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Matching entries from Dan Melson's Website
Excerpt from What Consumers Need to Know About Mortgages
Sorry this is late. There was some behind the scenes drama; the server the website was hosted on had a crash and the website had to be migrated and for boring technical reasons I couldn't log in to some functions...
Real Loans for Real People February 3rd, 2009
The Best Loans Right NOW Conforming Rates Thirty Year Fixed Rate Loans 4.875% 30 Year fixed rate loan, with one point (total discount and origination) to the consumer and NO PREPAYMENT PENALTIES!. Assuming a $400,000 loan, Payment $2117, APR 5.003!...
Real Loans For Real People October 14, 2008
I have to own up to the huge hike in rates we had. I wrote why it happened here. I would not refinance now, given a choice, but if you want to buy properties while the price is this far...
Consumer Articles: Week in Review July 13th, 2008
Newly Written Articles How to Buy a Bargain Property, a discussion of what sorts of properties to look for. Buying Your Final Home: Payment versus the Rate/Cost Tradeoff, in which I discuss why you want to pay attention to...
New Consumer Article July 9, 2008
Today's new consumer article is Buying Your Final Home: Payment versus the Rate/Cost Tradeoff, a discussion of why, even though you may have no heirs and may never be intending to sell, you should still shop for a loan...
How Can I Lower The Down Payment Requirements So I Can Buy Real Estate?
With a few lenders starting to loosen their requirements slightly in San Diego, it's becoming increasingly obvious that the bottom is behind us. However, the issue has now become, "I don't have much of a down payment. How do...
Why Cost Is As Important As Rate For Mortgage Loans
A few days ago I wrote an article explaining why borrowers should consider a 5/1 ARM, because the tradeoff between rate and cost is lower for that loan, and most people don't keep their loans 5 years anyway, so...
Loan Assumption and Assumable Loans
Every once in a while, the subject of assumable loans comes up. An assumable loan is one where the owner of a property has the ability to pass the loan along with the property in a sale. In other...
April 2008: Why Loan Rates Are Cheap
Despite all the hype, rates (or, actually, the tradeoff between rate and cost) are pretty darned good right now. I'm at home right now, but yesterday, for someone with average credit (national median) and 20% down payment or equity, I...
Real Estate: Giving Someone a Monopoly Does Not Encourage Top Performance
From an e-mail I've been talking to agents lately and I ask them about the things I've learned about from your site. I thought I would say things like "I want to apply for a backup loan" and they would...
Forty and Fifty Year Mortgages
Recently, the forty year mortgage has started to make a comeback, and a few lenders have started introducing the fifty year mortgage. The reason, straight from the horse's mouth, the lender's representatives, is lowered payments. In an uncertain and unstable...
Changing Rates and Streamline Refinancing - Reasons to Love Zero Cost Loans and Hybrid ARMs
Rates move up and down constantly. This is one of the strongest reasons both Intelligent consumers and intelligent loan officers love zero cost loans. Every time rates drop, I call or send an e-mail to those clients who signed...
Is a VA Loan a Good Deal?
Veterans Administration, or VA loans, are government guaranteed loans available to veterans and active duty members of the armed services, that enable them to purchase homes for not money down. In fact, VA loans go up to 103 percent of...
Loan Cosigners in Real Estate - A Lot of Risk For Not Much Gain
Every so often I get questions about loan cosigners. The main borrowers do not qualify on their own, so they get someone - most often mom and dad - to cosign. Now this is a different thing, or so I...
Dissecting the "Lending Game"
(This was written some time ago, when rates were higher, but the principles involved are the same) Right now X is offering me a loan that looks something like this: 80/20 No down payment On the /80: 6.5% FIXED interest...
Let Me Tell You About The Loan You Could Have Had
Not interested? Most people aren't when it's talking about how they got taken advantage of in the past. First off, it's in the past so it is over and done with, and there's no use dwelling on it, right? Second,...
Real Estate and Loan Agents Selling Mortgage Life Insurance
Just got another in a long series of emails about this horrid product: (identifying details redacted) Learn How To Make More Money Per Client ($500-$1000) In This Workshop You Will Learn Why The Most Successful Mortgage & Real Estate Professionals...
Listing: Understand Your Target Market
One of the hard things to get through to sellers is the characteristics of the sort of buyers they need in order to have a successful transaction. If a given set of prospective buyers can't afford the property, they might...
Loan Rate Sheets: An example, and the games lenders play
This is something I probably should have covered quite some time ago, as it's part and parcel of the system that's abused. Here are sample rates from one A paper lender, picked at random, that were in effect a few...
Time In Line of Work
From an email: Anyway, my wife and I are about to purchase a place here in the X area and we've been hearing that "a tough loan" line due to the fact that I'm only 10 months into my new...
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