Entries from Searchlight Crusade tagged with 'loans'
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...
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...
Virtues of the US Real Estate Loan Market
The scope of the problems that exist in the United States consumer mortgage market are huge. Enormously, mind-bogglingly, "How Big Is Space?" type huge. Yet, the problems are almost entirely on a retail level, when one provider works with one...
What Happens To Equity During and After Foreclosure?
"what happens to your equity when the bank forecloses" was a question I got. The answer is that most, if not all, will be dissipated by the foreclosure. Let's say you own a home currently valued at $500,000, that you...
Buying Your Final Home: Payment versus the Rate/Cost Tradeoff
Hello, Mr. Melson, I am one of your legion of fans of your www.searchlightcrusade.net website, having lucked into stumbling upon it by hyperlinking from another site. It is my goal to read EVERY ONE of your archived articles before I...
Being Realistic Saves Money on your Mortgage
If you haven't heard about the thirty year fixed rate mortgage, welcome to planet Earth and I hope we can be friends. The thirty year fixed rate loan seems to be the holy grail of all mortgages. It's what everyone...
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...
Definition of Purchase Money, Cash Out, and Rate /Term Mortgages
Purchase Money: This is a loan that enables you, in combination with your down payment, to actually purchase the property. If you spend cash to buy the property and get a loan the next day, that is not a purchase...
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...
Prepaid Interest and Why You Never Really Skip a Mortgage Payment
Many people think that mortgage interest works like rent: paid in advance before you live in the property for the month. This is not the case. Mortgage interest is paid in arrears. As you begin the month, interest begins...
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...
Why Cost Is As Important As Rate For Mortgage Loans
When I wrote 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 having a likely need to...
Mortgage Lenders Don't Want to Compete on Actual Price
Yet that is exactly what you want them to do. To avoid competing on price, they have all kinds of distractions they offer to make life more convenient, but not cheaper. They offer automatic payment options, the convenience of having...
If You're In Trouble With Your Loan, Talk To Your Lender Right Away
We got behind on house pymts & it was sent to an attorney for foreclosure.? The attorney has printed a notice in our paper on Oct 9 that it will go up for public action on Nov.16th. We found out...
Why Buyers and Refinancers Should Think About a 5/1 ARM
Right now, due to the problems we had with unsustainable loans, nobody wants to consider anything but a thirty year fixed rate loan. I understand why, especially as I've been preaching the dangers of things like short term adjustable...
Shop Loans By The Bottom Line To You, Not By What the Provider Makes
When it comes to mortgage loans, people get distracted by the darnedest things. Let's look at Wal-Mart. You think they got to be the largest retailer in the world by making less money than their competition? I assure you...
The Benefits and Limitations of 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...
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...
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...
What is Reasonable Loan Officer Compensation?
I get people asking me about how much their mortgage loan providers make, usually with an idea towards negotiating it down but often with the idea of choosing one loan or the other based upon the loan officer's compensation. This...
Feed Subscription
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries tagged 'loans'. [What is this?]
