California Home Loan information

Historically, Sebastopol and most of the north bay home prices have been too high for FHA to make sense. Today, we have incredibly low rates combined with low home prices and the FHA loan limits is $662,500 in Sonoma County. The limit is as high as $729,750 in Marin and many other bay area counti...

Some of my fondest memories are when I get to wander down a country lane to a friends house and just hang out, listen to music, have nice conversations while eating and drinking and looking at some really great art. Today was even more fun because I got to do this over and over and we did not eve...

What are you looking down here for? The answer is in the title. Interest rates are UP! Just a few short weeks ago, we were locking loans at 4.75%, I even had a client buy down and lock in a rate of 4.375% for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. It has been a good year for refinances for many people. T...

One little recurring theme in my articles over the last 14 months has been that FHA loans have become increasingly more useful in this market. In the last round of stimulus rules, FHA went back to 2008 loan limits. That means that in Sonoma County, the conventional loan limit is $520,950 but you ...

Back in January in this very blog I posed the question – Refi or Modify? You can imagine my thrill when I saw in the latest round of stimulus packages that President Obama not only had read my article but came up with some answers and he was fairly quick about it. On March 4th 2009 the guidelines...

You do! If you are looking to buy a home today or you are a real estate agent working with buyers OR sellers, you need these acronym loans. Ok, Ok, I need them but what the heck are you talking about? FHA, VA, FNMA, FHLMC, USDA, PERS, STRS, CalHFA, CHDAP, DPA etc. are the acronym loans I am talki...

I have a business coach who told me about facebook and that I should get on there and do some social networking and I did not listen to him.... I have a friend who got on facebook and loved it and wanted me to get in there too and so I did. I started cruising around, finding old friends and shari...

Ok, things are good, you have some money in the bank and a stable job and you want to go buy a house and take advantage of this great real estate market. The trouble is that you won't make much money on your current house because of the very same market. Hey! I have an idea. You can rent out your...

Towards the end of last year, Fannie Mae announced that they would not make a loan on investment property to anyone who had 4 or more mortgages. This was quite a blow to many people who are investors in real estate. The new rule did not care hoe many mortgages the borrower had when lending on the...

I was kind of stuck on what to write for this month’s article and so I started to look back at what I had written over the years and I saw headlines like these: Is now a good time to buy a house? – January 2008 Risky Income Documentation? – August 2007 We have hit rock bottom and we are clawing o...