Mike's Blog

Consumers "shopping" for a mortgage have taken on a new twist, leading to the creation of an information-sharing network by competing mortgage lenders. In a desperate attempt to secure some forms of mortgage financing, loan applicants have turned to tailoring their loan application and loan docum...

Homebuyers turned away due to lack of credit or credit scores do have a rather unconventional way to be approved without traditional credit or even a credit score. Nontraditional credit is a widely used form of credit verification used by certain mortgage lenders for loan applicants who prefer no...

  How far will you go to get the dream home you have always wanted, or the lowest interest mortgage available?  Are you willing to claim assets you do not have, or income that you truly cannot prove to be true? If so, you could be facing a lengthy prison term and a very heavy fine. The moment you...

  Getting a mortgage loan approval is about to get a lot tougher as both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have opted to toughen underwriting guidelines for conventional mortgage loans as a direct result of the current housing and mortgage crisis. Revised mortgage loan underwriting guidelines will call ...

  Just when you thought the housing and mortgage crisis was limited to only homeowners, a new victim has been brought into the fray, one who doesn't own a home or have a mortgage. Who are these new, unsuspecting victims? The people who are actually renting homes! Thousands of homeowners (namely i...

The loan approval that you receive today could fail to close due to the lack of follow through required by consumers and their loan officers as stipulated directly within the loan approval itself. A loan approval contains several stipulations by a mortgage underwriter that requires the verificati...

Financing the purchase of a home is getting more difficult these days, especially for those consumers who may have recent or past credit delinquencies in their credit file.  Credit score requirements by most mortgage lenders are changing on a weekly basis, requiring no less than a 580 middle scor...

The loan approval from your bank or mortgage lender to finance a home purchase may not include many homes for sale in "As-Is" condition, so it is critically important that you recognize this before committing yourself to a purchase contract. Several purchase contracts have failed to close recentl...

Question: What do you get when you combine a dishonest mortgage broker, dishonest title agent, and a dishonest real estate appraiser?  Answer: heavy fines as well as a lengthy prison sentence! Law enforcement officials and government regulators are cracking down hard on people involved in all asp...

The interest rates and closing costs that you shop for today for a mortgage loan could be dramatically different when you get to the closing table.  Unscrupulous mortgage broker and bank loan officers are intentionally quoting low interest rates and even lower closing costs as a way to get consum...