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Serving those who serve…special VA Home buying, selling and financing meeting
July 18, 2012
This is a GREAT opportunity to find out more about VA Home Loans in person! Active or retired service men and women are eligible for a variety of benefits around home ownership including purchasing with no down payment and no minimum credit scores. Home owners that currently have a VA home loan have a special marketing advantage! New opportunities to short sale with a VA Home Loan exist as well!
Refinance your existing VA Loan to a lower rate or a fixed rate and enjoy the savings!
Whatever your VA Home Loan need – we’re here in person to answer your questions and give you some free information. No obligation, no contracts – just stop in between 5pm and 7:30 on Thursday, 7/19 at the RE/MAX Professional Associates office at 246 Boston Turnpike in Shrewsbury (Route 9 east).
The top five discussions from the State of the Union to the Housing Market
January 29, 2012
The State of the Union address and the upcoming Florida GOP primary are bringing new and much-needed attention to housing issues. Here are the top five articles on the housing crisis and how the politicians are looking at it.
President Barack Obama’s proposal for enhanced refinancing efforts sparked a new dialogue among members of Congress and the media after the State of the Union Tuesday. Issues like the size of down payments, principal write downs, and how to take advantage of low interest rates are suddenly gaining traction among lawmakers. Even the GOP candidates for president are having to face the housing crisis as they campaign in Florida, a state hard hit by foreclosures.
Associated Press: After Obama Speech, Three Arguments for Housing
President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union speech that he wanted to help struggling home owners refinance their mortgages. The Republicans who want his job say the government should get out of the way of the housing market. But some experts advocate something much bolder to provide relief to the 11 million home owners in the United States who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.
MSNBC Bottom Line: Home Buying Could Soon Beat Renting
Falling home prices have sent many would-be buyers to the sidelines. If all goes well, record low interest rates and rising rents may soon prompt some of them to take a second look at buying.
New York Times (Bucks): Big Down Payments Could Bar Creditworthy Borrowers From Market, Study Finds
Requiring a minimum down payment of 20%, or even 10%, on home loans would push many creditworthy borrowers into higher-cost loans or out of the mortgage market entirely, a new study says.
HouseLogic: Finally Some Talk on Home Ownership; Will Action Follow?
It was nice to finally hear a politician talking about solving our housing market woes — the bull’s-eye in terms of economic recovery. Aiming to strike a populist chord with voters, President Barack Obama asked Congress Tuesday night during the State of the Union to pass a mass refinancing effort that would help home owners take advantage of today’s lower mortgage rates.
USA Today: Florida Primary Turns Spotlight on Housing Bust’s Fallout
As the GOP presidential contest heads to Florida, the Jan. 31 primary looms as the first in the nation where declarations by Romney and former senator Rick Santorum that housing should be allowed to bottom out will be judged by voters in markets where the housing bust has been concentrated.
What do you think?
New Refinance Program Targets ‘Underwater’ Owners Current on Payments
November 30, 2011
This seems like big news! I was just reading this article from Orlando which is a very hard hit area of the country.
“Starting Thursday, home owners with “underwater” mortgages can apply for a new Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refinance program geared for pretty much everyone who owes more on a home than it’s worth.
Matt Hamilton has dutifully paid the loan on his Maitland house and a Longwood rental condo, but until now he could not refinance them to obtain more affordable interest rates because the properties are financially underwater.
Starting Thursday, Hamilton and many of the other quarter-million Orlando-area residents with “underwater” mortgages can apply for a new Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refinance program geared for pretty much everyone who owes more on a home than it’s worth — including landlords and second-home owners.
“It’s been difficult because I’m so far in the hole that no one wants to refinance me,” said Hamilton, a product developer for Longwood-based Onlinelabels.com. “But if you look at my payment history, I am a safe risk.”
The federal government’s previous foreclosure-prevention efforts, such as the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), lowered the interest rates on mortgages of home owners at risk of foreclosure because they had lost income. But the new Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) is seen as a possible game changer even for home owners who are underwater but who have stayed employed and continue making their payments.
Home owners who have missed mortgage payments in the past six months need not apply. And not all the details — such as loan limits — have been disclosed yet. But this is one of the first refinance programs that doesn’t require an appraisal to determine the value of the house.
“It’s a reward for the responsible borrower who swallowed a bitter pill but still kept moving,” said Travis BeMent, mortgage-loan originator for Home Loans Today of Orlando. “There’re a lot of people out there ready to pounce on this.”
The HARP application process begins Thursday, just as new reports show that more than half of the mortgaged homes in Metro Orlando are saturated with more debt than they are worth. In all, 254,146 mortgaged homes in the four-county metro area are in that situation, according to a report released Tuesday by the mortgage-research company Corelogic.
Even though Orlando has a greater share of underwater homes than Florida overall or the nation as a whole, the percentage of “negative-equity” houses in the metro area actually decreased slightly during the third quarter: 51.6% of the mortgaged homes in Orange, Seminole, Osceola, and Lake counties were worth less than their loans in the July-through-September period, down from 53.1% in the second quarter.
About 44% of the mortgaged houses in Florida, and 22% of those in the nation, were underwater in the third quarter, according to Tuesday’s report.
Many of those mortgages were sold to home owners who purchased at the peak of the market in 2006-07, when sales prices were double what they are today and when interest rates ranged from 5.7% to 6.5%, according to the Orlando Regional REALTOR® Association. Today, interest rates on a 30-year mortgage are less than 4%.
One cautionary note about HARP: Interest rates could change by the time a qualified property owner’s refinancing application is processed, BeMent said. Fannie and Freddie are not expected to have the ability to process the new loans until as late as next March.
But HARP, he noted, also offers a break to home owners who want to refinance for 15 or 20 years instead of 30 years. To qualify, an owner must have a mortgage backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and will likely need a credit score of at least 620.
Orlando lawyer Jeremy Sloane hasn’t missed any payments on a rental home he owns in east Orange County’s Avalon community, but he still loses money on the property every month because the mortgage he took out in 2006 far exceeds the rent he collects, now that prices have collapsed. He said he has already talked to FBC Mortgage about the new federal refinancing program.
“At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s anyone’s responsibility but myself to make the payments, but the frustrating part was that other people have been able to get out of their situation and not take a loss,” Sloane said. “This program will hopefully make it a lot more palatable renting out that house and not taking a loss.”
By Mary Shanklin, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.”
I have also found this article on SmartMoney (http://www.smartmoney.com/spend/real-estate/sizing-up-harp-20-1322685479452/) that has a great, quick write-up of the refinancing limitations. The guidelines prevent anyone who has been behind in their payments over the past six months from applying and you have to have a credit score of at least 620. If you are looking for other options, they do exist. This page will give you a full list of options for distressed homeowners – avoid foreclosure. If you would like some help reviewing these options, a private meeting is available to you.
What in the world is HAFA?
November 1, 2011
Think you might want to short sale? Click here for more information
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Real Estate and *stuff * 