Joy Olivia Miller

Archive for the ‘Mortgage’ Category

In this day and time with so much negative news about the credit crunch, subprime crisis or housing meltdown it is easy to get discouraged as a first time home buyer or even if you already own a home and are simply trying to get your mortgage payment down. Many news reports are telling people that there is no way that you can get approved for a mortgage if you have credit issues in this market. That is simply not true.

Yes, it will take some additional work and documentation than in previous years but it is very possible and we are seeing Connecticut home mortgages get approved every day. You cannot let all of the negative news and negative people stop you from working towards consolidating your debt to get some monthly savings. You must be prepared to document your story so that the Connecticut mortgage broker you work with will know how to present your mortgage application to the underwriter.

You also have to be prepared that there are not that many Connecticut mortgage lenders remaining who specialize in helping people after major credit issues like bankruptcy, foreclosure or multiple late payments. However, we know many lenders that are taking a serious look at Connecticut mortgage applicants who have gotten back on their feet and are making the right steps towards recovery. These are the mortgage lenders we focus on working with because we have many years of experience with them and they realize that honest Connecticut mortgage brokers are still around.

There are times that your credit past will take more time and more documentation than you want to spend. In cases like this it is important that you start with simple manageable steps that keep you moving forward, but don’t get you bogged down and feeling depressed over your past. If you are worried that you have too much luggage then you may need to work with a Connecticut mortgage broker that can help you map out your road to credit recovery.

I’ve been receiving LOTS of great questions from homeowners lately and I’m honored that you trust us enough to send us your questions.

Today I received an e-mail along the following lines, with the pertinent part in bold:

Hi Christine:

My servicer is National City. I have been trying to get a loan mod for 10 months.

You’ve probably heard this many times, but until I was in default I could not get their attention. Eventually they listened; of course my credit is now destroyed. Anyway, long story short my “modified” loan is now more than I was previously (and could not afford) paying, as my previous loan was 6% interest only, and the modified loan is 4% for 5 years, 5% for 25 years, but fully amortized.

My request to the servicer to find out my investor, so that I could talk to them, rather than a National City loss mitigation person was fruitless. National City claims they cannot reveal the investor. I even wrote a letter asking for the investor, but got a letter stating they could not reveal the investor because of some agreement they have.

How can I find out who owns my loan. If I am able to 3% interest I can stay in my home. As it is right now, I’m on borrowed time.

Is your B.S. alert on right now? Mine went off a long time ago. I wish I could say that I’m surprised, but I’m not. If this is happening to this person, I’m sure it’s happening to a lot of you because someone took the time to e-mail me about it. If there’s one person struggling with it, which means there are probably thousands of you out there struggling with the same issue.

As Garfield says, begin with the QWR. The lender has twenty days to acknowledge your correspondence and sixty days to make a good faith effort to provide the documents under RESPA.

If you don’t get a response or it’s not a complete response, send them another letter and bug the hell out of them. Threaten to file a lawsuit if you have to.

After you get the response, get yourself a loan audit with an auditor who can research the chain of assignment issues, securitization and undisclosed finance charges. (I offer this service currently.)

Once you have the audit and a clear picture of what’s happening with your loan, you can proceed from there. Options may include filing a TILA/RESPA lawsuit, getting a loan modification or fighting foreclosure using the audit results.

If your QWR and loan audit reveals the lender is a mortgage pool, look on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website, called the EDGAR database. There’s a wealth of information on that site and will reveal a lot of about the mortgage pool security.

Check this out: some of you have mortgages that may have already been paid off!

For example: Aurora Loan Services is the servicing arm of Lehman Brothers, who securitized ALL of its mortgages. They cannot prove which of these loans have been paid, written down, bailed out or who even owns them.

If, during the discovery phase of litigation it is revealed (1) payments from TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program, a.k.a. “bailout”) or from investors have been applied to your collateral in the stream of securitization and investment and/or (2) the loan was table funded (your lender was paid a commission to “act” as the lender at the table, ostensibly to pretend to underwrite the loan, perform due diligence, confirm the appraisal, confirm the viability of the transaction, and confirm the affordability and benefits) and/or (3) the debt was released in bankruptcy, you may have a legal claim of satisfaction on some or all of your debt.

Loan modifications have been a great tool, but ultimately if you don’t owe the money on your loan, why modify it? This is why I think more people are missing the boat when it comes to resolving their mortgage issues. Many of you have serious predatory lending issues in your documents and have causes of action under TILA and RESPA that could show your loan was paid off. It’s possible that many of you are paying for something you really don’t owe.

Whatever you do, don’t wait until the last minute to deal with these issues. If you know you’re looking at a mess down the road, get started early. Sixty days isn’t a lot of time in the scope of a foreclosure filing. Plan ahead and execute so you have your strategy in place for whatever you want to accomplish.

Incoming search terms for the article:

Obtaining a loan modification is the latest magical solution to foreclosure. One new government program after another has been released to help borrowers modify the terms of their mortgages to make them more affordable, and thousands of private companies have begun to offer assistance in qualifying for a loan mod. Obviously, if everyone who can make a payment was given such a program, the foreclosure crisis would have been solved before it began.

Unfortunately, though, the real world has foiled many of the designs of the mortgage industry central planners and regulators. All of the government programs have failed for a variety of reasons, including voluntary participation, lack of clearly defined rules for compliance by the lenders, and unaccountability. Even for the few mandatory participants, the same problems keep creeping up.

Homeowners should expect to run into at least three major issues when attempting to qualify for a loan modification. These problems should be considered before the borrowers decide whether to apply for a modification or not, as they may not apply to other solutions to foreclosure. Of course, some of them will apply to alternative plans to save the house.

First, homeowners will have to deal with unresponsive mortgage lenders and servicing companies. Loss mitigation departments of these large financial institutions have not dedicated the resources necessary to assist all of the borrowers attempting to apply for various solutions. This means that collection departments may call owners tens times a day, but any call made back to the loss mitigation department will not be answered in a timely fashion, if at all. Faxes containing personal financial information and application documents are routinely lost, as well.

Second, the documents governing the securitization process for the mortgage may restrict the number of loan modifications that can be offered. The pooling and servicing agreements (PSAs) may only allow a certain percentage of loans in a pool to be modified. Even if the borrowers can show financial ability to pay a modification plan, they may have to be turned down by the servicing company, unless the loan is moved out of the securitization pool.

A final consideration homeowners should make before applying for a mortgage modification is if they would require a principal reduction. Many loan mods would not be affordable for the long term without decreasing the amount the borrowers owe in total. However, any reduction of principal may be considered by the IRS as taxable income to the owners. This may result in a large, unaffordable tax bill that will cause the modification to fail is the borrowers can not make the monthly mortgage payment and pay the taxes for the forgiven debt.

While loan mods can be a great way for homeowners to modify their mortgages so they are more in line with the borrowers’ current financial situations and market conditions, there are also a number of drawbacks. If the servicer takes too long to respond, the foreclosure will proceed anyway. If the PSA does not allow for any more modifications, qualified borrowers may be turned away. And if there is a large tax bill due to the modification, it may be impossible to pay the mortgage and the taxes.

If you are considering signing a mortgage on manufactured home, do not sign the papers until you have thoroughly worked out the issue of land to put your home on. You should never accept a mortgage without knowing for sure where you want the home to sit, and that it is legal for it to be there.

Your options for obtaining land will be to rent property owned by someone else, buy land, or to take package deal, which includes the mortgage on the land and the manufactured home. Each of these arrangements has their own set of circumstances to consider.

Renting Land

If you are going to live in a community of manufactured homes, you need to run this by your mortgage lender first. Many lenders will not allow you to put a home which they finance, on rented property. This is because the risk is high that you will, at some point, be required to move away from the land.

Most manufactured homes today have permanent foundations that cannot be picked up and moved. If you are asked to leave the land you are renting, there is a serious problem with the home. Many homes in this circumstance are merely abandoned, leaving the bad debt on the lender.

Even if you do find a lender willing to allow the home to go onto rented property, it is advised that you check into other options. You will not be able to have your home on a permanent foundation if you opt to move it into a community where land is rented out and it will limit your chances of selling the home in the future since buyers will be limited to getting loans from lenders that will approve a home on temporary foundation and on rented land.

Buying Land

Unless you can afford to outright pay for your land, you will have to take out a second loan in order to pay for it. While this should not be an issue with your mortgage lender, you must make sure that you can secure the loan for the land and that you can afford to pay back that loan and your mortgage simultaneously. The interest on both loans could very well leave you paying more than if you bought a conventional home.

Land/Home Package Deal

One of the easiest loans to secure for people with less-than-stellar credit histories or those that want a low down payment, is a mortgage that includes the home, land, and all set-up costs for the property. Manufactured home retailers often extend these loans themselves, so you don’t have to jump through the rigorous standards of a bank or larger lending company. The problem is the ease of obtaining these loans almost always comes with a much higher interest rate.

If you have reasonable credit and a down payment, it is in your best interest to look into a conventional home before taking a mortgage on manufactured home. You will likely come out ahead by paying less interest on a home that is worth more in the long run.

When you buy a property with a loan, it is best to hire a mortgage loan auditor. This professional can help you face mortgage issues such as foreclosure and the like. They can actually work miracles when turning the tide in your favor, in case you’re having problems paying off your loan. Although they cannot do magic, they sure can give you all the right advice so you can arrive at the best solution to whatever specific problem you are dealing with regarding your mortgaged property.

The existence of the loan modification program has assisted a lot of people in a financial crisis which has rendered them unable to pay off their loans. Auditors determine if there are any loopholes in the transaction you entered into when you purchased your property – a small, unpremeditated miscalculation of the loan, fraud or misrepresentation. Auditors would know what went wrong and how to fix the problem.

In general, mortgage loan auditors help their clients through:

a. Audits loan calculation
b. Detects error in loan and submits a well-calculated report
c. Offers correct information on the right index, interest rates, and monthly payments
d. Provides proof of the correct balance since the first payment
e. Detects fraud
f. Processes legalities for demanding full bank refund

Because of the existence of mortgage loan auditors, lenders are now afraid of being sued. These professionals help protect people and their investments in a way. However, their existence is not all about scaring off companies that are taking advantage of loaners. Instead, this will encourage each party in this type of scenario to sit down and negotiate any problems that may arise. Bringing issues to the courts could be a waste of time, money and effort for both parties and out-of-court negotiations are always preferable. By nature, these auditors are there to protect loaners and have been successful doing so. 80% of lending violations had been brought to the proper authorities or have been settled among the parties involved because of the intervention of auditors. This has resulted in the number of violations decreasing rapidly.

Mortgage loan auditors basically conduct an all-inclusive review of a case before writing a precise report that can be used as a legal document that protects those whose rights, as loaners, have been violated. If it turns out that nothing is wrong with the mortgage, these auditors will not charge you with any service fee and will give you a refund, in case you have paid a certain amount.

As a qualified borrower, do not hesitate to get a loan to buy the properties you need. Just never forget to hire these professionals because the moment you sense something wrong. Nothing beats professional advice.

A reverse mortgage is a loan that a lending institution issues to its long-term customers based on the equity in the customer’s home. The added feature is that during this term, the customer continues to retain ownership and occupation of the property. A reverse mortgage serves the dual purpose of keeping one’s home and receiving money from it simultaneously.

The loan need not be repaid during one’s lifetime if the person continues to live in that home and promptly pays the taxes and insurance. Companies that lend in the reverse mortgage market do not insist on any income or credit requirement on the part of the customer since the equity in the home serves as the security for the loan.

The reverse mortgage amount that the lender provides depends on the equity in the home, the age of the consumers, and the interest rate at the time of closing. The reverse mortgage needs to be repaid only when the consumer sells the home or permanently leaves the home. The heirs to the consumer have the choice to keep the house and pay back the loan from other assets in the event of the consumer’s death. The heirs also have the choice to sell the house and repay the loan using the proceeds from the sale. All reverse mortgage loans in Texas come under federal government programs.

Homeowners who are sixty-two or older can borrow against the equity in their homes under a reverse mortgage program. Generally, the income, health, or credit history is not a criterion for issue of a reverse mortgage. Also, there is no need for an underwriting or loan committee. Most reassuring for senior citizens is the fact that there are no monthly payments. Though interest rates on reverse mortgages are normally the highest in the market, they are also fairly easy to obtain.