GA Mortgage

http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com – New Fannie Mae Streamline Loan Modifications may do more harm than good

Part 5 –

We do realize that there are situations that people are in that they want to be out of and we want to move past. We have back in the studio, the author of Real Estates Future also the author of The Foreclosure Sharks white paper, a fantastic manual that he has put together that you can get for free. Dan Havey thank you very much for coming back. You can get a copy of the white paper The Foreclosure Sharks at http://mortgageanswerman.com.

So Dan I know that you have brought the just recently released new Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac guidelines, with their streamlined modification process. This is the kind of thing where the consumer can go and do-it themselves, right?

Yes, except that we would certainly advise against that. These are the guidelines that Fannie Mae came out with; they are effective as of a couple weeks ago now. But with Christmas and the holidays I dont think a whole lot of people have figured out what this is all about yet. So as we said in the last segment the guidelines that they have come out with here, and what I have is a print out but I dont know that this is the whole thing because I have heard some commentary on this that actually says that it is much worse then I am about to relay to everyone on the air.

I am just going to pick out a couple points about this and then I will let Michael laugh about them because some of these things are just crazy in the fact that it doesnt really help the home owner and I also dont think it is going to move us past the conditions we have to get people some really good loan modifications, the kind of loan modifications that we are talking about where you actually employ an attorney to help you with your loan modification.

The reality of it is we need to get through this mess we dont need to stave it off, push it out further and in my opinion that is what this does. That is exactly what is going on here, there was an article I was reading by Fitch, which is one of the major bond rating firms and that is exactly what they said. They said that the alt-A arms are all coming back to roost now, I think the default rate was over 14% on all alt-A arms, being at least 90 days past due. And the comment in the article was something like, well we havent really seen a lot of losses from it yet and then it said in a caveat at the end, and we think its because they are not really foreclosing on any of these guys yet, so that is why they havent seen any losses. Well if you keep pushing it off into the future eventually you are going to have to see some of these losses.

We have the same thing here with Fannie Mae, which I think it is just another band-aid; it is not going to really solve the problem. First what they have here, and this one is pretty benign, that once they give you the new mortgage payment you have a three month trial period. If you make the payments during that trial period they let you keep the modification. So that one is not so bad.

The next one says that the qualified borrower cant be in litigation, bankruptcy, or have an existing work out plan, and you have to be at least 3 months behind or in foreclosure in order to be eligible for this streamline.

Ok I get to comment right? SO basically what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just told everyone, according to this that I am reading right here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just told you to be 90 days late on your mortgage. That is exactly right, they said that the only way they were going to be able to help you was to be 90 days late on your mortgage.

So I have been, over the past several months, heck Dan you helped us put together the package, you are the cofounder of the modification hotline and I am on the radio every week when we do a little blip about load mods from time to time, saying dont trust anybody who tells you to be late on your mortgage. First of all no loan professional, no mortgage professional, no loan modification specialist will tell you to be late on your mortgage, however, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just said you need to be at least 90 days late on your mortgage if you want them to help you.

Duration : 0:6:53

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In November, 2009, the federal government extended and expanded the popular First-Time Homebuyer’s Credit. It lets you trim your tax bill by up to $8,000. Sign a contract to buy a home before April 30, 2010 and then close on it by June 30, 2010 and you can claim the credit on your 2009 or your 2010 tax return.

For more information, visit http://turbotax.intuit.com

Duration : 0:1:56

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May 11 (Bloomberg) — Ron Phipps, president of the National Association of Realtors, talks about U.S. housing policy and mortgage tax breaks.
He speaks with Betty Liu and Peter Cook on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Duration : 0:3:28

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http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/taxes/arizona-is-not-a-recourse-state-so-chances-are-you-will-not-owe-1099-c-income/ – Arizona is not a recourse state, so chances are you will not owe 1099 C Income –

Part 6 – In Arizona, typically its not a recourse state, so if they are telling you that theyre going to garnish your wages because you didnt pay back your entire mortgage, there is a local bank ,that was threatening a very good colleague of ours about a small second mortgage that person had taken out. Threatening to send it to collections and garnish her wages. It simply isn’t going to happen.

But nevertheless, there is still the tax implications that apply, if you need to navigate through this maze. There is a lot to it, you need to protect yourself. You talked about bankruptcy is one of those exclusions, right? One of the problems with bankruptcy is people dont understand the bankruptcy laws. They are so tight now and your feet are really held to the fire from the federal government right now. It’s not like you just didn’t make your mortgage payment, so you go file bankruptcy, it’s just not realistic. Assuming bankruptcy is the last resort option for everybody. And we certainly want to avoid that, it would not be sound financial advice from any credible source that I can think of.

Let’s walk through a case scenario, somebody who is listening to this broadcast, their head is spinning right now, they’re thinking, oh my gosh. I should have known about the tax implications, a short sale versus loan modification. Let’s start at the top and work through a quick scenario. And then we’ll point out the specifics of what they should be considering right now.

For example, we talk about this all the time and to your credit Michael Barnes and to Velocity Financials credit, you were early in bringing out the loan modification for people who were in a distress situation regarding a mortgage, maintaining or keeping up with the mortgage payment. So you started going down the path where the refinance started to become a much more difficult option, with new constraints and all the other factors that led to part of this economic crisis, a loan modification has become a buzz topic today. Driving to the station today, driving down Camelback Road, I see a sign on the corner. You know, one of those stick in the ground, homemade jobs, that says don’t refi a Loan, modify, with some success rate and the phone number.

Hang on there I want you to say the success rate. The sign literally said, 99% success rate, and it goes back to the point that you made when they say that they can reduce your mortgage principal by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, thats the absolute last resort for any lending institution. Thats not what this is about, so let’s start with that, then we will work on the tax ramifications of how that might work in the overall financial strategy.

I am familiar with the loan modification industry here in Arizona. There is no regulation, unfortunately. We at Velocity Financial work with a national network of attorneys, so if you’re the guy in El Centro California, or youre in Phoenix, or youre in Alaska it doesn’t matter where you’re at. We have someone who is an expert in that field in that state because the laws are different. But without the regulations some person with the ugly yellow sign on the side of the road says he has a 99% success rate, I don’t believe him it’s probably not using an attorney, who knows, dont buy into that garbage. Were going to tell you the truth, if we cant do a loan modification, we will tell you that we cant do it. And if a loan modification is not the best thing for you, you can find the some of these other options… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com

Duration : 0:5:19

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Charles D’Alessandro of Fillmore Real Estate interviews a mortgage professional. The question is what does a first time home buyer do to prepare for their Brooklyn home search.

Duration : 0:6:26

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http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/loan-modification/attorney-negotiated-loan-modification-process-going-thru-the-legal-door/ – Attorney negotiated loan modification process. Going thru the Legal Door –

Part 7 – We have Dan Havey with us talking about loan modifications. This segment we want to talk about the specifics of the actual mechanics of, how does it actually work for the homeowner? Let me just start it off and if you would then explain the back end of how it works. Our job is to determine where you’re at now, be very specific about where you’re at with your mortgage now, what the rate is, what it’s done, those specifics. How much you make? We have to help the lender with one thing which is to establish a hardship which is crucial to this. You can’t be making half $1 million a year paying $5000 a month in a mortgage, they are not just going to lower your interest rate because you want it. There actually has to be some sort of change, financial change, hardship.

We determined that and then there is a significant amount of paperwork involved, Velocity Financial takes care of that for you. We fill out the paperwork along with your help, review all of the documentation, we then recommend be right loan modification, whether it be an interest rate reduction, or extending the term of your loan, waiving some of the balance that you owe which is very very rare. To make sure that once we’re done with this whole process you can sustain and live in that house and be happy forever.

So the process itself really is not that much different than what people went through when they got their loan in the first place. That is correct and it’s kind of funny, this has to be exactly the reverse. There is paperwork that we need to collect on your mortgages, we check the value of the property to see where you’re at and in most cases youre underwater with the value. We dont do an appraisal though, there is no credit analysis, we do review your finances, and these sorts of things but essentially it’s just like doing a loan. What we’re trying to determine is exactly what is sustainable for you.

So what we do at the modification hotline at Velocity Financial is to put together the entire package, just like we do for a loan package because we basically send this to a underwriter, theyre not known as an underwriter they’re known as a loan modification coordinator but at modification hotline we are the first set of eyes. We work with you directly, getting all the paperwork in, getting it put together because we know exactly what has to be in that file, how it has to be stacked, how it has to be presented, before it goes to the loan modification coordinator who works for the attorney.

Then once it is at the attorneys office with their modification coordinator, they take a look at it, they make sure that everything is in there, they make sure that it is a doable modification. This all happens before it is ever presented to an attorney.

There are a whole lot of steps and there is a lot of paperwork. The process like you said is very similar to a loan with the exception that there are no costs of the title company and all that other stuff. Those dont exist, we dont charge an upfront fee, and we do collect a retainer for the attorney. At some point during our process we make our recommendations and we turn it in. Then the attorney does their due diligence and thats where I really want you to explain what happens, what are these attorneys looking for?

Well this is where it completely goes off track, versus what a homeowner would do if they were doing their own modification, because they would do everything we just talked about, they would fill out the paperwork, get together tax returns, pay stubs, whatever the lender wanted and they would present all of it to the lender. Now they probably wouldn’t know exactly how to stack some of the paperwork, and how to calculate some of the things that we know how to calculate, but they would put all that they work together.

Where the difference comes in is once it gets to the attorney because the attorney ultimately wants to get you a loan modification but they can’t just call up the bank and say hey I want loan modification, because he is going to get the same result you did. So what he has to do is he has to go through the file, and he has to look for things like, I am going to use a bunch of acronyms here, he’s looking for things like TILA, RESPA, HOEPA, HUD violations, all these different guidelines that the lender was required to meet while giving you the loan… http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Duration : 0:6:47

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First: Move residential real estate, (one to 4 family units) ASAP, into both the ordinary and portfolio tax categories for properties that are acquired in the next 24 months by anyone (individuals, partnerships, corporations etc).

Second: Any residential real estate acquired in the two year period would remain in this new deducible income tax state for the life of property ownership by the investor or investment entity.

A balance market will begin to emerge as investors and investment entities acquire residential real estate at what I believe will be unprecedented levels

By Stanley Klos

Duration : 0:9:58

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Technorati Tags: 1986, 700, act, bailout, bill, billion, Bradley, congress, crisis, dollars, Donald, estate, Hank, Paulson, Reagan, real, Regan, ronald, Tax

FairTaxOfficialhttp://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/fairtaxofficialNewsHome, Sales, Ownership, Buying, Mortgage, Interest, Deduction, MID, FairTax, VAT, Value, Added, Tax, Q&A, National, NST, Economy, Flat, ReformWill the FairTax hurt home ownership with no mortgage interest deduction?

Duration : 0:1:37

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http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/foreclosure/foreclosure-rates-on-forbearance-agreements-done-with-banks-reaches-58/ – Foreclosure rates on Forbearance Agreements done with banks reaches 58% –

Part 3 – In studio with us today on this fine New years eve is Dan Havey, the co founder of the modification hotline as well as the author of The Foreclosure Sharks a great white paper he put together. He is also the author of Real Estates Future and this segment we are talking about loan modifications and some specific information.

You also have a great story to tell about this to. Well unfortunately I have too many stories about people who have had to go through foreclosures, bankruptcies, loan modifications. The one story I want to talk about real quick is a friend of mine who unbeknownst to me went out and did a loan modification on her own and not to get into a whole bunch of technical details on it she ended up getting a pretty decent interest rate because they actually cut her mortgage payment in half and she was pretty happy about that.

She owed a little bit more than the house was worth, she wasnt terribly upside down, but by the time they got done with her she certainly was going to be because the modification, and actually I should not call it a modification, I should call it a forbearance agreement, what they did to her was to say, OK we will cut your interest rate in half, we will cut your monthly payment in half, but we will take all of that deferred interest and tack it onto the back end of the loan. So that by the time her interest rate went back to where it had been, it was going to adjust up over the next five years, so that within that five year time period she was actually going to owe $60,000 in back interest on top of the principal balance that she had before she went to go talk to her bank.

What kind of a deal is that? I didnt think it was a very good one and she ended up eventually not taking it and just recently let the house go back to the bank, because she just looked at it and said, Wait a second here, I am already $20,000 upside down, by the time Im done with you guys I will be $80,000 upside down and so great I get a cheaper payment for a while. She moved into a rental property that was even cheaper then what she would have had to pay to stay in the house and from what she tells me the house is nicer.

Some of the unfortunate scenarios that come up that we get to see. Unfortunately we talk to lots of people that have similar situations, trying to do these on their own and it is possible to do a loan modification on your own. We know that, the program is designed for you to do that. The problem is it generally does not work out.

The re-default rate on loan modifications done on your own is significantly higher than loan modifications facilitated by an attorney that is representing you, for a number of reasons. Number one you have to pay an attorney to represent you. The other is that I think you are going to get a better modification based its not just a negotiation between you and the loss mitigation department for the bank. We are talking about using a professional attorney who is a trained negotiator to negotiate on your behalf with another attorney. By the way, theyre not talking to the same loss mitigation people in India that you may be talking too.

Here are some numbers that just came out from John Dugan who is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and they did a study of the loan modifications that have been done to date. In many cases these were forbearance agreements, not loan modifications. If an individual talks to his bank, generally speaking he will not get the same as result as what an attorney would do, so most of these are really forbearance agreements. And in that case, 36% had defaulted or were 30 days past due after 6 months and 58% were in default after 8 months. Again that is 58% in default after eight months and I saw some numbers the other day and unfortunately I didnt bring them in with me today, that according to some study of the very few modifications that have been done using an attorney, I say very few, but it is still thousands or tens of thousands, but few compared to what is getting done directly with the bank, the number is only like 5% of the ones done with an attorney have re-defaulted and again I dont have the numbers with me so I cant site the source…

Duration : 0:5:47

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http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/real-estate/beware-of-phishing-schemes-and-bank-scams-gmacs-clients-hit-hard/ – Beware of phishing schemes and bank scams GMACs clients hit hard –

Part 3 – As promised just before the break, I told you to, listen in if you know anyone who has a GMAC Mortgage, this is one of those too good to be true things. Heres the thing, I have no issues what-so-ever with GMAC, thats not what Im saying, what Im saying is there is a scam of sorts that is going around. A client of ours received a letter, we did a second mortgage for this person a few years ago, they received a letter from GMAC, it looked like GMAC, it sounded like GMAC, and it said that we are willing to forgive your second mortgage of 200 and some thousand dollars in lieu of a one time payment, payable within the next 30 days, of say 20 thousand dollars.

I dont recall the exact amount or what it was. There is a phone number on there, it says loss mitigation department on it, a person assigned to this case. They called the phone number, they answered the phone as if you were calling into the loss mitigation department, and verified if you just send us this amount they will release the lien. Well it is completely false. It is absolutely not true.

These people are not going to seek you out on their own, now whether it be GMAC, today we have actually seen that one, there may be other ones out there. Folks, if you are getting stuff like this you need to verify it and you need to verify it by sources other than the information on the letter that you have received. If you get an email that says your bank account has been tapped into you need to check, chances are it is some kind of a phishing scam and this is no different.

We have gone back to identity theft through the mail and if you have been a party to this you need to verify and check into it, and you need to contact the authorities immediately for more information, if you need help with this sort of situation you are welcome to give us a call at 480 Velocity.

It is pretty amazing that that kind of thing still exists, and with the announcement by Paulson today that the fact is they are no longer willing to buy bad mortgages off the books of the banks. When you come across a phishing scam such as this one there is not a bank out there, I dont care what kind of trouble they are in, that is going to take $0.10 on the dollar to forgive a loan.

In a situation where things are going well, you are right in a situation where things are going well, and the status quo, they are going to be pursued by an attorney, that is entirely different, they are not just going to volunteer up and give you the money, its not going to happen.

Absolutely not and thats where we get back into what a loan modification is, who it benefits, and how it works and so forth, you are starting to see these wheels in motion amongst all of these banks. One of those wheels is certainly not well forgive $200,000 in debt if you write us a check for $20, 000.

And when we have talked about this Brett you and I have had many conversations in regard to what does it take? Can a person do this on their own, we will get to that a little later, but the answer is Yes. A consumer can actually do it on their own, up until very recently with the new announcements made from some of these major servicers and investors, up until then, a person trying to do it on their own would take days upon days and hours and hours on the phone not getting calls back trying to find time during the day while working to get this done and in many cases they are going to get a temporary fix.

The loss mitigation department for the bank that you have your mortgage with, their job is not to mitigate your loss its to mitigate their loss. They are out to protect the bank, thats why we use the national network of attorneys that we do, that are specialists, that have done thousands of these loan modifications, that go to bat for you. By the way folks, they are not going through the loss mitigation door that you would have to go through they are going right to the legal department, they are going to threaten suit if necessary, they are going to do discovery work, they are going to find out if there was anything that was misrepresented either by the bank or the broker and take that angle… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com

Duration : 0:5:36

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