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Army Sergeant Battles Mortgage Servicer — and Wins

mortgage lawsuit A Georgia homeowner was awarded $21 million in a lawsuit against one of the largest mortgage servicers in the nation. The homeowner, David Brash, a U.S. Army sergeant, claimed that PHH incorrectly reported his account as “seriously delinquent,” when payments had been made on time through automatic deductions from his paychecks. The hefty judgment, according to the plaintiff’s attorney, was necessary to get the mortgage servicer’s attention. Huffington Post Business reporter Yepoka Yeebo has the full story:

A federal jury has awarded a Georgia man more than $21 million in a lawsuit pitting the homeowner against one of the nation’s largest mortgage servicers.

U.S. Army sergeant David Brash was awarded the damages in March, after a Columbus, Ga., jury found that PHH Mortgage, the country’s eighth largest mortgage servicer, had incorrectly reported Brash to credit score companies as “seriously delinquent” despite the fact that all his mortgage payments had been automatically deducted from his paycheck.

According to court documents, Brash sent letters to the mortgage company that went unanswered, violating federal laws. When he called his mortgage company to find out why his payments were not going through, his attorneys said, he was repeatedly routed to overseas customer services staff who couldn’t answer his questions.

See the full story on Huffington Post Business.

More on AOL Real Estate: Find out how to calculate mortgage payments. Find homes for sale in your area. Find foreclosures in your area. Get property tax help from our experts.

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Source: http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/04/07/georgia-homeowner-awarded-21-million-in-mortgage-lawsuit/

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Home Equity Borrowing Still a Pretty Good Deal

Filed under: Home Equity

Not long ago, homes worked like giant credit cards. Home Equity Lines of Credit (HELOCs) helped borrowers cash in on the equity in the homes. Dan Wolfrum of Peoria, Ariz., bought his home at a foreclosure auction in 1991 for $51,000. At the time, the four-bedroom, two bath house on a peaceful cul-de-sac in the Phoenix area seemed like a no-brainer. As the value of his home skyrocketed in the decade that followed, Wolfrum observed

Not long ago, homes worked like giant credit cards. Home Equity Lines of Credit (HELOCs) helped borrowers cash in on the equity in the homes.

Dan Wolfrum of Peoria, Ariz., bought his home at a foreclosure auction in 1991 for $51,000. At the time, the four-bedroom, two bath house on a peaceful cul-de-sac in the Phoenix area seemed like a no-brainer.

As the value of his home skyrocketed in the decade that followed, Wolfrum observed fellow homeowners in his neighborhood take out home equity loans to finance swimming pools, SUVs and summer vacations. In the late 1990s, after divorcing and remarrying, the meat distributor salesman finally took the plunge and applied for his own home equity loan to pay for home renovations and a new car. A few more refinances and one loan consolidation later, Wolfrum owes $170,000 on his mortgage.

With foreclosures and short sales rampant in the Phoenix area, Wolfrum’s house is now worth less than what he owes. His income in decline and retirement getting nearer, Wolfrum is now working with mortgage experts to lower his payments.

Wolfrum’s now-familiar tale might lead one to conclude that home equity loans and home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) are at the top of the current list of homeowner no-nos. But that conclusion would be dead wrong.

Certainly banks have tightened their lending standards, due to declining housing markets nationwide. According to Equifax, the volume of new HELOCs created in November 2009 was $4.9 billion, less than a quarter of the amount created two years earlier, in November 2007. But rates remain at historic lows, around 5 percent for revolving credit HELOCs and just under 9 percent for fixed-rate home equity loans, according to Bankrate.com. Good luck finding credit cards with rates below those.

If you plan to brave the waters of home equity borrowing, here are a few current guidelines:

1. The first key to success is to use home equity borrowing in a sensible, educated way. A good general rule is to reserve it only for something that could be considered an investment, such as education or home improvements. Avoid quickly depreciating purchases such as cars, vacations, and big-screen TVs.

2. Do some serious comparison shopping before signing up with any particular bank or lending institution. These days, many major lenders aren’t doing home equity deals, even with consumers with good credit. But some smaller, regional and online banks are. The trick is to find them and find the ones with the best rates. Ask around at local banks and do some searching on the Internet, as well. As always, an excellent credit score helps–over 740 is best.

3. Don’t use your house as a piggy bank. A good example of this is not using home equity to pay down credit card debt. This is an easy way to fall into deeper debt without addressing the underlying problem–mainly, that you’re spending too much to begin with. Even home improvements and tuition payments can drain your home dry if the spending limits aren’t kept in check.

4. Finally, be careful to limit the size of your home equity loan. Avoid combined mortgage and home equity borrowing that leaves a cushion of less than 20 percent equity. If you owe more than 80 percent, you’ll pay higher interest rates and eliminate a vital source of emergency funds. Besides, if housing prices continue to decline, you could find yourself “underwater,” just like Dan Wolfrum.

Another issue to be watchful of is the increased difficulty homeowners with second mortgages are having in modifying their loans, though President Obama’s recent bailout initiative regarding five states that have seen housing values drop more than 20 percent, may easy some of that pain.

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Source: http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2010/12/09/home-equity-borrowing-still-a-pretty-good-deal-02/

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Robo-signing settlement may boost short sales

The government’s $25 billion settlement with the nation’s five biggest mortgage servicers over so-called “robo-signing” practices could boost short sales, as loan servicers will receive credit when they approve sales that include forgiveness of a portion of underwater homeowners’ debt.

Although the settlement is only expected to help a fraction of homeowners who owe more their properties are worth — perhaps one in 20, according to one estimate — it will also help bring certainty back to housing markets by removing some of the obstacles that have been keeping homes stuck in the foreclosure pipeline.

Announced last month, detailed terms of the agreement between mortgage servicers and a coalition of state attorneys general and federal agencies were filed today.

BofA Threatens Family With Foreclosure Over $1 ‘Coding Error’

Filed under: News, Foreclosures

$1 foreclosure utah When Shantell Curtis sold her Vernal, Utah, home last year, she expected, as a reasonable person might, that she’d paid her last mortgage payment on the house.

But her lender, Bank of America, thought differently, according to KUTV 2News in Utah. Because of a $1 “coding error” on the bank’s part, the title to Curtis’ home was never transferred to the new owners, making it appear as if she still owned the home. As a result, BofA initiated a foreclosure process on the home and reported Curtis to the credit bureaus, effectively obliterating her credit score.

Now Curtis is left to pick up the pieces for a mistake that was not her own, on a house that no longer belongs to her.

While BofA was prompt in identifying the problem after Curtis reported the issue, it’s been more than five months and she still hasn’t received a letter to confirm that the title issues have been resolved. A bank spokesperson also told her that they’d clear up her credit issues, but that could take up to three months. In the meantime, Curtis’ credit score remains in the dumps.

“They said that they had to keep reprocessing it and this has been a game we’ve been playing ever since,” Curtis told KUTV. “They just say they need to reprocess papers.”

AOL Real Estate contacted the new owners of the home in question, who said they were unaware of the Curtises’ problem, adding that they are current on their own mortgage. They’ve never received any mail from Bank of America addressed to the Curtises either, they said during a phone interview.

The new owners’ mortgage is with a different lender.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Bank of America told us that they will look into the matter. As of this writing, they have yet to respond.

UPDATE: Bank of America spokesperson Jumana Bauwens sent the following – This was an issue that we handled with the tv station in August. It was a result of a coding error. We have verified that all the codes on the loan were corrected. The loan now has a zero balance and reflects as paid off in the system. We apologize to the Curtis’ for this error and have made (in August) the necessary corrections to the credit agencies.

%Gallery-133958% More on AOL Real Estate: Find out how to calculate mortgage payments. Find homes for sale in your area. Find foreclosures in your area. Find rentals in your area.

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Source: http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/11/04/bofa-threatens-family-with-foreclosure-over-1-coding-error/

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Does mortgage principal reduction work?

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The world will only have to wait a few more weeks to find out whether Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will allow principal reductions on mortgages they back.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency will decide this month whether Fannie and Freddie should allow write downs on the balances of borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth, said Ed DeMarco, acting director for the agency.

Fannie and Freddie have been at the center of a tug-of-war over fixing the housing market. They have long resisted calls to write down the balances on the loans in their portfolio, saying it would be too costly for taxpayers.

But the pressure has been building, especially in the wake of the $26 billion mortgage settlement that will reduce principal for 1 million borrowers whose loans aren’t backed by Fannie and Freddie.

The agency, which regulates the government-controlled companies, had decided against allowing principal reduction after internal studies showed that alternatives such as adjusting monthly payments or forbearing principal were more cost effective.

DeMarco has said his agency is charged with protecting taxpayers’ interests, and principal reduction would amount to an expensive taxpayer bailout of troubled homeowners.

Since then, however, the Obama administration has sweetened the pot. It tripled the incentives it will pay to Fannie and Freddie for reducing principal under the Home Affordable Mortgage Program, or HAMP. This has prompted the agency and the companies to redo their analysis.

But will it even matter if Fannie and Freddie start allowing principal reduction?

How many are eligible?

Together, Fannie and Freddie have about 3 million loans that are seriously underwater, according to company filings. But three-quarters of these homeowners are current on their payments and may not qualify.

“These borrowers are demonstrating a continued willingness to meet their mortgage obligations,” said DeMarco in a recent speech. “This should be recognized and encouraged, not dampened with incentives for people to not continue paying.”

In the end, the number of eligible underwater Fannie and Freddie loans could range from a few hundred thousand up to 750,000, according to estimates. That’s not that much considering there are 11 million underwater borrowers in the U.S., just over a quarter of whom are behind in their payments.

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Purchase Offer Accepted

After looking at a slew of short sales and foreclosures, and having a full price cashÂ offer rejected, our buyers are ecstatic … Â celebrating royally right now.Â Â Their offer on a townhouse was accepted, and theyÂ are closing next month. CashÂ offersÂ oftenÂ give a seller aÂ level of confidence thatÂ home purchasesÂ requiring lender approval (and an appraisal – in thisÂ rather [...]

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Homebuyers Take Note: Mortgage Elevator Is Going Up

Filed under: News, Advice, Financing, Refinancing

mortgage elevator Consider this the “snap out of it” slap that Cher gave Nic Cage in “Moonstruck.” If you’re in the market for a house, you need to buy it while the interest rates are low — and by the way, those rates crept up a bit already this week.

Purchase price? Feh. When it comes to how much house you can afford, the number that really matters — unless you live in the rarified world of cash buyers — is what interest rate you can get. And the bad news, for those of you who thought you could wait it out until some expert told you the housing market elevator had reached the bottom floor, is that the real elevator is heading back up — and that’s the elevator of interest rates, not home prices.

According to Dan Green at The Mortgage Reports, for each 1 percent increase in mortgage rate, your home purchasing power drops 10.75 percent. That means if you could afford a $600,000 house when interest rates are 4.5 percent, you can only swing a $535,000 house when the rates go up a percentage point, assuming the same monthly mortgage payment. For each 0.125 percent increase to mortgage rates, your maximum allowable purchase price falls 1.35 percent.

With the exception of a three-month period, average monthly 30-year fixed mortgage interest rates have been at or below 5 percent since 2009. That’s completely unprecedented: Average rates had never even hit a low of 5 percent prior to 2009.

The message: You’ll get a whole lot more house for your money if you move quickly.

For more on mortgages and related topics see these AOL Real Estate guides:

More on AOL Real Estate: Find out how to calculate mortgage payments. Find homes for sale in your area. Find foreclosures in your area.

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Source: http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/07/06/homebuyers-take-note-mortgage-elevator-is-going-up/

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Where Are the Real Home Bargains? Not Where You Think!

Filed under: News, Advice, Buying, Financing, Foreclosures, How To, Investing, Renting, Selling

What if you could buy a house for $25,000 in a neighborhood that wasn’t a battle-scarred slum and rent it out for $750 a month as soon as the ink was dry on the deal? Where are these deals that let you recapture your investment in just three years and from then on enjoy a steady monthly income from the property?

If you said Phoenix, Las Vegas or south Florida, you’d be wrong says Paul Habibi, a principal of Habibi Properties and real estate professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Here’s a hint to the place Habibi thinks is the hottest investment around.

Yep, Habibi is humming “Kansas City” right along with Wilbert Harrison, Fats Domino and the 50 or so other recording artists who covered that tune. As for a real estate investment, Habibi says Kansas City, Mo., is ripe for the picking.

Habibi’s approach to real estate deals is not for novice investors, but it is for those who can tolerate some risk and buy into a statistician’s mind. He’s developed a matrix that filters the top 30 MSAs (metropolitan statistical areas) through their projected growth rates (increasing population is good), unemployment (the lower, the better), and whether the city has a diversified job platform (Silicon Valley won’t get his money).

He also rejects places where other investors have already scooped up the bargains (forget Florida and Las Vegas). Phoenix, popular with many investors, also fails his litmus test. It was built as a retirement community and lacks a job infrastructure for future growth, he says. And those Texas cities that everyone bandies about — Dallas, Austin, San Antonio — while their prices have remained flat and they seem to have escaped relatively unscathed from the recession, there are so many investors already there that they’re tripping over one another.

Kansas City is just about perfect, said Habibi, whose company recently concluded its first phase of buying 32 single-family homes there in “C-level” neighborhoods for a price point of $25,000 each, spent $5,000 to $10,000 on repairs and now rents them out for about $750 each. He expects to double or triple his holdings in Kansas City with his second investment fund, for which there is a minimum buy-in of $100,000 for accredited investors to participate.

Kansas City’s population grew at a faster-than-national average pace from 2000 to 2010. With an unemployment rate of 8.7 percent, it falls below the national level of unemployment of 9.1 percent. The city has a diversified industry base that includes Sprint Nextel Corporation, Hallmark Cards, the Fort Leavenworth military base, UPS and a Ford assembly plant. Google has selected the city for its ultra high-speed broadband network project. Plus Kansas City has a business-friendly reputation for encouraging retention of companies.

Habibi discourages individual investors without much experience or tolerance for risk to try to fly solo. He credits much of his success from having an infrastructure in place — people to scout and inspect the homes, screen for tenants, manage the properties on-site and swiftly deal with eviction issues.

For those who don’t want to listen to the expert, click on the images below of some homes for sale in the Kansas City area that are worth checking out:

See other homes for sale in the Kansas City area at AOL Real Estate.

Also see: College Town Real Estate Investments Score High Marks Upside Down on Your First House? Just Buy a Second One! Viewpoint: Why No New Houses May Be a Good Thing

%Gallery-137999% More on AOL Real Estate: Find out how to calculate mortgage payments. Find homes for sale in your area. Find foreclosures in your area. Find rentals in your area.

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Source: http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/11/02/where-are-the-real-home-bargains-not-where-you-think/

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Housing Crisis to End in 2012 as Banks Loosen Credit Standards

Capital Economics expects the housing crisis to end this year, according to a report released Tuesday. One of the reasons: loosening credit.

The analytics firm notes the average credit score required to attain a mortgage loan is 700. While this is higher than scores required prior to the crisis, it is constant with requirements one year ago.

Additionally, a Fed Senior Loan Officer Survey found credit requirements in the fourth quarter were consistent with the past three quarters.

However, other market indicators point not just to a stabilization of mortgage lending standards, but also a loosening of credit availability.

Banks are now lending amounts up to 3.5 times borrower earnings. This is up from a low during the crisis of 3.2 times borrower earnings.

Banks are also loosening loan-to-value ratios (LTV), which Capital Economics denotes “the clearest sign yet of an improvement in mortgage credit conditions.”

In contrast to a low of 74 percent reached in mid-2010, banks are now lending at 82 percent LTV.

While credit conditions may have loosened slightly, some potential homebuyers are still struggling with credit requirements. In fact, Capital Economics points out that in November 8 percent of contract cancellations were the result of a potential buyer not qualifying for a loan.

Additionally, Capital Economics says “any improvement in credit conditions won’t be significant enough to generate actual house price gains,” and potential ramifications from the euro-zone pose a threat to future credit availability.

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Tips for Choosing Home Builders

If you have decided toÂ build your next home, congratulations! You will have plenty of crucial decisions to make within the upcoming months from where to build your home to what colour to paint the master bedroom walls.Â The first decision to make, of course, is what builder to hire. There are dozens of differentÂ home builders [...]

Source: http://www.brothernwla.org/tips-for-choosing-home-builders/

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Obama State of the Union Plan Inadequate for Housing?

Filed under: News, Refinancing

Obama state of the union By Jon Prior

Even if the promising mortgage refinancing plan that President Obama announced Tuesday night passes Congress, critics say it will fall short of solving the deepest housing problems.

The White House did not release great amounts of detail, but the plan would help homeowners current on their mortgage to refinance down to a lower rate and save an average $3,000 a year on payments. The plan widens the Home Affordable Refinance Program to include mortgages not guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and would tax banks to raise funding.

Analysts said Wednesday morning that the program could cost as much as $10 billion and could reach between 2 million to 3 million borrowers.

Read the full story on HousingWire.

Also see: Bernanke: Fed Should Help Turn Foreclosures Into Rentals Principal Reduction Better Than Short Sales, Report Says

More on AOL Real Estate: Find out how to calculate mortgage payments. Find homes for sale in your area. Find foreclosures in your area. Finds homes for rent in your area.

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Source: http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2012/01/25/obama-state-of-the-union-plan-inadequate-for-housing/

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Raising Credit Score Reduces Mortgage Costs

Filed under: Credit

If you have a credit score at 620 — generally considered the dividing line between good and bad credit — boosting it by 20 points could save you thousands of dollars on your mortgage. And there are simple ways to do this in a short time. An analysis of about 300,000 loan requests received through Zillow.com in September revealed that a homeowner who raises his or her credit score to 640 points may benefit from adSetType('F'); htmlAdWH('93301391', '215', '35'); adSetType('');

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If you have a credit score at 620 — generally considered the dividing line between good and bad credit — boosting it by 20 points could save you thousands of dollars on your mortgage. And there are simple ways to do this in a short time.

An analysis of about 300,000 loan requests received through Zillow.com in September revealed that a homeowner who raises his or her credit score to 640 points may benefit from a 0.10 percent reduction in their annual percentage rate, or APR.

For a $300,000 home loan with a conventional 20 percent down, this yields a savings of $10,000 in interest costs over the life of a 30-year fixed-rate loan.

What about those with credit scores under 620? Without enough loan requests in that segment, Zillow was unable to generate any findings for those deemed to be in the “bad credit” zone. (According to Fico.com, this is an estimated 29.3 percent of all Americans.)

“People with scores under 620 should not expect the same conventional rates,” says Jason Biro, author and founder of the nonprofit, Saving Your American Dream. “Lenders are now looking at entire credit history, such as a bankruptcy or foreclosure, and credit worthiness, not just your score.”

However, Biro says that those falling within the threshold of 620 to 719 should keep working on their credit scores to benefit from lower interest rates. Here’s what you can do to easily boost your score 20 points within a few months:

1. Pull your credit report. Obtain a free copy of credit report from annualcreditreport.com, which you are entitled to each year by federal law. Request a copy from each of the three repositories (Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax) and review them for accuracy.

2. Dispute discrepancies on your credit report. By e-mail or mail, you can appeal any inaccuracies on your report with the repository. According to Biro, if you don’t get a response from the agency within 45 days, the law requires that this information be removed from your credit file.

3. Pay your bills on time and don’t use more than 30 percent of existing credit. Gail Cunningham, vice president of public relations at the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, says 65 percent of your score depends on paying bills on time and the amount of available credit. She suggests using less than 30 percent of your existing lines of credit to see an immediate jump in your score and being diligent about timely bill paying (all you need to cover is the minimum payment required by the due date).

Your Credit Score Can Cost or Save You Thousands. Know Where You Stand. Get Your 2010 Credit Score

4. Request a score improvement analysis. Another option is to get a score improvement analysis, says Biro, in which mortgage brokers or credit counselors can use credit software to see what you should do first — whether it’s paying down debt to closing down accounts — to bump up your credit score the fastest.

While these tips are what can make the biggest impact in a short amount of time, they won’t magically discharge your credit woes overnight, experts say.

Once the errors are corrected, you’ve reduced your debt or made other necessary adjustments, the improvements should only take a month or so to be reflected in your credit score. However, start to finish, Cunningham recommends beginning the process about three months before you’d like to apply for a loan or refinance your mortgage.

But the good news, she says, is that the lower your credit score, the faster you will see improvement.

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Source: http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2010/12/09/raising-credit-score-reduces-mortgage-costs/

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Spring Cleaning: Essential Tips for Homeowners

Filed under: News, Advice, Lifestyle, Other

Spring Cleaning By Pat Mertz Esswein, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance

As you go about your annual spring-cleaning ritual, take a few additional steps to save money on energy bills this summer, improve your home’s appearance and ward off big-ticket repairs later.

Here are 18 things for you (or the handyman) to tackle now to help prepare your home for the warmer months and keep it in top shape.

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More on AOL Real Estate: Find homes for sale in your area. Find foreclosures in your area.

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Source: http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2012/03/08/spring-cleaning-for-homeowners-top-tips-for-happy-homes/

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Satisfying Services from Verizon

People who want to make sure that they are working with best mobile phone providers are now welcome to seek help using the internet. You can find lots of comments and feedbacks about different mobile phone providers in your country which are reliable and perfect for your needs. When you are located at United States [...]

Source: http://www.brothernwla.org/satisfying-services-from-verizon/

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30-Year Mortgage Rate Again Nears Record Low

Filed under: News, Buying, Refinancing

WASHINGTON — The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage dropped near its all-time low this week, making homebuying and refinancing a bargain for those who can qualify. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan fell to 3.88 percent from 3.98 percent. That’s just above the rate of 3.87 percent reached in February, the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.

The 15-year mortgage, a popular option for refinancing, plunged to a fresh low of 3.11 percent from 3.21 percent last week. The previous record of 3.13 percent was hit last month.

Mortgage rates are lower because they tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. Last week’s disappointing report on March job growth led more investors to sell stocks and buy Treasurys, which are considered safer investments. As demand for Treasurys increases, the yield falls.

Yet the low rates are unlikely to draw in many more people looking to buy a home or to refinance their mortgage.

Waiting, As Home Prices Keep Falling

Some would-be buyers are still skeptical about purchasing a home with prices still falling. Home appraisals that are higher or lower than the sales price have scuttled a rising number of home contracts. Many Americans are struggling with damaged credit and unstable finances.

And mortgage rates have been below 4 percent for all but one week since early December, leaving some potential buyers and refinancers unimpressed by new record lows.

“The rates have been very attractive for some time,” said Bill Armstrong, vice president of Mackintosh Realtors in Damascus, Md. “Rates going a little higher or lower is not going to have much of an impact.”

Still, the mild winter has helped lift expectations for the housing market after four years of sluggish sales.

January and February made up the best winter for re-sales in five years, when the housing crisis began. And builders in February requested the most permits to construct homes in more than three years.

Fewer Apply

Applications for new mortgages have fallen over the past month, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. But there has been a sharp rise in the average mortgage size, suggesting an appetite for bigger loans. The average size of mortgage applications has increased by $20,000 since December, to about $235,000 last month.

Home prices continue to fall. Prices tend to lag sales and millions of foreclosures and short sales — when a lender accepts less than what is owed on a mortgage – remain on the market. And the housing crisis and recession have also persuaded many Americans to rent instead of buy, which has led to a drop in homeownership.

To calculate the average rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on just Monday through Wednesday of each week.

The average rates don’t include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.

The average fees for the 30-year and 15-year fixed loans were unchanged at 0.7.

For the five-year adjustable loan, the average rate fell to 2.85 percent from 2.86 percent, and the average fee fell to 0.7 from 0.8.

The average on the one-year adjustable loan rose to 2.80 percent from 2.78 percent, and the average fee was unchanged at 0.6.<

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

%Gallery-151873% See also: Homebuying: 5 Key Steps to Your 1st Real Estate Purchase Banks Neglect REO Homes in Minority Areas, Study Says Home Costs: 4 Crucial Questions Reveal Hidden Expenses

More on AOL Real Estate: Find out how to calculate mortgage payments. Find homes for sale in your area. Find foreclosures in your area. See celebrity real estate.

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Source: http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2012/04/13/30-year-mortgage-again-nears-record-low/

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Purchase Offer Accepted

After looking at a slew of short sales and foreclosures, and having a full price cashÂ offer rejected, our buyers are ecstatic … Â celebrating royally right now.Â Â Their offer on a townhouse was accepted, and theyÂ are closing next month. CashÂ offersÂ oftenÂ give a seller aÂ level of confidence thatÂ home purchasesÂ requiring lender approval (and an appraisal – in thisÂ rather [...]

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Foreclosure Victims Plan Protests Across U.S.

Filed under: News, Economy, Financing, Foreclosures, Home Equity, Refinancing, Selling

Victims of the foreclosure mess and housing crisis are taking to the streets — literally. Street demonstrations are being planned in 10 cities, and in the crowd at the first one you are going to see Dixie Mitchell, a 74-year-old cancer survivor who refinanced her paid-off home to help one of the foster kids in her care — and is now losing it in a foreclosure.

Mitchell (pictured at left), who along with her 76-year-old husband raised eight biological children and 50 foster children in this house, says that she intends to make her voice heard loud and clear as she marches in front of bank offices in Seattle on Sept. 21. The march is the first in a 10-city rollout of protests organized by The New Bottom Line, a coalition of community groups that challenges big banks’ role in the housing crisis.

Mitchell’s story is particularly heart-wrenching: She and her husband were doing just fine living in the house they’ve owned for 44 years until he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed and cost him his job. The house was fully paid off in the mid-1980s, but they borrowed against it to make roof and kitchen repairs. The straw that broke the camel’s back came in 2005, when Mitchell needed to hire a lawyer, at a cost of $20,000, in an effort to keep a 3-year-old boy who had been in her care since he was an infant.

She was advised by the bank to refinance her house to get the cash. She took out an adjustable rate loan that would reset in two years, at which point, Mitchell says, the lender told her that she would be able to refinance into another 30-year-fixed rate loan. But the original loan was bundled and sold multiple times to different lenders. It reset to a higher rate right around the time her husband suffered a massive stroke, and she quickly fell behind in her payments. Without his earnings, her monthly income is just $2,200 in Social Security and her monthly mortgage is $2,568.

Mitchell filed for bankruptcy, tried getting assistance from every social service agency she could think of, spent two years trying to get a loan modification and even offered to rent out rooms to boarders if the bank would just let her keep her house.

“My husband wants to die at home, at our home,” she says. Her home is set to be auctioned on Oct. 28 and she has no place to go.

Why is she going to participate in the demonstration?

“I need them [the bank] to look me in the eye and tell me why they think it’s better to put people out in the street,” she said. “They haven’t done their share to help. They don’t even give you a chance … all they do is lose your paperwork and make you send it over and over again. Each time you talk to somebody, you get a different answer.”

Those are sentiments shared by many.

LeeAnn Hall, executive director of Alliance for a Just Society and one of the organizational members of The New Bottom Line, said the Seattle area protests will be staged both in downtown Seattle and at the annual policy summit meeting of the Association of Washington Business, a statewide chamber of commerce. The meeting is being held in Suncadia, a mountain resort near Cle Elum, Wash. The governor is expected to attend the meeting and Hall said that the group hopes to engage her.

Subsequent demonstrations are planned across the country in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco and other locations.

The New Bottom Line said that it is targeting “big banks that bankrupted the country and drained wealth from American families.” The direct actions primarily target JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, and include taking over bank buildings, meetings of corporate officials, civil disobedience, prayer vigils and mass mobilizations.

“We are struggling with less and less, while the big banks profit more and more,” said George Goehl, executive director of National People’s Action, another organizational member of The New Bottom Line. “The big banks have done nothing but dodge taxes, throw people out of their homes and choke small business, all the while draining our wealth to pad their bottom line. It’s time for JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo to pay us back.”

According to a press statement, the group’s goals are that banks:

o. Pay their fair share of taxes — their statutorily required 35 percent corporate income tax and not “game” the system through off-shore tax shelters and loopholes.

o. Stabilize the housing market and revitalize the economy by reducing principal for all underwater homeowners to current-market value. “This would end the foreclosure crisis, reset the housing market, pump billions of dollars back into the economy and create one million jobs a year,” the group says.

o. Invest in American jobs by using their trillions of dollars in cash reserves to invest in small businesses — the main source of jobs in the U.S. — and other job-generating investments.

Also see: Viewpoint: What’s Behind Banks’ Big Foreclosure Push? 101-Year-Old Foreclosure Victim to Get Home Back Woman Faces Foreclosure on Home She Bought for $1

More on AOL Real Estate: Find out how to calculate mortgage payments. Find homes for sale in your area. Find foreclosures in your area. Find rentals in your area.

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Source: http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/09/19/foreclosure-victims-plan-protests-across-u-s/

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Is Your Home Earthquake Proof?

Filed under: News, Home Improvement

In the wake of last week’s devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, prospective home buyers may be asking themselves what about a house makes it more able to weather a natural disaster.

There isn’t a huge difference in the way residential homes are built in Japan compared to in the U.S., although the Japanese are more likely to invest in special earthquake engineering, particularly in commercial and higher-end residential buildings.

Home builders in both Japan and the U.S. use a lot of wood-frame construction, which is flexible and tends to ride out a quake fairly well, said Heidi Faison, outreach director at the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center in Berkeley, Calif. But wood frame structures do have potential vulnerabilities in two key areas: the foundation and the wall that supports a crawl space, which is called a cripple wall. She recommends home buyers hire an engineer to make sure the wood frame is bolted to the foundation. If a house has a crawl space underneath it or you need to climb a few steps to get up to the first floor, it likely is supported by a cripple wall, which can buckle in an earthquake. If you’re in an earthquake-prone location, that space needs to be filled in with a solid material.

Gary Ehrlick, a structural engineer and program manager for Structural Codes & Standards at the National Association of Home Builders, outlines some other house features to consider:

o. Look at the garage, if the house has one. A large garage door opening or a lot of big windows on the first floor, that can create a soft story — an open space without enough support to withstand violent shaking. o. Brick veneer can present a major hazard if it’s not attached well. Brick was a problem in the 6.3 magnitude temblor that struck New Zealand last month. “It doesn’t create as much of a hazard inside, but outside it can injure or kill,” he said. o. Houses built on a slope are often an issue. They need to be tied back well with footings. Also make sure the slope is stable. Liquefaction — where saturated soil becomes liquid — can be a problem and can occur when a building is located near a lake or river. In an earthquake, liquefaction can cause the ground to behave like quicksand, as seen in New Zealand and in the 1989 earthquake in Loma Prieta in the mountains of Santa Cruz, Calif.

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See photos of homes for sale in your area and across the country on AOL Real Estate

These are all important things to look for in a house. But they only address hazards caused by the shaking of the earth.

In Japan, most of the damage was actually inflicted by the subsequent tsunami, just as most of the destruction in the San Francisco quake of 1906 was caused by fires that ripped through the city after gas lines were ruptured.

A disaster’s chain of events makes the preparation scenario a bit more complicated.

There is a growing interest in designing homes better able to survive a tsunami. The basic idea in tsunami design, as in flood-resistant construction is to get some of your structure up above the expected level of water, said Gary Ehrlick.

“In commercial structures they talk about vertical evacuation zones.” Under this theory, the first floor, built out of concrete or steel, is strong enough to withstand the pressure of the water. The “zone of refuge” occupies the upper floors.

Another concept that came out of the earthquake/tsunami that leveled Banda Aceh, Indonesia, on Boxing Check out our gallery of Day in 2004 is a house where the first floor allows the wave to wash through it, destroying the walls but preserving the foundation. This would be a concrete frame with columns or wall segments in each corner of the house. The walls are panels made out of something light, like bamboo or wood. After a disaster, such panels would be easy to replace.

Check out our photo gallery of a tsunami-resistant home designed by Kazunori Fujimoto Architect & Associates:

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More on AOL Real Estate: Find out how to calculate mortgage payments. Find homes for sale in your area. Find foreclosures in your area. Get property tax help from our experts.

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