Over the past couple of days, a new possible excuse for the recession has been coming up here and there and it’s called the mark-to-market accounting rule, and not a lot of people know what it is. I had to look it up myself, and I’ll try my best to explain what it’s about.

Continue reading Mark-to-Market and Mortgages

Basically, when you talk about a jumbo mortgage, this is essentially a mortgage with a larger amount than the normal limits set by industry standards. These standards are defined by our mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Continue reading What is a Jumbo Mortgage?

With the market experiencing a supply glut of homes, fixed-rate mortgages are now experiencing historically low interest rates. Here are some tips to getting the best possible home mortgage available. Just remember to keep a good credit score.

Here are some tips to help you get the best possible loan.

(1) Watch your rate.

The closer you are to closing on a home mortgage deal you have keep tracking your interest rates which continue to fluctuate. If the rate for the deal you are making suddenly goes up with no reasonable explanation you may have to find another lender for a mortgage even if you may have to push back your date of purchase by several days.

(2) Get preapproved, not prequalified.

The loan with the lowest rate and fees that are less than a thousand dollars are usually the best deal for people looking for a home mortgage. It pays to get a pre-approval for these loans. This usually entails filling out an application that details your income, savings and personal debt. It will be checked against your credit report and if it passes their tests, you can get the preapproval letter with how much you can borrow for your home mortgage.

This is much better than getting prequalified because prequalification does not include your credit score. In this manner, you get an idea of what problems you may encounter when getting a mortgage and what rates you can expect. But Should I Refinance Home

(3) Get the best rates

Fixed-rate loans now are so cheap there’s no point in looking for something else. It’s just a matter of shopping around to find out what is the best rate you can get for your home mortgage. You can do this by doing some aggressive research online, asking your friends or agent and joining credit unions.

With the market the way it is now, it shouldn’t be so hard to find a home mortgage to your advantage.

At some point in time, you tend to ask yourself, who is in charge of protecting me from possibly bad mortgage business practices?

The Federal Trade Commission is the main government body that regulates the business of mortgage brokering. The FTC is tasked to enforce the basic consumer protection statute (found in Section 5(a) of the FTC act) that states that “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce … are … declared unlawful.” So in this case, your rights as a consumer are protected by the FTC and in turn, they watch over the business of mortgages.

States are also regulators for mortgage brokers. They issue licenses to brokers to allow them to run their businesses in their locality. In this sense, a lot of people who work on loans that pertain to mortgages and call themselves mortgage brokers really are not legally allowed to do so.

Further information about the regulators of the mortgage industry can be found on these websites:

www.CSBS.org
www.AARMR.org
www.namb.org
www.nabmb.org

We can define a  mortgage as the transfer of ownership or interest in property to a lender serving to as collateral or security for a loan which is usually for money. The mortgage in itself is not a debt, it is actually the security for the debt promised by the lender. It’s a transfer of an interest in land (or the equivalent) from the ownership of someone to the lender of the mortgage with the promise that this interest will revert back to the original owner when the terms of the mortgage has been fulfilled.