Articles Published in: June 2020

June 10, 2020

Why FHA Loan Interest Rates Are Lower

Have you ever started to research home loans and found yourself getting confused at all the data presented to you? What is the difference between a 30-year fixed rate conventional home loan and a 30-year fixed rate FHA mortgage? How do you know which loan to choose? Buying a home is one of the biggest commitments you can make financially as an ordinary, non-business borrower. The down payment alone makes some borrowers worry they can’t afford the loan (fortunately there may be local down payment assistance programs in your area that can help) or that they won’t be able to understand the intricacies of a mortgage. But buying a home involves a lot more common sense than you might realize. One area this is true for is interest rates–once you | more...

June 9, 2020

Does Credit Monitoring Hurt Your FICO Score?

By Bruce Reichstein

Credit monitoring is an important service. Many borrowers don’t know what their FICO scores are when first starting out, and it is easy to be surprised by outdated or erroneous information on your credit file if you don’t look at it frequently enough. Do you know what your credit reports say about you? Your credit activity including the most recent events can sometimes make or break a credit application. Too many recent applications for credit is one problem, another may be too much of the wrong kind of credit (junk credit cards, payday loans, etc.) The reason for credit monitoring has a lot to do with protecting your identity from fraudsters and thieves, but many people have never even seen a credit report, let alone understand what is in them. | more...

June 8, 2020

Do You Know How To Dispute Your Credit Reports?

By Joe Wallace

Do you know what it takes to dispute a problem on your credit reports? If you don’t know the contents of your credit report, or how to dispute your report, you may encounter trouble at loan application time. Are you a potential home loan applicant in planning stages of your home loan? It is very important to look at your credit reports and review the contents. If you have never seen your credit report before, you are not ready to fill out a home loan application. Review Your Credit Reports Now Disputing your report doesn’t happen overnight–you need time to dispute inaccurate or outdated information that may be on your credit report. And entries in your credit file that point to you being a victim of identity theft? That can | more...

June 5, 2020

Mortgage Loan Interest Rates Below Three Percent

By Joe Wallace

Financial magazines reported mortgage rates falling below three percent; these reports in early June point to the numbers we’re seeing both for conventional mortgages (depending on the term of the loan) as well as government-backed loans like FHA home loans. Why have mortgage rates continued to fall to historic lows? Market volatility, daily ups and downs over COVID-19, civil unrest, and trade war concerns have contributed to these low rates. But the volatility associated with today’s mortgage loan market makes it hard to predict whether these rates will be with us tomorrow, next week, or ever again. Fortunately, borrowers and lenders use a toll called a mortgage rate lock commitment to protect the loan applicant from future changes. How does it work? When you make an offer on a home | more...

June 4, 2020

Reverse Mortgage And Foreclosure Relief Scams: What You Need To Know

By Bruce Reichstein

Mortgage scams and reverse mortgage scams involve people coming to you with offers to save you from a pending foreclosure, or offer you a reverse mortgage to help cash in on the equity you have built up in the home. But scammers aren’t there to help, they are there to profit from your problems; fortunately, there are ways to tell if you are being scammed and stop a con game dead in its’ tracks. Advice About Scams From The U.S. Government The Department of Justice offers advice about scams–have you been contacted by third party agencies without having contacted them first? What should you do to prevent being taken advantage of if you need foreclosure relief, or need a home equity loan or reverse mortgage? The first step–identifying the biggest | more...

June 3, 2020

Why Your Lender Offered You A Different Interest Rate Than What You Saw Online

By Joe Wallace

House hunters searching for lenders online and comparing home loan interest rates may be seeing rates reported for FHA home loans below the three percent range, and compared to years past those rates are at incredible lows. In the first week of June 2020, FHA mortgage loan interest rates were reported at 2.68%. According to some data aggregators, that percentage represents a 52-week low at press time. The same sources report the high 52-week average for FHA mortgage loan rates at or near 4%. By the time you read this, those numbers will have changed up or down, but as a snapshot of the rates in a given moment in time these numbers are significant. But the low rates you see online are not offered to all loan applicants; do | more...

June 2, 2020

Credit Reports and Accuracy In Credit Reporting For Your Home Loan

By Joe Wallace

Do you know what your credit report says about you right now? If not, you aren’t truly prepared for your home loan application and may learn the hard way about issues on your credit report including identity theft, reporting errors, etc. If you have not looked at your credit reports, you should not fill out loan paperwork; there are many issues that can affect your mortgage loan application and they are directly related to the contents found in your credit file. Three Credit Reporting Agencies, Three Separate Credit Reports Don’t assume you can just pull a single credit report–consider what all three of the major credit reporting agencies have in their files in your name. These agencies do not share information, which makes it more important for you, the future | more...

Conventional Loan Interest Rates Make History, FHA Loan Rates Still Incredibly Low

June 1, 2020

Refinance Loan Options: Choose Wisely!

By Bruce Reichstein

Mortgage loan interest rates have been on a wild ride in 2020. Coronavirus, incredible lows for rates, market volatility, and much more have all created an environment that feels as unpredictable as mortgage rates have seemed. And the rollercoaster isn’t over yet. Finance blogs are still reporting as late as June 1, 2020, that refinance loan demand has actually grown larger than the demand for new purchase mortgages. That isn’t shocking in an era where rates have, at least on paper, dipped below the three percent range at times (your experience will definitely vary). Those with the ability to refinance into a lower interest rate save money over the course of the mortgage, assuming these borrowers pay on the mortgage over a long period of time. Understanding The Refinance Loan | more...