News & Commentary
Now Available: The Quick & Dirty Guide To Successful Mortgage Modifications
A number of people have asked if some of the mortgage modification material on this site could be combined with new information and made available as an eBook in various formats.
The answer is now yes.
The guide below is available in various eBook formats and the price is less than $3.00.
Oh, about the calculator on [...]
Mortgage Modifications: Bush Versus Obama
It’s beginning to look like the government’s efforts to modify troubled home loans is beginning to pay off. As of the end of February more than 170,000 borrowers had obtained permanent mortgage modifications while more than 1 million more under the Making Home Affordable program are involved in trial modifications that could result in better [...]
15Mar2010 | Peter G. Miller | 0 comments | Continued
Mortgage Reform — Getting Back To Basics
Given the huge profits on Wall Street, we seem to have quickly forgotten that financial reform is necessary if we’re to prevent or less the next financial meltdown.
Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-DE) is now proposing systemic financial reform. One part of that reform — a big part — would clearly involve changes in the way mortgages [...]
Foreclosure Filings Rise For 50th Straight Month
Tough weather in many states as well as loan modification programs are believed to have held down foreclosure filings in February, according to the latest report by RealtyTrac®, the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties. Even so, foreclosure filings for the month included 308,524 default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions nationwide — a total [...]
11Mar2010 | Peter G. Miller | 0 comments | Continued
Mortgage Qualifying Improved With Credit Card Change
It’s being widely reported that the Bank of America has decided to eliminate overdraft fees for debit cards. This is a mortgage issue, a consumer issue and a common sense issue that should concern anyone who wishes to finance or refinance a home.
New rules from the Federal Reserve will make it more difficult for lenders [...]
Mortgage Paid? How Do I Know?
It would be nice to report that every mortgage payment is promptly received and correctly processed. However, it follows that in a country with some 45 million first mortgages that there are millions of opportunities to screw up and that sometimes loan payments made in good faith are not properly handled.
What can you do?
If [...]
9Mar2010 | Peter G. Miller | 0 comments | Continued
No More Pre-approval Letters, Say Lenders
As a result of the new mortgage borrower protections that took effect January 1st, some lenders are now saying they can no longer provide pre-approval letters.
“Before writing the letters, lenders like to see proof of income, such as a pay stub or tax return. But under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act rule that [...]
Foreclosure Taxes
We usually think of foreclosures as the end product of not paying a mortgage. But in a somewhat weird way it’s also possible to be foreclosed for other reasons.
For instance, in many communities the water company is actually a governmental agency. Don’t pay your water bill and there can be a lien against the property, [...]
What Are Private Mortgages?
We usually think of real estate financing in terms of loans from banks, mortgage brokers, mortgage banks, credit unions and insurance companies. In fact there’s another source of real estate financing, private mortgages.
Private mortgages can be alluring and in some cases financially dangerous. In the best case a private mortgage will provide a low rate [...]
What Kind of Foreclosure Title Can I Expect?
With huge numbers of foreclosed properties now available for sale you have to wonder what type of title you might expect if you purchase one of these distressed homes.
The lender selling REOs (real estate owned by a bank or other lender) does actually care how you own title, What it does care about is that [...]
What are foreclosure brokers?
It used to be that foreclosures were rare events. About .5 percent of all home loans were foreclosed in a year, a figure which reached 4.58 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
The huge foreclosure surge has not happened everywhere — some areas have seen vastly more foreclosures than [...]
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