The FHA Training Manual used for mortgage loan officer training by industry leaders such as National Association of Mortgage Brokers and hundreds of other companies! This FHA Training Package includes a 380+ page manual, an FHA Refinance Guide, an interactive CD and Free Updates. Read more!
I almost can’t believe what I just read in Reuters. I’ve picked up on it a little bit as loan officers on the street are telling me that FHASecure isn’t worth the effort, and it looks like this is showing up in the actual numbers of closed loans. According to an article by Reuters Washington correspondent Patrick Rucker on Monday, only 266 FHASecure loans have been originated to date!
The Senate has just passed legislation that would open the door for FHA to become more competitive in the marketplace! The FHA Modernization bill, which now heads back to the House for “reconciliation” before heading to the White House, had been
stalled in the Senate for weeks.
Details still to be worked out include the increasing of loan limits, term (up to 40 years), risk-based MIP pricing, lowering the down payment requirements and a few other details, but is expected to happen quickly. This is good news for the industry, consumers and FHA, as we battle with increasing pressure from the sub-prime fallout.
The real estate market is crashing around us. Refinances get harder to finish every day. Usually because the borrower’s home is worth less than it was when they bought it two years ago. Subprime lending is a faint shadow of what it used to be. Every day FNMA and Freddie Mac or the mortgage insurance companies tighten up the reins on us just a little bit more.
Today, Countrywide – the biggest or next to biggest lender in the country most of the time – actually had to make an announcement that it wasn’t going to file bankruptcy in order to stop its stock from falling further!
Worst of all, today Freddie Mac announce that it had lost $2.02 billion in the third quarter and “absorbed both a $1.2 billion provision for credit losses as well as a $3.6 billion charge in mark-to-market activity for its portfolio assets.”
The FHASecure program was officially announced in September 2007, however it was not until the last few weeks that a “pool” was created for the mortgage backed securities necessary to raise the money to fund loans made under the program. In spite of that delay, FHA Commissioner Brian Montgomery announced before a Congressional hearing on Friday, November 2, 2007 that 540 lenders are officially offering the program and more than 70,000 conventional borrowers have applied for FHA loans under the program!
If you are divorcing or already divorced, and the divorce decree requires that you remove your spouse from the loan on the property AND pay them their equity AND you’ve got a few credit problems, don’t panic. For an FHA refinance, this is still considered a rate/term refinance even though you are paying out cash to you ex-spouse.
