The Official Down Payment Requirements - 02/22/10 11:17 AM
Here are the down payment requirements for the various types of loans:
Conventional (non-government) loans:
For most conventional loans, the minimum down payment requirement is 5% for primary residences, 10% for second homes, and 15% for investment properties. If the property is a primary residence, there are special loan programs that only require 3% down, but the interest rates are higher than regular conventional loans. IMPORTANT NOTE: The mortgage insurance (MI) companies have stricter guidelines than the lenders do.  If the loan is for more than 80% of the sales price, the MI guidelines must be followed.  Typically, the MI companies … (0 comments)

Forget the Appraisal - You Don't Need One! - 02/16/10 05:09 PM
How about selling a house without an appraisal?  Fannie Mae has a loan program called HomePath that does not require an appraisal.  It's for their REO (foreclosed) properties.  Here are some of the highlights of the loans: 
No appraisal required Only 3% down payment No mortgage insurance required At the moment, they are having a special deal that includes the following:
The borrower can get up to 3.5% of the sales price towards new appliances.  Fannie Mae buys them and delivers them to the house. The borrower can get an additional 6% to pay for closing costs and pre-paids. These deals … (4 comments)

What's the Max DTI? 28%, 36%, 41%, 43%, 50%...??? - 02/05/10 06:16 PM
We get a lot of questions about debt-to-income ratios these days.  Here are the underwriting guidelines for the various types of loans: 
Conventional (non-government) loans:
If the loan is underwritten manually (by a person), the debt-to-income ratio (DTI) is 36%.  If the borrower has strong compensation factors, the DTI can be as high as 45%.  Compensating factors include such things as very high credit scores, large down payment, large amount of reserves (money in the bank), etc. If the loan is underwritten by the underwriting software that is available to some lenders, the DTI ratio is 45%, and it can go … (40 comments)

 
Chris_-_20 Rainmaker_large

Chris Thomas

Denver, CO

More about me…

The Mortgage Experts at America's Mortgage

Office Phone: (303) 345-3683

Email Me

Widely recognized as the leading source of accurate mortgage and credit information in the Metro-Denver area, and the people to call when you need a great mortgage.


Listings

Links

Archives

RSS 2.0 Feed for this blog

Find CO real estate agents and Denver real estate on ActiveRain.