Rain City Guide

Let me begin by saying I think that uniform Good Faith Estimates are a huge step in the right direction. However, I’m quickly reviewing the newly revised Good Faith Estimate and HUD-1 Settlement Statement (beginning on page 46; link below) to see if any changes were made since they were unveiled. The two biggest issues that I [...]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac opened trading at record lows due to rumors about a possible bail out.  I’m writing this waiting to hear an announcement from Treasury Secretary Paulsen….
If you are in a transaction at this time and your mortgage fits within the FHA loan limits ($567,500 for King, Pierce and Snohomish County), I [...]

I spent part of last week at an FHA conference and had a chance to learn all about their upcoming changes which Rhonda blogged about here.
In the past I have been critical about the lack of HUD auditors regulating their laws.  Regulation has mostly been left up to state agencies. Personally, I’ve only seen a HUD auditor [...]

Mortgage rates continue their trend upward and they don’t look like they’re coming back down soon. This market is still very volatile and as I always, I encourage you to lock and not float your interest rates if you a closing within the next 4-6 weeks. If you’re hunkering for more [...]

Are we throwing out a program that works, the FHA Down Payment Assistance Program, in this case the baby, while trying to fix the sub prime mess, the bathwater? I guess it all boils down to how valuable home ownership is and how well it helps drive a healthy economy.
A lot of realtors, including myself, have used an [...]

This afternoon I received our Mortgagee Letter from HUD with the nitty gritty on FHASecure.   Since our company is a HUD Approved Mortgagee lender (we’ve been providing FHA financing since our inception back in 1976); we are also approved to help distressed home owners who have adjusting ARMs via a FHASecure refi.
FHASecure is “a temporary program designed to [...]

Bush offered America some presidential words this morning to let us know he’s on top of this whole subprime meltdown, credit crunch, liquidity crisis. On his agenda: An FHA bailout in the form of a new feel good loan program: FHA Secure. Let’s pause for a moment and reflect back on how well HUD is [...]

I’ve run into this before while running my daily business of real estate sales. A client comes to you and wants to buy a property, whether it is for investment or residential purposes. You learn during the process of interviewing each other that the client is from another country where English is not the major [...]

Every “exotic” loan program has a potential appropriate user of that program. What we are seeing more and more today, is the industry using these perfectly good programs inappropriately, to “get the deal done”. Before I go into my take on the situation, let me point out two relevant sites worth reading. [...]