My Mind on Mortgages

The Obama Administration announced yesterday that they were expanding the criteria for homeowners who wish to refinance their existing mortgage under the housing-rescue program.  The program, which is known as refi plus in our industry, is now allowing homeowner’s whose mortgages are now worth up to 125% of the home’s current value to refinance under [...]

After being gone for 6 months Tina and I landed on US soil on Wednesday AM in LAX.  Upon landing I couldn’t wait to get my hands on two things that are scarce overseas- filtered coffee & the WSJ.  I was able to acquire both shortly after clearing customs (suckers).
Anyways, in the Wednesday edition James [...]

Are you considering refinancing your existing mortgage?  If so you may be interested to learn that the amount of money it will take to satisfy your existing mortgage (known as the “pay-off amount”) will be MORE than the principal amount you owe.  Why?
Your existing mortgage lender will not only request that you pay-off the principal [...]

The Federal Reserve Board recently created this website  which is designed to help consumers evaluate whether or a refinance of their existing mortgage makes sense.  Typically I am skeptical of the Federal Governments ability to simplify this process for consumers.  After all they were the ones who brought us the Good Faith Estimate & Truth [...]

Has your home recently been listed for sale? If so, did you know that by having your home listed for sale your ability to refinance your mortgage is severely limited?
95% of banks will not lend on homes that have been recently listed for sale because they are concerned that the home might go back up [...]

Here’s an article I read recently:
During my twenties, I accumulated nearly $25,000 in consumer debt. I had a spending problem. With time, I was able to get my spending under control (mostly), but I still owned overwhelming debt. How could I get rid of it?
The personal finance books all suggested the same approach:
Order your debts [...]

The purpose of this article is to give consumers a guide for determining whether or not a proposed refinance makes financial sense for them. Through my interactions with many of my clients over the years I’ve found that much of the population is left confused when evaluating mortgage refinance options. I hope that I can [...]

For most of our clients, the idea of a “no closing cost” (NCC) refinance seems too good to be true. We think that these loans are great tools for helping our clients save money; but it is critical that our clients understand how they work. The purpose of this posting is to explain how we [...]