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 : 0:0:53

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Part 6 (Excerpts)

Arizona is not a recourse state, so chances are you will not owe 1099 C Income

In Arizona, typically its not a recourse state, so if they are telling you that theyre going to garnish your wages because you didnt pay back your entire mortgage, there is a local bank ,that was threatening a very good colleague of ours about a small second mortgage that person had taken out. Threatening to send it to collections and garnish her wages. It simply isn’t going to happen.

But nevertheless, there is still the tax implications that apply, if you need to navigate through this maze. There is a lot to it, you need to protect yourself. You talked about bankruptcy is one of those exclusions, right? One of the problems with bankruptcy is people dont understand the bankruptcy laws. They are so tight now and your feet are really held to the fire from the federal government right now. It’s not like you just didn’t make your mortgage payment, so you go file bankruptcy, it’s just not realistic. Assuming bankruptcy is the last resort option for everybody. And we certainly want to avoid that, it would not be sound financial advice from any credible source that I can think of.

Let’s walk through a case scenario, somebody who is listening to this broadcast, their head is spinning right now, they’re thinking, oh my gosh. I should have known about the tax implications, a short sale versus loan modification. Let’s start at the top and work through a quick scenario. And then we’ll point out the specifics of what they should be considering right now.

For example, we talk about this all the time and to your credit Michael Barnes and to Velocity Financials credit, you were early in bringing out the loan modification for people who were in a distress situation regarding a mortgage, maintaining or keeping up with the mortgage payment. So you started going down the path where the refinance started to become a much more difficult option, with new constraints and all the other factors that led to part of this economic crisis, a loan modification has become a buzz topic today. Driving to the station today, driving down Camelback Road, I see a sign on the corner. You know, one of those stick in the ground, homemade jobs, that says don’t refi a Loan, modify, with some success rate and the phone number.

Hang on there I want you to say the success rate. The sign literally said, 99% success rate, and it goes back to the point that you made when they say that they can reduce your mortgage principal by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, thats the absolute last resort for any lending institution. Thats not what this is about, so let’s start with that, then we will work on the tax ramifications of how that might work in the overall financial strategy.

I am familiar with the loan modification industry here in Arizona. There is no regulation, unfortunately. We at Velocity Financial work with a national network of attorneys, so if you’re the guy in El Centro California, or youre in Phoenix, or youre in Alaska it doesn’t matter where you’re at. We have someone who is an expert in that field in that state because the laws are different. But without the regulations some person with the ugly yellow sign on the side of the road says he has a 99% success rate, I don’t believe him it’s probably not using an attorney, who knows, dont buy into that garbage. Were going to tell you the truth, if we cant do a loan modification, we will tell you that we cant do it. And if a loan modification is not the best thing for you, you can find the some of these other options.

Duration : 0:5:19

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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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For Loan Limits in your area:
http://entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/hicostlook.cfm

Duration : 0:4:4

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Duration : 0:2:54

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Kirsten specializes in homes for cyclists and people who want to drive less and live more. Visit her site http://bikerealtor.com for contact information and other great listings in Portland, Oregon.

Duration : 0:1:59

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Duration : 0:3:12

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Kirsten specializes in homes for cyclists and people who want to drive less and live more. Visit her site http://bikerealtor.com for contact information and other great listings in Portland, Oregon.

Duration : 0:1:59

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Duration : 0:0:39

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