Disasters and the Mortgage

after Katrina I am upside down with my mortgage.my house is uninhabitable. My flood insurance checkdoesn’t payoff the mortgage. How can i get a short payoffdue to financial hardship – i.e. relocation loss of jobs andsteady income? This is one of the hard truths about mortgages. They are a contract between you and the lender …

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 and the law in your area. Most lenders policies require the property to be titled in …

Mutual Funds: What They Are And How They Work

For being the most popular investments in the country, many people have a “black box” picture of mutual funds. Money goes in one end and more money (usually) comes out the other. Mutual companies in general are a very old concept. The Egyptians had them in ancient times, mostly for insurance purposes. For one time …

What Pre-Approval For A Mortgage Loan 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. For A paper, it should mean that you’ve fed the final loan information, including qualifying …

What I Look For In a Mutual Fund Family

Reading the papers, I see all kinds of garbage about mutual funds. Probably the biggest single piece of garbage is that only the so-called “no load” funds are any good. They focus only on the cost of the “loaded” fund, as if there is no benefit to be had from the fact that the “load” …

What Fees Can You Recover If Your Loan Is Denied?

“What mortgage fees can i recover after loan denial” was a search I got. The answer is basically, “None.” Indeed, one of your search criteria should be mortgage providers that don’t charge anything up front, except maybe a credit check fee. Those are about $20, and you should be prepared to spend that $20 several …