Category Archives: Mortgages

Cold Hard Fact for today: The average Real Estate Agent or Loan Officer is not motivated to tell you that you can’t afford your property. For the agent you are trying to talk people out of a property after they have already fallen in love with it. Let’s face it, if it’s higher in price, …

Continue reading “Can I Afford This Property?”

One of the things that has a lot of issues is any transaction between related people. This is not limited to purely family transactions, but applies also to transfers among partnerships and their partners, corporations and their officers. The market theory holding that the value of a property is what is agreed to between a …

Continue reading “Loans On Related Party Transfers of Real Estate – Family, Corporate, or Partners”

The most recent hot thing in mortgage circles is a mortgage accelerator program. Now I’ve heard other things, most notably biweekly payment programs, called mortgage accelerators in the past, so let me take a moment to define exactly what I’m talking about. A mortgage accelerator is essentially a combined mortgage and checking account, where every …

Continue reading “Mortgage Accelerator Programs: A Good Basic Idea, But the Devil Is In the Details”

This is part and parcel of the system that’s abused. Here are sample rates from one A paper lender, picked at random, that were in effect when I originally wrote this. Rates are lower now, but it’s a good example nonetheless. These were Fannie and Freddie conforming 30 year fixed rate mortgages with full documentation …

Continue reading “Loan Rate Sheets: The Games Lenders Play With Rate and Cost Adjustments”

I live in (City 1) and recently signed a work order on a semi-custom new construction house in (City 2). My wife and I make a combined 120K income and still can’t afford a decent place in City 1. It was preapproved rather quickly from both the builder’s mortgage company and a few outside companies …

Continue reading “Relocation Loans and Developer Issues”

I got a question about what I think about those online quote services. The answer is that they vary from okay to putrid. There are two sorts of online quote sources. The first is where mortgage companies have their rates online, and people come along and browse. Those are pretty much a waste of your …

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A mortgage or Deed of Trust (they’re not the same!) is basically pledging an asset that you own as collateral for a debt. If you default on the debt, the lender takes your property. When you’re talking about real estate in the state of California (and many others), this is generally accomplished by use of …

Continue reading “Mortgages: General Concerns and Manufactured Housing”

First let me say that I really learned a lot from your postings/articles/website; its awesome that a resource like yourself exists. Now to the problem. I recently refinanced and the mortgage broker lied to me about many, many things. I was sold a negative amortization mortgage. The broker provided me a chart showing my payment …

Continue reading “You Only Need Negative Amortization Disclosures on Negative Amortization Loans”

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 at first. The lenders don’t like it, but there’s a grace period built in. Fifteen …

Continue reading “What Happens When You Can’t Make Your Real Estate Loan Payment”