If you lost your home through a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, you may not have to wait five years before you are eligible to finance your next home.
Fannie Mae is directing its lenders to relax rules making mortgage applicants who have done short sales or given up their homes with deeds in lieu of foreclosure ineligible for a new mortgage for many years. Instead, you could be eligible for Fannie Mae financing in as few as two years. The new standards go into effect July 1st. Continue reading ‘Recent Short Sale or Deed-in-Lieu of Foreclosure? You CAN Buy Again!’

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How much does bad credit cost when you get a mortgage? You probably have an idea. A closer look may motivate you to pay a little more attention to getting your obligations taken care of on time.
According to Freddie Mac, the average mortgage size in 2008 was $167,960. A homeowner with that mortgage and a 520 credit score will pay $185,302 more in interest charges over the life of a 30-year mortgage than a borrower with the same mortgage and a credit score of 720, according to a formula devised by Consumer Credit Counseling Service. That works out to an extra $516 a month. Continue reading ‘Improve Your Credit, Save $516 a Month’

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If you’re experiencing mortgage credit problems, have missed home loan payments, and are perhaps delinquent on other credit accounts as well, it may be tempting to give up. The stress can be debilitating, the balances pile up, and you think you will be in bad-credit Hell forever. A recent study by VantageScore shows that’s not necessarily the case. Continue reading ‘Fix Your Credit in Nine Short Months. Really.’

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If your credit is, well, iffy, you’ll want to take note of this. FHA is taking a hard look at lenders with higher default rates, and taking away their approval to underwrite FHA mortgages. Even if every loan they approve and fund conforms 100% to FHA’s underwriting guidelines. Why should you care? A couple of reasons. Continue reading ‘FHA Cracking Down on Lenders: Here’s Why You Should Care’

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If you have a bad credit mortgage, chances are you have a high interest rate. Your housing expense may very well exceed 31% of your gross monthly income. And if you live in a neighborhood dominated by bad credit mortgage financing, chances are there are lots of foreclosures and your property may very well be worth less than the value of the liens against it. Well, to paraphrase a popular commercial, there’s a HAMP for that. Continue reading ‘New HAMP Principal Reduction FHA Refinance — Hardship Not Required’

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Debt settlement, debt management, and debt consolidation firms are taking great pains to induce you to call them. They are bombarding the radio and TV with advertising geared towards consumers who are being consumed by credit card debt. They stuff your mailbox with fliers and brochures designed with the desperate in mind. And they flood your email with more ads than Pakistani “Viagra” sellers. Continue reading ‘Debt Consolidation Should Not Include Upfront Fees’

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You had to get a co-signer on your mortgage because you had no credit, or even bad credit. This nice person enabled you to buy your home. You don’t want to repay her generosity by ruining her credit, do you? Because if you don’t pay that mortgage on time, the late payment shows up on her credit report and lowers her credit score. In addition, the lender can chase her and harass her to collect arrearages and late fees owed by you. Not nice. So here’s what you do. Continue reading ‘I have a co-signer and can’t pay my mortgage. What now?’

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It’s a sad tale you read a dozen times a day. Borrower buys home, borrower loses job, borrower loses home. And in some cases, the bad credit people get from missing mortgage payments actually keeps them from getting new jobs! And of course you can;t refinance to a lower mortgage payment when you’re out of work. Now, thanks to updates in the HAMP modification program, unemployed borrowers will be able to get help that doesn’t involve a foreclosure notice and a moving van Continue reading ‘HAMP Help for Unemployed’

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Somewhere among the hundreds of pages of proposed consumer financial protection making its way through the House and Senate are provisions that may affect anyone who looks for a bad credit mortgage or subprime home loan. The new bills will give a new Consumer Finance Protection Agency (CFPA) the authority to abolish prepayment penalties on high-interest bad credit mortgages. Continue reading ‘Feds Take Aim at Subprime Mortgage Prepayment Penalties’

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A new mortgage law in Georgia offers extra protections to people with bad credit looking for home loans. In the past, some bad credit lenders in Georgia were able to make loans to people who could not afford to repay them, and they were able to overcharge for these loans too. Senate Bill #57 has been passed and sent on to the Georgia State House of Representatives for approval. Here are two important protections the bill as written would provide: Continue reading ‘Georgia Subprime Mortgage Law Offers Protections for Bad Credit Borrowers’

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