what is a underwriter final “sign off” on the conditions First off, it needs to be mentioned that a good loan officer gathers information and puts a full package, with all of the information an underwriter should need, before submitting the package to the underwriter. That’s how you get loans through quick and clean. Give …
Category Archives: Mortgages
Removing Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI)
“How do I remove PMI?” 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 a monthly surcharge based upon a percentage of your entire principal balance. You pay for it, but the bank is the …
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Mortgage Closing Costs: What is Real and What is Junk?
The easy, general rule is that legitimate expenses all have easily understood explanations in plain English, they are all for specific services, and if they are performed by third parties, there are associated invoices or receipts that you can see. Let’s haul out the Mortgage Loan Disclosure Statement (California) or Good Faith Estimate (elsewhere), and …
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Investing in Second Trust Deeds
From an email:I’ve been enjoying your blog posts on mortgages. I’ve learned more from you about what to expect than I have from any other source, and I’ve gotten 10 mortgages in my life. I was reading Larry William’s website this week, and on there I saw one of his newsletters from last summer:http://www.ireallytrade.com/http://www.ireallytrade.com/freestuff.htmthe May …
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 most real estate transactions. If there is a non-loan related problem, chances are that you …
Did That Slap On The Back Leave a Knife?
One of the things the place I work does to attract clients is advertise foreclosure lists to our clients. Several times a week, people call and ask for the lists, and we say, “Great! Just come on down, fill out a loan package and an agency agreement, and we’ll get them to you fresh every …
Appraisers Speak Out Against “Make The Deal”
Appraisers Petition Against “Make The Deal” I’ve spoken about these issues before in this post. I’ve certainly heard of plenty of abuse on both sides of this equation, and there is plenty of motivation for lenders to abuse the situation by requiring a higher than “real” appraisal value. Still, I think that by reading only …
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“Lenders Are All The Same”
Just like Mohandas Gandhi and Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were all human beings, lenders make money by lending money to people who want it. That’s about the limit of the truth in that statement. Lenders do, by and large, get their money to lend from the bond market. But not all lenders get …
Short Payoffs
A while ago I wrote an article called, “What Happens When You Can’t Make Your Real Estate Loan Payment.” This is kind of a continuation of that, as I got a search that asked, “What is necessary to persuade a bank to accept a short payoff on a mortgage” Poverty. In a word, poverty. You …
Lump Sum Payments on a Mortgage and Alternative Investments
This one came from a search engine: amortization of real estate loans early payoff based on a lump sum payment This is one of the smart things you can do. Not necessarily the smartest, mind you, but smart. The question is if there’s a better way to get a return on that money, wither by …
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