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Articles Published in: April 2022

FHA home loans

True Or False? FHA Home Loan Issues You Should Know

How much do you really know about the home loan process? If you are interested in buying a home with a low-down-payment FHA mortgage, there are a few things that are good to know before you start house hunting. True Or False? FHA Home Loans Are For First-Time Homebuyers Only False. It’s one of the most common persistent myths about FHA mortgages. True Or False? You Don’t Need A Down Payment With An FHA Home Loan False, but the down payment requirement for FHA mortgages is lower than some conventional equivalents. While it’s true that there are conventional mortgages that offer down payments in the three percent range similar to FHA home loans, you may find the FICO score requirements for these loans to be higher than the FHA minimum | more...

 
Buying A Home with an FHA Loan

Preparing For An FHA Mortgage Loan

Applying for an FHA home loan doesn’t happen overnight–it takes time to plan, budget, examine your credit, and save money for the fees and expenses associated with an FHA mortgage. If you’re new to the home buying process and don’t know where to start, a very good way to begin to get an idea of how much home you can afford with your present income, debts, and financial obligations. Do you want to know how much you can borrow, and how much your payments might be? You can use an online mortgage loan calculator to estimate these amounts. Remember that the amount of the loan you might qualify for and the amount of mortgage payment you can actually afford may be two different things altogether, which is why many web-based | more...

 
FHA And HUD

The End Of April Is The End Of Fair Housing Month 2022

Saturday, April 30, 2022, is the last day of Fair Housing Month. But the advent of May doesn’t mean that the fight against housing discrimination comes to an end.  The Department of Housing and Urban Development encourages all who may have experienced some form of discrimination in the housing process to come forward and report the incidents to the HUD Office of Housing and Equal Opportunity or FHEO. FHEO is responsible for enforcing the Fair Housing Act, but also the following laws that contribute to fair housing for all: Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Section 109 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 Titles II and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 The | more...

 
Getting Ready For Your Home Loan

Comparing Home Loan Offers

Are you planning to buy a new home? You can find the right home loan by applying a similar process you use to find the right house.  In fact, shopping around for the right mortgage loan is just as important as shopping around for the right house. If you are considering an FHA mortgage to buy, renovate, or build a home, you’ll want to make the same kind of informed decisions about the lender and the loan.  Comparing lenders and loans is the way to do that. But there are some tips you can follow to make that process more streamlined. Research Multiple FHA Lenders While on paper, FHA loan terms and conditions such as FICO score requirements seem to be standardized, the FHA minimum FICO score requirements are just | more...

 
FHA mortgage

Before You Fill Out An FHA Home Loan Application

How can a new borrower prepare for a home loan application? There are some important steps to take and not all of them are as obvious as others. For example, do you know where your down payment money will come from? If you are still trying to figure out how to budget and save for it, you might consider investigating local down payment assistance programs in your area. But there are other things to do before you turn in a home loan application. Check Your Credit Use That’s a no-brainer, right? But there are issues you should consider when examining your credit that may not be so obvious. For example, some first-time homebuyers don’t realize that it’s not just your credit scores, but also your credit utilization that gets scrutinized | more...

 
Is your credit ready for an FHA loan?

Employment And Income Verification For FHA Loans

Here is a common variation on an FHA loan question we get frequently. “I have been employed for about two years, do I qualify for an FHA mortgage?” FHA loans require a variety of financial qualifications including FICO scores, your history of payments on financial obligations, your debt-to-income ratio, and other factors. Lender standards and FHA loan rules both apply, as do some state laws and other regulations. There’s no individual factor that determines a borrower’s ability to qualify for an FHA mortgage, a number of variables come into play as mentioned above. Sometimes one or more factors can disqualify a borrower, it’s true-a low FICO score, debt ratios that are too high, missed payments in the last 12 months leading up to the loan application, or major changes in | more...

 
HUD

HUD Announces Fair Housing Conciliation Agreement With Bank Of America

Housing discrimination comes in many forms. The Fair Housing Act makes it a crime to discriminate against people at any stage in the housing process.  You cannot be denied a loan, services, or assistance due to your race, religion, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other non-financial factor listed in the Fair Housing Act. Yet, discrimination persists, even among major corporate lenders and other industry players. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced a Conciliation Agreement with Bank of America, N.A., “to resolve allegations of familial status and sex discrimination under the Fair Housing Act.”  Bank of America, and one of its loan officers, “allegedly refused” to approve a home loan for a couple, “until after one of the applicants returned to work from maternity leave.” | more...

 
New FHA Home Loan

Buying Your First Home: What To Remember

There is a little checklist of things not to do when buying a home. The top of the list? Not shopping around for a lender.  FHA home loans have multiple options including the type of loan (fixed-rate, adjustable-rate mortgage) and the loan term (15 years or 30 years). But there are also multiple options based on the property you want to buy; a suburban home, a townhouse, condo unit, or even a multi-unit home.  That variety of options brings with it a need to know more specifics about the type of loan you seek, and there are definitely things NOT to do when you are considering these options. And not all the considerations are directly related to applying for and getting approved for an FHA mortgage. Some have a lot | more...

 
HUD

FHA Adds 40-Year Mortgage Relief Option

The Federal Housing Administration has announced a 40-year mortgage modification option for borrowers who are struggling to save their homes due to COVID-19. The announcement will have lenders offer more options to those who are behind on FHA Title II loans, which are the mortgages most commonly used under the FHA loan program to buy primary residences with.  The new 40-year option is meant for those who “cannot achieve a minimum targeted 25 percent reduction in the Principal and Interest portion of their mortgage payment through FHA’s existing 30-year mortgage modification with a partial claim” according to the press release. Over time, the FHA and HUD have made major changes to the COVID-19 homeowner relief choices offered to those with FHA mortgages.  According to the FHA and HUD, adding the | more...

 
FHA Home Loan

Applying For An FHA Mortgage With A Changed Name

It is illegal under the Fair Housing Act to discriminate against a person who seeks housing because of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, family status, and any number of other non-financial issues. But in addition to the Fair Housing Act, there are certain Know Your Customer best practices required for both buying a home and renting that help establish the identity of the renter or buyer. Your lender will require you to verify your identity with a photo ID, tax documents, Social Security Number, and/or other identifiers. But what happens if the name on these documents isn’t the same as the name you have now or will have in the future? If you have a need for a legal name change these best practices can get a little complicated, and | more...