FHA Changes Guidelines for Seller Concessions

In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced the first major changes to FHA financing for the year changing the maximum seller concessions from 6% to 3%  early summer 2010.

The changes to seller concessions will have a large impact. Concessions include what the seller is contributing to the buyer in the transaction. A [...]

Make Sure Your Earnest Deposit Can Be Traced

It’s important that buyers cut the check for their earnest deposit from an account they can trace the funds from.  I recently had a transaction where the buyer used a cash gift to buy a cashiers check that was later used for their earnest deposit.  This will create problems during the underwriting of your loan, [...]

How Long Do I Have to Wait to Buy a House After a Short Sale?

The answer to this question varies depending on the loan program a buyer is looking at, but most buyers who have past credit problems rely on FHA loans as their fastest track back to homeownership.  This is due to FHA’s lenient credit guidelines compared to conventional loan programs.

HUD (The Department of Housing and Urban Development) [...]

Goodbye to Some Old Friends and Hello to Some New Ones

I’m announcing an move in my career.  Effective today, I’m officially working at Cobalt Mortgage.  This is a move I’ve put thought and consideration into for many months.  Cobalt is a company where I feel I can service my clients with the best array of products and service. I will have the ability broker loans [...]

You May Have Unclaimed War Bonds!

Every day, I watch a small internet video news report for mortgage professionals from a website called, “Think Big Work Small” (www.TBWS.com). 

In today’s broadcast, Frank Garay  and Brian Stevens (the hosts of the show) shared some information that I thought I would share. 

In World War II, the government issued millions of dollars in War Bonds [...]

Funds From a Cashiers Check may be held!

I just received a notice from Talon Title and Escrow that some banks are now holding funds from a Cashier’s Check!

This means if you receive a cashier’s check and you deposit these funds into your bank account, the funds may be held until the check clears.  This is the first I’ve heard of this.

There are [...]

The Taylor Bean and Whitaker Meltdown in a Nutshell

One of my clients and good friends sent me a link to an article that sums up the debacle pretty well. 

It sounds like most clients now know where to send their payments.  There has been some issues related to escrow accounts not paying taxes or insurance.  There have also been issues where borrowers received escrow [...]

$8,000 Tax Credit Extended? Increased?

Rumors have been going around about the $8,000 first-time-home-buyer tax credit being extended beyond December 1st, 2009.  There’s even rumors of it being increased AND including all buyers, not just first time home buyers.

Nothing is set in stone yet, but there’s obviously a lot of interest in this topic.  Some skeptics say that many of [...]

New Credit Scoring Model

It appears that there will be a new credit scoring model.  The new model is being dubbed “FICO 08.” 

Supposedly, this model is designed to help more qualified borrowers get the loans they deserve and filter more borrowers from potential default.  Mostly, it’s geared towards punishing repeat default borrowers more.  Borrowers who have an infrequent delinquency [...]

Real Estate Bar Camp in Seattle

I had the honor of going to my first barcamp on Wednesday, September 8th 2009.  This BarCamp was geared towards how to utilize technology in the real estate market.  We covered many topics including the Seattle real estate market, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Blogging, video blogging (something I’m excited to try) and social networking.  It was [...]