I have started branding my blog posts with all of my identity information in the last paragraph, including name, phone number, e-mail, business and address because I am finding more and more of my blog posts showing up in “no host” sites as belonging to them. They are taking my blog posts in their entirety and re-blogging them without credit to the original author. That is stealing and it is a violation of copy write laws but how to enforce them.
I don’t have a problem with the sites that pick up my posts and then repost them giving me credit for the posting. That just gets me more exposure on the web. I think the people that do that are kind of lazy for not writing their own posts and using someone else’s work in a site that is just there to get Google Adsense money, but that is their thing. It is the ones that don’t say who they are and are just farming people coming into the site for Google Adsense and other referral income without credit to the authors that I really object to. For instance, I “borrowed” this picture from another website, but am giving credit to Agency Spy for their good work on this artwork: I even linked the picture to their URL so they get double credit for it. Now this takes a bit more time than just running an RSS feed to your website, but it is the right thing to do. Interestingly, when I contact Google about the use of my material on sites with Adsense, the could care less, even though it wasn't supposed to be done. All they care about, it appears, are the click throughs. They suggested that I sue.
Well, that is my rant for today. If you would like to discuss this problem, or are interested in mortgage information, contact me, Fred Chamberlin, at 541-342-7576/541-221-3455 cell or e-mail me. Alpine Mortgage Planning is located at 1200 Executive Pkwy., Ste. 100, Eugene OR 97401. May your posts be safe, and I hope this one goes up on the automatic posting on one of those sites.
WOW! There are changes, and then there are changes. FHA Commissioner David Stevens announced today a bunch of policy changes designed to strengthen FHA’s Capital Reserves. Those changes range from raising down payment requirements, to raising upfront and monthly mortgage insurance premiums to lowering the seller concessions. These are changes that can make huge differences in a person’s ability to actually get an FHA loan in the future.
FHA, like the banking sector, must also maintain capital ratios. Since they now insure about 30% of all new loans, FHA is nearing the limits of loans they can make based on their capital ratio. The loss of FHA as a lender in today’s market place would be hugely detrimental to the recovering housing industry. So, in an effort to fix this problem, FHA will be raising their upfront mortgage insurance premium fees from 1.75% to 2.25% and have requested approval for an increase in the monthly fee as well. They will also limit the high LTV financing to borrowers with a 580 credit score; a score under 580 will now require at least a 10% down payment. This will probably have the least effect on the market as the majority of lenders do not make FHA loans under a 620 credit score.
One change that I see having the biggest effect on the market will be limiting the seller contribution to 3 percent that will go into effect in early summer. Taken in conjunction with the new Good Faith Estimate changes that require credits for seller title insurance and yield spread premium for brokered loans, this could quickly become a major problem in an FHA transaction. Here is the announcement from FHA:
Announced FHA Policy Changes:
Mortgage insurance premium (MIP) will be increased to build up capital reserves and bring back private lending
The first step will be to raise the up-front MIP by 50 bps to 2.25% and request legislative authority to increase the maximum annual MIP that the FHA can charge.
If this authority is granted, then the second step will be to shift some of the premium increase from the up-front MIP to the annual MIP.
This shift will allow for the capital reserves to increase with less impact to the consumer, because the annual MIP is paid over the life of the loan instead of at the time of closing
The initial up-front increase is included in a Mortgagee Letter to be released tomorrow, January 21st, and will go into effect in the spring.
Update the combination of FICO scores and down payments for new borrowers.
New borrowers will now be required to have a minimum FICO score of 580 to qualify for FHA's 3.5% down payment program. New borrowers with less than a 580 FICO score will be required to put down at least 10%.
This allows the FHA to better balance its risk and continue to provide access for those borrowers who have historically performed well.
This change will be posted in the Federal Register in February and, after a notice and comment period, would go into effect in the early summer.
Reduce allowable seller concessions from 6% to 3%
The current level exposes the FHA to excess risk by creating incentives to inflate appraised value. This change will bring FHA into conformity with industry standards on seller concessions.
This change will be posted in the Federal Register in February, and after a notice and comment period, would go into effect in the early summer.
Increase enforcement on FHA lenders
Publicly report lender performance rankings to complement currently available Neighborhood Watch data - Will be available on the HUD website on February 1.
This is an operational change to make information more user-friendly and hold lenders more accountable; it does not require new regulatory action as Neighborhood Watch data is currently publicly available.
Enhance monitoring of lender performance and compliance with FHA guidelines and standards.
Implement Credit Watch termination through lender underwriting ID in addition to originating ID.
This change is included in a Mortgagee Letter to be released tomorrow, January 21st, and is effective immediately.
Implement statutory authority through regulation of section 256 of the National Housing Act to enforce indemnification provisions for lenders using delegated insuring process
Specifications of this change will be posted in March, and after a notice and comment period, would go into effect in early summer.
HUD is pursuing legislative authority to increase enforcement on FHA lenders. Specific authority includes:
Amendment of section 256 of the National Housing Act to apply indemnification provisions to all Direct Endorsement lenders. This would require all approved mortgagees to assume liability for all of the loans that they originate and underwrite
Legislative authority permitting HUD maximum flexibility to establish separate "areas" for purposes of review and termination under the Credit Watch initiative. This would provide authority to withdraw originating and underwriting approval for a lender nationwide on the basis of the performance of its regional branches
As a mortgage banker, it will be easier to navigate some of the pitfalls that will come with the implementation of these policies. The announcement by FHA gave implementation time frames of these changes and a mortgagee letter will be issued tomorrow, so, now really is the right time to buy. Give me a call and lets see what we can do to qualify and put you into a home with an FHA loan. You can reach me at 541-342-7576/541-221-3455 cell or e-mail me. Alpine Mortgage Planning is located at 1200 Executive Pkwy. Ste. 100, Eugene OR 97401.
As I have said before, I don’t normally quote mortgage rates for a number of reasons, but I am going to make an exception again today. Today’s 30 year fixed rate for a conventional loan for the Eugene/Springfield, Lane County Oregon market is at4.875%/5.041% APR*.The reason I am doing this is because I think this rate will be going up shortly. How soon is a really good guess, but undoubtedly by the end of March, but I expect it to happen much sooner.
Why do I expect movement sooner, rather than later? Well, I think we are seeing inflation that isn’t showing up on the government reports. I think the continued climbing of the stock markets while gold and oil climb are good indications of inflation. I think that the growth of the federal government through the stimulus spending is a sure sign of inflation and today we got actual reports of inflation in the United Kingdom and India. If you don’t think we are affected by inflation in other countries, try again. Inflation means that rates will rise. Not may rise, will rise. The Fed has done a pretty good job of keeping inflation in check, but there are signs that we are getting closer.
That is why I am quoting rates today. I think we may see the bottom of the current cycle and if you are one of those waiting for the bottom, you missed it, but still have a chance to get pretty close. Rates are pretty volatile in the best of times and in this market, a sudden sell off could result in huge increases in rates in a short period of time. I don’t think that will happen, I think rates will stay fairly good, but no where near as good as right now. I think we will see them go up much quicker than they come down but not in big leaps. I think this video from NAR really points out the folly of continuing to wait:
(*Now, for the fine print, the rate above assumes the following: Owner occupied conventional loan with a $250,000 purchase price (non manufactured home, non rural acreage, single family home) with 20% down. Loan amount is $200,000 Credit score of 740 or higher. 30 day lock period. Credit score, loan size, down payment, and purpose of loan will affect APR. This is not a guarantee of rate availability for a specific property and can change without notice. My lending is restricted to Oregon, Washington and California.)
The Federal Reserve is still buying mortgage backed securities and that is helping the bond market. This purchase program is only scheduled to continue through the end of March. Rates will undoubtedly bounce up when the Fed stops buying bonds. Now is probably the best of all worlds with rates down and housing prices down and sellers willing to negotiate, but for who knows how long? Add to that the First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit and the “Move-up” Homebuyer Tax Credit and we have an unbelievable time to buy. Both of those credits require you to be in contract by the end of April.
If you would like more information about what you can qualify for and actually be comfortable paying on a mortgage, give me (Fred Chamberlin) a call today, 541-342-7576/541-221-3455 cell or e-mail me. I am here to help you and to answer your questions. Alpine Mortgage Planning is located at 1200 Executive Pkwy., Ste. 100, Eugene OR 97401.
HUD announced Friday that the rules on flipping homes will be changing Feb. 1. This could have a huge effect on the Eugene/Springfield, Lane County Oregon market. This is being done in an effort to stabilize home values and improve conditions in communities where foreclosure activity is high according to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. I see this as being a boon to our are in getting rid of more of the foreclosures that have been plaguing our market. Under current rules, foreclosures that were still owned by the banks that purchased them could be bought with an FHA loan but any that were purchased from the bank had to be owned for 90 days before an offer could be made on them for an FHA loan.
"As a result of the tightened credit market, FHA-insured mortgage financing is often the only means of financing available to potential homebuyers," said Donovan. "FHA has an unprecedented opportunity to fulfill its mission by helping many homebuyers find affordable housing while contributing to neighborhood stabilization." So, as a result of the recent change, the prohibition of FHA insuring a mortgage on a home owed by the seller for less than 90 days will be temporarily lifted on Feb. 1. "This change in policy is temporary and will have very strict conditions and guidelines to assure that predatory practices are not allowed," Donovan said.
Since it often takes less than 90 days for someone to purchase a foreclosure and ready it for resale, FHA buyers were taken out of the buying pool for these properties because the sellers wanted to recoup their capital as soon as possible. Therefore, in many cases were not willing to wait until the 90 day period was expired. Under the new policy, there may be requirements of a second appraisal or proof of improvements, but overall, it will, at least, put FHA buyers on an even footing for some excellent deals out there. "This action will enable our borrowers, especially first-time buyers, to take advantage of this opportunity." said FHA Commissioner David H. Stevens. The waiver will take effect on February 1, 2010 and is effective for one year, unless otherwise extended or withdrawn by the FHA Commissioner.
To protect FHA borrowers against predatory practices of "flipping" where properties are quickly resold at inflated prices to unsuspecting borrowers, this waiver is limited to those sales meeting the following general conditions:
All transactions must be arms-length, with no identity of interest between the buyer and seller or other parties participating in the sales transaction.
In cases in which the sales price of the property is 20 percent or more above the seller's acquisition cost, the waiver will only apply if the lender meets specific conditions.
The waiver is limited to forward mortgages, and does not apply to the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) for purchase program.
As always, I am available to help with the transaction. I would assume that offers should not be made on any of these properties until Feb. 1. If I can help with any FHA purchase transaction, contact me at Alpine Mortgage Planning, 541-342-7576/541-221-3455 cell or e-mail me. We are located at 1200 Executive Pkwy., Ste. 100 in Eugene.
On January 1, the new 2010 Good Faith Estimate came into being amid a lot of hoopla and consternations. Now that it is here, many people don’t know exactly what it does and doesn’t do for the consumer and how it will effect and what affect it will have on Realtors®. This is a major change in RESPA (Real Estate Settlement and Procedures Act). Because of the changes, I will be holding webinars for Realtors® in my service area (Oregon, Washington and California) with a limit of 25 per day allowed to register. Here is the sign up link for the webinars.
The webinars are free and I will be sending a one hour certificate of attendance for each attendee. The changes in this form are huge and should be considered a must know for any Realtor®. I have held many seminars in the past for Realtors® and consumers on subjects ranging from First Time Homebuyer information, to FHA ins and outs, to blogging for your business. I will also be holding seminars in the near future for potential home buyers. The nice thing about a webinar is that you don’t have to figure in the travel time from your busy day. Each one will be held at your desk.
Be sure and get registered, I expect these slots to fill fast and will be strictly first come first served. If you have any other real estate mortgage questions, don’t hesitate to contact the Eugene Loan Guy, 541-342-7576/541-221-3455 cell, 1200 Executive Pkwy., Ste. 100, Eugene OR, or e-mail me.
Yesterday was Veteran’s Day and a number of people thanked me for my service and that made me feel very special. I was in the U. S. Air Force from 1966 to 1978 and spent time on Guam during operation ARC LIGHT and BULLET SHOT during my first enlistment, on temporary duty with the 4133 Bomb Wing (Provisional). The wing was flying sorties from Guam with B-52s over Vietnam. No, I wasn’t an air crew member, I flew a typewriter and a camera. I was editor of the base newspaper. I was back on Guam on permanent (well as permanent as the military gets) assignment in 1973 and helped with the processing of refugees when Saigon fell in 1975. We took in 121,000 refugees in a 10 day period as people fled from Vietnam in almost anything that would fly. The first ones came off of the commercial airliners with so much gold they could hardly walk. The last ones were stuffed so tightly into C-130s that they couldn’t sit down. Later, the boat people started arriving. It was a heart wrenching thing to watch as people fled their homes to keep from being killed.During those years, when I traveled, I didn’t do it in uniform, there was too much chance of being spit upon or derided. The military was the target for protesters and demonstrations. It wasn’t until much later that we were finally accepted for who we were and not what was being done. That is why I am so pleased that there are people today working to make sure the members of our armed forces are recognized and praised for what they are doing. The following clip was forwarded through Facebook by one of my friends. I hope you will take the time to watch the whole thing.
There are a number of very good videos out that say the same thing and I want to thank the people that have taken the time to do this for our military. There are a number of people from my era that are still suffering and maybe, just maybe, this will help them too. It is hard to come back to your home and have people turn their back on you. I don’t want that to happen to our military today. So in response to those yesterday, I just want to say: You are welcome, it really was my honor to serve.
The mortgage bank that I work for, Alpine Mortgage Planning, has issued a challenge to the Eugene/Springfield area to bring in a Million Dollars ($1,000,000) in First Time Home Buyer Tax Credits as part of the Stimulus package. You can check out the challenge here.
All of this means that the loan advisors teaming with their Realtor partners will be working to bring the dream of homeownership to at least 125 first time home buyers between now and November 30, 2009, the date the tax credit expires.
Check out the http://www.alpinemilliondollarstimuluschallenge.com/ website for information about upcoming seminars for new home buyers. Down Payment Assistance programs will also be addressed during the seminars, helping prospective home owners get the money together for the down payment.
If you have any questions about the seminars, or to start the process, give me a call at 541-342-7576/541-221-3455 Cell or e-mail me.
Interestingly, while doing some web surfing trying to find out who my competition is in the blog-o-sphere, I wasn't entirely pleased with who was out there. I wanted to know who else was writing about the place I call home and who was writing about lending, mortgages and loans. It is interesting what I found. Like this site, for example. Neighborhood Expert Online is a place where you can come and find someone that is actually in your Neighborhood to help you with whatever you need. Granted, the availability is kind of limited right now, but it is a fairly new site and as such, will take some time for the various neighborhoods to be represented in the various fields. Right now, I want to focus on the Eugene/Springfield Oregon Neighborhood.
Who are these guys?
As an veteran searcher, I use Google a lot to search to see who is writing what about my area and my field. By doing that, I found the this blog called roost. It is an interesting blog and has some good information about Eugene but I have no idea who writes it or where they are or if they really know about the Eugene/Springfield Market. There is no information on the home page about who the blog is done by. On my blog sites, I am very firm about who and where I am.
Now you know who this is
A different site talks about 48 hours in Eugene. Now, Nancy D. Brown is the writer of this and she is obviously a good travel writer. She also has her name and contact information on her website. I think she is a pretty good writer too and appears to really like traveling.
Excellent Local Information
Then there is this article about planting more trees in Eugene. This is obviously by and about Eugene. Again, a nice piece that has the right local information attached. This is what I like to see when I am looking for local information. Take a look at this local information that I posted on my website. Again, plenty of acknowledgement as to who and where I am on the site.
Local Expertise
Now, how about my field of expertise? When I posted about First Time Homebuyers, you know who I am and how to get in touch with me. It isn’t a website designed to gather names so that they can be sold. That is so much different that this site, that says it is information for Oregon, but is actually another of the “contact” gather sites. Fill out the form and someone will contact you. that someone has probably purchased your name and will probably be one of several that will call, none of them necessarily knowing anything about the local area.
I believe you should chose to work with someone local to your area that knows the area. Otherwise you are taking your chances with one of the “no name” contact gather sites. Personally, I prefer to work with people that know what they are doing and know my area.
Now I am sure that the experience bloggers out there already know about this or else they are very comfortable writing in HTML. However, since I think HTML is a little harder to learn than Klingon and just a bit easier than Romulan, I found this a very helpful product. It is called Windows Live Writer and you can write with it using just normal word time action and not worry about the extra HTML code that Word seems to throw into a post just for grins.
Download and Use
You can download Writer here and it is really easy to use. You can add hyperlinks like I am doing, you can ad photos and you can add maps and tables like this one. So far, I have tied Writer to my three blogs, Eugene Loan Guy, FHA Loans Oregon and No Money Down OR WA CA. The absolute nice thing about this is with the other multi user platforms, I can copy my HTML code from my blog and paste it right into the create blog form, like I am doing with this on Active Rain. Unfortunately, as you can see, it doesn't work on A/R. Must be some code stripper in A/R's program that makes it not work, but take a look at what I did on wannanetwork with the same post. Of course, I don’t even have to do that with Positive Real Estate Professionals, because it automatically picks up my new posts and transfers them right into my Blog post on PREP. That is a super benefit.
Easy Code – No Training
I can use the same HTML code and move it into my other multi user platform, MyFHAMortgageBlog and make any necessary changes once it is posted. What a great way to get around HTML and get the maximum SEO at the same time. So, if you haven’t tried Windows Live Writer and you are not proficient in HTML, I suggest you give it a try. I have used some of the editing possibilities with Writer on this post, just to show you what can be done. As you can see, you can align left, center, justify or align right. Pictures are easy too, including this sepia tone.
For those that think loan officers and bankers are just hard hearted meanies that just want your money, take a look at this video about a bank loan officer in Spokane Washington helping a whole family find safety in an unsafe world.
It is unclear in this news story whether his title is 'Banker' or 'Loan Officer'... but really, who cares? It's just one of those nice 'breather' stories that reminds us all that life is alright.
The morale of the story ... Take a break to help others every now and again... you never know, it might even turn out to be a 'marketing moment'.
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Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
It is unclear in this news story whether his title is 'Banker' or 'Loan Officer'... but really, who cares? It's just one of those nice 'breather' stories that reminds us all that life is alright.
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