Entries from Searchlight Crusade tagged with 'cost of money'
Yield Spread is a Beneficial Tool That Can Be Misused
If you read the papers and the congressional record on the housing crisis, you might think yield spread is the central culprit for the entire meltdown. You would be wrong. Yield spread is a beneficial tool, offered voluntarily by lenders,...
Lender Paid Mortgage Insurance or Regular PMI?
If I am buying a foreclosed home for 220k of which 200k is being financed, and the home comes back at being valued at 285k from my mortgage company, am I still required to pay PMI? If so, how in...
How to Avoid A Repeat of the Housing Market Mess
Scapegoating mortgage brokers or anyone else is not the answer, nor is prohibiting yield spread. We've been here before (in the early 1990s), congress did something remarkably similar except a little bit more sane. It didn't work then. Why would...
Wanting a More Expensive Property Than You Can Really Afford
This is one of the biggest issues with my local real estate market. Because the San Diego market has very high demand and limited supply of property, prices are high. A reasonable two bedroom condo runs around $200,000. A 1200...
Investors Aren't The Only Ones Who Can Fix Ugly Properties
A couple years ago, I took a look at a lender owned property a few miles from my office. It was ugly. I mean ugly. The yard was a mess, there was a deck that was rotting. The facade looked...
Efforts to Rehabilitate the Negative Amortization Loan
The negative amortization loan is a very popular loan with certain kinds of real estate agents and loan officers. It has two great virtues as far as they are concerned. First, it has a low payment, and despite the fact...
Saving Money by Refinancing Your Mortgage
pfadvice talks about debunking a money myth and perpetuates one of his own. He took issue with someone refinancing to lower their monthly payment, insisting instead that the term of the loan was all important. His point is understandable in...
Refinancing Out of A Negative Amortization Loan (Or Any Other) Before The Penalty Expires
HI, My name is DELETED and my husband and I are searching for a way to get out of our Negative ARM loan before we get upside down. Our problem right now is our loan to value. Our loan right...
Down Payment At Purchase or Wait Until Later To Pay The Mortgage Down?
Got a search engine hit for do I make a big down payment on a home or should make a lump sum payment after the mortgage It's hard to construct a scenario where using it as "purchase money" doesn't come...
Option ARMs and Cash Flow
One of the standard arguments I hear about Negative Amortization and Option ARM loans is that they "give the client the option to make a smaller payment if they need to." This so-called "Pick A Pay" benefit is a real...
Negative Amortization Loans - More Unfortunate Details
(This is a reprint originally from December 2005. I have reasons for reprinting it even though these loans are not currently available) My article on Option ARM and Pick a Pay - Negative Amortization Loans is one of my most...
Discovering You've Got A Bad Loan - Don't Panic!
No, this isn't the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy But having written half a dozen articles roundly critical of the way in which these loans are generally sold, it's not unusual for me to get e-mail like this one: Hi,...
Option ARM and Pick a Pay - Negative Amortization Loans
(This is a republish of one of the first articles I wrote back in early summer of 2005. Everything I wrote then still applies. I am grateful that lenders have for the most part, stopped offering these, as they were...
Developers and Incentive Money to Use Their Lender
Good Evening! My name is DELETED and my wife and I recently signed papers to purchase a property from DELETED in DELETED, CA. After our options, their lot premium, and the elevation charge, the house is listed at 425,000....
Why Renting Really Is For Suckers (And What To Do About It)
(This article was originally written in August 2006. The market and loan rate figures have changed, but the basic information is the same, as is the conclusion) Okay, you might expect a Real Estate Agent to have a post with...
The Tradeoff between Rate and Cost in Real Estate Loans
The question every good loan officer hates is "What is your lowest rate?", usually the first thing in a phone conversation. People think that this sort of rate shopping is going to help them. The fact is that it almost...
What Are Your Options If You Can't Make Your Mortgage Loan Payment?
I found you on the Web after doing some research for my parents regarding short sales and foreclosures. I appreciate your straight talk regarding the whole loan and real estate process which I know they find incredibly intimidating. Right...
Whatever the New Trick in Loans is, It's an Always Attempt to Keep From Really Competing On Price
It seems every week I get asked about some new or revived trick that loan providers are pulling. The one thing they all have in common is that they are methods to avoid competing on price. What the basic terms...
Truth In Lending and APR
(Note: This article is a reprint of one of the earliest articles I wrote, from a time when rates were higher. The principles, however, are quite valid - and even reinforced by the fact that rates now are much lower)...
Why It May Be Costly to Reject Paying Points
I hear it and read it all the time - advice that says to pre-emptively reject the possibility of paying points. People that talk to me about loan rates that tell me they will not consider any loan that...
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