You’re in the process of buying a home, and so far things have been going pretty smoothly. Your lender has pre-approved you, your Realtor has found you the perfect home, and with a bit of luck, the seller accepted your offer and now you’re in contract. It’s very likely that early on in your loan process --- usually within the first few days of having your offer accepted --- your lender ordered an appraisal. From there, a licensed appraiser went out to the property and then turned in a completed appraisal report … (17 comments)
Nearly every home buyer initially hates the "P" word --- PMI, or private mortgage insurance. Years and years of conditioning have taught generations upon generations of first-time buyers that PMI is something to be avoided at all costs, and even though I daily go to great lengths to demonstrate this is patently untrue, even those that come to see the light about PMI and find themselves with a form of private mortgage insurance will soon arrive at their next concern: "When can I remove the PMI from my payment?"
If I've learned anything in the current political environment it's that you can't make people see things they choose not to look for. But what about the opposite? What happens when the truth is hard to find? Or, better still, what if the question at hand involves a bit of both? That is, what if people don't have the inclination to look for something that is a bit difficult to locate? With the help of one of our Founding Fathers, we're going to dispense some wisdom and address this dilemma in the context of a first time … (3 comments)
With the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee poised in June of 2018 to increase in the rates that impact home equity lines of credit ("HELOCs"), home buyers who have traditionally used "piggyback" or "80-10-10" solutions to purchase a home with less than a 20% down payment may have second thoughts. Not about buying the house, per se, but about a HELOC rate that could approach 7% --- with future adjustments possible as well. When Prime Rate was in the mid-3% range, most 80/10/10 loans had very palatable start rates but after a decade of seeing … (1 comments)
California has both a dynamic and desirable real estate market and in the recent years we've seen an influx of foreign buyers. Despite the headlines such as, "Chinese Billionaires Snapping Up San Francisco Real Estate with All Cash Offers 150% Over Asking...," I can attest that not every foreign buyer is able to purchase real estate with a Louis Vuitton suitcase bursting full of hard currency. In fact, many of them seek mortgage financing for any number of valid reasons and when they do, we are often able to help.
A while back, and in this post here, I talked about the four distinct ways that a homebuyer could purchase a new home without first selling his existing one. And of the options, perhaps the least understood and most complex is the cross-collateralization program. This is a type of financing where more than one piece of property serves as the real estate security for the loan and usually it implies that the existing home and the new home will BOTH make up the collateral value by which the loan-to-value (LTV) will be determined. I thought I would provide a real … (5 comments)
What Happens When My Appraisal Comes in Low (or High!)?
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