Part 7 – We have Dan Havey the author of Real Estates Future in the studio today.

Michael, I was just curious, back when I got into the industry many, many years ago there used to be a rule of thumb that if you were going to refinance you had to lower your interest rate by at least two percent and I know as time went along and products changed that really became unnecessary, but I am just curious in todays mortgage market its a lot different than we were dealing with even two years ago. Is that still true that there is a 2% rule? Whats going on now?

I happened to catch Suze Orman on television and she was talking about mortgages, the caller who called in to the program, the question became I believe similar to what Dan just asked, her comment was that basically if you’re in 6% interest rate or above now is the time to re-fi. That is what she said, a blanket recommendation. I know a lot of people put a lot of credence into what she says, maybe you could speak to that, the lowest interest rates you’ve seen in your career, you have been doing this for a while.

I have, and they are. You know there was a lot of speak the last couple weeks about the Fed, the Fed funds rate by the way is the lowest it’s ever been in history. As of this week the discount rate is to the point that banks are lending money to each other at nothing, the Fed funds rate for intrabank lending is at zero, the problem is the banks don’t have any money.

To be serious about the refinancing, because its a serious topic, I think people are starting to see their mail boxes filled with lots of advertising crap about refinance. I believe that doing the refinance is no different from doing a loan modification or buying a house, you need to sit down with the human being that’s local, that you can know is a legitimate source. You’re going to give all this personal information about you, your family, your kids, your Social Security number, you want to make sure you have somebody there that you know whos legit.

In regard to the old rule of thumb 2%, nothing could be further from the truth, and I will expand, but to the point of Ms Ormond that if youre at 6% or higher, that is a blanket statement and blanket statements never work. We just did a refinance for a guy who was at 5 1/2%, and it makes sense. Every situation is different, as far as how much do I have to lower my interest rate to make it work? It depends on the type of mortgage that you get.

The only type of loan to get today in December of 2008 is a 30 year fixed. I know that one of the things that was really interesting to me, and that you and I have referred clients to one another for several years, so we share a number of clients, were familiar with those families and those households, and this is Wednesday, on Monday and Tuesday of this week I’ve had seven phone calls from clients who you’ve already done loans for, refinances for, asking if this is the time to refinance a loan that is only a couple years old.

And I know in several of those cases the answer is yes you’re actually helping families right now with that process. I am and we do. To answer the question, you need to determine what the payback term is, in other words when your refinance is done it’s a new loan, there’s the title insurance, appraisals, lots of different things may need to be done, not in every case, but in most cases there are costs associated with that. The cost has to be offset by the amount of savings. Its a breakeven analysis

Absolutely it is, the shorter the breakeven the better the loan. I am working on a case right now which is going to be done in the next couple of days where the guy lowered his interest rate by an1/8 of a percent and it made sense for him. It’s not for everybody, 2 percent or lower, 2% is significant, now you’re talking about really significant savings in terms of cash flow… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com

Duration : 0:6:31

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Duration : 0:2:36

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Part 3 (Excerpt)

$8,000 tax credit the government is paying you to buy a home with a very low down payment

We have back in the studio today Mr. Dan Havey. Dan and I have worked together in the mortgage industry for about 14 years and we are happy to have him back. He has seen a lot of changes in the market and thanks again for being here.

Michael, here is a question I wanted to ask you, there is so much misconception in the marketplace today as far as what is still available for financing. I think a lot of people have this idea that it is impossible to finance a loan or get a mortgage or that you have to be able to put 20% down or have a 720 FICO score. Can you let people know whats really going on out there?

Well you know a lot of things have gone away. There are a lot of those old loan programs that were fancy ways to sell money and finance real property and a lot of thats gone. The reality of it is, if a person has a minimal amount of money down, there is absolutely financing through the Federal Housing Administration with 3.5% down. You can buy up to about $358,000 with only 3.5% down. Now with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we actually do have a few investors that will allow us to only put 5% down with those and that loan amount maximum is $417,000. So there is still plenty of financing for primary residences.

Now in regard to looking at investment properties believe it or not there are actually still some stated income loans out there, but the stated income loan is for a non owner occupied property, the interest rates are very high and you know what, if you can put 20 to 25% down and prove your income you are better off using conventional financing, it is absolutely still available.

Now if you are a first time home buyer living in an apartment and you are getting kind of tired of it, you are looking at low interest rates, you are looking at the property values have come down over 50%, FHA is generally going to be the direction that person is going to want to go, right?

Absolutely and you know Dan with the $8000 first time home buyer tax credit you know that is a check that the government sends you for up to 10% of the sales price of the home up to $80,000. Its capped at 10%, you are not going to get more than $8,000 back and you may get less if you buy for less than $80,000, but whats really interesting about this is you can, if you have already filed your 2008 tax return, you can file a 1040X and get that credit sooner. You dont have to wait until April 15th of 2010 to get your tax credit. You put the money down today, close on the mortgage, move in, file your 1040x, there is a form that is called the 5405 but thats not all that important, and you can have that money back in your pocket right away.

So I know that was part of the plan that came out today and just to make it a little bit clearer for peoplelets just take an example. Lets say you buy yourself a $150,000 house and you buy it as an FHA, it doesnt really matter how much money down or how you buy the house but if you buy a $150,000 house, you are going to get an automatic $8,000 tax credit that you can take off of the taxes that you owe the government. So lets take an example where you are a W-2d employee and you pretty much break even at the end of the year, you dont owe the government any money and they dont owe you any money the government will actually write you a check for $8,000 for that tax credit and if you buy it this year you can amend your tax return for 2008 and get a check from the government for $8,000.

And thats not including the other tax write offs that you get for writing off the taxes on the house writing off the interest on the house, so again with a $150,000 house with 6% interest roughly you are going to be looking at another $10,000 worth of write offs on top of that. Now that is a write off not a tax credit, like the other one so you are going to save whatever your tax rate is. So lets say your tax rate is 30%, that is another $3,000 in taxes saved. So if you buy a house this year you are going to put an extra $11,000 in your pocket.

So if you buy a $150,000 house and you have to put 3.5% down, Thats what? Lets just say roughly $5,000, you just made $6,000 and you get to own a house. ($11,000 tax savings minus $5,000 down payment) And your mortgage payment is more than likely less than or equal to what you are paying for rent and you own it.

Exactly and you get the benefits of having your own house…

Duration : 0:6:14

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Duration : 0:2:55

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