On 2nd Feb, 2012, President Barack Obama revealed the details of a proposal that is going to encourage the housing market by assisting more distressed homeowners than are being helped now by lenders. The current HARP only assists the borrowers who have their loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The President expressed the idea that HARP would reach to more homeowners. So now this program would be expanded so that the loans that are not backed by Fannie and Freddie. These loans are without any federal backing and would be allowed to refinance into FHA backed loans and will be considered as the same Fannie and Freddie backed loans. According to an estimates the distressed homeowners would save around 3,000 US dollars per year in mortgage cost.

There are two conditions for the borrowers to be eligible for this program:
1). there should not be more than one delinquency
2). the loan amount cannot exceed the FHA loan limit

If the loan amount is more than 140 percent of the value of the property, the lender will have to agree to decrease the balance of loan. If the borrowers can verify their employment, the will not have to submit a full file of paperwork for the refinancing.

However, this change requires legislation. The Congress will have to agree with these changes for this program to take effect.
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If you want any help in a short sale, Short sales in New Castle, you can seek help and education from me which is necessary to make educated decisions. If you would like a free PRIVATE consultation please email me at homes4keep@yahoo.com. – Pearl

Servicers have been altering their operations to adjust the changes announced by the Federal Housing Finance Agency to HARP in October 2011. For the eligible borrowers certain things were eliminated e.g. loan-to-value ratio caps, upfront fees and warranty claims on the old loan file. When the HARP was launched in March 2009, about 0.8 million Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac borrowers could get their loans refinanced with lower rates. However, only about seven percent of these borrowers had loan-to-value ratio caps above 105%.

According to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts, during the month of December, prepayments slowed and dropped by 6%. According to an analyst of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, they expected an uneventful month in January and February is to provide the first quick look into the prospects of HARP. There are rumors that the White House is going to launch another program in order to promote more refinancing.

According to an analyst at JPMorgan Chase, modifying all coupon stacks of mortgage-backed securities would violate the prospectus. For such an action, the loans need to be at the risk of default. As per the analyst, if a refinancing wave on GSE loans is started by the White House and everything is to be moved into a 4% mortgage, it would only give annual savings for borrowers of around $25 billion to $30 billion. He further added that this would only be a transfer of wealth from investors to borrowers – also that compared with overall economy, the dollar savings of such a move would be small. Theoretically, HARP 2.0 is going to resolve issues of many refinancing hurdles.

If you want any help in a short sale, Short sales in New Castle, you can  seek help and education from me which is necessary to make educated  decisions. If you would like a free PRIVATE consultation please email me  at homes4keep@yahoo.com. – Pearl

The Federal Housing Administration waived a rule that restricts the agencies from insuring a home if the home is sold within 90 days of their possession. Now FHA is extending this waiver. This regulation, known as anti-flipping regulation, was invented to curb the damages done by market functions. It disallows the buyers to buy a property and then immediately sell it at high prices. This was earlier set to expire on January 31, 2012; but it has now been extended to remain in effect till December 31, 2011.

This anti-flipping regulation was designed in order to sustain a stable housing market. However, in the year 2010, it was waived. Its waiver was supported by the argument that this temporary relief would let the purchasers to buy HUD-owned properties, bank-owned properties and private homes. The buyers would buy the homes, improve them and resell them. This would lead to revitalization of the housing market.

The acting FHA commissioner, Carol Galante, is of the view that extending this waiver would result in accelerating the resale of foreclosed homes. Galante further added that FHA would remain a source of mortgage financing.

There are some restrictions attached with this waiver. The parties involved in these dealings cannot seek to achieve any special interest other than from buying and selling of the properties.

The lender has to meet all the criteria and provide documents in order to justify the increased price, if the sales price of the property is greater than or equal to 20% of the actual cost. This waiver is applicable to forward mortgages only.

According to FHA, the waiver has been extended after realising that acquiring, rehabilitating and selling a distressed home or property takes less than 90 days.

If you want any help in a short sale, Short sales in New Castle, you can  seek help and education from me which is necessary to make educated  decisions. If you would like a free PRIVATE consultation please email me  at homes4keep@yahoo.com. – Pearl

In order to reduce the cycle time and to bring improvement in customer services, Bank of America had made a process change for short sales that are submitted with an offer. This change is effective since 1^st December, 2011. This change has impact on all short sales that are submitted with an offer and the homeowner is eligible for HAFA program.

If the homeowner is HAFA eligible, Bank of America will not wait to contact the homeowner – instead it will start work on the short sale submitted with offer. All HAFA eligible homeowners are not required to contact the Short Sale Customer Care of BoA to signal if they want to participate in the program or not.

Now HAFA eligible homeowners can discuss it with their real estate agents and submit all necessary documents indicating the interest in HAFA to Equator within 14 days of application submission. But the bank will not stop the short sale file and it will continue advancing in the process. If the bank doesn’t receive the required HAFA documents, the short sale will be considered a traditional short sale.

Bank of America is changing the processing of all HAFA short sales with an offer from their outsourced vendor partners to BoA associates. All short sales submitted without an offer will also be processed by the outsourced vendor partners. A file can easily be transitioned from Bank of America’s traditional process to the HAFA process. This will result in improved customer service and agent experience.

Actions required:

– Short sales initiated on Equator.com that receive a HAFA eligibility message no longer require homeowners to call Customer Care to confirm their interest.
– If homeowners wish to participate in HAFA, agents must submit the requested documents within 14 days. (Note: the 14-day period begins the day the HAFA solicitation letter is mailed to the homeowner. Agents can obtain the date of the letter from homeowner.)
– If you are unclear about which documents to submit, contact your short sale specialist via Equator messaging.

If you want any help in a short sale, Short sales in New Castle, you can seek help and education from me which is necessary to make educated decisions. If you would like a free PRIVATE consultation please email me at homes4keep@yahoo.com. – Pearl

On 17th November 2011, FHA loan limits have been restored to their previous limits by the U.S. House and Senate. Now the limits will be 125% of the median home price which was 115% earlier. According to an estimate by NAR, several hundred counties where FHA loan limits fell at the end of September will now rise back up to the previous level. These new loan limits will provide help, liquidity and stability to the buyers.

It is expected that the President Obama will soon sign this legislation.  These limits will be effected as soon as President Obama signs the bill. After that, FHA will send a mortgagee letter to the approved lenders. The mortgagee letter will contain a list that’s been updated to reflect the new limits. The restored loan limits are in a broad-based bill that includes funding for a wide variety of federal operations and programs. It may take a couple of weeks for FHA to update the database and release the mortgagee letter.

The NFIP (National Flood Insurance Program) has also been extended by this funding bill till December 16 in order to allow lawmakers time to consider long-term authorization of that program, which is an NAR priority.

If you want any help in a short sale, Short sales in New Castle, you can seek help and education from me which is necessary to make educated decisions. If you would like a free PRIVATE consultation please email me at homes4keep@yahoo.com. – Pearl

Defaulting on recourse loans provides the lender the opportunity to retrieve the asset that was given as collateral for the loan as well as providing them grounds to collect on any deficit there may be left on the balance of the loan.

In stark contrast to this, is the non-recourse loan that only allows the provider the ability to take possession of the item that was put up as collateral. As in an instance that a lender takes a home or vehicle title as the item to back the loan, in case of default the only option available in to claim the vehicle or the house. criminal defense attorney

Defaulting on a recourse loan carries consequences to the recipient that are quite serious due to added monetary loss as well as loss of the backing item. If the loan is valued higher than the item the backer may legally collect the remaining sum from the loan carrier.

As in the example of a home being used as collateral; the recourse loan could be at $80,000 dollars at time of default. Even though the house may have been valued at $120,000, the home could be sold for $50,000 in auction. This will leave the provider with $30,000 loss to be recovered from the holder of the recourse loan.

The loan provider is given many avenues to collect their loss if the holder defaults on a recourse loan, most likely of which is going to be a suit in civil court. The court may then allow the backers to possess property, accounts, and garnish the wages of the individual until the monetary amount owed is satisfied. Consequences other than monetary are hits to the individuals credit and even if debt is forgiven, there could be a tax burden put upon the person or business that owes the debt.

If you want any help in a short sale, Short sales in New Castle, you can seek help and education from me which is necessary to make educated decisions. If you would like a free PRIVATE consultation please email me at homes4keep@yahoo.com. – Pearl