Greg 's Blog

Many lenders are freezing access to Home Equity Lines of Credit (HELOCs) . Millions of Americans use their HELOCs as their families security blanket to weather any unplanned financial storms. If you were planning on using your HELOC for spring home improvements, medical bills or college tuition, ...

Effective June 1, 2008 the following provisions of IL Senate Bill SB 1167 become effective. Verification of Borrowers ability to pay when calculating Debt Ratios Adjustable rate loans (ARM's) payments must be calculated using the fully indexed rate calculated with the index rate + applicable marg...

Dr.Gregory Elliehausen of Georgetown UniversityCredit Research Center presented his report that mortgage brokers' customers have a lower APR, on average, than bank customers to attendees at the Legislative Conference held inWashington D.C April 11-13, 2005 and to a Federal Reserve Board Conferenc...

Did you know running your credit report can "trigger" unsolicited loan offers?   Credit bureaus make additional money selling loan inquiries to similar lenders. When you allow your trusted mortgage advisor to run a credit report to answer your loan questions it "triggers" the credit bureaus to se...

According to a recent Wall Street Journal news article April 2008 may mark the bottom of the housing market. Their analysis is based on reviewing variances from the standard debt service coverage ratio of 28% lenders use to qualify mortgage prospects. In the 1990's it took an average of 19% of ou...

First Mortgage loans above the conforming lending limit purchased by Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac are considered jumbo.  For the past several years that amount has remained $417,000.00.  During most of that time the rate premium for jumbo loans have been a slight increase over conforming loans. Becau...

After several prime rate reductions mortgage rates are rising - again! The federal funds & prime rate are not the benchmark for mortgage rates.  10 year treasury bonds are said best because mortgage loans are held for this period on average.  Most mortgages are bundled & sold as mortgage bonds/se...

The following is an excerpt from a recent email sent to a client.  Hoping others find this helpful...  It's very hard to say what the mortgage rate is going to do but here are some general observations.Inflation often leads to higher interest rates which generally lowers demand for stocks because...

After creating a market that allowed almost anyone to qualify for a loan the secondary market (mortgage investors) suddenly stopped buying loan types that didn't perform as predicted.    Investors also exercised their contractual right to force originators to buy back defaulting loans resulting i...

Looks like relief has arrived for many subprime ARM mortgage holders!  Here are some details and remember FHA remains a full doc loan program.  See my seperate blog on FHA lending guidelines. Greg Zaccagni @ http://www.mortgageadvisor.info September 5, 2007   SUBJECT:    The FHASecure Initiative ...