HARP Program. San Jose Homeowners Must Wait Till March.
November 28, 2011 by Darcy Beg · Leave a Comment
The Home Affordable Refinance Program or HARP, the program that will allow you to refinance your upside down mortgage has come out with their guidelines recently. Originally we were told that banks would start taking loan applications for this program in December. Well, that’s been pushed back to March. Here’s why. In order to be eligible for the program, you must get a desktop underwriting or DU automated approval through Fannie Mae’s system. The current version of DU will reject if LTV is over 125% but, the new version of DU coming out in March that will accept unlimited LTVs. Now remember, in order to qualify for this program, your current loan must be owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, and needed to be completed before June 2009. If you
Happy Thanksgiving
November 21, 2011 by Darcy Beg · Leave a Comment
Following the long-standing tradition of Thanksgiving, I wanted to take a second and share something I’m thankful for. Sp
Become a Video Star and Win an Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet
November 16, 2011 by Darcy Beg · Leave a Comment
There are hard ways to make money and then there is BestCashCow, the easiest way to put extra money in your pocket. In fact, by spending just a few minutes on BestCashCow researching bank rates, the average family can put more than $500 in their pocket. That’s a pretty good hourly wage!
To help get the word out, we’re launching the BestCashCow Hard and Easy Ways to Make Money Video Competition. We created the video below to get the competition rolling and spark some ideas. Now it’s your turn. We’re looking for your videos on the hardest job or the hardest thing you have done to earn money. You can use video to film yourself speaking about the experience, you can recreate the experience, or you can film the actual job as you do it. We’
Banks Resume Tightening Mortgage Guidelines
November 8, 2011 by Darcy Beg · Leave a Comment
As part of its quarterly survey to member banks nationwide, the Federal Reserve asked senior loan officers whether last quarters prime residential mortgage guidelines have tightened, loosened, or remained as-is.
A prime borrower is defined as one with a well-documented, high-performance credit history; with low debt-to-income ratios; and who chooses to finance a home via a traditional fixed-rate or adjustable-rate mortgage product.
After a 2-year easing cycle, the nations biggest bank banks report that theyve reversed course, and are raising the bar on mortgage approvals.
For the period July-September 2010, 88% of responding loan officers admitted to tightening their prime guidelines, or leaving them basically unchanged.
If youve applied for a home loan of late, youve experienced this first-hand.
High delinquency rates and defaults since 2007 have caused the banks to rethink what they will lend, and to whom.
MPC’s Bean: We were close to raising rates before crisis
October 30, 2011 by Darcy Beg · Leave a Comment
The deputy governor of the Bank of England has revealed how the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) nearly raised rates earlier this year, before the downturn hit markets.
Charles Bean said as recently as May there were calls from a substantial section of the MPC to raise rates from their historic low of 0.5%.
Speaking to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), Bean said: “As recently as our May meeting, a third of the Committee were voting to raise the Bank rate from its emergency level of 0.5%.
“Although I did not join them in voting to raise the Bank rate, I did view the arguments for and against a tightening as being finely balanced.”
However, he said such was the deterioration in the outlook since then, the MPC was forced to expand its quantitative easing programme by £75bn at the last meeting, to stave off deflation.
“Without action, and despite the present excessive level of inflation, the extra margin of slack meant that inflation would consequently be more likely to undershoot, rather than overshoot, the 2% target in the medium term,” he said.
Bean’s comments are ahead of the upcoming meeting of the MPC next week.