About Short Sales

During the real estate boom of the last few years, a brand new problem began cropping up on a regular basis whenever a lender had to foreclose on a defaulted mortgage. Every Tom, Dick and Harry with no money and no credit, but ready access to late night television suddenly wanted to “flip” houses.

Legitimate real estate investors who buy distressed houses, make repairs and then sell the property to new homeowners provide a very valuable function in the real estate market. Unfortunately, the late night TV watching “house flippers” didn’t quite serve this same purpose as well. While the market was booming, these budding Donald Trumps would make offers on homes even though they had no way to finance or pay for that home. While they waited for closing day, they would go out and find some uneducated mark and send them to their mortgage broker to qualify for an FHA loan to buy the house under contract. As soon as the potential homeowner was safely qualified, the investor would go in, mop the house up a little and set up back to back closings. They would purchase the property and sell it for much more at the same time without ever putting up any money of their own.

These “sellers” would offer prospective purchasers such enormously easy terms in the middle of a seller’s market that folks would be lining up fighting to see who could pay the highest price. After this practice had been rolling along for a few years, many of these new home owners started defaulting on their mortgages, thus forcing HUD to pay off the mortgages with money from the FHA insurance fund. The HUD homes advertised all over the place come from these foreclosures. When HUD tried to sell these houses, however, the trouble started. HUD found that the appraisals used to get these loans approved were seriously over inflated, causing huge losses when selling the properties. This endangered the entire FHA program.

Thus a few years ago, HUD implemented an “anti-flipping” rule. Any house that changed owners within the previous 90 days was absolutely ineligible to qualify for FHA financing. The purpose of this rule was to guarantee that homes were being sold by legitimate investors and real value was being added by the investor.

As is usually the case when HUD takes action, they created another problem with their solution. The new rule contained no exception for foreclosure homes being sold by the lender. This blocked out a huge group of buyers from the market and helped lower values even further. In 2006, HUD changed the anti-flipping rule to allow FHA financing on homes being sold by government sponsored enterprises and federally chartered institutions. The rule was left in place for all other sellers.

Here we are at the present. Subprime lending is dead. Foreclosure levels are setting new records every time they are announced. Many people are losing their homes. At least, though, many potential new first time home buyers can now take full advantage of these lower home prices since FHA interest rates are still low.

Smart real estate agents and mortgage originators who are up to date on guidelines release these nervous potential home owners out into the market. As they visit these foreclosed properties, they always ask whether the present owner is eligible for that financial institution exception. The lender’s real estate agent will say honestly that this home is definitely still owned by the bank and the bank is an exempt institution. Everyone completes the negotiations and gets all the right signatures to put the buyer’s mortgage in process. Everything is wonderful up to this point. As normally happens, the title examination results are faxed over to the processor and look fine at first glance. Then while double checking the details, the mortgage processor notices that the owner named on the title policy doesn’t exactly match the contract. Very similar, but not an exact match. So a call is made to the attorney/title company’s office and the processor finds out that now a subsidiary company of the foreclosing now owns the property. A fairly common practice lenders employ in managing their real estate owned portfolio.

The new, and extremely serious, problem is that this subsidiary often is granted title to the property many months after the actual foreclosure and does not fit into any of the categories exempted from HUD’s anti-flipping rule. They have only owned the property a month. No one in the listing agent’s office knew anything about this, and all the representatives of the lender thought everything was normal. Unfortunately, our aspiring new home owner, who has already given notice to their landlord, is now required to wait 60 more days to close on and move into their new home.

Loan officers must be sure to warn real estate agents and potential new home owners, about this rule. Be sure that everyone goes far above and beyond the call of duty asking questions about the chain of title of the home before setting any dates on the sales contract. This situation doesn’t cause much difficulty if caught at the beginning and planned for, but can be absolutely devastating if this detail is missed.

Your home is a place of security and relief from the pressures of the outside world and most people feel relaxed upon entering their domicile. This is one of the contributing factors to statistics demonstrating that most accidents occur in the home and often by inattention to dangers. Home safety needs to be the first frontier to tackle in protecting yourself and your loved ones from accidents.

Home safety doesn’t require blazing yellow and orange signs around hazardous areas or barricades to dangerous places. It just requires some fairly simple and common sense adjustments to your lifestyle to prevent accidents. People are very conditioned to convenience and often sacrifice safety concepts to make life easier.

Less obvious as home safety problems are counters and tables with sharp corners. For adults the corners represent a danger to knees, thighs, elbows, and hips. Many large bruises are gained every day from bumping into the corner of a piece of furniture. If there are young kids in the house, those corners become threats to the head, eyes, and shoulders. As children develop, they often are not looking ahead to what dangers lay at head level.

Shelves in closets and storage areas in general are very often victims of clutter and overloading. It is a classic cartoon notion for the closet door to open and everything fall out on the hapless character involved. In real life it is not funny and can be painful. Overloaded shelves can fall on a head or body at any time to cause injury.

The elderly are usually more sensitive to tripping and falling concerns such as varied flooring or rugs. The differing levels for materials covering the floor are potential sources of tripping. The danger grows over time as the borders get worn. Home safety experts additionally recommend non-slip pads for rugs and periodic review of floor covering boundaries.

Bathrooms can be wet and messy venues, requiring many strong cleaning products using hazardous chemicals. For ease of use, many people store these supplies under the sink or nearby. Due to the danger, the chemicals should be locked away or put up in an elevated place that is not as easy to access. All of the containers should have child-proof lids to add extra home safety to the situation.

Tripping and falling are common hazards in a house and often develop after time instead of immediately. The hallway rug was nice and smooth to start with, but after the kids and pets chased on it, the ridges and ruffles are just waiting to trip someone. Borders that were once secured between flooring and carpet come loose over time and can lead to unexpected falls.

High temperature devices are part of modern households and obvious home safety hazards. Stoves are needed to cook but can remain hot to the unwary touch for many minutes after cooking is done. Many stoves indicate for 30 minutes after use that the elements are still hot.

Most homeowners assume the door marked “Mortgage” is boarded shut for them after a bankruptcy. Refinancing is actually a financial necessity on the road to rebuilding your credit. Here is what you need to know about refinancing your mortgage after bankruptcy.

Refinancing your mortgage has many advantages: lower interest rates, lower monthly payments, cashing out equity, and rebuilding your credit, just to name a few. Because you have a bankruptcy on your record refinancing your mortgage will be more difficult, but not out of your reach. There are steps you need to take before you apply for a new mortgage; this will ensure you qualify for a decent interest rate and favorable terms on the new mortgage loan.

The Internet is an excellent resource when mortgage refinancing after bankruptcy. You can quickly research mortgage refinancing interest rates from dozens of national mortgage companies. Don’t stop at the mortgage rate, request Good Faith Estimates from each lender you are considering to perform a line-by-line comparison of each mortgage refinancing offer.

Because you can expect to pay a higher interest rate when mortgage refinancing after bankruptcy, it is important to avoid paying any retail markup of this loan. Mortgage companies routinely markup the interest rate you qualify to boost their revenues. This markup by the retail mortgage company is called Yield Spread Premium and results in paying thousands of dollars in unnecessary interest each year.

You will need to spend some time learning about mortgages and researching mortgage lenders. This will allow you to avoid making many of the costly mistakes homeowners make when refinancing their mortgages. Shop from a variety of mortgage lenders and compare interest rates, lender fees and closing costs; by making this comparison from a variety of mortgage lenders you will be able to spot lenders that are trying to take advantage of borrowers with their terms, conditions, and fees.