Many homeowners who own more on their home than their home is actually worth are obviously in a very difficult financial situation, especially in cases where a homeowner’s monthly mortgage obligation has become problematic due to the loss in property value. Interest rates on home loans are quite low at the present time but underwater homeowners have been unable to refinance for a more affordable mortgage rate and possible mortgage payment since they have negative equity in their home.

Yet, it’s hoped that this new Federal Housing Administration program will bring more options to homeowners in an underwater mortgage situation so that they may make their home loan payment more affordable and avoid foreclosure. However, there have been some concerns over whether this program will be successful due to the fact that mortgage servicers will be required to offer a principal reduction before homeowners may qualify.

Mortgage servicers have been reluctant to offer principal reductions in some cases and since another qualification of this program is that a homeowner must be current on their home loan payments, it’s believed that mortgage servicers may not offer principal reductions in cases where homeowners can still meet their mortgage payment requirements. However, homeowners who may be struggling to stay current on their home loan payments may find assistance through this short refinance opportunity as long as their mortgage servicer will work with them to provide more affordable mortgage payment options.

If you are planning on buying your dream home and are planning to take a home loan/mortgage, you must have often wondered “how much can I borrow for a mortgage”. To get an answer to that, you have to consider various factors. Some of the factors are as follows.

1. Credit score: To find out how much mortgage you can afford, find out your credit score first. Your credit score affects the interest rate; this will directly affect the mortgage payment. It is better to find out from a few lenders what interest rates they are offering. This should help you determine how much mortgage you can afford.

2. Down-payment: The amount of money that you have saved and are willing to pay towards the down payment, also affects how much mortgage you can afford. Earlier it was very difficult to get a mortgage for more than 80% of the price of the house you are purchasing. That is, 20% of the price of the house had to be paid by you, as down payment.nowadays, mortgages are given even with 3% of down payment.Thus, it is important for you to find out how much down Payment you will be able to make.

3. Monthly income: Your income is an important determinant that affects how much mortgage you get. Most lenders say that housing expenses are not to exceed 25% to 28% of your gross monthly income. Your income in this case will include, not only your income from your steady employment but also overtime, bonus, income from self employment, interest and dividend incomes, workman’s compensation etc. House expenses comprise of monthly mortgage principal, property taxes and your home insurance. The house expenses should not go beyond 29% of your gross income.

4. Debts: How much debt you have, is also considered by lenders before they give you a home loan. It is better to pay off as much of your debt as possible before applying for a mortgage. All debts such as real estate loans, bank loans, auto loans, alimony, and child support, come under consideration. Your housing expenses and your long term debts should not be more than 36% of your gross income.

Considering these factors you can have a fair idea of how much monthly mortgage payment you can afford. This helps answer the question “how much can I borrow for a mortgage”.

Not to worry to much, well you should worry, I hope to have a solution for you.

I had someone leave me a comment that spurred this answer.  They were declined for their loan modification after spending 7 months in a trial loan modification program.  They have been sent to collections and the foreclosure process without ever giving them a ‘decline letter’.

Go to learn more HERE at Trial Loan Modification Decline………………

It becomes an ethical question at this point, make your house payments or stop paying and walk away.

If you have been here before I have addressed the common response of walking away from your home as something that should never happen.  I truly believe that you need to fight to find solutions before resorting to the easiest course of action.  It’s just easy to walk away and it’s HARD to stay in and fight with your bank or lender to make things work “The Right Way”

“The Right Way” is fighting for a desired outcome and not taking the path well traveled.

1. Attempt a loan modification -  This is difficult to accomplish and will often require duplicate work on your end just to have them look at your paperwork.

2. Attempt a Short Sale – this is selling your home for less than the loan amount.  It is very common these day and there are some very good Short Sales Agents out there so just go find one you like and make it work.

3. Try a Short Refinance – This is not easy but it is possible to refinance your home for less than you owe.  You need to demonstrate a hardship and if done correctly you can get your balance reduced and you remain in your home.

4.  Sell and rent back – this is more complicated but can be done if you absolutely want to stay in the home you currently own.  You also might get lucky and be able to buy the house back for less shortly after you short sell it to the investor.

Many times people don’t work through all their options because it is just TOO HARD!  There is a whole lot of emotional stress when it comes to dealing with your mortgage.  I guess anytime you deal with finances it seems to be difficult.  Just know you have options and that figuring out those options is not that difficult.

SHORT REFINANCING HELP

Negative Equity Mortgage Solutions – HAMP Program

Shellie Hatfield and I go into great detail on how to properly handle a Negative Equtiy Mortgage using the HAMP program.  We cover the criteria in great detail and even dive in to the Streamline refi program.

HAMP program visite by On The Money Radio Show.

TG-421: Obama administration Kicks off Mortgage Modification …

November 30, 2009. TG-421. Obama administration Kicks off Mortgage Modification Conversion Drive. WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today kick off a nationwide …

Obama Administration To Admit Failure Of Mortgage Modification …

Throwing good after bad is not a practice that generates long term success and prosperity. In fact, the unintended consequences and costs of dysfunctional.

Status of Efforts
• 63 servicers had signed participation agreements for the first-lien modification program;
• More than 1.3 million solicitation letters for HAMP loan modifications to borrowers;
• More than 328,000 HAMP trial modification offers to borrowers;
• More than 209,000 HAMP trial modifications had started;

. . . and of the 209,000 mortgage modifications (.3% of total homeowners) started in the country, how are we doing?

• 1,080 borrowers had successfully completed the trial period and received HAMP modifications.

HAMP – Another Federal Foreclosure Bailout Plan

www.qualityfreearticles.com In 2009, the Congress and the Obama administration revealed their newest plan to help families save their homes from foreclosure by encouraging mortgage modifications. This plan, called the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) was designed to create broad guidelines for the mortgage industry on modifying loans, as well as provide incentives to lenders and servicers to offer modifications. … hamp “foreclosure bailout plan” …
Hope you enjoyed and Please be sure to follow us on this site and ask us questions in the comments section below.

Here are some good articles that discuss various issues surrounding Negative Equity Mortgages:

Most Borrowers with Negative Equity Have ARMs

And analysts at Amherst Securities Group warn that negative equity is a much more significant predictor of defaults than unemployment. As of the third quarter of 2009, First American CoreLogic found that most borrowers with negative equity have ARMs originated between 2005 and 2008. The borrowers… Subscribers have free access to the archives. … Get the free IMFnews e-newsletter sent to you every Wednesday. You’ll get the top mortgage news from all our publications.

New negative equity mortgage offers a lifeline – Walletpop UK

The experts will all tell you that negative equity isn’t a problem for life. You just sit tight, ride out the tough times, and eventually the price will edge back up to what you paid for your home. In most cases it only takes a couple …

Calculated Risk: Negative Equity Report for Q3

The average value for all properties with a mortgage is $270200, but properties in negative equity have an average value of $210300 or 22 percent less (Figure 8). The average mortgage debt for properties in negative in equity was …

Divorce yourself from your home!

So, take Professor White’s advice and just say No to negative equity. But don’t just walk away! Fight your foreclosure to gain leverage and possibly force a meaningful modification of your mortgage. The first step is to treat your house …

Real Estate Forecast for 2010

Mortgage experts speaking before the House Financial Services Committee have all concluded the Obama administration’s mortgage modification program is “destined to fail” and doesn’t address the issue of negative equity. …

My mortgage lender, Wells Fargo, sent me an application for the …

Anyway, I have an ARM mortgage that will NOT adjust until 2014. I have negative equity thanks to the wonderful market. My appx value is probably around k and I owe about k. My interest rate is about 8% but with zero PMI with a monthly …

If you have question about an Upside Down Commercial Mortgage I suggest you contact Howard Minster.  He has not only mortgage workout programs but may have a cash flow program for you as well.

Why Credit Matters

While there are a few insurance companies that don’t look at credit scores in determining premium rates, most do. In fact, it is estimated that around 92 percent of insurance companies do look at your credit. They do this because, just as in other situations, your credit is seen as a sign of just how risky of a driver you may be. If you have a low score insurers may feel that you are someone who takes more risks, doesn’t keep up on their financial responsibilities and will be more likely to file claims, thus costing them more money.

Having poor credit may impact your insurance rates but, as you know, a credit score doesn’t tell someone’s whole story. Because of this, it’s not the only piece of information they use. They also look at your driving record, age, where you live, vehicle being insured, and other factors. You may be able to help offset poor credit somewhat by having a great driving record and by avoiding having a vehicle that is considered risky, such as a sports car.

What You Can Do

The good news is that, if you have good credit, you are likely to save money on your insurance premiums. So this is yet another reason to try to improve your credit. But just how do you go about doing this? Start by getting a copy of your credit report and reviewing it. Locate anything that is not correct and file a claim with the agency to inform them that it is inaccurate.

Beyond that, work at fixing any credit problems you have and improve it overall. You can do this by paying bills on time, lowering your debt to income ratio, and not opening up new credit accounts. Then, be sure to get new auto insurance rates periodically. If you get your insurance policy with a credit score of 525 and you raise it after a year to 620, you will want to either inform your current carrier or get quotes from others to go elsewhere. Improving your rating should translate to a lower premium, either with your current insurer or by obtaining a new one.

There are so many rule and tricks that you need to follow that most people get overwhelmed with all the data and information they obtain that they can even focus on what they really need to be doing.  Not to mention all the bad information that flies around and just flat out confuses people.  The most important thing is that every individual person is different and one experience may be similar to another but they are NEVER the same.

I haven’t posted anything in a while so I am going to take some time and go over everything that I have been up to so everyone gets their moment and I get as much “Good” information to you as possible.  I have been up to quite a bit in these past few months so I will share with you everything I can.

1. Upside Down Mortgage Help – There is a Local Sacramento Attorney who sat down with me and we developed a program to help homeowners understand their situation by offering Upside Down Mortgage Help! – There are a couple videos there that will go into detail how to handle your use FNMA’s new Upside Down mortgage refinance program DU Plus.  This program allows those who have two mortgages to refinance the first mortgage as long as that loan is a FNMA mortgage.  The details to that program can be found at http://www.brentlane.net – QUICK NOTE: to get to all the videos please insert your email and select “No Thanks, take me to the videos” on the second video page.  This will quickly give you direction and tell you which option is most suitable for you and your family.

2. FHA Streamline Refinance in CA – Have you checked your mailbox lately?  By now you should have heard about this Streamline FHA Refinance CA but if not this mortgage refinance can save you a couple hundred dollars a month.  There are several people who for whatever reason haven’t see the true value of this streamline FHA refinance because $100-$150 a month just isn’t worth it to them but the reality is that if you plan on staying in your home for more than 4-5 years this is an easy way to lower your payment.  This loan is a savior to many.  It is free from income and appraised value checks so if you lost your job or know that your houses value is down it doesn’t matter here.  The only rule is that you have a FHA currently to qualify.

3. Real Estate Taxes on Mortgage Refinances CA – I am not a expert on anything tax related but I wanted to share with you a couple common pitfalls regarding taxes and escrow or impound accounts.  In almost every Mortgage Refinance CA transaction I have had this year I have had an issue with escrow or impounds and the related tax bills.  Funny part, every one of my clients had been underpaying their monthly taxes!  When we go through the refinance process we verify that the taxes are accurate and that they are paid and that the escrow/impound numbers are accurate.  Now most people would know that house values in CA have been on the decline for the past few years.  Since the clients took their purchase Mortgage on the property their taxes have been reflecting poorly.

Traditionally when you buy a house the new tax bill is close to the old value on the property but as a rule of thumb property taxes are are 1.10%-1.25% or the properties purchase price.  Now if that purchase price is considerably less then the current value the tax collector has placed on the property then the amount that needs to be paid to the tax collector is going to be substantially less as a result.  In other words, my clients weren’t paying enough to their impound or escrow accounts and therefore when we went to do the streamline FHA Refinance CA we would have a shortage in the escrow account and that had to be built into the new loan or made part of the total payoff of the current mortgage.  To make matters worse,  the tax bill increased from the current number sometimes wiping out the entire savings the FHA Streamline Refinance CA provided.

Needless to say this made it difficult for most of my clients to understand and left quite a bit up to the tax collector moving forward.  The easiest explanation for this situation was that if we did nothing the current escrow payment will go up forcing you to catch up and then add back in a higher payment until the property taxes are correctly reporting potentially raising the payment by a couple hundred dollars.  Now in the streamline FHA refinance CA process there is no savings reflected in the monthly payment so a lengthy explanation was always needed to get the transaction closed but in the end everyone of the people I assisted in this process was happy except one! ( I am not perfect )

4. On The Money Radio Show – Recently I was offered an opportunity to work on the radio talking about one of my passion projects, Mentoring Youth through Coaching Football, Character Based Coaching.  The Playmakers Radio Show was born and together with my radio co-host, Greg Roeszler, I made my radio debut.  The show is on 950AM KAHI or http://www.kahi.com and airs on Sunday’s around the Raiders Games.  We discuss youth and prep sports in the local and national area.

That all led to being on a different program related to my actual day job and On The Money Mortgage Show was born.  My co-host for this show is Shellie Hatfield and we have been discussing some great mortgage news and recent updates.  This show also airs on Sundays at 9am on 950AM or http://www.kahi.com.  Shellie has really done her homework and introduced me to all sorts of other mortgage related issues.

We have discussed HVCC and AMC which are appraisal related issues and how they are negatively impacting the real estate market by making things more expensive.  Shellie introduced a great example on how an AMC (Appraisal Management Company) cost her client $900 in appraisal fees versus the traditional $450 (up from $350 thanks to the AMC’s).  AMC’s use appraisers that are NOT familiar with the areas where appraisals need to be ordered and this causes many problems for those people in the real estate transaction.  We are working hard to remove AMC’s as a policy as it hurts the consumer while making some agency or government monitored company wealthy.

You can listen into the On The Money Radio Show 950AM show below!

5. Local Affiliate Marketing - Since writing online for several years now I have learned quite a bit.  During that time I have been lucky enough to have the search engines deem my websites worthy of being on the first page of their results.  As a result I have been averaging quite a bit of web traffic to my site and have been able to send traffic to other sources as a result.  This has raised some eyebrows as you can imagine and as a result I have been asked several times to assist others in duplicating the process for their businesses.  As a result I have taken a couple people and walked them through how I managed to put rank my website so high in search engines.

This has spawned a new business for me and I have been able to help several other people and businesses with their online marketing and introduced the concept of Local Affiliate Marketing.  Check out the site for details on how I can help you and your website or online business or contact me directly.

6. Playmakers Organization and High School Football – Now if that wasn’t enough I donate quite a bit of my time to a non-profit organization called Playmakers.  The organization takes care of homeless kids and mentors youth using coaching as a tool.  Playmakers also offers free youth and high school football camps in Sacramento.  In 2009 we coached around 700 kids between all the different football camps we did all across the country.  I am proud to be a part of the organization as it grows into something even greater.  Here is a little bit about this program:

That should about do it for this giant post but if you need anything please feel free to contact me, I am sure you can find my email on here somewhere!

Brent [at] brentlane.net

Short Sale Help in Sacramento – A Case Study by Real Estate Attorney Steve Beede

Fannie Mae has stepped in to help!

Refinancing Upside Down Mortgage has a new face and Fannie Mae is leading the charge.

They are now allowing homeowners the ability to refinance their Upside Down Home Loan  with relative ease.

I have put together some educational videos that will walk you through the steps to help you through the process of  refinancing an upside down mortgage.

Click the LINK below and I will tell you how to start the refinancing upside down mortgage process.

upsidedownmortgagehelp

I know that the mortgage industry has take on a bad name and it can be difficult to find the right person to help you.  If you are looking for help with buying a new home, refinancing upside down mortgage or any type of mortgage issue please feel free to contact me at brent[at]brentlane.net.  I take personal pride in being a trustworthy Roseville CA mortgage broker and I will do everything in my power to deliver what I promised you in the beginning.

So much is going on the mortgage market that it’s hard to keep up.  Take a minute and learn all you can and then find an expert to give you that upside down mortgage relief your are looking for.  I can help you with upside down mortgage refinances to purchasing a home in Auburn, CA or Placer county CA.

I look foward to talking with you.

Brent Lane

brent[at]brentlane.net