Finance And Mortgage Blogs | Seapartners.info

Posts Tagged ‘mortgage’

House hunting can be an exhilarating process as you try to pick that perfect property. Applying for a mortgage isn’t nearly as much fun. Following is an overview of how the mortgage industry works.

An Overview of the Mortgage Process

You have a nice chunk of money saved away for a down payment. You have started shopping for a home or have found the perfect property. It is time to enter the world of financing, better known as getting a mortgage. Before entering the labyrinth, it might help to get an overview of how the mortgage process works.

A mortgage simply is a debt instrument that acts to secure a cash loan to you on a home. In exchange for giving you the money, the lender puts a first lien on the prospective home for loan amount. If you default, the lender can foreclose and sell the home to recover the debt amount.

In mortgage industry terms, applying for a mortgage is known as originating a loan. To originate the loan, you will first have to find a lender you are comfortable with. You may have a close relationship with a bank that will suffice. Many will find it advisable to use a mortgage broker to shop for the loan that best meets their needs. Different lenders offer different loans and terms.

As part of the origination process, you will fill out a lengthy loan application. Depending on the nature of the loan, you probably will also be required to submit documentation supporting your claims of income and so on. There are no document or partial document loan applications, but most people don’t qualify for them. Once your application is submitted, a lender inevitably will ask for more information or documentation. Depending on how the review, known as underwriting, goes, the lender may decline or accept your application. Often, the lender will add a stipulation to the loan that cover issues it is concerned about.

Once you are granted the loan, you will close on the residence you are after. Most people are then very surprised by what happens. Inevitably, your mortgage lender will sell the loan to another entity. To raise cash to issue more home loans, lenders sell their current stock of mortgages on a secondary market. Your lender may continue to handle the administration of the loan, but will often just hand the entire thing off.
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If you own a home, you know mortgage products have moved beyond the basic 30 year fixed option. Reverse mortgages are one such product and here is an overview.

An Overview of Reverse Mortgages

A typical mortgage is created when a lender provides you with a lump sum amount of cash to purchase real estate. In consideration of this, you agree to repay the mortgage on a monthly basis for a defined time period at a particular interest rate. The length of the repayment period and interest rate, whether fixed or adjustable, set the monthly payment amount.

A reverse mortgage works in a similar way, but backwards. It is a fact that the baby boomer generation is moving into their retirement years. A high percentage own homes with significant amounts of equity in them. The problem, of course, is equity is a fixed asset, to wit, you can’t see it in your bank account. Traditionally, the best way to turn this hard asset into cash was to sell the property and move down to something cheaper. You then pocketed the difference in the form of cash.

Many people, however, are attached to their homes. A good portion of your life, including raising a family, may have occurred in your home and it is emotionally difficult to sell it. On top of that, tax issues may take a bite out of the cash you receive. Throw in the pure misery of attempting to move all of your valuables that have been accumulating for 15 or 30 years and selling your home starts to look like a dubious option at best.
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Getting out of debt can be a long, drawn out process. If you spent years wrestling with financial problems, the solution will not come to you overnight. It can take months, even years to unravel debt difficulties but it can be done. You have some options to help you get started; let’s take a look at four of them:

Credit Counseling. Credit counseling companies are vying for your business. This can be a good option as you shop around to find the best plan out there, but bad as you learn that many companies will charge exorbitant fees or do work for you that you can do yourself. Some government agencies and nonprofit firms provide credit counseling too. For little or no money you may be able to find a professional who can help you navigate through your debt dilemma.

Debt Consolidation Loan. Replace your high interest credit cards with one, low interest rate credit card. You could also see if a lending institution will give you a debt consolidation loan. However, you may have to pay for an application fee, whereas with a credit card you would not.
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Refinancing a first and second mortgage requires some extra considerations. Depending on your equity, you may find that combining the two mortgages results in a higher interest rate. You may also find that you have to carry PMI with the refinanced mortgage.

Will Refinancing Benefit You?

Refinancing two mortgages allows you to consolidate your loans into one payment, often lowering your monthly bill. You may also find lower rates under the right circumstances.

Those with a large amount of equity benefit most from consolidating loans since they qualify for the lowest rates. It is important to look at interest savings, not just monthly numbers which can be misleading.

However, if you have less than 25% equity, you may end up qualifying for higher rates. With less than 20% equity, you will also have to pay for private mortgage insurance. Even with these factors, you may still find that you will save money by refinancing.
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It is natural for people to ask for help when they are in trouble and it is within our nature to offer a hand when we can. What throws this natural human relationship off its kilter is our ego that impacts our decision as to when we ask for help and when to extend a hand.

We often wait until we are in serious trouble before we ask for help and by that time the kind of help we receive is very very expensive and sometimes too late. On the other hand when we offer a hand too soon, we come across as interfering busy bodies who do not know the first thing about free will. Parents know what this is like when they talk to their children. But we leave the eagerness to help alone for now and concentrate on asking for help too late.

Let’s take the term “bad credit loan” for instance. According to a segment of Yahoo that keeps track of what people search for, in December of 2006 over 100,000 people searched for bad credit loan. On the other hand a little shy of 5,000 people looked for the term “bad credit repair.”

When I added all the people that were looking for various loans related to bad credit, the number was over 500,000. But the number of individuals who looked for bad credit repair still remained under 5,000.
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