Real Estate

First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit Assistance and Federal Government Home Loan Program with Low Down Payment on FHA Mortgages. Buy Bank Foreclosed Homes at a Discount. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 2 (Excerpt)

The median income family can afford twice the median priced home; prices drop over 50%

And now I mentioned Dan Havey is back in the studio with us, Dan has done a lot of great things in the mortgage industry. He left us about a year and a half ago, is that right Dan?

Yes, I left the mortgage industry in October of 2007. Tell us a little bit more about yourself.

As you know I came originally from Wisconsin, where I got a degree in Business Finance and I came out here in 1989 and started working with my brother selling real estate owned-REO, bank owned properties for Fannie Mae, Countrywide, and the Resolution Trust Corporation-RTC which was the government entity that was put in charge of disposing of all the real estate owned by the 1800 S&Ls that had failed. I did that until about 1995 when I moved into the mortgage industry and there for 12 years I worked predominately with bankruptcy attorneys helping their clients get out of bankruptcy and foreclosure. I left the mortgage industry in October of 2007. Now I am working predominately in the arena of marketing for real estate and mortgage companies, helping out companies, just like Im here helping out Michael today, to get people to realize that right now actually is a really good time to buy.

There are a couple of points I want to make and it was something that Michael had said earlier. The first one was that 4% interest rate. Originally Obama said a couple of weeks ago, when he rolled out the mortgage plan, that they were going to take the $200 billion and use it to buy mortgage backed securities, well the article I was reading today said it appears that plan may have changed. Instead of buying the mortgage backs they were actually buying the stock of Fannie and Freddie to help support the company and keep these companies going under. I dont quite understand why being how they own them now.

Well youve got to hand it to the government they have really done a heck of a job helping Fannie Mae out, for instance today the stock is up to $0.41. Wow, doing so well, I remember when it was $150 or so, where it was at the top of the market.

Today, right now is definitely the best time even if rates dont get down to the 4% point. The beauty of it and were going to talk more about this in a later segment, is that we have seen a 51% decline in home values from the peak of the market. So you dont have to have the absolute greatest interest rate in order to be able to buy a house today. The median home price right now is $130,000 in Maricopa County, it was $264,000 just two years ago.

So the median home price is $130,000? We are going to talk a little bit about what a person has to make to actually qualify for that. Well it is definitely well within the means of a median income family. Right now a median income family makes about $64,000 in the state of Arizona according to the US Census Bureau and HUD. I ran some numbers today, I think at 6% interest and at that rate they can buy a $280,000 house. So you can buy twice the median home price if you are making just what the median income family would be in the state of Arizona. So the median household income buys double the median priced house in Maricopa County. That is correct, at 6% interest.

And the reality of it is interest rates are not even that high right now. So for people to be waiting for that perfect interest rate of 4% it doesnt really matter if it gets here or not because right now is such an incredibly fabulous time to be buying a house. There are so many foreclosures out there on the market right now, there are so many short sales out there on the market right now, and the point you made earlier is very important, that people have to get in and get prequalified, know exactly what they can buy. Now in many cases you are going to need a down payment, so get with your mortgage broker, get with Velocity Financial and start working on that program of getting those funds together for the down payment as well.

Dan Havey we talked in the past about whats available for financing these days, interesting to give little pat on the back for Velocity Financial is one of less than 15% of all of the lenders in the state of Arizona that are qualified to do FHA financed homes. Now FHA financing, people used to think it was only for first time home buyers, thats no longer the case. The FHA loan which only requires 3.5% down payment it doesnt matter if you have owned a home before and in many cases you can own another home now so long as your new purchase is going to be your primary residence you can utilize FHA financing and put only 3.5% down.

Duration : 0:6:42

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Amidst the Real Estate & Mortgage Meltdown; Foreclosure Fraud & Scams; Real Estates Future is Great. First Time Home Buyers, FHA Loans & Seller Paid Closing Costs. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 1 (Excerpt)

Forget the doom and gloom, First Time Home Buyers can buy with FHA

Thanks to my very great friend Brett Fallon for taking the time to be here in studio today. Brett is one of America’s finest financial advisors. And of course the infamous Dan Havey. Now we all love Dan Havey because he was instrumental in getting me into the mortgage industry about 14 years ago. Most importantly, Dan was instrumental in helping us put together the loan modification hotline and he is the author of Real Estates Future.

So today we have a few things we want discussed in regard to the economy, what’s happened, were wrapping up the year. You may have heard about this in the media, of course the media’s job is to scare you. Well our job is to tell you the truth. So Brett you have some data and some information that you wanted to share

Some of the things you hear in the media, you cant escape, its pretty much doom and gloom, sky is falling, this is the next Great Depression. It’s over for all of us and we should all just pack up and go. That kind of stuff is pervasive out there and creates fear and a lot of anxiety amongst people who are either investors, people who are looking to buy a house, looking to refinance a mortgage.

People dont realize there are certain tools that exist that we will talk about during the course of the show today. They should understand that some of the things that we discussed prior to today’s broadcasts were interest rates. Interest rates are at historic lows. Money is cheaper right now than it has ever been. We know the Fed recently reduced the Fed Funds Rate and that is the rate that banks are lending money to one another at.

Right now that rate is zero. Historically, that’s never happened in the United States before. The Fed’s idea is to help to unfreeze this credit market and we keep hearing all this talk about how credit markets are still frozen, that the global recession is deepening, there is evidence to the contrary of that. Some of the moves that the FED is making are working. We’re starting to see, and you and I were talking recently about some clients that were helping in terms of refinancing existing mortgages. Well, if the credit markets are frozen how come we got those loans complete?

Well, that’s a good point, and you got a call I think it was last Monday or maybe the Monday before, someone called you and asked if there was any money to refinance. What can I do? Well the reality of it is there is plenty of money out there for refinances, in some cases there’s issues with property values. That’s why there are different options for those types of people

Well from a buyer’s perspective, todays property valuation is a good thing, if I’m a buyer. Thats a good point too. People are interested in buying and the huge opportunity today. This is an unprecedented opportunity in my opinion, both in terms of the dollar and the real estate market. And for those who understand those dynamics and are willing to entertain the deal, they will be handsomely rewarded. There is no doubt about it.

And as we spoke on the last show, home prices in November for Maricopa County show that the median home price is down as low as $160,000 already. And it reminds me a lot about when I got into the industry, way back in 1989 and the type of financing we had then was FHA and Fannie Mae. And were back to that again now. We’ve got sanity back into the market and home prices have come down. But right now, it’s a perfect time, especially for first-time homebuyers or a move up buyer who can buy under the Fannie Mae limit of $417,000. If you can get into that range, and as we spoke before that 78% of the homes in Maricopa County that sold last month sold for under $250,000. I think that right now is the time just to get out there and find a house to move your family and children into with an FHA loan.

Michael, you don’t have to have exactly perfect credit do you? You can have a couple of dings if need be, right? You’re exactly right, each case has its own merits, every FHA loan is underwritten individually. There are many cases where collections are okay, there needs to be a explanation. You dont have to have the 720 plus credit scores like you do for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get the best rates…

Duration : 0:5:57

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/09/01/Financial_Fiasco_The_US_Infatuation_with_Home_Ownership

Former Senator John Sununu (R-NH) gives an insider’s perspective on the federal government’s role in causing the financial crisis. Sununu claims politicians supported much-maligined organizations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because “they didn’t want to appear to be anti-housing.”

—–

How was it possible that in a world where thousands of people regulated financial markets the whole system crashed down? And should we now give more power to central banks, government agencies, politicians, and regulators? Isn’t that what brought us here in the first place?

Financial Fiasco digs deep into the foundation of the economic meltdown, revealing how it was the product of conscious actions by decisionmakers in companies, government agencies, and political institutions, and by consumers. Financial Fiasco tells the compelling story of how rate-cutting by the Federal Reserve inflated the real estate market and fueled increased risk-taking in the financial markets; how new government policies to promote home ownership blasted air into the credit bubble; how new financial instruments, credit-rating requirements, and accounting rules intended to prevent cheating backfired; and much more.

Financial Fiasco guides readers through a world of irresponsible behavior, warns that many of the “solutions” being implemented are repeating the mistakes that caused the crisis, and offers guidance on how to move forward. – Cato Institute

John Edward Sununu (born September 10, 1964) is a former Republican United States Senator from New Hampshire. Sununu was the youngest member of the Senate for his entire six year term. He was also its only Arab-American member during his time in office. He is the son of former New Hampshire Governor John H. Sununu.

Duration : 0:3:52

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First Time Home Buyers use FHA Mortgage and Seller Paid Closing Costs to Buy Real Estate Now. Best Market Conditions for Foreclosures and Short Sales in Decades. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 6 (Excerpt)

How many lives have to be wrecked by the mortgage companies loss mitigation departments?

I always tell people when I was dealing with them, with their bankruptcy situation or foreclosures or whatever especially when someone would call me and they would say, I want to file a chapter 13 to save my house and I would say, You dont even think about doing that without an attorney and I would give them an attorneys name and it would work out for them because I think the numbers were like 95% of all chapter 13s filed by the home owner themselves failed.

And I think that is the kind of numbers were going to see in loan modifications, we saw numbers the other day that came out from the government saying that over 50% of the loan modifications are failing. I would suspect that 95% of those were not negotiated by an attorney.

Youre absolutely right, the other thing is people think theyre getting a loan modification because their lender told them that but theyre going to increase their payment over the next X number of months to make up for the back payments. That is not a loan modification by my standards, that is called a forbearance agreement and the majority of people who have failed its because they were put into a plan that was designed to fail.

For gods sakes if your lender is going to increase your mortgage payment by 50% how on earth are you going to pay it when you couldnt pay it when it was right? To me its just mind boggling, theyre out of their minds in these loss mitigation departments. They’re not looking out for you, theyre mitigating the loss for the banks, you need someone who is going to fight for you. And that is what we do.

Well those guys are employed by the bank and they have a vested interest in seeing the bank do well. And they have huge, huge, huge, hundreds of millions and billions in losses that they need to make up. Its kind of a no-brainer, plus, you can’t discount the psychological element in this. If youre in a stressful situation and youre emotionally tied to what if, what if, what is this going to look like in six months? You cannot objectively negotiate your own case with the lender it’s just not psychologically feasible to consider that. Even if you have the time and could figure it out.

And one thing, to take it back to a personal level, there were many times when I was working with people who were in foreclosure and got the phone call the night before the foreclosure sale. They would ask me, can you help me?, and I would say yes, here is what you want to do. You want to go down to the bankruptcy court first thing tomorrow morning and file a chapter 13 by yourself. Now I am not saying go through the chapter 13 by yourself, because I would give them the attorneys number, but they have to be there in line by nine oclock to get it filed and then go get an attorney to work with.

But why did they end up in that situation? In many cases they would tell me that they have been working to get what they called a loan modification, more accurately a forbearance agreement, that is what they were working on with their lender, they would send in all the paperwork that the lender asked for and they would call the lender back after 30 days. And the lender would say, oh well we lost it and so they would get it all together again, and they would send it in and it would be another 30 days, oh well we lost it. Or this, or that, or they would ask for more paperwork and eventually what it came down to is a couple of days before the actual foreclosure sale date the lender would call up and say No, we decided to not do your forbearance agreement for you. And then they’re calling me looking for help. Now if you were working with an attorney, I guarantee that lender is not going to lose your paperwork.

So I have this young lady of 50 years old call me today her husband had just passed away two months ago. Sad, sad situation, very difficult to talk with her because it just felt so horrible this was just unexpected. I probably should not say the name of the servicer, but she’s dealing with someone who would be considered a subprime lender, their loss mitigation department is in India. India doesn’t really have the same rules and guidelines, there is a huge language barrier between her and the person she is talking to try with to save her home.

Duration : 0:6:36

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Home Loan Modifications Negotiated by Licensed Attorneys. Real Estate & Mortgage Laws and Guidelines are Complex. Beware of the Banks Loss Mitigation Department. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 6 (Excerpt)

Fannie Mae is proposing to give you a 50 year loan with an adjustable rate

The next one is that your loan to value on your house has to be at least 90% of the property value. So in other words everyone under 90% gets foreclosed on? Right, if you only owe 80% of what your home is worth, they can foreclose on you, take your house and they dont lose as much money.

Back when I was working with Fannie Mae selling repos almost 20 years ago now, they always gave us the figure that they lost 20% of the homes value every time they had to foreclose. So they have plenty of room to sell your house if you only owe 80% on it. So if you owe, lets just throw out some numbers here, lets say your house is worth $100,000 and you owe $80,000 on it, well they are going to lose a little bit but they are going to make it back when they sell your house for $100,000.

Yes, they would just as soon kick you out and keep their money. Yes, exactly I am not necessarily going to say that Fannie Mae is going to kick you out of your house, however the reason why they have this guideline is very simple, they are not going to lose money on you if they have to foreclose on you when you are under 90%. They certainly are not going to lose very much money.

If you have subordinate loans it may be left outstanding and will not be considered in the LTV, so lets just give an example here, your house is worth $300,000 and you have a $300,000 1st mortgage and you happen to have a $50,000 second mortgage. They will re-modify your 1st mortgage but leave the 2nd mortgage in place. So people get to stay underwater, or upside down.

Well certainly you would be in that case and it just does not sit right. The best thing I certainly would like to see them do if nothing else in a situation like that is combine it all into one loan at a much lower interest rate. Because you know that 2nd mortgage is probably going to have a high interest rate. So it would just be so much better.

We need verification of income that makes sense. Here is one I dont get, 38% as far as your debt to income ratio. That seems kind of high to me. What do you think Michael?

Well I think that people who have gotten themselves into trouble and they need to do something like a loan modification then 38% is probably on the high side. People need relief, but they need relief that is going to last a long time. Even though this is essentially a trial-period loan modification this particular guideline of 38% really does not set well with me, I personally think it needs to be lower. People need a break; people need to be able to stay in their house.

Well what I was looking at is your average family; I always think probably pays about 30% of their gross income towards taxes, payroll, and things like that, so right off the bat Uncle Sammy takes 30%. Well now that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are owned by the government Uncle Sammy is going to get another 38% out of your paycheck which is a total of 68%, that doesnt leave a whole lot of money does it? Especially if you have a car payment, or you have kids to feed, maybe who go to daycare while you go off to work, assuming you still have a job. The unemployment rate is pretty high.

Well in order to qualify for this you do have to have income so you do have to have a job. So moving on to the next one because we are getting a little short on time, what they are going to do is take all of your back interest, escrow advances, costs, fees, everything they are going to add it to the loan amount and have you pay it back over as much as 50 years, if they need to stretch it out that long. Theyre going to give you a 50 year mortgage? I looked at that and thought, why dont you make it interest only because you are never going to pay the thing off anyway.

Lowest acceptable rate that they’ll have is 3%. The real kicker, if they get you a rate of 3% it will be an adjustable rate because it’s below today’s market rate. Your rate will actually increase starting five years from now at 1% per year until it gets up to the market rate. So not only are they getting a 50 year loan that you will never pay off, theyre giving you an adjustable-rate loan on top of it. If they give you 3% today it will begin to adjust up in the five years until it reaches today’s market rate. I think today’s market rate is about 6%, so you may get 3% for a couple years but eventually they go back up to 6%…

Duration : 0:6:35

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First Time Home Buyers use FHA Mortgage and Seller Paid Closing Costs to Buy Real Estate Now. Best Market Conditions for Foreclosures and Short Sales in Decades. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 5 (Excerpt)

Loan Modifications are all the craze beware and only work with an Attorney

I have been a part of these broadcasts where we have talked about the loan modification concepts exclusively and to your credit Michael and your team at Velocity I saw you guys as being first to the punch if you will, first to start introducing this concept not only to the listening audience but to your clientele whenever it might be appropriate for the people who need to look at that option. Now I am seeing on street signs that are handmade and posted on street signs all over the city, call me for loan modification. I am hearing commercials and radio broadcasts that are discussing this loan modification concept; I have seen infomercials regarding this now so its becoming a bigger and bigger scope, its a big buzz right now and maybe you could tell me, and I already know the answer to this how long have you been doing this? And then what are the criteria for someone to consider this process?

Its funny that the loan modification concept is new and its the new buzz word and everybody is talking about it and everybody is doing it and it has been around forever. People have been able to do this for many, many years. The banks dont want your house back; they really, really dont. They may act like it and when you talk to them it may sound like they do but they dont. Velocity Financial is working with a national network of attorneys that have been doing this for 16 years, they have done thousands of these.

These law firms have represented thousands of home owners helping them, keeping them from going into foreclosure. You will see yard signs, street signs, advertisements. As you know Velocity Financial does not advertise, the radio station does play a spot because its important for people to know there is legitimate, licensed help out there. What I want to point out is if you have tried to do it on your own and it didnt work out, I am sorry about that and it doesnt mean it cant be done.

Most importantly you want to deal with somebody that you can sit across the table from, that is here locally, and you dont want to write a check to anybody other than a law firm. A licensed attorney needs to handle this, it is the best way to handle this. Velocity Financial does not charge an up front fee; we take care of all of the necessary paperwork, the discovery work. We do all of that and we dont charge for that. You do have to pay an attorney to represent you and after the case is done and modified and everyone is happy, they will pay us for the work that we have done. So dont work with anyone who isnt an attorney, thats my opinion.

In most states its the law and in Arizona its the wild, wild, west once again as usual, loan modifications are just not regulated but you know what, if you need a legitimate firm, if you need a human being to talk to and sit down with and lets get this thing worked out.

Well as you know Michael I started in the business about 20 years ago and the entire time I have really been working with attorneys. When I was doing loans for 12 plus years, I worked almost exclusively with bankruptcy attorneys helping to bail their clients out of bankruptcy and out of foreclosure, and I had been approached by other people and seen plenty of stuff on the internet about how you can basically buy a book online for $495, or go to a seminar, or do whatever and suddenly youre this loan modification expert after you read the book and filled out a couple of forms and that just doesnt give you the knowledge, the background and especially the negotiating ability that you have when youre dealing with an attorney…

Duration : 0:5:40

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First Time Home Buyers use FHA Mortgage and Seller Paid Closing Costs to Buy Real Estate Now. Best Market Conditions for Foreclosures and Short Sales in Decades. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 3 (Excerpt)

Now is a great time for first time home buyers to get into the real estate market

Back in studio of course Brett Fallon are favorite and one of America’s best financial advisors, and a very good friend of mine for a long time also Dan Havey. Dan, what is the name of the book?

The name of the book that I am in the middle of writing is called, Real Estates Future. What it is, is a model that I created with a friend of mine. I didnt believe this was possible when it was first brought to me, but after working on it for six months and doing a lot of research I found that we were actually able to predict, in advance, through a whole series of equations and data, we were actually able to predict in advance the top of the last real estate market here in Phoenix by six months.

So were doing a lot more research to see if we can take that to a broader national level and see if we can come close to actually giving people an idea in advance of the top and bottom of the real estate market.

And this is not the doom and gloom type stuff, this is reality, this is not media spin or anything, correct? No, this is just numbers. That’s all this comes down to, numbers, a lot of different equations. I am not going to bore people with all the complicated stuff. When I was in college I started out with a degree in computers and mathematics and eventually ended up getting a degree in finance, so Ive got a lot of numbers spinning around in my head.

The amount of content you have put together to talk about these first time home buyers, we just talked about what you should do when buying a home right now, you need to make sure that you get the seller to pay as much as they can, obviously you want to pay as little for the house as you possibly can. You want to get the seller to contribute as much as they can. But Dan why dont you talk about what it means to be a first time home buyer or for someone who could be in the market?

Well again with the numbers we were looking at, how this came about like I said last year we were working on this model and after the real estate market kind of took a crash we put it to the side for a little bit and the other day I said, its about time to resurrect it because we have to start looking at when is it going to be the bottom of this next market and people are going to want to know that.

So I started looking at some numbers here just in Phoenix and a couple things actually surprised me, it was very heartening for me when I saw that one of the metrics that we look at is whether or not the median income household can afford to buy the median priced home. And right now in Maricopa County the median income family makes $64,000 and the median priced home is $160,000 and $160,000 home is well within the means of the $64,000 income family. In fact just running numbers at 5 1/2 to 6% you could probably buy as much as a $250,000 house.

So then I took a look at where are houses selling right now, and I found that 78% of all of the houses that were sold in Maricopa County last month were under $250,000. So 78% were under $250,000, and I do believe that between $100,000 and $250,000 its like 53% of all the houses, and obviously there is some of the cheap stuff that is being sold at the repo sales and that kind of stuff right now too.

Like I told you before, my brother picked up a couple of REOs over the weekend and I think he paid $30,000 each for them. And there is one other thing I would like to say before we move on, where I think its a great time for first time home buyers to kind of jump back into the market is another metric we look at is year over year home sales, and for obviously the last two years the home sales were declining year over year, and what we have seen is in the last 6 months there were at least a thousand to two thousand more sales per month than there were in 2007. And percentage wise that is pretty high, its not just a thousand or two thousand the percentage is significant. Sometimes the numbers dont mean a lot, but when youre talking about an increase of 20 plus percent in a few of these months, thats huge…

Duration : 0:5:47

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Home Loan Modifications Negotiated by Licensed Attorneys. Real Estate & Mortgage Laws and Guidelines are Complex. Beware of the Banks Loss Mitigation Department. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 4 (Excerpt)

The pitfalls for trusting your bank one more time; Beware The Foreclosure Sharks

This whole loan modification thing reminds me a lot of the old Peanuts comics where every fall Lucy would get out with the football and she would set it down on the ground, and she would coerce Charlie Brown into coming along and kicking the football. Well of course as we all know Charlie never got to kick the ball, Lucy always pulled it out from underneath him and I kind of look at the mortgage industry, the servicing end of it in particular that way.

You have to think about it, in many cases the loan that you were put into was not a good loan in the first place. The person who gave you that loan knew it was not a good loan, the Wall Street banks that came up with these crazy ideas should have known better. Now admittedly they didnt otherwise they would not be out of business today, but they should have known that these were not good products.

Yet when you are faced with an issue regarding your house so many people go back to the bank, like Charlie Brown going back to Lucy and believing that THIS time Lucy is not going to pull the ball away. Well what is going to keep the bank from not pulling the ball away from you this time? Absolutely nothing.

I love that analogy; everyone remembers the Charlie Brown show and the comic books like you said. Another thing I want to point out too, going back just a little bit, you mentioned the lenders who put these home owners into these loans knew that they were not good loans. My thoughts after some of the mods that Ive seen, that you and I have seen doing the forensic audits, the home owner could have qualified for an FHA loan in those times, but it was so much easier for banks to put them into these sub prime loans because the documentation was easier, and it was just easier.

It is not just that they are easier; I know that your firm, Velocity Financial is FHA approved but what percentage of lenders today when, we probably have maybe 30% as many lenders as we had two years ago, what percentage today is FHA approved?

In the state of Arizona, of all the lending institution, less than 15% of all mortgage firm, banks, credit unions, less than 15% are licensed by the federal Housing Administration. Velocity Financial is proud to be one of those firms.

What I saw back in the peak of the market is of course everybody thought that real estate was going to go up for ever. Every body wanted to jump on board and buy 3,4,5,6 properties and I always tell the story that I knew we were in trouble, I knew we were hitting the top of the market long before I developed any of the models for Real Estates Future when I walked into our bank one day and I saw that they had a loan that was 100% financing for someone to buy an investment property and they didnt have to prove their income and they only needed a 620 FICO score.

Which considering everything now, I mean, to get a Fannie Mae loan today what kind of a FICO score do you need? If youre an investor? If youre an investor you need 720 and probably 20% down, at least 20% down and certainly it is not stated income anymore. No that doesnt exist, and significant cash reserves, the whole nine yards.

So these banks knew the kind of garbage that they were giving to people and yet we are supposed to trust them to get us good loan modifications. I think that in one of the later segments we are going to talk about the newest guidelines that just came out from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regarding their new fancy-schmancy loan mod program and to be honest with you I dont think it really does much for people at all. We will talk about that in the next segment and to the people who are in the mortgage or real estate industry or who have been in the real estate or mortgage industry it is going to sound a little bit like a comic bit because this might as well be bath tissue, I dont even know why they came out with it.

We are going to talk about that along with a few other things, so real quick I know we havent had too much of a chance to talk about The Foreclosure Sharks, Dan but we will touch on that a little bit later. How do people get a copy of this white paper, The Foreclosure Sharks these are things that people need to be looking out for?

Yes, for The Foreclosure Sharks you can go to my website, http://mortgageanswerman.com. There will be a link there you just click on it and pick yourself up a copy and it will help if you are in a foreclosure situation if people come knocking on your door it will help you to at least know what to look out for. So mortgageanswerman.com for The Foreclosure Sharks…

Duration : 0:6:54

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The Bright Side of the Housing Collapse….You can buy a home for as little as $40 (with payments as low as $0.19 per month!!! if financed)

One in five U.S. mortgage borrowers are underwater

NEW YORK (Reuters) One in five U.S. homeowners with mortgages owe more to their lenders than their properties are worth, and the rate will increase as housing values drop in states that have so far avoided the worst of the crisis, a new study shows.

About 8.31 million properties had negative equity at the end of 2008, up 9 percent from 7.63 million at the end of September, according to the study, released Wednesday by First American CoreLogic. The percentage of “underwater” borrowers rose to 20 percent from 18 percent.

Another 2.16 million properties could go underwater if home prices fall another 5 percent, the study shows.

First American said the value of residential properties fell to $19.1 trillion at year-end from $21.5 trillion a year earlier, with half the decline in California. Forty-three U.S. states and Washington, D.C., were included in the study.

While states such as California, Florida and Nevada were particularly stressed, the study showed worrying signs of deterioration in relatively healthy parts of the nation.

“The economic slowdown is broadening,” said Sherrill Shaffer, a banking professor at the University of Wyoming at Laramie and a former Federal Reserve official. “As more people lose jobs, it will be more difficult to sustain the levels of pricing and home ownership, and that is a big factor driving down housing prices in more parts of the country.”

Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Ohio remained the most stressed states, with 62 percent of underwater borrowers and just 41 percent of mortgages.

Other areas, though, also face more stress. Connecticut, for example, saw a 25 percent increase in homes with negative equity, while Washington, D.C., had a 44 percent increase.

“Even I continue to be surprised at the tentacles of this financial and economic debacle,” said Robert MacIntosh, chief economist at Eaton Vance Management in Boston. “More people are being laid off, resulting in reduced income and therefore less consumption. That leaves fewer people with money to buy homes, and the mentality is that people believe they should wait six months rather than buy now. Less demand means falling prices.”

Roughly 68 percent of U.S. adults own their own homes, and about two-thirds of these have mortgages. Many economists expect the nation’s unemployment rate to rise above 9 percent before the recession ends, up from January’s 7.6 percent.

CALIFORNIA, NEVADA UNDER STRESS

California had 1.9 million borrowers with negative equity at year-end, more than any other state, followed by Florida’s 1.28 million. About three in 10 borrowers in both states were underwater.

By other measures, Nevada was the most stressed, with 55 percent of owners having negative equity and borrowers on average owing 97 percent of what their homes are worth. About 28 percent owe more than 125 percent of their homes’ value.

Michigan had 40 percent of its homeowners underwater, while Arizona had 32 percent.

New York fared best, with just 4.7 percent of borrowers with negative equity and an average 48 percent loan-to-value ratio, though this could change as employment and bonuses slide in the financial services industry.

According to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, prices of U.S. single-family homes slumped 18.5 percent in December from a year earlier, the biggest drop in the 21-year history of the data.

Many lenders are taking steps to keep borrowers out of foreclosure. The Obama administration has backed legislation that could broaden powers of bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages for troubled borrowers. Among major lenders, only Citigroup Inc has supported such a plan.

MacIntosh expects housing prices to keep falling until “well into” 2010. “There is no magic bullet or magic arrow here,” he said. “It is a question of trying to come up with ideas and seeing what happens. It could take a long time.”

First American CoreLogic is an affiliate of title insurance and real estate services company First American Corp.

Duration : 0:2:41

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Home Loan Modifications Negotiated by Licensed Attorneys. Real Estate & Mortgage Laws and Guidelines are Complex. Beware of the Banks Loss Mitigation Department. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 7 (Excerpt)

Attorney negotiated loan modification process Going thru the Legal Door

We have Dan Havey with us talking about loan modifications. This segment we want to talk about the specifics of the actual mechanics of, how does it actually work for the homeowner? Let me just start it off and if you would then explain the back end of how it works. Our job is to determine where you’re at now, be very specific about where you’re at with your mortgage now, what the rate is, what it’s done, those specifics. How much you make? We have to help the lender with one thing which is to establish a hardship which is crucial to this. You can’t be making half $1 million a year paying $5000 a month in a mortgage, they are not just going to lower your interest rate because you want it. There actually has to be some sort of change, financial change, hardship.

We determined that and then there is a significant amount of paperwork involved, Velocity Financial takes care of that for you. We fill out the paperwork along with your help, review all of the documentation, we then recommend be right loan modification, whether it be an interest rate reduction, or extending the term of your loan, waiving some of the balance that you owe which is very very rare. To make sure that once we’re done with this whole process you can sustain and live in that house and be happy forever.

So the process itself really is not that much different than what people went through when they got their loan in the first place. That is correct and it’s kind of funny, this has to be exactly the reverse. There is paperwork that we need to collect on your mortgages, we check the value of the property to see where you’re at and in most cases youre underwater with the value. We dont do an appraisal though, there is no credit analysis, we do review your finances, and these sorts of things but essentially it’s just like doing a loan. What we’re trying to determine is exactly what is sustainable for you.

So what we do at the modification hotline at Velocity Financial is to put together the entire package, just like we do for a loan package because we basically send this to a underwriter, theyre not known as an underwriter they’re known as a loan modification coordinator but at modification hotline we are the first set of eyes. We work with you directly, getting all the paperwork in, getting it put together because we know exactly what has to be in that file, how it has to be stacked, how it has to be presented, before it goes to the loan modification coordinator who works for the attorney.

Then once it is at the attorneys office with their modification coordinator, they take a look at it, they make sure that everything is in there, they make sure that it is a doable modification. This all happens before it is ever presented to an attorney.

There are a whole lot of steps and there is a lot of paperwork. The process like you said is very similar to a loan with the exception that there are no costs of the title company and all that other stuff. Those dont exist, we dont charge an upfront fee, and we do collect a retainer for the attorney. At some point during our process we make our recommendations and we turn it in. Then the attorney does their due diligence and thats where I really want you to explain what happens, what are these attorneys looking for?

Well this is where it completely goes off track, versus what a homeowner would do if they were doing their own modification, because they would do everything we just talked about, they would fill out the paperwork, get together tax returns, pay stubs, whatever the lender wanted and they would present all of it to the lender. Now they probably wouldn’t know exactly how to stack some of the paperwork, and how to calculate some of the things that we know how to calculate, but they would put all that they work together.

Where the difference comes in is once it gets to the attorney because the attorney ultimately wants to get you a loan modification but they can’t just call up the bank and say hey I want loan modification, because he is going to get the same result you did. So what he has to do is he has to go through the file, and he has to look for things like, I am going to use a bunch of acronyms here, he’s looking for things like TILA, RESPA, HOEPA, HUD violations, all these different guidelines that the lender was required to meet while giving you the loan.

Duration : 0:6:47

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