Real Estate

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 1 (Excerpt)

Seller paid closing costs the best deal going

Today were going to be talking about mortgage strategies, buying real estate, all the different things that you need to know from here on out through 2009, lots and lots of opportunities. We brought back once again one of the best financial planners in the entire country Mr. Brett Fallon.

We also have in the studio today a very good friend of mine Mr. Dan Havey. Dan has been in the real estate and mortgage industry for over 20 years, in fact he got me into the industry, he was instrumental, in fact the major hand behind putting together of the loan modification hotline.

Velocity Financial is a financial services firm, were primarily focused on doing mortgages for residential purchasing and refinances. One of the things that we have seen is that the purchasing market has picked up quite a bit and looks in my eyes like we very well may have hit the bottom on prices.

You can buy a 3000 square foot house for $150,000 these days, and one thing that we’ve recently found is most of the sellers are willing to pay closing costs on behalf of the buyer. Its a known fact that it’s a cold sellers market and sellers are happy to have an offer, whether it be a low offer or not.

Now I have a couple examples I want to share, it’s important to point out that I am not a realtor, I dont want to be a realtor, those people that take the time to get a license to be realtors they know what they’re doing and they do it very well, however you being the person that is going to buy a home, you need to protect every penny that you can. The example I have written down, and Brett feel free to chime in at any time if I should happen to miss something here.

I’ve put together a scenario of purchasing a $300,000 house, now if you buy a $300,000 house and you have to put 3% down as in my example that works out to be about $9000. Let’s just say that the closing costs associated with purchasing that house plus the prepaid interest, setting up an escrow account, paying a year’s worth of homeowners insurance, there is also property taxes that must be paid, home owners dues, all these different things, those can add up. They don’t need to be 3% they can be less, they can be more. This example is just making it simple so that you can understand it.

If you buy a house for $300,000 you put 3% down and 3% for closing costs, your out-of-pocket for this example is going to be about $17,500. Now if you were going to buy that home and have all of that prepaid escrow and closing costs deferred to the seller and actually paid $309,000 so that you actually roll the closing costs into the cost of the home, and only came out-of-pocket 3% you would be out-of-pocket about $8900. So the savings there is $9000. Your mortgage payment will go up, however with a payback of about 160 months. So in other words if you take the money out of your account today youre going to lose that and have a lower payment…

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Mark Fleming, Chief Economist, First American Core Logic discusses the housing market and why you”ll be hearing about negative equity and shadow inventory in 2010.

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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 6 (Excerpt)

World wide recession caused by the mortgage melt-down. Is inflation far behind?

What their ratings were based on was simply that nobody thought real estate would go down again. They were just going to keep going up forever, doesn’t really matter if you call it AAA or BBB. Isnt going to matter if the note never gets called.

We certainly saw that for years in the mortgage industry. We would refinances somebody and a couple of years later they would call us up again and say hey my house went up $100,000 in value and I bought a car and a boat and my kids need to go to school and give me another hundred grand out of my property, and it just kept going up forever and ever and ever and as long as that was happening everything was just fine. But then as we know everything just stopped.

There’s only so much leverage that could exist out there and that is why the stop started if you will. Because as that leverage continued to balloon; how much more leverage can a Wall Street firm or a bank take on to buy up more mortgage backed securities? Oh I know well carve out these tranches and well sell them off overseas. So that is where it ballooned, how wide reaching and impactful has it been?

Well we see it now it’s a global recession. It’s not a US recession for that reason. And that is starting to clean itself up, not only by the Fed aggressively here at home, by working with other developed nations around the world with their equivalents of the Fed in those countries they are doing the same thing. They are acting aggressively and that’s great for the short-term but that is like putting a band-aid on a carotid artery that has been severed, it doesn’t work. That is okay for today and tomorrow, long term there are bigger issues, bigger issues translate into inflation. Where I am going with this is the fact that right now with money being cheaper than it has been at any other time in the history of the United States.

That’s your motivation, if you’re looking for a loan, if you are looking to refinance a loan, if youre looking for a loan modification, whatever your circumstances are, this is your opportunity. I am of the opinion that five years from now we’ll look back on this time period and say, my gosh look at all the mistakes the Fed made.

One of the things I want to go back to is something you said earlier about how all these mortgage derivatives were broken up and put back together. And most of them certainly many of them got bought by hedge funds. A lot of them got bought up by foreign governments and whatever around the world. One of the things about where that’s coming in is it’s causing a massive structural problem, especially in the mortgage industry when it comes to the servicing aspect and a loan modification aspect.

These hedge funds are now coming along, and they are suing the servicers because the servicers are doing what they had a right to do under the contract that they signed with the hedge fund in the first place which was to modify these loans. While the hedge funds are saying if you’re going to modify the loan we want all the money and the servicers or the bank or whatever is saying, no were not going to so now they are getting into a big fight and I have a feeling were going to see a lot of lawsuits, which is only going to hurt the American homeowner, because unfortunately it’s only going to delay a loan modification process.

But it’s also one more reason why you want to have an attorney on your side negotiating with the servicers, negotiating with the bank, maybe even negotiating with the hedge fund for all we know. But negotiating with somebody on your behalf, somebody with the legal power, negotiating for you so if they need to go after the bank for lack of standing, because maybe that’s what it takes to get their attention, go after them and prove they have a lack of standing and say, oh great now that I have your attention let’s do something to help the home owner.

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$8000 Tax Credit for First Time Home Buyers with Low Down Payment. Lender Finance Program with Low Payment and Fixed Interest Rate on FHA Mortgage and Government Assistance. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 8 (Excerpt)

Analyzing tax returns for self employed and small business owners; Use a Mortgage Planning Expert

Credit scores now are a major factor with interest rates. You see the liars up on the internet with interest rates being at 4.625% and all this kind of hocus pocus, its not true. You are never going to qualify for that rate today. They are going to lie to you, once you sign and see the fine print you are going to realize that it is a ridiculous idea to pay that amount of money in fees.

Credit scores have to be significantly higher than they used to, but again I have to tell you, its my opinions that a 70% no doc loan with someone who has a 720 or higher credit score I believe is a good loan. I personally believe that at some point it will be brought back.

I am not arguing with that, with a good FICO score I can agree with a 20% down for a stated income loan. People are encouraged through our tax system to write off all of their expenses and so often we have small business people who really are making money but because they take advantage of our tax system they are not able to get a loan. They cant qualify based upon their income.

In a lot of cases yes, but once again I definitely want to point his out just because someone is self employed and owns a small business and they do write everything off, that does not mean that they will not qualify. They may have been told now that they have to go stated income because of tax returns, but most people, the small business owner, the consumer doesnt know how to analyze his taxes, whether or not he is going to qualify for financing thats not his area.

Most CPAs dont even know how to analyze taxes to extrapolate enough income back out where we can use it as income, so just because a person is self employed does not mean that they cant qualify for financing and honestly nothing could be further from the truth. Plenty of people self employed, small business owners will qualify using their tax returns.

I think that anyone right now who doesnt own a home should be giving you a call getting pre-qualified. If nothing else give you a call and see what you can do. So you say, I wrote off a bunch of stuff last year and I am not going to be able to buy a house well maybe you can. But get in there, have a professional, have someone who knows what to do, whos been in the business for 15 years, have them take a look at it and decide whether or not you can really get that loan.

One of the things with my mortgage education; I am a certified mortgage planner. I am a certified mortgage analyst and a certified mortgage planning specialist. The significant part of that training and those certificates is in analyzing complex tax returns and we analyze complicated tax returns for professional athletes, for professional musicians, all the time. There is income always, it is just a matter of knowing how to get all of it out there. So I think we have kind of hit that.

So yes if you dont own a home today and you have been told NO, you need to find out if the person who told you no is qualified to tell you no, #1, and #2, less than 15% of the lenders in Arizona are qualified to do FHA loans. Those are the loans we are talking about, $100 down to buy a HUD-home, less than 3.5% down to buy a house with the best interest rates that we have seen in my career, its crazy not to look at your options.

If a lender does tell you no, it would be like going to a doctor and he says you have to have your arm amputated because you have a pimple on it. I think you are going to go get a second opinion, maybe even a third. To make sure you dont have to have it cut off. And that is exactly what we have here, if you go to a lender and he says, Well you are going to have to put down 20% you know he is not an FHA lender. So run out of there and call Michael at Velocity Financial and get yourself pre qualified.

Dan Havey, you have a great website, its called http://discountdreamhome.com and why dont you talk real quick about that. Its real simple, if you are looking to buy a foreclosed home, and as we discussed earlier they are many times the best homes to buy right now, they are vacant, they obviously have a highly motivated seller. You dont have to deal with all the troubles you would have to deal with from a regular or as we refer to them, an organic seller, because a lot of these people are upside down.

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Each month, This Month in Real Estate provides expert opinion and analysis on real estate trends across the nation. The aim of the consumer-oriented segments is to provide real information on real estate.

Duration : 0:3:25

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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…

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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 2 (Excerpt)

How having the Seller pay your closing costs can quadruple your money

On the other hand if you roll that into the loan it’s going to take you 160 months to break even on that. 160 months which is a little over 13 years, that is the antithesis of the Velocity of Money that we talk about on the show every week, so I am not convinced that its the right deal for the masses, but something that should be considered is what is the opportunity cost of taking the money out of Account X and the type of account you taking it out of has some impact too. If it’s from a brokerage account then you experience the market loss in that account and youre selling at these low price levels, I think the markets are going to turn and the opportunity costs over 160 months, youre talking about a substantial amount of money. And the additional mortgage payment is insignificant.

Obviously no one is going to allow you to pay more than the house is worth, that’s not what were suggesting. What were suggesting is merely to look at instead of simply making a lower offer than you would normally make, I’m suggesting that you consider the closing costs and what the real closing costs are in this example.

Assuming that the house is already attractively priced, one of the things that this buyer in this example should consider instead of making a lowball offer on a house that’s already priced rather attractively in this marketplace, it might make sense to consider exactly what you’re describing now. And that would be take that money or that difference and ask the seller to include those costs as part of the deal to sell the house, versus why lowball offer the house when you already know the house is the right price.

That’s exactly right and one of the other points here is in a lot of cases the closing costs dont need to be quite that high. So there is the opportunity for the home buyer to buy down, for instance, use 1% of the loan amount to buy the interest rate down. I did a calculation here today, the cost of funds changes all the time, in fact we had four price changes today. Four mortgage rate changes today, just in one day. This doesn’t apply in every scenario, but that’s why you use a certified mortgage planner, that’s why they use a FHA certified mortgage firm to do the loan to make sure that it’s the right thing to do but here’s the example of today. 1%, paying 1 point to buy the interest rate down will lower your mortgage payment, on this example of a $300,000 house, would lower your mortgage payment by $118 a month.

It’s not simple it’s not just like going to your local bank and having them give you a quote on the rate, there is so much more to it these days. I think that one of the things you’re pointing out right now is the fact that this type of negotiating exists and should be considered when making this purchase. And I know that you have already espoused that youre not a realtor in that sense, but your realtor should be talking to you about these options. If they are not, you may want to consider finding one who knows about that stuff.

They absolutely do and I’m not suggesting to anyone that they go out and find another realtor because yours is not working out for you. The reality of it is if your realtor doesn’t believe in the concept it may only be that they just don’t understand the concept. Have them give us a call, we can explain it to them. And I have simple illustrations we can share with them, how we would structure it financially, and they can, the realtor can set the price. That’s what their job is, but what our job is to make sure that you use every penny available to you to the best of your ability.

I have a question for you Brett, if you took $9000 and didnt take it out of your savings, 401K, or whatever, what will it turn into with today’s market? What would that be like?

Depending on the way the money is allocated, invested in a fixed income investment, or an interest-bearing account in a bank or whatever, what I can tell you is over the same amount of time, that $9000, over 160 months, youre probably talking about quadrupling the money. I would say that that is relatively easy and I’m not talking about taking on significant stock market risk. What I’m talking about is just compounding interest in some kind of interest-bearing account. I mean it could be a bank CD.

The other thing to do is we have this book called the Short Sale Playbook written by Ron Quinterro that we have available to anyone who is interested in it…

Duration : 0:6:12

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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 4 (Excerpt)

80% of homes can be purchased with FHA Financing

You also talked about this graph you put together, it talks about the month of November was a 25% increase over the previous year. Obviously prices have gone down and it looks like it then has gone back up, and so once we finish selling off this inventory there is a good chance that were going to be finding or hitting the bottom.

I think just in that region of $150,000 to $200,000 region that prices have really stabilized at this point, they may go down a little bit more, but I think for the most part, because that is where the financing is right now, with the FHA and the conforming loan limits, anybody in that price range can still get a loan. If youre looking to buy something over $400,000 youre going to have a lot more trouble just because the financing is not available.

Well the financing is a lot more difficult over the $417.000 loan amount number. Luckily Velocity Financial still has some of the interim small jumbo financing available, still with decent rates and the larger jumbos there is still financing available but nothing like this median home price of $275,000 and below. Well and I think what that goes back to, specifically with the FHAs, because, what percentage of the closing costs can be contributed by a seller on an FHA loan? Its pretty high right?

FHA financing, the Federal Housing Administration has had a standing rule for quite some time that the seller can contribute up to 6% of the sales price towards the closing costs. Realistically on a $250,000 purchase price youre not going to need 6% towards closing costs, so you would want to use that money to lower the price or buy down the interest rate, or any number of different things. So in a situation like that you could have the seller come in, pay all of your closing costs for you, you can keep that money in the bank, you could use it to fix up the house, you can do whatever, and all you would be responsible for is a small down payment.

Thats correct, 3% of the sale price down, you can have the seller pay the property taxes up to a year in advance, the home owners insurance, the home owners association fees, they are called prepaid or escrows. They can pay all of that. What is the loan limit right now for FHA? Currently the FHA loan limit is $346,250, its kind of an odd number, that does go away at the end of this month, December. However if youre lucky enough to have a home picked out in that price range, you want to try to get it done by the end of the year, so long as were able to get it underwritten in house, our firm will still be able to close on that with a higher loan limit after the first of the year.

The new limits probably going to be your next question, so as of January 1 in Maricopa County its $271,000. Even at 271, with the scenario I was talking about before, in Maricopa County, 70-80% of the home sales still would have fit within that 271 limit. Yes, one thing that I do want to point out is that when the Housing and Recovery Act of 2008 expires that huge loan limit of 346 expires, that was the deal, they are going to try to get it extended but we cant plan on that necessarily, but only 10% of the properties in Maricopa County fit into that 271 to 346 range.

Now I know the answer to this but you dont happen to be qualified to do FHA loans are you? Yes Velocity Financial is FHA approved, were one of less than 15% of the lending institutions in Arizona that can do FHA financing, not only for purchases but for refinancing as well. Which I think is some of the stuff we want to talk about as well because some of the old rules for refinancing simply dont apply anymore.

Brett did you have anything to add? Yes, two things stood out to me in that discussion and one of the things was the bigger picture concept in my mind thats the way it works. Its how I am wired, I start with that then I narrow my way down to the specific scenario given a clients circumstance.

What that big picture represented to me and one of the things that you pointed out with your charting Dan and the work that you have done, is the year over year home sales is shrinking the inventory that exists in Maricopa County, and when that inventory shrinks, we all know that new homes and building had pretty much dried up, so allowing that inventory to shrink is a very positive thing in terms of stabilizing, or placing a bottom, or putting the housing market back on a path of growth long-term, and so that was one of the things that stood out to me.

Duration : 0:6:32

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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 1 (Excerpt)

Why you should use a licensed attorney to negotiate your loan modification

Dan Havey thanks for taking the time to be with us tonight. Thank you Michael for having me and you are absolutely right 2008 for many people was a very tough year. Tough year for pretty much everybody that I know, how many banks have we lost in 2008? Hopefully the bleeding is gone; hopefully there arent too many more banks to fail. Quite a few banks have picked up some of the slack, but the reality of it is so many people have been faced with such hardships, we have solutions that we are maybe going to talk about today that they can look forward to, to make 2009 a great year.

Definitely that is what we are doing here with your organization at Velocity Financial and with the Modification Hotline and with many of the other things I am working on right now to help people out. When I first got into this business it was back in the late 80s, I moved here from Wisconsin after getting a degree in finance and I started selling repos for Fannie Mae, Countrywide, and the RTC. The Resolution Trust Corporation was responsible for getting rid of all the real estate owned by the over 1,800 S&Ls that failed. So I cut my teeth selling those reposed properties and got to know a lot about the laws and worked with a lot of attorneys and then in the mid 90s I moved into the mortgage business, and I immediately started there working with bankruptcy attorneys for the most part.

I was helping people get out of their bankruptcies, chapter 13 bankruptcies, to avoid bankruptcies, to stop foreclosures and I did that up until the fall of 2007 and at that point the market really changed for me as we know most of the subprime financing went away. Some people might look at me and say, my god you gave people subprime loans, well if you are in a chapter 13 bankruptcy and your payment to the trustee is $1,500 a month and I can get you out of bankruptcy and reduce your total monthly outlay by $1,200, your mortgage payment would go up a little bit, I think this is a really good use of a subprime loan. And I certainly never had any complaints from anyone when I got them out of bankruptcy or I stopped their foreclosure and saved their home.

So late last year I moved out of the mortgage business for a while but I never really left it because it is pretty much what I have done my entire adult life. Over 20-25 years I have been involved with real estate, mortgages and finance and I worked for a while for about 6 months last year on a model for an idea that we came up with of being able to accurately predict the top and bottom of all real estate markets and we perfected it for Arizona and most of California. It worked really well to the point that we could actually predict the bottom of the market 6 months in advance and then after the bottoms hit all across the country we kind of stopped working on it.

It is one of the things I am going to start working on again over the next few months. The title of the book is Real Estates Future and you can go to my website at http://realestatesfuture.com and get a copy of that if you want to, it is not available yet but just put in your information and I am going to give away a whole bunch of free copies of it.

The reason why I went through this entire story is because a few months ago Michael and Velocity Financial came to me and said he was going to do loan modifications and I had been approached by other people and I had seen a bunch of garbage on the internet and the thing that he said to me that sold me was, You know Dan, you have to understand, were using attorneys to negotiate these loan modifications.

And that is, I didnt mean to interrupt but that is the key; that is one of the reasons it took us so long to get in. Even though Velocity Financial was at the very beginning of this mad craze, heck you cant drive down the street without seeing a sign that says loan mod, kind of like back in 2006 in the heyday of the mortgage business where you couldnt drive down the street and see a sign that said, if your mortgage payment is more than 1% you are paying too much. Well now everybody is jumping into the loan modification game and it is dangerous.

And that is exactly it, it is every unemployed loan officer has gotten into the loan modification game and I guess I am guilty of the exact same thing. It is just after having 20 years experience of working with attorneys, I know what they are capable of doing, I know how they can go in and negotiate and the biggest thing is they are there to protect the home owner, to protect the consumer, to protect their client because they have a fiduciary responsibility to that client…

Duration : 0:6:29

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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 8 (Excerpt)

30 year fixed FHA mortgage is the best financing available for first time home buyers today.

So now the only question that I would have, Michael is you only lowered the guys interest rate by 1/8th of a percent, weren’t there a whole lot of closing costs associated with that? Good question, in this particular case no. There were no closing costs.

Well then it definitely makes sense to lower your interest rate if it’s not going to cost you anything and you can lower your monthly payment by 100 bucks a month you would be crazy not to do it.
His breakeven was one day, in that particular case.

It goes back to this Velocity of Money concept. If you’re not sure if it makes sense or not, it’s kind of a no-brainer, give the team at velocity financial a call. You will do the analysis for them to determine if it makes sense or not based, on their unique circumstance, and from there youll advise them on the appropriate type of loan.

You know it’s funny that people over the years they get so hyper-focused on the interest rate of the loan. Interestingly enough I had a recent client whos focus was not on the interest rate, it was on the closing costs. The problem is there is a correlation between the cost of the money and rate, you have to pay it isn’t free for anyone. No cost loans are not really no cost, youre paying a higher rate to get it, so where does it make the most sense for you and your family, how long are you going to use this mortgage? There are so many factors, there’s an incredible amount of discovery that needs to be done.

If you walk into your local financial institution it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bank and you ask what is the rate today? It’s vanilla, it’s not 31 flavors, its vanilla, this is what we have. Well we have a couple of other options, but that’s not how it works at the bank.

One thing I wanted to point out Michael was it was back in 2003, we saw interest rates that were close to what they are now and a lot of people got into the same kind of loan that I got into at that, I got into a three year adjustable loan. And I’m really kicking myself because I wish I’d gotten into a 30 year fixed, and I would say with anyone, especially with as low as interest rates are, they definitely have to get into this market. jump in and get themselves into a 30 year fixed and just be happy with it forever.

That’s a really good point, and it’s safe. If you have a 3 year ARM or two year adjustable, or a 5 year adjustable and youre 1, 2, 3, 4 years into it, the 30 year is the safe way to go, more than likely the interest rate is going to be lower than what you have. In the case of the adjustable ARMs, adjustable-rate mortgages just dont make sense today. If you have a 30 year fixed, its the safe bet.

Dan if you and I are wrong and real estate values continue to tumble, you know what, you have a nice safe loan and you dont have to worry about it for a long time. On the other hand if you want to live there for 20 years, you dont have to mess with it. I think its the right thing to do for most people

Well I think that anyone who is out shopping for a home over this weekend, and what they’re looking for is to not only ask the seller to pay as much of the closing costs as possible but first to get pre-qualified by calling you at velocity financial. They want to make sure that they get themselves a 30 year fixed, FHA is probably the best product out there right now because its such a low down payment, and if youre a first time home buyer and youre in the $60,000 a year range, you can go out there and buy up to that $250,000 house and have a place for your family to be in after the first of the year, and never have to you live in an apartment and have Christmas in an apartment again, you can have Christmas in your own home next year.

Absolutely, that is a really, really good point. We dont want to forget about the $7500 tax credit that goes along with having a home, if you havent owned real estate in the last three years.

The other thing that I want to mention before the show gets wrapped up today, there is interest rate risk here just like there is in the bond market. Interest rate risk is you the buyer looking at what you can use to increase the velocity of money, increase the efficiency in your existing mortgage, or move to a new mortgage because money is cheaper today than it’s ever been…

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