Mortgage Information

Acting Federal Housing Administration Commissioner Carol J. Galante announced FHA will extend its temporary waiver of the 90 day anti-flipping regulations through the end of 2012. According to Commissioner Galante, "the new extension will permit buyers to continue to use FHA-insured financing to purchase HUD-owned properties, bank-owned properties, or properties resold through private sales. It will allow homes to resell as quickly as possible, helping to stabilize real estate prices and to r... Read Full Post

Once again, inaction by Congress has allowed mortgage loan limits to be decreased as of the first of this month. The change impacts the maximum amount of a home loan that qualifies for funding through FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In 2008, Congress raised the limits up to $729,750 in some areas to make larger mortgages available in higher priced housing markets. The new limits will now drop FHA and GSE loan limits to 115% of local area median home price with a cap of $625,500 (from the cur... Read Full Post

Apparently, a huge number of condominium associations around the country missed the deadline for applying for project approval recertification under FHA guidelines. Such a silly move has left many unit owners crying foul with their association's management company and board of directors. In today's real estate market, you can hardly blame them. By letting their condo project's fall off the approved complex list, an increasingly important source of mortgage money becomes unavailable both for n... Read Full Post

In an effort to help curb homeowners who are upside down on their mortgages from moving to take a strategic default, Fannie Mae is enacting tougher guidelines to make such a move more costly and painful. Wednesday's announcement by the government-controlled mortgage giant said it would instruct the companies servicing its loans to recommend when it should pursue a so-called deficiency judgment - a court order requiring a defaulting borrower to pay any remaining unpaid portion of the loan afte... Read Full Post

Last week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that FHA-insured homeowners experiencing problems caused by defective drywall may be eligible for assistance to help them rehabilitate their homes. In addition, HUD's Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program may also be a resource for local communities to help families facing financial hardship while trying to combat the ongoing problem. Declaring defective drywall to be a FHA Type 1 Special Forbearance, F... Read Full Post

Hardly a few days go by that we don't get an inquiry from either one of our industry peers or a prospective client as to why they can't get mortgage financing for their recent condo purchase. The reasons are many and in most instances very confusing. Especially if you're talking about buying a condo in Florida. Since the majority of our lending business is now done within this state, I'm going to focus on the problems we are facing here with getting financing for a condo. However, many of the... Read Full Post

We just wanted to give you all a reminder that beginning July 30, the Federal Reserve Board's new Mortgage Disclosure Improvement Act (MDIA) goes into effect. The rule will not only change the way the Truth In Lending Act (TILA) is disclosed to consumers, it may also lengthen the time it takes to get your clients home loans closed. Highlights of MIDA's new requirements include the following: TILA disclosures apply to any closed-end extension of credit secured by the dwelling of a consumer inc... Read Full Post

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) released a preliminary analysis yesterday of how the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) is impacting the housing market. As should have been expected, the numbers seem to reflect an adverse impact. I say this not only because of the numbers themselves, but because anyone who has been involved in the industry for a long time knows, when the government tries to use poorly thought out and knee jerk reaction legislation to influence outcomes, there ar... Read Full Post

There appears to be a fair amount of confusion over the new First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit that was included in the recently passed Housing and Economic Act of 2008. Quite frankly, it is not surprising. While driving over this past holiday weekend, we heard at least four different radio ads by various companies and all of them made it seem like this program was a free ride. The reality is something else altogether. Here’s how the program actually works: To be eligible, home buyers must no... Read Full Post

Effective July 14, 2008, FHA will implement a risk based premium policy for its mortgage insurance (MI) on 1 to 4 unit single family mortgages. The premiums will vary slightly based on the term of the loan (i.e. 30Yr versus 15Yr), so for the purposes of this post, we have focused on the single family premiums for a loan term over 15 years. As with everything surrounding today's mortgage market, these new guidelines are another step towards tighter qualification standards and higher borrower c... Read Full Post