Number One Home Loans

I bought my home 4 years ago, and it appraised at $101,000. I bought it through a mortgage company, on a 30 year loan. Now that I can afford to pay a little more I’d like to redo my loan, and add my car payment on with it on a 15 year loan. The problem is that the mortgage company had a stipulation that they got to do my 2nd and 3rd mortgage, which they want to charge thousands of dollars in fees to do. Can I go through my local bank and do a home equity loan using my house as collaterol, and pay of the mortgage company?

depends what the rate is on the first mortgage.
if it’s less than 6.25% than you might want to think twice about refinancing.
FHA allows you to go up to 95% ltv…and with good rates.
You can still refi to a 30yr fixed mortgage, and make payments as it was a 15yr mortgage. You dont want to strap yourself for money if you can afford ‘a little more’.

My 2nd mortgage is owned by BofA and since BofA bought out country wide my 1st mortgage is now owned by BofA as well. I’m considering walking away since i’m upside down, should i stop paying both mortagages since they are owned by the same bank? and should I also close my savings and checking account at BoA?

WOW! The best thing to do before taking any action is speak to an attorney. It is not always as easy as "walking away" as the bank could obtain a deficiency judgment against you if they are unable to sell the home for what is owed on the mortgages.

Have you looked into where you would live if you left the home and how that will impact your life? Just because you are "upside down" in the house does not mean that you should not continue to live there as you might end up with less home for the same payment someplace else. And defaulting on the mortgages will damage your credit rating and impact future credit purchases (such as a car) and interest rates for several years.

Housing values will come back, it will just take some time. And if you can afford the payments, staying where you are might be the best choice.

If you cannot afford the payments, there are other options available such as renegotiating the interest rates on your mortgages.

I’m not very familiar with the whole refinancing concept yet so I’m not sure how long one must wait for the money. Are there factors taken into account to figure out an estimate? I’ve heard it takes about a month, but then again, I’m just a noob at this.

depends on the lender and your situation. A month the average time table, but don’t count on it until the money is in your hand. There is a 3 day waiting period after you close that allows you to change your mind.

I hear that if a bank goes under other banks will buy these mortgages. But with so many mortgages exceeding values of homes, many banks might not want to buy the mortgages. What would happen if a bank goes under, and no one wants to buy their crappy mortgages?

It would not happen. Some other lender would purchase the mortgages, simply because there is value there. No bank has ALL crappy mortgages. Another lender(s) will analyze the quality of the ‘paper’ and make a decision what the entire package is worth, and would purchase same, perhaps for less than the actual outstanding amount.

First Time Home Buyers use FHA Mortgage and Seller Paid Closing Costs to Buy Real Estate Now. Best Market Conditions for Foreclosures and Short Sales in Decades. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 7 (Excerpt)

The old rules no longer apply and Suze Ormond should know that.

We have Dan Havey the author of Real Estates Future in the studio today.

Michael, I was just curious, back when I got into the industry many, many years ago there used to be a rule of thumb that if you were going to refinance you had to lower your interest rate by at least two percent and I know as time went along and products changed that really became unnecessary, but I am just curious in todays mortgage market its a lot different than we were dealing with even two years ago. Is that still true that there is a 2% rule? Whats going on now?

I happened to catch Suze Orman on television and she was talking about mortgages, the caller who called in to the program, the question became I believe similar to what Dan just asked, her comment was that basically if you’re in 6% interest rate or above now is the time to re-fi. That is what she said, a blanket recommendation. I know a lot of people put a lot of credence into what she says, maybe you could speak to that, the lowest interest rates you’ve seen in your career, you have been doing this for a while.

I have, and they are. You know there was a lot of speak the last couple weeks about the Fed, the Fed funds rate by the way is the lowest it’s ever been in history. As of this week the discount rate is to the point that banks are lending money to each other at nothing, the Fed funds rate for intrabank lending is at zero, the problem is the banks don’t have any money.

To be serious about the refinancing, because its a serious topic, I think people are starting to see their mail boxes filled with lots of advertising crap about refinance. I believe that doing the refinance is no different from doing a loan modification or buying a house, you need to sit down with the human being that’s local, that you can know is a legitimate source. You’re going to give all this personal information about you, your family, your kids, your Social Security number, you want to make sure you have somebody there that you know whos legit.

In regard to the old rule of thumb 2%, nothing could be further from the truth, and I will expand, but to the point of Ms Ormond that if youre at 6% or higher, that is a blanket statement and blanket statements never work. We just did a refinance for a guy who was at 5 1/2%, and it makes sense. Every situation is different, as far as how much do I have to lower my interest rate to make it work? It depends on the type of mortgage that you get.

The only type of loan to get today in December of 2008 is a 30 year fixed. I know that one of the things that was really interesting to me, and that you and I have referred clients to one another for several years, so we share a number of clients, were familiar with those families and those households, and this is Wednesday, on Monday and Tuesday of this week I’ve had seven phone calls from clients who you’ve already done loans for, refinances for, asking if this is the time to refinance a loan that is only a couple years old.

And I know in several of those cases the answer is yes you’re actually helping families right now with that process. I am and we do. To answer the question, you need to determine what the payback term is, in other words when your refinance is done it’s a new loan, there’s the title insurance, appraisals, lots of different things may need to be done, not in every case, but in most cases there are costs associated with that. The cost has to be offset by the amount of savings. Its a breakeven analysis

Absolutely it is, the shorter the breakeven the better the loan. I am working on a case right now which is going to be done in the next couple of days where the guy lowered his interest rate by an1/8 of a percent and it made sense for him. It’s not for everybody, 2 percent or lower, 2% is significant, now you’re talking about really significant savings in terms of cash flow…

Duration : 0:6:31

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Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) — Jeana Curro, director of mortgage strategy at UBS Securities, talks with Bloomberg’s Lori Rothman about the outlook for U.S. mortgage rates after the Federal Reserve ends its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities on Feb. 1.
Curro also discusses the outlook for the mortgage-bond market. Bloomberg’s Brian Luke also speaks. (Source: Bloomberg)

Duration : 0:2:48

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If you’re a qualified veteran and ready to buy a home, CalVet is here to meet your home financing needs!

Duration : 0:1:2

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I’m currently on a repayment plan on a rental property for the 1st mortgage. The 2nd has been charged off by EMC mortgage and sent to an outsourced collection company called LCS. Does anyone have any experience on how to deal with LCS and what rights I have to settle this 2nd mortgage. Can they freeze my assets? Will they seek a Judgment?

Yeah, they are working on seizing assets, not freezing them (LOL).

What they can and can not do depends on your state. And yes, they will need a judgement, but that will be a piece of cake, you are either repaying the debt or not.

If I can not pay a home equity line of credit with one bank but I continue to pay the 1st mortgage what action does the home equity line of credit holder take? Both loans are up to date, but I will be unable to pay the HELOC much longer. I do not live in the property in question. It is vacant and with a realtor but it is in Florida and the value is dropping almost daily due to the crisis in the real estate market in florida. Should I let the banks forclose?

You never want to let them foreclose on you, period. I am sure you still have equity in your home. You should try and sell or refinance, and yes, they still will refinance you with those late payments. What you need to know if what your home is worth and what you owe on the two loans total. If you could refinance the two together and get one loan and a lower rate/payment, you should be fine. If you are not going to pay one of them, I think the 2nd is what not to pay, but that payment is probably much less, right?

I just realized you said it was vacant with a realtor and CONTRARY to what many think, you CAN refinance even if a property has been listed for sale lately. Just change the status to cancelled or withdrawn and talk to a mortgage broker that knows the business well. Even vacant homes can be refinanced. I would suggest trying to refinance and have your realtor list this for rent. I am sitting on a vacant home in Cape Coral FL that I already did a cash out refinance on and it has been vacant almost a year. It sucks to use the equity in the home to keep it going but it is better than getting late payments and/or foreclosure.

I want to know how banks set the interest rates for mortgages. All I know is that they move up and down with the fed funds rate and discount rate (Correct me if I am wrong). Does anyone know all factors that play into the rates that lenders come with? Is there a way to calculate or give more or less weight to any one of them? Thank you.

That is not to say that when the fed lowers rates the mortgage rates don’t tend to fall slightly but not in unison.

The question i think you want to know is why the rate quotes differ so much does. The fact is all mortgage professionals are finding rates from the same pond so to speak.
lenders and brokers have rate sheets it shows the rates that would be available to you what most people don’t know….simply put it shows the rate with the borrower paying no points to get a lower rate and then the other which is it shows the lender or broker your rate that would pay him a yield spread! 1/2% of loan amount to as much as 3% of your loan amount

And in some cases the borrower has no idea of this! Or it is explained away when you see a high APR by saying the reason is because of the closing costs. Closing costs do move the apr higher but considering the apr is factored over the life of the loan 30 years or whatever your term is.

The term is yield spread or back end money. most brokers and lenders even banks split the amount they want to make between the lender fee and yield spread so if a lender wants to make 3% then they show half in the front of 1 1/2 % lender fee.
Borrowers should always focus on the rate. It is unfortunate that so many brokers use the raising of rates to make more money and that doing this can cost the borrowers tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in added interest.

The simple fact is you need to use a loan comparison calculator to show the differences in loan offers. 1/2 % higher rate on a 30 yr fixed with a 250k home loan is 48,750 in additional interest!
Remember that the majority of the first 10 years of mortgage payments go toward the interest you owe!

HERE IS A CALCULATOR TO SEETHE BIG PICTURE