Today we have the final installment in the series on the new Good Faith Estimate formThe 2010 Good Faith Estimate (Page Three). Your government that should be protecting you from the worst sort of mortgage provider lies is now actively...
The second installment in the series The 2010 Good Faith Estimate (Page Two) is now up. Read it and weep - for consumers nationwide who were hoping the government would provide the solution to their troubles. Didn't happen. Instead, it's...
It's been a while, but the most recent Transaction From Hell (seller's tenants didn't want to move out - or even let inspectors in) is finally over and I've had a little bit of chance to recover. Today's new consumer...
The new consumer article for today is They Told Me Not To Make My Loan Payment. Ladies and Gentlemen, that's one of the top ways to get yourself in trouble when you're refinancing. What if your new loan cannot be...
The new consumer article for today is There Is No Fairy Godmother for Loans. To avoid becoming a government statistic, ask prospective loan providers the hard questions before you sign on the bottom line - or better yet, before you...
The new consumer article for today is Student Loans and Real Estate Loans: Default, Repayment vs. Nonpayment and Consolidation. These are the three issues that are most common for loan applicants to run afould of....
The new consumer article for today is Investment Property and Loan Qualification. It has become exceedingly difficult to get credit for rental income when you apply for a new mortgage, with the upshot being that when the lender won't agree...
The new consumer article for today is Military Housing Allowance and Loan Qualification. For all the nonsense the military puts up with, this is one instance where the government treats them better than just about any other employer....
The new consumer article for today is Fifteen Year Loans: Are They A Good Idea?. Lots of nonsense gets put out there about fifteen year loans, and to many people there is a certain cachet to only needing fifteen years...
This morning I updated my popular article Refinancing When You Owe More Than The Home Is Worth, talking about the changes in the possibilities since I originally wrote it. I really want to be writing more original stuff, but...
The new consumer article for today is The Hope (Dashed) For Homeowners Program. I really thought that most folks understood this was all political theater - unlike the $700 Billion for lenders who screwed up by the numbers, intentionally disregarding...
Today's new consumer article is Why You Should Not Walk Away From Upside-Down Real Estate. You shouldn't, if there is any alternative. Doing so takes a theoretical loss on paper and turns it into something concrete with real world consequences....
Today's new consumer article is Mortgage Accelerators, Money Merge, and Paying Your Mortgage Down, which deals bluntly with the contention that these programs that allegedly "pay off your mortgage in a fraction of the time" actually help. They don't. I...
Today's new consumer article is What If You Cannot Refinance Later?, which addresses a very real concern that there are many reasons why people may not be able to refinance their property at a later date, so even though the...
A while ago I did an article entitled Debt Consolidation Refinance - Pros and Cons. It's a good article, if I do say so myself. Nonetheless, I think there's more to say on the subject, not just from a point...
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...
(Note: As of the time I updated this, the website of the company was off-line. I do not know why and a casual perusal of search engine results is uninformative) If that title seems to be damning with faint praise,...
There are many ways of suckering real estate consumers, and cash as an inducement to get people to swallow a raw deal is one of the most common. From sellers (usually developers), "free" upgrades are one of the most common....
That's one of the questions I've been asked, and it deserves an answer. Know that there is some flexibility to the answer, as there are embedded trade offs. You don't need as much of an income, or as high of...
You've probably heard the horror stories, and I've mentioned the possibility more than once. Some unsuspecting person is looking at properties beyond their price range, and it therefore has all kinds of attractive features that properties which are in their...
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