Real Estate Blog

Is your current mortgage payment (Including property tax and insurance) more than 31% of your income? The governments “Making Home Affordable” program is incredibly generous, the home equivalent of the “Cash for Clunkers” program.

We (At www.illinoismortgagemods.com) have achieved mortgage payment reductions of over 50% for clients that were never late on their mortgage- they had just experienced or were about to experience a reduction in income. This includes clients that had their new mortgage payments calculated and reset based on their impending pension income rather than current employed income!

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It could be as low as 2% on a 40 year amortization. Your modified payment will depend primarily on your Current Income. Therefore, lower income means lower rates. Interestingly, the traditional risk variables that would ordinarily determine your interest rate when applying for a loan are turned on their head with the Making Home Affordable (MHA) loan modification program.

Can you imagine going back a couple years and having a banker say to you, “We could give you a lower rate if you were delinquent or even if you just made less money but it appears that you can afford to pay more than your neighbor so that’s what we are going to charge”. Homeowners that are interested in benefitting from MHA shouldn’t put off applying for the home-equivalent of “Cash-for-Clunkers”.

Continue reading ‘What Interest Rate Should I Get With a Mortgage Modification?’ »

Almost every lender/servicer cautions homeowners against paying third parties to assist with their loan modification applications. Every participating lender in the Making Home Affordable (MHA) loan modification program is capable of working directly with their borrowers to process these applications without third party assistance.

There is also free government loan counseling help for homeowners that are struggling to work directly with their lenders. On the other hand, many of my clients first tried unsuccessfully on their own and were then surprised at how much quicker and better the results were when I was advocating for their application. I have a Bartlett client that was told he did not qualify for a MHA loan modification by both his servicer (National City) and a government counselor. I was able to get him into the MHA program in less than a week.

Continue reading ‘What is The Best Way to Seek Mortgage Modification?’ »

The credit crunch began officially just over two years and since then many UK citizens and industries have suffered badly economically. The mortgage and remortgage and housing industries have been ravaged by the economic downturn more than most other sectors. People simply did not have the confidence in their financial future to move house including buying a new built property. As a result many new built properties have remained unsold and builders have had to reduce their prices by enormous amounts simply to recoup their costs and have not been producing much profit.

Even areas that were property hotspots such as Cardiff harbour with the city having been promised a New York skyline has seen the luxury apartments lying unsold.Over a third of the properties have been unsold and others which have been sold are on the market again.This is due to people having to sell up due to redundancy, the cutting back of paid overtime, etc. The doom and gloom reported continually in newspapers and televisioin news kept expounding only negative aspects of the economy of the UK further adding to the woes of the mortgage and housing market as people simply seemed to curl up into a ball of lethargy and were not prepared to or confident enough to do anything so major as buying a property. All reports also seemed to suggest that mortgages were totally unavailable. This in reality was not the case, as mortgages and remortgages have never been away, although there are twenty six per cent fewer mortgage lenders now than at the same time last year.

Continue reading ‘Mortgage Lending Is Continuing On The Up As House Prices Stabilise’ »

When an individual or family is faced with a possible loss of their home they often become emotionally and mentally distressed. After working so hard to obtain a home it is now being taken from them and these people are often left wondering what their financial future might look like and whether or not they’ll ever have the opportunity to own a home again. Individuals under this kind of emotional and mental stress are often open to the foreclosure alternatives that their lender may approve. Unfortunately there are individuals out in the world who seek to take advantage of people in their most desperate of times. The real estate industry and individuals facing foreclosures are not exempt from scams that are dressed up nicely to look as though they are a legitimate and legal alternative to a foreclosure.

One of the most dangerous scams out there that individuals facing a foreclosure need to be wary of is the mortgage modification scam. While a mortgage modification is a legitimate alternative to a foreclosure, any modification that’s on the up and up will always have been approved by a homeowners lender and is usually led/managed by a talented Santa Barbara real estate agent. Any individual or family who qualifies for mortgage modification and chooses that over a foreclosure must always keep this in mind as many scams make it difficult for those under emotional and mental duress to differentiate the two. For this reason alone every individual or homeowner facing a possible foreclosure should first speak with if not work with a Santa Barbara real estate agent. Real estate agents trained and educated on the subject of foreclosures will be able to tell a homeowner immediately whether or not the mortgage modification is legitimate. Those who forgo working with a Santa Barbara real estate agent are those individuals who most often fall prey to such despicable and unscrupulous scams.

Continue reading ‘Mortgage Modification Scams: What To Do And Who To Contact’ »

What is a bi-weekly payment plan and what can it do for me? By making a small change in the way you make your mortgage payment, you can save tens of thousands of dollars. How? All you have to do is make half of your mortgage payment every other week. It’s just that simple. Tired of paying too much interest on your home loan? Here’s how a biweekly Mortgage works: By paying half of your payment every other week, you’ll actually make 13 mortgage payments in a year instead of 12. Just this simple straightforward method can pay your mortgage off up to seven years earlyaE”seven years of your life free of mortgage payments. How is this possible? If you’re paid every other week from your employer, then you are aware that are two months out of the year where you receive three paychecks instead of two. When you get this third paycheck twice a year that you’re not counting on, you’ll be putting money towards your principal. You are used to paying half of your payment already. This means it’s going to straight to your principal.

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