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Category: Lending (page 30 of 56)

November 22, 2011

Lower VA funding fees, as of November 18, 2011, attract year-end veteran buyers

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

N.B:  On the day before I published this, HR 674 passed, reverting the funding fee amounts to the “old” levels.  It was updated in VA Circular 26-11-19, published November 22, 2011.  The “new” lower funding fee schedule was in effect for three days, from Nov 18-21.  Sorry for the confusion.

Home buying became a bunch cheaper for eligible veterans.  On November 18, 2011, the VA lowered the amount it charges veteran borrowers, for the VA loan guaranty.  Rather than charge private mortgage insurance (PMI), like conventional loans do, or a combination of an upfront mortgage insurance premium (UFMIP) and a monthly insurance premium (MIP), like the FHA does, the VA relies on a one-time charge, which can be financed, called a funding fee.

The VA looks at a service member’s life cycle and tailors the funding fee to meet his/her expected abilities to finance a home.  For example, a first-time home buyer pays a funding fee of 1.4% of the loan amount, for a zero-down loan.  The VA expects that service member to have some equity for his/her second home purchase so, should the veteran choose to buy “no-money-down”, on a subsequent purchase, the VA funding fee is double, or 2.8% of the loan amount.

Veterans who put down 5% of the purchase price are only charged .75% of the loan amount.  Veterans who put down 10% of the purchase price are only charged .5% of the purchase price.  All refinance transactions, including the no-income qualification and no appraisal needed, refinance transaction, otherwise known as the VA Interest Rate Reduction Loan (IRRL), are charged .5% of the refinanced loan.

A full table, of the new VA funding fee amounts, can be found on Mortgage Rates Report.

November 9, 2011

Hey, Ron Phipps: I say the National Association of Realtors is a rent-seeking Rotarian Socialist conspiracy against the American consumer. Can you offer even one argument to refute that claim?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

My friend and partner, the ever-more-Unchained Brian Brady, posted a Facebook link to a Wall Street Journal article on the current push by the National Association of Realtors for extended loan subsidies for the rich:

To understand why 90% of U.S. mortgages are still underwritten by taxpayers, look no further than the nearby letter from Ron Phipps of the Realtors lobby. He makes clear that the Realtors, like the rest of the housing-subsidy crowd, are working hard to get Congress to reinstate a $729,750 loan-limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guarantees.

Why do rich people need taxpayer-underwritten home loans? They don’t, of course. The NAR needs loan subsidies at all income-levels to keep churning the real estate market.

In case you haven’t looked at your bank statements or retirement accounts lately, the NAR has already churned the American economy into a five-year coma. But like every other legislative vampire, the NAR won’t stop sucking away at unearned income until the body politic is entirely exsanguinated — bled to death.

This latest Five-Alarm Urgent Action Item — one of three or four a week Phipps and his minions spam-spew — is nothing more than an extension of the original NAR philosophy: Milk consumers, taxpayers and real estate salespeople for the benefit of brokers.

Do you doubt me?

The real estate licensing laws, written in their original form by the NAR, exist to limit competition in real estate brokerage, eliminating alternative sources of real estate brokerage to artificially sustain higher commissions for NAR brokers.

The sales commission co-brokerage fee — the vaunted “cooperation” among brokers — exists to create the Multiple Listings Service oligopoly, the golden handcuffs by which real estate salespeople are bound to their brokers and to the NAR — and which, not-coincidentally, continues the viciously anti-consumer NAR policy of de facto sub-agency.

The IRS “safe harbor” exclusion shielding real estate brokers from having to report income for their employees makes it possible for brokers to churn-and-burn gullible real estate salespeople like a toy store burns through your kid’s allowance money. No other business can afford to treat human capital — that would be you — like so Read more

October 6, 2011

Who has “Cutting Edge Marketing” for Mortgage Origination?

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

The mortgage business is pretty cut-and-dry today.  Historically low interest rates, a whole lot less people in the industry, and five screwed-up banks are making it easy for originators to pick the “low-hanging fruit” today.  I’m not so naive to think that the Garden of Eden will be as lush as it is today.  I know we are going to have to return (once again) to the basic building blocks of business generation when rates rise (my guess for the inevitable rise is sometime after the New Year).

A lot of things have changed in the past two years, especially the way we find loans which can be funded.  Some of the ideas I think make sense include:

  1. an automatic CRM, like Top Of Mind manages for you
  2. video email marketing, like I have been exploring
  3. Continuing education for REALTORS, like Educate2Earn is doing
  4. Old-fashioned blogging for mortgages
  5. Even older-fashioned but proven systems, as offered by Loan Toolbox
  6. Some of the many ideas offered by Mortgage Marketing Animals

Are you doing something differently to get the telephone to ring?  Is there anything you might have heard, which allegedly works, which you would like to learn?

I’m interested in your feedback.

August 31, 2011

Reuters: “Homeowners without a job or good credit histories have been essentially shut out of the refinancing process.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

And this is bad news?

That entire Reuters article is interesting, as will be the forthcoming stories on President Obama’s big, big plans to put Americans to work.

Two important facts emerge, I think:

First, no one in the entire ruling class has any idea how jobs are created. Stimulating demand while you stymie production is just another way of driving up prices at the cash register.

But second, I think Obama is managing to do what decades of conservative and libertarian ideologues have failed to do: He is demonstrating the futility of the entire Keynesian approach to government.

It’s an internet effect, of course. The massive increase in information velocity makes smoke-and-mirrors academic obfuscation more and more difficult.

But Obama’s uncanny political ineptitude is making it that much easier for Americans to discover that, for all the hype, the emperor has always been naked.

August 17, 2011

Reforming FannieMae and FreddieMac with Marx: Rotarian Socialist rent-seekers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your brains!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Totally cool. An actual newspaper article about America’s favorite welfare program, government subsidized mortgages — and in The Boston Globe, no less:

Amid all the clamor about entitlement reform during the struggle to raise the debt ceiling, one enormous cost – and potential source of future savings – largely escaped scrutiny: the billions of dollars the United States spends to support the mortgage market. Even before the 2008 financial crisis, the government assumed the credit risk on most loans, which allowed banks to offer better rates, but ultimately left taxpayers footing the bill when the housing market collapsed: $138 billion and counting.

During the crisis, the government became even more involved in the mortgage market by rescuing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and agreeing to backstop larger loans. This furnished enough liquidity to prop up the housing market and helped bring about the low mortgage rates of the last three years. But getting in has proved much easier than getting out. Today, the government backs 95 percent of new loans, leaving taxpayers more exposed than ever.

That could finally be about to change. After next month, federal loan limits in expensive areas like Boston, New York, and Los Angeles are set to decline from $729,750 to $625,500. Had the lower limits applied last year, the government would have backed 50,000 fewer loans. But even this modest pullback may not happen. At the urging of homebuilders and realtors, lawmakers in both parties want to extend the higher limits, possibly for good. It’s an early skirmish in the larger battle over the government’s proper role in the mortgage market. And the issue isn’t just when to pull back, but whether to do so at all: Many Americans have come to regard cheap mortgages as an entitlement.

I am so ecstatic to see Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie and FHAVAUSDA properly identified as welfare programs — invented by rent-seeking Rotarian Socialists for the benefit of other rent-seeking Rotarian Socialists — that I’m finding it hard to kvetch.

Well, maybe not too hard. Look at this:

Liberals tend to support government intervention as a means of subsidizing home ownership for the poor and Read more

July 29, 2011

Could Mortgage Rates DROP after a Treasuries’ credit ratings downgrade?

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

The dictated debt limit deadline looms and a credit rating downgrade, to US Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities, seems likely.  Naturally, a spike in treasury yields is expected and a subsequent rise in mortgage rates should follow.   That’s right out of the senior year textbook, in most American business schools.

I’m not so sure the fixed-income markets will follow the textbook.  Mortgage rates might … do nothing in response the the credit rating downgrade.  Here’s why:

The credit ratings agencies lack……well…credibility.

The independent credit ratings agencies ( Moodys, Standard & Poors, Fitch, etc) have a reputation for being late on the scene.  They got hoodwinked with Enron, MCI/Worldcom, and Greece.  They were asleep at the wheel during the mortgage meltdown, issuing AAA ratings to CDOs, up until late 2007.  They are often considered to be too chummy with the issuers (the issuers pay their fee) and when the issuer is a government (with the power to regulate their business), they generally walk on eggshells.

The news may be baked into the market already.

The ratings agencies have been signaling a potential downgrade for months.  Clearly, raising the US debt limit will allow the Treasury to remain “liquid” but the agencies have said a downgrade is likely unless a substantive plan is enacted to reduce spending.  Cut, Cap & Balance, the “most extreme” of the proposals offered, still might not have been “extreme” enough to avoid a downgrade.  Both political parties are demonstrating that they lack the political will to address the long-term structural deficits, needed to bolster the Federal budget, to avoid the ratings downgrade.  Fixed income traders seem to be shrugging that off.

US Treasury securities are still considered to be the safest investment in the world.

Certainly there are better run countries than the US but their debt offerings lack SIZE; there ain’t enough of that debt for the real money.  Germany has its EU obligations hanging around in the background and Japan seems to be in worse shape than we are.  Chinese sovereign debt could be a consideration but the Chinese and Japanese still want their investments dollar-denominated.  The US is, for all Read more

July 25, 2011

The Sky is Falling… and So Are Loan Limits

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

There are more changes coming to the residential lending world (all those surprised by that, please stand on your head and whistle).  The Fed is maintaining the conforming loan limit of $417,000, but is lowering the non-conforming, conforming loan limits.  The what now?  A little background might help: in 2008 Fannie Mae’s charter was expanded to allow loan amounts in high cost areas (such as San Diego… yeah us!) to exceed the nationwide conforming loan limit of $417,000.  The most recent loan limit in San Diego County has been $697,500, thus making it exceedingly difficult for those of us who toil away in the real estate salt mines of America’s Finest City to keep beautiful San Diegans housed in the luxury to which they have become accustomed…

But as of October 1, the limit is dropping; in San Diego County it will be $546,250 and some wonder if this isn’t just a stepping stone on the way down to the original $417,000! 

As you might imagine, there is a long list of people who do not like this decision.  The National Association of Realtors has sent out an Emergency “Call for Action” message in response, suggesting “… a housing recovery depends on keeping mortgages affordable” and warning this decrease in loan limits will “make creditworthy borrowers unable to access affordable financing” (emphasis mine).  This raises an interesting question:

Should the government be providing affordable financing in high cost areas?

Hold on, let me ask that again, with a little more accuracy:

Should you and I be subsidizing mortgages for people buying $800,000 homes?

Wait… don’t answer that.  We don’t want to be insensitive to the needs of my fellow San Diegans and we certainly don’t want to interfere with the ongoing success of the “housing recovery.”   Let’s move on to the good news:

With the Fed in charge of “high cost” loans and a market unsure what the Fed might  do next… well, they were kind of the elephant in the room; there was no space for anyone else, which meant that until very recently, there were no true Jumbo loans to be found.  (Unlike jumbo shrimp, a jumbo loan actually means what it sets out to mean: a loan amount larger than Fannie Mae’s conforming – or in this case non-conforming, Read more

May 5, 2011

Repeal The PATRIOT Act. Bin-Laden’s Dead.

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

STARDATE:  22 February 2002

Borrower:  Why do you need my driver’s license to secure me a mortgage?

Brady:  I’m required to by the new law, the USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act.  We mortgage originators have been enlisted in the GWOT, as the first line of defense.  I’m proud to do my part to help protect America and hunt down Osama bin-Laden.

Borrower:  That’s jacked up.  Did you know the PATRIOT Act also allows the FBI to execute it’s own warrants, tap your phone, read your email, intercept your written correspondence, and instruct your banks to not inform you that they are spying on you?

Brady:  You don’t have to be an agitator. I’m just doing my part.  In fact, the President said it not only is it our duty to protect the Homeland against marauding borrowers, he wants us to lend you more money… to get the economy moving, you see.

Borrower:  So..I can borrow ABOVE the value of my home?

Brady:  Absolutely.  It’s your patriotic duty.

Borrower:  Heil, baby.  Where do I sign up?

Geronimo is down.  Repeal the PATRIOT Act.  I know that freedom ain’t free but I now know tyranny can come disguised as tuxedo-clad theater goers.

April 27, 2011

The Stick, the Carrot, and The Men Behind the Curtain

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Monday, I talked about how real estate is better described as a store of value rather than an investment, referencing the work Reason’s Anthony Randazzo published.  Randazzo really hit it out of the park because he showed, without a doubt, how the residential real estate bubble started right after 1992.  Look at the second chart (Case-Shiller Real Housing Price Index).  That chart shows the adjusted for inflation index.  It looks like an EKG after a jolt from defibrillator paddles.  Every curious person would want to know what those defibrillator paddles were.:

Only once the so-called 1992 Government-Sponsored Enterprise (GSE) Safety and Soundness Act opened up the floodgates of federal subsidies, later to be caffeinated by the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy in the early 2000s, did prices double nationally.

ZAP!!! The 1992 Government-Sponsored Enterprise (GSE) Safety and Soundness Act which turned out to be an oxymoron.

One commenter didn’t buy the results of the EKG and said:

Seems to me that America has had a succession of bubbles, market manipulations and public speculations since the mid 80s. Gold/Silver in the mid 80s, the Saving & Loan scams later, then the tech stock mania, then the real estate bubble and now we’re seeing gold/silver mania again as well as two recent bouts of crude oil speculation.

And these things were caused by activist government planning? No, these things were caused by BIG, BIG money jumping from place to place and “making the market”.

I asked a leading question:

What makes it “jump”?

I should have pointed out that there was a commodities bubble in the late 70s (remember the odd and even days at the pump?) but, let’s add that 70’s commodities bubble, to the many asset bubbles cited by the commenter, and ask “Is that normal?” and, if it isn’t (by the way, it isn’t normal), we must wonder, did anything happen in the 1970’s which would cause money to move quickly in and out of asset classes?  Isn’t there some asset standard to which our dollar could be pegged?

The answer is like a bar of gold, hidden Read more

April 26, 2011

Housing Might Not Be a Good “Investment” But It’s Not a Bad Hedge Against Inflation

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Debra and I had the good fortune to met Anthony Randazzo at a Reason Foundation dinner last week.  Mr. Randazzo published an article today, about real estate as a “store of value” (which was consistent with what we’ve been talking about here on BloodhoundBlog).

Few people will dispute that more homeowners adds “social value” to communities.  Greg Swann articulated that nicely here:

The essence of our freedom is the free ownership of the land, and yet everywhere we turn, private property is subjected to one law after another, and everything that is not forbidden is compulsory instead.

This is a grievous error. The men who become Brownshirts or Klansmen or Khmer Rouge — the men who make up murderous mobs — are men without land. It is the husbandry of the land — each man to his own parcel — that most makes husbands of us, that sweeps away our willingness to live as brigands or rapists or thugs.

By robbing the private ownership of the land of its meaning, the state is, by increments, robbing its citizens of their humanity. No one burns down his own home, nor his neighbor’s home. But when the time comes that we all seem to own our homes only by sufferance, none of us will have anything left to defend.

What Greg was arguing against was an activist government, abusing eminent domain laws.  I was happy to read that locally, the brigands disguised as National City, CA Councilmen were defeated last week but the war in defense of private property rights will be a long campaign.

Mr Randazzo’s article however, demonstrates how that “social value” (op. cit.) can be distorted when the planners keep planning:

When looking at housing this way, the “ownership society” lauded by President Bush in the early 2000s, sounds like a good idea. Especially when considering the social values associated with homeownership, like being a good neighbor and having a stake in nuturing a community. However, while owning a home is rarely a bad thing, it might not be the great investment our Read more

March 24, 2011

The Coffee House Crisis

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

With all the talk lately about the new lending regulations that will apply on April 1st, a similar set of new laws and regulations has been completely overlooked.  I felt it prudent to bring this unsettling situation to light.

As you may or may not be aware, over the past few years there have been quite a few problems “percolating” in the retail coffee business.  It seems that some customers have been over-charged, while others have ordered coffee that was too hot or just plain did not satisfy. This is a serious situation, not only because of the expense involved, but also the very real danger of severe burning.

The House sub-Committee on Agriculture and Imports has been holding hearings into this matter.  They brought a number of new regulations to the full Congress, which were subsequently voted into law and take effect April 1st of this year.  These new regulations govern the coffee purchase transaction within a retail coffee vendor.

I’ve highlighted some of the key components below:

  • The server must be paid (or tipped) the same for all beverages and may not earn more based on the time or effort involved.  (E.g. there is no difference between an Iced Cocoa Cappuccino 1 pump mocha, 1 pump white mocha, non-fat milk with a drizzle on top and a plain black coffee.
  • Customers must pay by credit card or cash, but never both.  If paying by credit card, they may not leave any cash tip for the server.
  • The Coffee House must distinguish between beans grown / brewed in-house and beans that are imported.  With beans grown / brewed in-house, the server must decide what to charge the customer before the customer ever enters the establishment and must then charge ALL customers that exact same amount.  (The server may only change what they charge once per “qualified period”.)
  • If a customer orders a beverage from the grown / brewed in-house selection and pays with a credit card, the server may receive no tip. (For purposes of this section, even the owner of the Coffee House is considered a “server”.)  Instead, they must be paid according to a compensation plan the Read more
March 3, 2011

Rage and Rates… a Tin Foil Hat Production

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

I wrote the article below a couple of days ago for a blog on political and economic freedom.  I’m reprinting it here after enjoying some discussion on the matter with fellow Bloodhound and VA mortgage expert Brian Brady.  Besides it being a brilliant piece (of tin foil hat wearing rantings), the article does actually touch on an area that could be of great importance to our real estate buying clients:  mortgage rates.  You see (in an over-simplified explanation), when the world gets scared, money flows to safety.  Safety, at least for the time being, still resides in US bonds.  Though not always correlated, the interest rates on mortgages often travel in the same direction as those on bonds.  So if, for some crazy, unforseen reason, the world becomes a little apprehensive over the next 2 weeks, we might see mortgage rates drop.  The question is: when do you lock the rate for your client?  Well, if we knew the actual date this crazy, unforseen event may occur, we could watch closely and lock right up to the day before. Why the day before?  Because there are three possible outcomes to this disruptive event, and two of them are bad:

  1. It could turn out to be a tempest in a teapot, in which case money will quickly flow out of the bond market and interest rates will rise.  (Because of the inverse relationship between bond prices and interest rates, when people sell bonds the price drops and the rate rises… I see people’s eyes rolling back in their heads… moving on then);
  2. Or, things could go as bad or even worse than expected and oil prices shoot up (geographical hint), causing inflationary fears. Because inflation erodes fixed rate returns, bonds sell off and interest rates rise in response;
  3. Or, things could go as bad or even worse than expected adding to the already existing fear – oil prices be damned; in which case even more money flows to the safety of bonds and interest rates continue to drop.

As you can see, of the three scenarios, two give rise to higher interest rates making us heroes for locking our client’s rate before the event.  If, on the other hand, we find ourselves knee deep in the third Read more

February 15, 2011

“Let’s unleash the genius of free markets on the capital of the American people simply by refusing to load the dice in favor of housing.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

President Barrack Obama released his proposed 2012 budget yesterday. The jeers greeting this event, from all wavelengths of the political spectrum, suggest that, at long last, people have finally begun to take the measure of this pathetic little man-boy. Even so, there is at least one tax increase in the midst of the typically Obamaesque frenzy of insanely excessive “spandering” — spending in pursuit of political pandering.

Which tax? The mortgage interest tax deduction is on the chopping block at last — at least for the most prosperous Americans. This will be hugely beneficial to the rest of the economy, as CNBC points out:

If we eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, we can stop re-directing capital away from innovation. Working Americans will be free to spend, save, and invest according to their own perceptions of their needs and their sense of the future.

I expect that eliminating the government incentives for spending on housing would promote dramatic innovations, making Americans more productive and allowing the economy to grow with renewed vigor. Instead of building up a Ponzi-scheme illusion of bubble-dependent wealth, we can genuinely improve our lives by allowing wealth to flow to where individuals perceive it will be best used.

[….]

In short, let’s unleash the genius of free markets on the capital of the American people simply by refusing to load the dice in favor of housing. Isn’t time to at least give the market a chance?

This is not what we will hear from the National Association of Realtors, of course, nor from very wealthy crocodiles shedding very salty crocodile tears.

Oh, well. Here is the very best thing prosperous people can do for their country in this hour most dire:

Get you fat, pouty lips off the welfare tit!

If you want to be free, stop pointing a gun at your own head…

February 11, 2011

Obama’s “plan” for Fannie and Freddie? It’s FHA, as it turns out.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

That’s not what they’re actually saying. But the law of unintended consequences will win out in the end. From the Wall Street Journal:

All of the administration’s proposals envision a scaled-back role for the government. One includes a new government backstop of certain mortgages under a federal “reinsurance” model, while another would propose a more limited backstop that would scale up primarily during times of economic crisis. The third option proposes no such government backstop beyond existing federal agencies such as the Federal Housing Administration.

Owner-occupied transactions are already overwhelmingly FHA — with the result that HUD is well on its way to becoming the biggest player in the lender-owned market. Getting rid of Fannie and Freddie won’t matter at all if their role in underwriting bad mortgages for unqualified buyers is supplanted by FHA.

February 8, 2011

Farewell to Fannie and Freddie? Hold your breath…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The Obamanation plans to offer up three proposals to eliminate FannieMae and FreddieMac from the secondary mortgage marketplace. Expect to hear much mournful keening, in coming weeks, from the country’s best enemy of private property, the National Association of Realtors.

From the Wall Street Journal:

More than two years after the government seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Obama administration will recommend phasing out the housing-finance giants and gradually reducing the government’s footprint in the mortgage market, according to people familiar with the matter.

The administration is expected to include three options for a post-Fannie and Freddie world when it releases a long-awaited proposal for the future of the nation’s $10.6 trillion mortgage market, which could come as soon as Friday. Together with federal agencies, Fannie and Freddie have accounted for nine of 10 new loan originations in the past year.

The White House’s “white paper” will begin what promises to be a prolonged and fiery debate about the future of how homes are financed across the U.S. Any wind-down of Fannie and Freddie would happen gradually to avoid roiling markets, and the central, unanswered question is what kind of federal function, if any, the administration and Congress will invent to take their place.

Steps to reduce the government role in the mortgage market likely would raise borrowing costs for home buyers, adding pressure on the still-fragile U.S. housing markets. Consequently, analysts believe any transition could take years and would be driven by the pace of the housing market’s recovery.

The fight over how to restructure the housing-finance system has roiled Washington, and yet both parties have been hesitant to propose detailed legislation.

For conservatives, Fannie and Freddie played a starring role in the financial crisis, and any solution that is viewed as replicating their function could face fierce opposition from some Republicans. But more moderate Republicans may resist such an approach and could join Democrats who have said a federal role is necessary to ensure broad access to home ownership.

While advancing one detailed plan risks providing fodder for partisan battles, offering multiple proposals may help the administration force those views into the open, said Michael Barr, Read more

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