Who qualifies for Obama’s mortgage refinance plan?

Randy Johnson, president of Independence Mortgage Co. in Newport Beach, author of “How to Save Thousands of Dollars on Your Home Mortgage” and a mortgage broker since 1983, answers questions…

Q. I have been reading about Obama’s new housing bailout, and they say that homeowners who are “underwater” will still be able to refinance if their home loan was backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. 

Immediately, I started thinking, “do I qualify?” I’ve asked friends and have searched the Internet and have found varied responses to the one question I have — how do you find out if your loan is backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac? 

We write our (whopping) mortgage check to Wells Fargo every month, and it’s not like the bank teller has that information readily available. I can’t find a straight answer anywhere. And if I do find out my loan is backed by Fannie or Freddie, what do I do next?”

A. Regarding not being able to get a straight answer, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. But I do have good news for you. 

• If your loan servicer won’t or can’t tell you, you can still find out. To see if Fannie Mae owns it, go to www.fanniemae.com/homeaffordable. For Freddie Mac the website is www.freddiemac.com/avoidforeclosure/.Fill out their forms. Make sure your name and address are exactly the same as on your loan coupon. Just for fun I filled out the forms at each Website to see which one owns my loan. I am still awaiting a response.

1. If the loan is owned by either Fannie or Freddie, then you would qualify for the recent initiative for reducing the rate on loans that are between 80 to 105 percent loan-to-value (LTV) without mortgage insurance (PMI). 
2. If the loan required PMI initially, the lender can use the existing PMI contract.
   

The catch on this for Orange County owners is that any home bought in the last few years has likely dropped 20 to 30 percent, maybe more, and would be over 105 percent LTV. However, people who bought in the early 2000s might still be in that bracket and certainly can benefit.

• REALITY: this program has just been announced and it is highly likely that servicers have not yet developed their own policies and procedures and have not yet trained the staff on how to respond to inquiries. 
  

Danny in Corona asks:

Q. I purchased a condo in Oct. 2005 and financed both first and second mortgages at Chase. The first mortgage is a deed of trust (fixed rate) and the second mortgage is a California close-end deed of trust (a balloon note, but fixed rate). 

I have been unemployed since Oct. 2007 and all of my savings and emergency funds have been exhausted. I’m two months behind on both mortgages and approaching three months behind. I listed my condo for sale for over a year. Unfortunately, I had no luck. I also consulted with real estate brokers about doing a short-sale. However, they didn’t want to take it. 

I have no clue why. Anyway, if I successfully negotiate with Chase to have deed-in-lieu of foreclosure on my property or if Chase forecloses on my property, may Chase seek delinquent judgment on the second mortgage (closed-end deed of trust)? I have not refinanced since I purchased my condo.

A. First, I’m am sorry to hear about your situation and you have my prayers and good thoughts for a better outcome. You really need to ask a lawyer because technically that is a legal question. I think you will feel better informed if you look at a Website www.foreclosure.com/statelaw_CA.html, which summarizes current law. Frankly, I think that lenders have their hands full today and that they rarely go after defaulting borrowers, so I wouldn’t worry. Best of luck to you.

Read +

Bad Credit Mortgage Refinance

If you are sick with your finances, scared to deal with your bad credit situation and would like to somehow get out of this and start all over again keeping your credit score perfect, then there is one easy way to go about it. The simplest thing for you to do would be to go for a bad credit mortgage refinance. Now you might wonder who is going to refinance your mortgage when you have only very bad credit records to show. In this article you will find information on why it is possible for you to get refinance and also how you will have to approach lenders to get it done.

Bad credit mortgage refinance is not a big deal these days. Bad credit itself is not something to be ashamed of but simply a financial phase which anyone can overcome as there are any numbers of loans you can have to deal with it. The competition in the lending market is so high that financiers, banks, credit unions etc are coming up with new and new schemes designed to meet any financial problems you may have. There are lenders who have solution for just any financial problems or situation.

The first thing you have got to do to get a refinance for your mortgage would be to analyze your financial situation. Get to know where you stand with your credit records, how bad is it, what is the amount required to keep your credits clean, how much is your debt etc. This way you will have a better understanding of your finances and will let you look for refinancing which will cover all this, and still have amount left to let you get on with life.

Now you will have to do some home work to find lenders perfect for your situation. The best place to start will be to go online and look for lenders who provide bad credit mortgage refinance. Then do some comparison shopping by getting quotes from some of the lenders you would prefer aligning to. Weigh all the pros and cons to know which lender will be most beneficial to you. Remember to consider the interest rate, fees, cost, other charges etc while calculating the final amount.

Best way to go about it would be to look for a bad credit mortgage refinance plan for which the monthly payment would come within your monthly budget. You may use a mortgage calculator to easily get the various possibilities with your refinance plan. This will help to also decide on the term or period to choose for your loan. The longer the period of loan the lower your monthly payment will be but you will end up paying more for your loan than shorter term loans. All these factors considered do not expect to get a bad credit mortgage refinance with as low an interest as for good credit holders. The higher cost on your refinance is what you will have to pay as penalty for letting yourself into a bad credit situation.

Source

Foreclosure Filings in U.S. Jump 30%, Thwart Prevention Effort

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Foreclosure filings in the U.S. climbed 30 percent in February from a year earlier as the worsening economy thwarted efforts by the government and lenders to prevent homeowners from losing property,RealtyTrac Inc. said.A total of 290,631 homes received a default or auction notice or were seized by the lender, the Irvine, California-based seller of default data said in a statement today. It was the third-highest monthly total in RealtyTrac records dating to 2005. 

February filings increased 6 percent from January.“More people have lost their incomes or are underwater on their mortgages, so a new housing plan won’t change those facts by itself,” Barry Eichengreen, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an interview.The U.S. housing crisis is deepening as President Barack Obama attempts a $275 billion rescue to help borrowers with sinking home values or unaffordable loans. 

Declining prices sapped $2.4 trillion in value from the nation’s residential market last year, according to First American CoreLogic. Prices in 20 U.S. cities have fallen every month since January 2007, the S&P/Case Shiller index shows.Rising unemployment also is making it harder for homeowners to keep up with payments. 

The U.S. jobless rate rose to 8.1 percent in February, the highest in more than 25 years, according to the Labor Department.Wait and SeeSome of the top U.S. lenders own as many as 700,000 foreclosed homes they have yet to offer for sale, said Rick Sharga, executive vice president for marketing for RealtyTrac.The banks may be waiting to see how U.S. government plans develop before selling the properties, Sharga said. 

The lenders and government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two biggest U.S. mortgage financing companies, have already extended temporary foreclosure moratoriums.The combined percentage of loans in foreclosure or at least one payment past due in the fourth quarter was 11.18 percent, the highest on record, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington. 

The percentage of loans 60 days past due and 90 days or more late also were at record levels.“Many elements are lined up to suggest we’ll have more foreclosure activity in the future, maybe an all-time high,” Sharga said.

Obama introduced a plan Feb. 18 to use $75 billion of public funds to entice lenders to modify or refinance home loans, stem foreclosures and rescue delinquent homeowners. The president also said the Treasury Department would provide as much as $200 billion in additional backing for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to free up funding for new mortgages.

Re-Financing PlanTo qualify for a refinanced loan, applicants will have to fully document incomewith pay stubs and tax returns, and sign an affidavit attesting to “financial hardship,” according to Treasury.One in 440 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing last month, andNevada, Arizona and California had the highest foreclosure rates, RealtyTrac said.

Idaho, Illinois and Oregon joined the list of top 10 states with the highest rates, a sign that rising unemployment is now pushing defaults, Sharga said. Florida, Michigan, Georgia and Ohio were also in the top 10.

Read+

Greenspan Forgets Where He Put His Asset Bubble: Caroline Baum

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- “Counterfactuals from such flawed structures cannot form the sole basis for successful policy analysis or advice, with or without the benefit of hindsight.”

Even if one missed the headline (“The Fed Didn’t Cause the Housing Bubble”) and the byline (Alan Greenspan) on theop-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, there could be no confusion over authorship: That “Master of Garblements” and former Federal Reserve chairman was back to defend his legacy.

Greenspan lays out his case that the Fed’s easy money policies can’t possibly be to blame for “the U.S. housing bubble that is at the core of today’s financial mess.” It is long-term interest rates that determine “the prices of long-lived assets,” such as housing, he writes. And those rates, which stayed low as a result of a “global savings glut,” are out of the Fed’s control.

Control, yes. Influence, no.

“Why not try raising short rates if long rates are too low?” asks Paul Kasriel, chief economist at the Northern Trust Corp. in Chicago. “The recession was over in 2001. Why did he take so long to start to raise the funds rate?”

Greenspan is selective in arguing his case. By any measure, the overnight fed funds rate was too low earlier in the decade. The real funds rate, which is the nominal rate adjusted for inflation, was negative for three years, from October 2002 to October 2005, a longer stretch than in the mid-1970s. And we know how well that turned out.

Now we have additional evidence of the effect of negative real rates. When financial institutions are being paid to borrow, borrow they will.

Free-Money Policy

Banks and other mortgage lenders were happy to arbitrage the spread between the free money provided by the Fed and the rate they charged for an adjustable-rate mortgage. The share of ARMs as a percentage of total mortgage loans averaged 10 percent in 2001; by 2004, it was 32 percent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The dollar volume swelled to more than 50 percent that year.

Read+