Entries from Dan Melson's La Mesa Real Estate and Mortgage Website tagged with 'credit'
New Consumer Article: Student Loans and Real Estate Loans: Default, Repayment vs. Nonpayment and Consolidation
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....
New Consumer Article: It Is Illegal Under RESPA to Require Even Prequalification With a Particular Lender
The new consumer article for today is It Is Illegal Under RESPA to Require Even Prequalification With a Particular Lender, debunks the legality of a practice that listing agents are trying to bring back or institute with the increase in...
New Consumer Article: Will I Qualify for the Loan to Buy Real Estate During The Market Meltdown?
Today's new consumer article is Will I Qualify for the Loan to Buy Real Estate During The Market Meltdown?, which helps people answer the question of whether they will qualify for and be able to get a loan during the...
New Consumer Article: When Loan Modification Will Not Help, or Is Not Appropriate
Today's new consumer article is When Loan Modification Will Not Help, or Is Not Appropriate, in which I write about the major situations where trying for a mortgage loan modification will not help you....
New Consumer Article September 9, 2008
Today's new consumer article is Personal Loans For A Real Estate Down Payment, which discusses an uncommon but doable alternative for rapidly acquiring a down payment. It has significant downsides even if done correctly, and if you do it wrong...
New Consumer Article August 28th, 2008
Today's new consumer article is Rent to Own and Lease With Option to Buy, which talks about one alternative to the traditional sale that usually gets a seller a higher price, while not requiring a buyer to come up with...
Non-Recourse Purchase Money Loans in California
do you agree that a non recourse loan on a single family home is loaned with out financial risk to the borrower... if they do not want to keep their home when the market drops below what they owe,...
What to Do When Your Loan is Declined
Loans are declined, or actually, the next thing to it, all the time. It is pretty rare for a loan to be outright rejected; I do not recall ever having had a loan outright rejected. That's a sign of a...
Buying or Selling Subject to Existing Deeds of Trust
This is something that often happens with highly appreciated properties where the owner can no longer keep up the payments, they get hit with a notice of default, and along comes Joe or Jane seemingly riding to the rescue on...
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...
Paying Off Old Past Due Bills Without Hurting Your Credit
People sometimes ask how they can improve their credit if they have old collections on their credit record. The answer is NOT to simply pay them. Paying off a five year old collection can cause your credit score to drop...
Trying to Hurry Real Estate - Don't
Hi--I just found your site today. The best I've ever seen/read, etc. Thank You!! I do have a question I didn't see addressed regarding our current situation/dillemma: Our present home, which we've lived in for 8 years, is worth...
Straw Buyer Fraud
I've gotten several emails to articles recently having to do with straw buyers, and more search hits. Red flags preceded home-fraud lawsuit and Fraud case hits home seem to cover one of these weasels particularly well. A "straw buyer" is...
Multiple Mortgage Inquiries Do Not Drop Your Credit Score
>broker incurred 19 inquires in 1 week dropping my score. B.S. I'd go the full Penn and Teller on this one if I wasn't trying to stay family friendly. The law is clear on this one, and practice is fully...
Making Certain You Shop Your Mortgage - Whether You Want To Or Not
Ken Harney has some welcome news on Move afoot to end uninvited mortgage pitches To a certain extent, these are a good thing for consumers. However, it gets way overdone. What happens is this. Let's say I get a client...
Is a VA Loan a Good Deal?
Veterans Administration, or VA loans, are government guaranteed loans available to veterans and active duty members of the armed services, that enable them to purchase homes for not money down. In fact, VA loans go up to 103 percent of...
Issues Relating to One Spouse Qualifying For A Loan On Their Own
"I am married but want to refinance my house only in my name. What do I have to do?" This is actually pretty easy, and there are at least two ways to potentially accomplish this, depending upon lender policy...
What Pre-Approval Should Mean
People are understandably hazy on the difference between pre-qualification and pre-approval. Pre-qualification is a non-rigorous process whereby somebody says that based upon the information as presented to them, it appears you'll qualify for the loan. Pre-approval should be more rigorous....
Loan Cosigners in Real Estate - A Lot of Risk For Not Much Gain
Every so often I get questions about loan cosigners. The main borrowers do not qualify on their own, so they get someone - most often mom and dad - to cosign. Now this is a different thing, or so I...
Practical Applications: Credit Cards versus Home Equity Line Of Credit
I got an email raising a lot of issues. Some I'm going to deal with very quickly, others I'm going to spend some effort on, but nothing as in depth as a full article would have. I'm going to keep...
Getting Another Mortgage Loan After A Short Sale
Our home isn't worth what we owe. So say you were just an average person selling and buying a house, meaning you put your house up for sale, get a contract to purchase on it then go put in offer...
Quitclaiming Property with a Mortgage
I am currently living with my parents and they wish to deed of gift their house to me but they still have a remaining mortgage on it. Is it possible to do this or do they have to pay off...
Can Someone Be Added to an Existing Mortgage?
Got a search for that, and it occurred to me that it is a valid question. The answer is yes. The degree varies. You can simply contact the bank to make yourself responsible for payment. They are usually happy to...
Do You Have to Lose Your Home in Bankruptcy?
That was a question I was asked via email. The answer is "No." You don't have to lose your home in bankruptcy. I've done loans for many clients who kept their homes through bankruptcy. But they kept their mortgage payments...
Improving your Credit Score and Tradelines
Working with a borrower all day today. Truly ugly situation because he doesn't have a long history of credit, and this is the major obstacle to getting the loan done. He actually makes the money, and has a sufficient history...
Bankruptcy and Avoiding Foreclosure
How do I keep my home after filing bankruptcy. The Mortgage company wants to foreclose? I want to know if there is anyway to keep the home even after filing chapter 7 bankruptcy. I want to know if there...
The "We'll Keep You In Your Property" Scam
I've been aware of this scam for some time, but with a larger than normal number of people in foreclosure or otherwise at the end of their rope, it's probably past time to cover this. It is a pure scam...
Listing Agents and Pre-Approvals or Pre-Qualifications
It has become very trendy to ask for pre-approvals on loans, because so many escrows are falling through. Unfortunately, as I have explained in the past, Loan Pre-Approval Means Nothing, and prequalification means even less. Both are literally wasted paper....
Credit Lines: Number and Length of Time Open
from an email: On a related note, I hope you might have some advice for us. My husband and I just sold our condo. But we are NOT buying at the moment. Instead we are renting. (Not sure where we...
Approaching the Loan Application Process - What Loan Will You Qualify For?
On of the biggest time and money wasters in real estate is people that apply for the wrong loans - loans that they can never qualify for because they can't meet the guidelines, or can't prove they meet the guidelines,...
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 You Tell If A Buyer is Qualified?
A high percentage of buyers out there have no idea of how qualified they really are themselves. They have no clue as to any of the major factors in determining credit-worthiness. To be fair, there are dozens, if not hundreds,...
Loan Qualification Standards - "Loanbusters"
This is definitely not a "Who you gonna call?" I've done a couple articles in the recent past on the two ratios, debt to income and loan to value. Nonetheless, there exist a plethora of reasons why someone can be...
Straw Buyers and Their Liabilities
Over the last few years, a lot of folks have gotten used to zero real scrutiny of transactions. With values increasing rapidly, it was hard to lose money on real estate, whether you were purchaser or lender. One of the...
What Happens When You Can't Make Your Real Estate Loan Payment
I've written a lot here about how to manage your mortgage so that you control it instead of it controlling you. Let's consider what happens when that project fails. If you don't pay your mortgage, on time, no big deal...
The Biggest Hurdle in Mortgage Loan Qualification: Existing Debt
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...
Buying Real Estate Without A Source of Income Or When You Are Changing Careers
I've found several of your mortgage articles very helpful, and wondered if you could help me find a way to solve the dilemma I've been presented with by a loan officer at my bank. My husband is Active Duty...
Credit Reports: What They Are and How They Work
I recently went to a "direct from the providers" seminar on credit reports and credit scores. Some of this information has changed from previous information, and some of it will change in the future. Credit Reporting, FICO scores, and related...
How to Build Credit So You Qualify for a Home Loan
My husband and I are completely debt free right now. However, we are wanting to buy a house in the future and I see that as quite probably requiring a loan. What should I do to make sure that...
Rental History, Payment Shock, and Mortgage Applications
First, I just got engaged, and my fiancee and I have been discussing what we want in a house after we get married. It will be the first house for both of us. She spent the last two years...
100% Financing: Buying A Home With Zero Down Payment
Is there any program that i can qualify for a home with no down payment? Lots of them. We may not be talking number of grains of sand on the beach or drops of water in the ocean, but...
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