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Bipartisan Efforts to Improve Housing Supply?
One of the greatest challenges for current homebuyers is a lack of available homes. Right now, there are more qualified buyers than there are homes listed for sale. The lack of homes has caused home...
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Self-employed Q&A
For the month of May, I’m focusing on self-employed buyers. I’ve touched a little on self-employed buyers who use a Schedule C return and then those who use separate business and personal returns....
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Self-employed buyers – a case study
I’m wrapping up my month long deep dive into self-employed buyers. In one of the posts, I emphasized the importance of providing both personal and business tax returns (for those who file both). Here...
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Reinsurance Impacts on Mortgage Payments
For most new mortgages, homeowners’ insurance (“HOI”) premiums impact the monthly payment and the cash required to close the loan. Most monthly mortgage payments include an escrow component covering...
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W-2 Buyers
In the month of May, I focused on self-employed buyers. This month, I’ll turn my attention to W-2 buyers. When purchasing a home as a W-2 employee, life gets much easier with underwriting. How easy?...
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Qualifying income from bonuses and commission
Last week I began a series on purchasing a home as a W-2 buyer. Underwriting is certainly easier on those who are W-2 salaried buyers. What happens if someone receives income from bonuses and/or...
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Introduction to ARMs
One option for home buyers or homeowners who want to refinance is an adjustable-rate mortgage or “ARM.” Unlike with fixed-rate mortgages, ARM interest rates can change over the loan term, at specific...
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Hourly employees
Concluding a series this week on W-2 buyers. The first week focused on how easy it is for those who are W-2 salaried to purchase a home. Then I went into detail on bonus and commission income as it is...
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Interest-Only ARMs
My prior post was an introduction to Adjustable-Rate Mortgages or ARMs. This post focuses on a subset of ARMs, called interest-only ARMs. As the name implies, this type of ARM requires interest-only...
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Who are first time homebuyers?
I understand the title to today’s post may seem silly… first time homebuyers are people who’ve never owned a home. While true, it isn’t the full story. From an underwriting perspective, who are...
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REO on Applications – Conversion of Primary
When a mortgage applicant already owns one or more other properties (we call it Real Estate Owned or “REO”), specific underwriting guidelines apply to the REO property. In this post, we will cover how...
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REO on Applications – Existing Rental Property
My last post covered when a homebuyer wants to buy a new primary residence, keep their current home and convert it into a rental property. In this post, we will cover guidelines pertaining to another...
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Home sales decline. Values increase.
Existing-home sales continue to decline. They fell over 5% from May to June this year, and coincidentally also 5% lower compared to June 2023. Yet the value of homes continues to climb. We hit a...
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Housing market thoughts for the rest of 2024
Last week I discussed the current state of the housing market. The TL;DR version is simply… the market is challenging. We know where we’ve been. What can we expect the rest of the way? A recent Forbes...
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DSCR Loans for Rental Homes
My last two posts focused on Real Estate Owned (REO), and how rental homes impact the conventional mortgage underwriting process. This post covers a special type of loan for investors buying rental...
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Comparing Boomer vs Millennial First Home Markets
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal makes an interesting comparison of the housing markets faced by the Baby Boomer generation in the 1980s vs the Millennial generation of today. Last fall,...
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Setting up a target rate
Last week I dared to mention the “R” word… refinance. This week, I want to talk about something I do for my clients when the market enters into a refinance period. Setting up a target rate. As...
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Did the Federal Reserve Just Lower Mortgage Rates?
The short answer is “No.” Last week, the Federal Reserve (“Fed”) lowered the Federal Funds Rate by 0.5%. This means that interest rates for commercial loans, auto loans, home equity lines of credit,...
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Cash Gifts for Homebuyers
Given home-affordability challenges facing first-time buyers today, we at the Mortgage Blog want to cover a couple of creative ways homebuyers can finance a purchase in this market. In a future post,...
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Non-occupying applicants
As mentioned by my colleague Rodney Shaffer, given home-affordability challenges facing first-time buyers today, we at the Mortgage Blog will cover a couple of creative ways buyers can be qualified...
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