Entries from Searchlight Crusade tagged with 'payment'
Investment Property and Loan Qualification
One of the things that has constricted the most with the current paranoid lending environment is the ability to use rental income to qualify for a mortgage. It seems that lenders are seizing upon any excuse to deny income...
Why The Higher Rate Loan Is Often Better
The short answer is "Because it costs less". It costs more money to get a lower rate - simple fact. It takes time to recover the extra money you spend to get a lower rate via that lowered cost of...
Military Housing Allowance and Loan Qualification
One of the things that is really helping military families afford good properties is the military housing allowance and the way that lenders treat it, making it much easier for them to qualify with regards to debt to income...
Fifteen Year Loans: Are They A Good Idea?
My take on the matter is "mostly no", but they do have some uses. The one advantage that they usually carry a lower interest rate. There have been exceptions to this, just as there have been exceptions to the...
Don't Roll Mortgage Refinance Costs Into Your Balance If You Wouldn't Pay Them Cash
One thing that is very common in the mortgage industry is masking loan costs by rolling them into your loan balance. People are less sensitive to being asked to roll this money into their loan balance than they are about...
Refinancing Your Property with Less Income Than You Had When You Bought
Hello, When my husband and I bought our home 2.5 years ago (two bedroom condo) we qualified for the loan ($250,000) based on both our incomes. Then I had a baby and stopped working. We've never missed a payment...
Refinancing When You Owe More Than The Home Is Worth
I've been looking around for an answer to this but my searches haven't returned anything useful. Say you buy a house and with that house you finance in a pool. House was $210,000 and pool is $40k. $250k mortgage....
Things to Consider If You Can't Afford Your Payment
I read a lot of the info. you have on your web page ... thank you. I don't live in San Diego so I'm not looking for a home. What I am trying to decide is whether to sell...
Temporary Rate Buydowns
Every so often I run across a reference to a "rate buydown" I don't like to use them because they don't benefit the client, but I should explain them, what they are, and how they work. A rate buydown is...
Existing Debt: The Biggest Hurdle in Mortgage Loan Qualification
I got a question about what the number one obstacle is to most people qualifying for the loan on the property they want. The answer is "existing debt." Credit cards, student loans, car payments, etcetera. It seems like more people...
Property Advertisements: Trolling for Clients and Not Very Truthful
The first thing you need to understand in reading any property advertisements is that agents write them to get people to call. They are trolling for clients, not sales. Except in the case of someone who doesn't accept dual agency...
Mortgage Loan Advertisements: Horrible and Getting Worse
(Rates were much higher when I originally wrote this) Recently, a couple of mortgage places have been advertising "30 year fixed rate loan at 5.65%" like that's the lowest rate out there and it's some kind of great loan. It's...
Issues with Divorce and Real Estate
The bottom line on this question is always, "Whatever the courts say." Divorce law is complex, and different from state to state, and even when you think you've got a clear message in the law as written, the courts may...
Cash Flow Versus Balance Sheet Accounting in Real Estate
An email: Greetings, I've recently been pitched the idea of refinancing my home and investing in apartments, or more precise, a four-plex. The idea is to refinance and get a negative amortization loan on my house. With the money I...
Zero Interest Credit Cards versus Home Equity Line Of Credit
Once upon a time, I received an email about the virtues of zero interest credit cards as opposed to Home Equity Lines of Credit. I've organized both the email and my response in order to facilitate understanding: You raise a...
Read The Full Note Before Signing
Just got a search "how can I tell if my prepayment penalty applies to selling my home" Read The Full Note. You need to do this before you sign it. I know that many people are just thinking "Sign this...
Questions You Should Ask Prospective Loan Providers
Mortgage - Questions you must ask every provider about every loan when you are shopping. Permission is hereby granted to print this out and use it for non-commercial purposes so long as no alterations are made and copyright is preserved....
Games Lenders Play (Part IV) - Lying About Loan Type
I was approached by these folks a while ago via email. I attempted to get them to write up the experience themselves but I wanted to write something about this before I completely forgot about it. This whole exchange is...
Why You Should Not Walk Away From Real Estate Because You Owe "More Than It's Worth"
I keep reading stuff on the internet advising people who are upside down to just walk away if they are a upside down on their mortgage. This has got to be right up there with the worst financial advice...
Why You Should Not Refinance Just to Lower Your Payment
I keep talking with people who don't understand that a higher interest rate on a refinance can result in a lower payment even though the cost of money goes up. In fact, they don't understand why refinancing tends to lower...
Feed Subscription
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries tagged 'payment'. [What is this?]
