Greg 's Blog

The new "Making Home Affordable" loan modification plan aims to help seven to nine million homeowners get their hands on more sustainable mortgage loans. The "Home Affordable Refinance" program will be available to roughly four to five million homeowners with "solid payment history" on existing F...

Seller's Concessions/Buyers Assist is where the seller agrees to pay part or all of the buyers closing costs. The seller must agree to the seller assist and it must be stated in the sales contract. Most banks allow 3% seller concessions. Some lenders will limit the seller concession based on the ...

Mortgage rates remained relatively flat this week, according to the latest weekly survey from mortgage financier Freddie Mac. 30-year fixed averaged 5.10 percent for the week ending January 29, down from 5.12 percent last week and 5.68 percent a year ago. 15-year fixed averaged 4.80 percent, unch...

The chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders NAHB wants a government program launched to lower interest rates on home loans to 2.9 percent, along with an expanded homebuyer tax credit. Their proposed program would only be available to new homebuyers, and not those currently st...

Subprime lending volume was relatively modest in 1995 and 2000, but surged in 2005 and 2006, before easing in 2007 and completely dropping off this year.  It's forecasted that 2008 subprime originations will total just $10 billion, making up a mere 0.58 percent of the estimated $1.7 trillion in ...

Erroneous medical collections showing up on potential borrowers' credit reports are throwing another wrench in efforts to refinance homeowners into lower interest rate mortgage loans. "The tragedy is that the collection accounts, even those that have been paid in full, are lowering these individu...

A whopping 32.9 percent of mortgage applications taken during the month of October were government-insured loans, up from 10.3 percent in October 2007. The highest level recorded since the MBA's survey began in 1990 was a 43.8 percent share in February of that same year, while the lowest point wa...

I don't totally blame our US manufactures for their present situation.  Americans like their big cars & trucks and they were happy to accomodate.  If we were gurateed that gas prices would stay down to their present level of UNDER $2.00 per gallon american consumers would be buying big vehicles a...

Mortgage backed securities are formed by dividing the cash flows from a pool of mortgages into obligations with payment characteristics substantially different from the underlying mortgages. Mortgage derivatives are created by combining Collaterlized Mortgage Obligations (CMO) with different char...

They were the key reason for the demise of AIG and a large part of the reason for our current mortgage mess.  If you buy a bond from General Motors or mortgage bonds, you are lending them money for a set interest rate for a specified length of time. You face two risks. 1. They go bankrupt and don...