Entries from Searchlight Crusade tagged with 'loan qualification'
Buying Teardown Properties and Condemned Buildings
Dear Mr. Melson: My husband and I are great fans of your Searchlight Crusade essays. Excellent work! In today's mortgage-mess market, will lenders reject loan applications from average buyers (not investors) wanting to purchase acreage with a teardown outside the...
Real Estate: Getting From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be
When I'm driving, and get to busy main streets, I hate turning left onto major streets unless there's a light there. Traffic is coming hard both ways, usually at high speeds, and with only intermittent breaks in each direction. If...
Signing Off Loan Conditions
what is a underwriter final "sign off" on the conditions First off, it needs to be mentioned that a good loan officer gathers information and puts a full package, with all of the information an underwriter should need, before...
Helping Yourself Qualify for a Home Loan
There are a fair number of specific helpful suggestions to make in helping you purchase a home. All of them revolve around the loan. Let's face it, the loan is far and away the most hypothetical and uncertain part about...
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 Do Purchase Escrows Fall Apart? (And Why Is It Happening More Often?)
There have always been real estate transactions that fall apart. The reasons why they fall apart are as varied as the people who enter into the transaction in the first place. Let's get back to the very basics for...
Protecting My Buyer Clients Good Faith Deposit
The buyer's deposit is always at risk. This is just a fact of real estate transactions. I could pretend it's not so, but that wouldn't keep the deposit from being at risk - it would just make me a...
What Exactly do First Time Home Buyers Need?
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...
Unsustainable Loans You Should Not Use to Purchase a Property
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...
Buying Out A Partner - With Complications
First of all I love the information on the site. I've done some research into buying a home and have talked to several people who have bought homes and I can never believe the stories I've heard. My response...
What Happens If I Don't Sign Mortgage Documents?
That was a question that brought someone to the site and the answer is very simple: they don't give you the loan. You haven't agreed to pay them back, so why should they? There are two major cases of this,...
A Q&A for First Time Buyer Advice
(This is a reprint from December 15, 2006 that still has quite a bit to offer. There have been market changes which I will talk about but the original stands up well) This was a Q&A post from a certain...
How to Tell If You Can Afford This Property
Note: Since this article was originally written, there have been changes in the loan marketplace. The negative amortization loan is no longer available and the damage it did has finally become obvious to everyone with pretense of a functioning brain....
Pre-Qualification
One of the most useless and overworked items in the real estate industry today is the pre-qualification for a loan. Sellers want buyers to be "pre-qualified", and buyers are seeking "pre-qualification" to convince buyers they are serious. The level of...
Time in Line of Work for Mortgage Qualification - What Counts?
Question from an e-mail: Hi, I have a question about mortgages. My boyfriend and I are looking to buy a home, and since I have recently quit my job he would be the primary applicant. He makes $44k and we...
Writing Real Estate Purchase Offers to Beat Higher Competing Offers
This article was inspired by closing one of many transactions where my clients did not make the high bid (or even close), but did get the fully negotiated purchase contract and the property. By building an airtight case that...
Consult a Loan Officer Before You Make a Purchase Offer
I don't know how many people have told me the story of the Purchase Offer That Was Accepted But Couldn't Be Done. They come to me because they lost their deposit or are about to and they want some way...
The New, Allegedly Improved Good Faith Estimate (Page Three)
This is the conclusion of the series begun in Page One and continued in Page Two Page Three is where the most blatant lies of this whole piece take place, and the first part of page three is where...
The New, Allegedly Improved Good Faith Estimate (Page One)
I had a great rant about the limitations of the Good Faith Estimate all planned out in my head when I when I was in the very first stages of planning this website in my head. It was the first...
My Sixty Second Public Service Announcement about Buying Real Estate
Here was an idea I had: Pack a list of the most important things consumers need to know about buying real estate, as packed into the words I can say in sixty seconds without sounding like an over-clocked squirrel. Here...
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