Entries from Searchlight Crusade tagged with 'payment'
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...
Biweekly Mortgage Spam
Sometimes spam makes writing an article all too easy. Here is a piece of spam I got, probably because my email at work contains "realestate.com", with identifying information taken out. This goes to show that the financial ignorance of most...
How Can A Temporary Buydown Help Realtors and Agents?
That was a question I got. The answer is that it doesn't make a difference, but it used to be one more way you could be conned or cozened into buying a more expensive property than you could really afford....
Mortgage Accelerators, Money Merge, and Paying Your Mortgage Down
My article Debunking the Money Merge Account Scam has been getting a lot of attention and a large amount of hate mail lately. The scamsters that sell these things love to send me hate mail for exposing the fact that...
Magical Thinking About Mortgage Loans
(This is an updated reprint of an article written in February 2007. The Era of Make Believe Loans that made it easier to qualify people for inflated loan amounts ended abruptly a few days later, but the sort of thinking...
What If You Cannot Refinance Later?
People always assume they'll be able to refinance later. Even most of my articles have it as an implicit assumption. But what if you can't refinance later? There are situations where it happens. Many situations, as millions of people...
Games Lenders Play, Part VII - Selling Mortgage Accelerator Programs
I thought I'd share this with you as an example of the sort of mind set to beware. This is a real email I received, with identifying information redacted. I found you through the DELETED web site and I thought...
Don't Allow Yourself To Become A Victim of Bad Real Estate Practice
This woman made herself a victim stayed in a hotel for 7 weeks looking for my "Dream Home." And, when I found it, even though it wasn't in my price range, I knew I would do anything I could to...
Probate and Foreclosure and Planning Ahead
This question brought someone to my site: If my house is going into foreclosure but the house is also in probate, can the lender actually go forward with the foreclosure sale while the house is in probate? The short answer...
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...
The Lure and the Trap of Debt Consolidation - Payment Versus Cost of Interest
A while ago I did an article entitled Debt Consolidation Refinance - Doing it Wrong vs. Doing it Right. It's a good article, if I do say so myself. Nonetheless, I think there's more to say on the subject, not...
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...
How Do I Get Rid of Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI)?
"How do I remove PMI?" was a question that I got. First off, a definition. Private Mortgage Insurance, often abbreviated PMI, is an insurance policy that the bank may make you buy in order to get the loan. It is...
One Loan Versus Two Loans
One of the questions we ask all the time is whether to do your financing as one loan or two loans. Until comparatively recently, one loan was the default option, but people have been learning that splitting their home financing...
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...
Don't Let Cash Distract You From Cost In Real Estate
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....
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