mention of a September 14, 2011 session held by the Housing, Transportation, and Community Development Subcommittee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. It was chaired by US Senator Robert Menendez (D, NJ) along with Ranking Member Jim DeMint (R, SC), and the topic was “New Ideas for Restructuring and Refinancing Mortgage Loans.”

Among the witnesses was Marcia J. Griffin, President and Founder of HomeFree-USA, a non-profit homeowners’ advocacy group. Among other things, she stated that the US ought to prioritize the development of the Shared Appreciation Mortgage (SAM) as a way to achieve equitable and broad-based refinancing of troubled home loans.

So what is a SAM? They are not currently offered by any major US lender, but should they be? Read the rest of this entry

CFPB: What It Means to You

CFPB: What It Means to You

In the wake of the ongoing real estate recession, the federal government has introduced a variety of measures designed to protect consumers and weed out unprofessional or predatory mortgage loan originators. One of these actions has been the creation of a new federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act) established the CFPB, which was launched in July 2011. Here’s the mission statement of the CFPB: “The central mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is to make markets for consumer financial products and services work for Americans – whether they are applying for a mortgage, choosing among credit cards, or using any number of other consumer financial products.”

The basic idea is to heighten government accountability by consolidating into one place a variety of responsibilities that had previously been scattered across various government entities. The CFPB is like a one-stop-shopping center for consumer financial affairs. Read the rest of this entry

Honesty in Flipping: What to Disclose

This article is about flipping short sale properties, and the parameters associated with this are much different than other types of property sales and investment and should not be assumed to apply to other, more traditional forms of sales.  Short sales, as most people are now aware, occur when a property owner is behind on his or her payments and makes an arrangement with their mortgage lender to sell the property for less than its assessed, or true, value in order to avoid foreclosure, the stigma that goes along with it, and the credit damage that can come from it.

If your client, or someone you know, is in the business of short sale investing, meaning they intend to purchase short sale homes and immediately turn around and resell them for a profit, there are legal questions that go along with the process, many of which have never been addressed, but will undoubtedly come to light in a court of law at some point in the foreseeable future.

While buying a short sale home at a bargain and turning around and selling it at its regular price, or slightly less than its assessed value is completely legal, the term ‘fraud’ is being tossed around lately and it may behoove the serious investor to make every effort to offer full disclosure, or at least a modest modicum of disclosure to all parties involved. Read the rest of this entry

The Benefits of Going Green for Homeowners

In this day and age, everyone seems to be jumping on the proverbial ‘green’ bandwagon. From multi-national corporations to small local businesses, there is an environmental angle to just about every consumer product. For homeowners, the benefits of going green can be numerous and while some of them can cost money up front, there are many advantages to this new environmental movement.

Of course, the environmental movement isn’t new; it’s actually been around for many decades. Yet a fair majority of people throughout the country have either been aware from a distance or dismissive of it as a costly and ‘tree-hugging’ waste of time. The reality, however, has changed in recent years as the price of gasoline, home heating, and electricity have gone through the roof, in a manner of speaking.

Homeowners who are looking to either add value to their homes or save money in the long run, or both, are beginning to turn toward the benefits of going green as a serious way to make an impact, if not on the environment, then on their budget. There are quite a few things people can do to turn their home into a green home. Read the rest of this entry