Part 8 – Ok, so that is good to know, I know there are people who want to try and do that and I really don’t know. I am really a full time mortgage professional, I didn’t get into the loan modification business on purpose, we write mortgage loans, real estate loans for residential and commercial, so therefore I don’t know your laws on the same token you don’t do loan modifications and you don’t write loans, you’re professional realtor.
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Part 7 – We’re in the studio today with Kalyn Roberts and Jeri League of the Dreamvesting Group, these two young ladies are experts in the short sale area, they are NOT going to tell you what you want to hear, they are going to tell you what you need to hear. There is a big difference between what you want and what you need in the case of getting out of a situation. We talked during the break about the different types of people; who qualifies, who doesn’t qualify, who this is good for, and who its not good for. I want you to talk about people who are upside down and how you’re here to help.
What we want to get across today if you just need to call someone if you’re upside down in your mortgage, if you have a listing next door and its a bank owned or short sale, there is a good chance you’re probably upside down in you mortgage if you bought anytime in the last, in the last 5 years were almost back to 2003 pricing now.
Just to jump in real quick, Jeri and Kalyn its not just the people who purchased, its the people who used their homes as ATMs which is a crude way for me to say it but lets be honest. You watch the television, and I am not going to name any names, but a company that rhymes with lietech though, they have a commercial where they are showing pictures of using your home to buy a big boat and everybody got sucked into that and now here were.
Yes, if you used your second mortgage to build that big beautiful pool in your backyard, maybe you need to call us. Yes, its unfortunate, we always tell everyone like you just said, everybody got sucked into it, it doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it doesn’t mean you necessarily made a really bad decision. Most people got caught up in the real estate market and good marketing ploys like that, and the bottom line is as we said earlier you don’t have to be late on your mortgage payment, you don’t have to be facing a foreclosure, if you’re simply upside down because you refinanced your home or purchased too recently and the house next door is selling for $100,000 less than yours and you just need to get out of a bad financial situation, you’re a candidate for a short sale or even a loan modification.
One of the things about loan modifications that I hear all the time is, and I research other loan modification companies, and what I hear is they are telling people things that just aren’t real. For instance if your owe $400,000 and your house is worth $300,000 and you want your lender to forgive $100,000 on a loan modification, chances are that isn’t going to happen, whereas with a short sale, when you’re exiting the property because it just isn’t going to work, they would in most cases consider doing that.
Absolutely if that is the market value of your home they are going to consider the bottom line, the banks don’t want these properties back, it costs them so much money to go through a foreclosure process and as our prices are falling, monthly, weekly, daily, the likelihood of the value of the property being extremely lower by the time they get the property back is 100%.
In addition to the $60,000 in foreclosure cost, paying real estate commissions and a few other fees is significantly better, because the loss is going to be significantly less with a short sale. Here’s a question and I hope that I am not putting either of you on the spot, but suppose the guy owes $400,000 on his house, lets just say its worth $300,000 and you get the listing and this guy is out at a cocktail party and his cousin shows up and says, Ill buy the house from you. Ill buy the house from you, we will make the bank pay the difference and Ill just let you stay in the house. Is that a realistic situation, is someone going to find out about it? Is it good to do that or not?
In real estate, real estate purchases and transactions have to be non-arms length. Now arms length is described as your parents and your children, other than that we pretty much stay out of it because theoretically, yes that could happen, however the banks want to see that the homeowner is not benefiting, so the homeowner would have to become a tenant and be paying rent to new owner at that point. So there are many legitimate situations where you could meet someone who would buy the home and allow you to stay in the home…RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com
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Part 6 – Allright so getting back to the person that is looking to do a short sale how do they start?
Well obviously, call us. The most important thing as we have been saying throughout the program, call somebody as soon as possible take it upon yourself to get the education. Education is your most important asset in hard economic times. So take it upon yourself if you have a lender or you have a realtor that you prefer to work with ask them about it, but make sure that you get their qualifications in dealing with this situation. Not every realtor chooses to deal with short sales.
In fact our team actually negotiates on behalf of other real estate teams for their clients, we allow them to keep the listings but we do all the negotiations, because most realtors dont want to do it, its a not an easy process and its not something where you want to be a guinea pig for your mother in law to be doing. If you have someone who is not experienced, talk to them about working with us. We would be more than happy to do that as well. Were not opposed to that as well.
That’s great because since the Velocity of Money show has been on the air, Velocity Financial works with several different realtors, we have had the opportunity to have a couple of great short sale experts on in the past and of course Jeri, you and I have spoken about Cheryl Willis, for example is a great realtor and a great example of an expert.
I like the team concept and the fact that you do the negotiations as well, between the two of you, you have 20 years of real estate experience and not being afraid to pick up the phone and negotiate on behalf of the homeowner is huge. I am really glad you have taken the time to learn that and take that extra step because lets face that is a job. That Is not really easy.
We have personal experience with these types of situations, friends and family members that are going through this and we understand them. I have been doing short sales for several years, before most people wanted to do them, and I didn’t want it to become my whole entire business because its so difficult, but after having gone through the experience with so many people it has really become my mission to help people in this situation, because its so hard and a couple things that I pride our team on is; #1 were not trying to get you out of your house, were not just looking for another listing at all.
When we do an analysis of somebody’s situation almost every single time we talk to them about doing a loan modification, as you know because if we can keep them in their house that is the best for everybody involved. Short sale is the second option and you want to make sure that you have someone that is experienced to negotiate on your behalf and that they really have your best interest at heart.
And now is the time, when all of us in the real estate, mortgage industry is to look out for the home owner, like we said earlier today and heck we have said on the show many times, and Jeri and I have talked about this several times. The more people we put into loan modification space, short sale space to get through this nightmare, the better off everyone is going to be. One thing that is interesting to point out real quick is if you do a short sale instead of a foreclosure you qualify to by a house inside of two years in most cases… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 5 – If you’re in trouble and you think you want or need to do a loan modification, we work with a national network of attorneys that are here to help your situation, and this show were talking about short sales because a loan modification is not for everyone. A short sale is a great alternative to a loan modification, the reality is if you can do a refinance that is more than likely the best case scenario, if you cant a loan modification is a great tool, the reality the retainer for the law firm is less than a refinance, but if those aren’t the options for you, you need to call Jeri and Kalyn here and they are the short sale experts.
Kalyn in the last segment we talked about where people should start the process and the reality of it is you’re saying they should start now, right? They should start it now we don’t care at this point whether you have a foreclosure date already or if you don’t or if you know you need more information about this you need to call us today. Were happy to come over and give you a free consultation, no obligation we will just sit down with you and review your full situation and we will be frank with you and we will be honest and we will help you make the right choice for your financial future. Relieving you of pain or debt or whatever you have going on were the experts and we want you to call us.
Nobody wants to hear false truths or false promises its so easy for people who right now are facing foreclosure, for any number of reasons, its easy for them to bite onto anything that sounds like what they want to hear. The reality of it is they need to hear the truth as harsh as it is and you’re going to tell them the truth, and that is your job, you’re not going to tell them anything that they don’t want to hear. Nobody wins in that case.
If we don’t know that we can close it we will not even take it, we will be honest with you. That is so important, again talking to, because every single day I do talk to people who call in from the show and we talk about this, the reality of it is it is not going to do anybody any good if it doesn’t work out, or we don’t know if its going to work out, or we don’t have a really good idea that its going to work out on their behalf, and in the case of a short sale as well as a loan modification this has to be a win-win.
The homeowner that is in this situation they need out and a short sale may be the right option. The lender sure as heck does not want the house back even if they are required to take a loss its a significantly better option for the lender then a foreclosure. Going back to a few minutes ago when you said you’re making these calls to India and everything else, I had the opportunity last week to teach a contract writing course at Paradise Valley College, Lynn Phelps the Phd there at Paradise Valley Community College allowed me to teach this finance class and there were several people who were getting their real estate license. Most of the people in the class were thinking that real estate was an 8-5 job.
No, Not even close. I thought it was going to be glamorous. I love it, I do love it but its more of a life choice. Its a lifestyle, I remember when Kalyn was first coming on my team and that is one of the things that is most important to me is that the agents on my team understand real estate is not a career as much as its a life. It really is, you work when other people don’t work and you work when they work.
That makes perfect sense and its not the 9-5 job that it might have been in the middle of 2006, and maybe your job isn’t very fun in the beginning of September in the middle of the day on Sunday, probably a little hot and sticky out there but now Kalyn you have been in real estate now for about 9 years.
You’re the team leader for the Dream Vesting group and a certified negotiator is that correct. Yes. And you Jeri as well have been in real estate for 9 years. Yes, almost nine years. I am an associate broker so I am excited about that, I took the class almost two years ago and finally decided to take the test and take the plunge.
Well good and that is a great accomplishment and you also have extensive experience in property management is that correct? Not property management, property sales management. I actually ran three different condo projects back in 2006 when it was fun to be a real estate agent. I helped actually with the acquisition of the properties, the development and then the sales, and then ran the sales teams and I ran three real estate offices as well. Very nice so the condo conversions are what you’re talking about back in 2006 in the day right? Yes… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 4 – The lenders, its the loss mitigation departments that you’re dealing directly, with the two of you doing the negotiations on behalf of the homeowner. Good, and then do you contact the lender immediately when someone calls you, and were going to talk about when they should call you in just a few minutes, but when the homeowner calls you do you immediately contact the lender and find out when the foreclosure date is and try to get that pushed back?
We do that as soon as possible, we can check the foreclosure date on tax records, if there is one that has been set, but there is some paperwork that is involved before we can contact the lender, because the lender will not just speak to anyone on behalf of the homeowner. You can get a lawyer and they will not talk to your lawyer unless they have authorization in writing from you the homeowner to speak about their financial situation and their mortgage on their behalf. So we do have some paperwork that we have clients do and the first thing is the authorization letter, as soon as we have that we can begin speaking to them on your behalf.
So Kalyn the next question is, when should someone start the process? Now. Honestly if you’re listening to us right now and this is striking any sort of nerve you should be calling us. If you have concerns about being able to afford your home, or you cant sell it, if you’re in a situation like going through a divorce, going through relocation like Jeri mentioned, all of these situations are possible short sales and you definitely should be on the phone now because too many times we see where people are in denial of whatever the situation may be and finally they are two weeks before foreclosure date and they are calling us.
We don’t have enough time with just two weeks. There is too much involved for us to get the foreclosure extended, get an offer, get all the things that are included when you only give us to weeks, and then where are you, a lot of the time they don’t even have a place lined up, and if you have a foreclosure on your record its a lot harder to get a rental.
Yes the foreclosure has significant impact on your credit report where as a short sale could be potentially much better. Maybe the foreclosure process will be started during the short sale process but not having it completed is better than having an actual foreclosure on your record.
Absolutely, the foreclosure proceedings started will not even show on a credit check if a landlord or a management company is pulling your credit to approve you for a rental, but its the worst thing in the world if you have gone through a foreclosure and you’re just now calling us. I have some clients who need to be in a house this weekend and they have a foreclosure. They contacted me after the foreclosure had gone through and you would think that people would understand with the number of foreclosures going on that would not be as harsh on your credit but its. Were having a really difficult time finding landlords that will accept people who have foreclosures on their credit.
Me as a landlord, my wife and I have several rentals and I were to look at a credit report and see that a foreclosure proceeding had been started but the homeowner and potential renter says, we started it but we were able to sell the house short so we didn’t have to go ahead with the foreclosure. That absolutely would be someone that I would consider over someone that had a foreclosure because it shows that they care, they certainly tried their very best, so I would think that is a great situation to be in. So two weeks left before your sale date is too late, its not going to work out.
Well I have recently done one in ten days. So it can be done, I had a one ten days before the foreclosure date and I had the bank put out the foreclosure date about a month and a half and we will close a short sale on that. 90% of the time though we wont be able to help you with that little of time.
Well the hardest part about the process is the beginning process, getting the lender to even acknowledge that they have received the authorization letter or the information packet that we have sent, the financials and the offer. You have to understand that lenders have thousands of foreclosures going on and they may have 20 bulk fax machines in their offices and as the paperwork comes through if its not that persons paperwork it may get tossed. That process alone can take 30 days before they even tell us they got what they need… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 3 – One of the things I mentioned at the beginning of the last segment is this special allotment of funds that we received from one of our mortgage banks that we currently have available, a 30 year fixed, no prepayment penalty this is the real deal just what you’re looking for a 4.875% interest rate with an APR of 4.95% and that is available we do have people at the office right now if you have questions in regard to that they can answer them for you. You would call 480-Velocity
Michael, I have some clients who are buyers that would love that rate. Is that available to buyers as well? Actually, yes its that rate is for a no cash out refinance, no higher than 80% LTV, they have to have perfect credit to hit this number but even in some cases, well with this particular loan there are some closing costs, but one of the things we have available too is a no cost option and that interest rate is for people who are doing the purchase or refinancing and that rate is only 5.5%. The interest rate is 5.5% and the APR is 5.5% so that is for purchase money as well.
Were back talking here with Jeri League and Kalyn Roberts, were talking about the objections to doing short sales, there is another one you wanted to point out Jeri?
Yes, one more objection that people often have when we talk to them about their particular situation is that people feel that they have to be behind on their mortgage payment in order for a bank to consider a short sale and that is not true, the bank analysis everyone’s entire situation, we have people write a hardship letter, they want to see your financials and there is an entire situation not just being behind on your mortgage payment.
Your hardship may be that you’re being relocated by your employer and you simply cant sell your home for what you owe on it due to today’s market conditions. The banks will definitely look at that.
People think that the key is that you have to be late but that is not the case. That is really good to know, so we talked about the objections or the pitfalls rather what about the advantages to doing a short sale?
The biggest advantages to doing a short sale are: that its less impactful on your credit typically than a foreclosure and one of the most exciting benefits is that we can often extend the foreclosure and keep you in your house longer. In Arizona banks have a right to start a foreclosure as soon as you’re over 30 days late on one mortgage payment. In today’s current economic situation most banks are not starting that process for three to six months, but again that is most banks. They can start after one month.
Yes, but once they start the foreclosure process its a 90 day process in Arizona. So you will get a notice that says basically you have 90 days to come current with the note or to move and they are taking your house and selling it in 90 days. Now once we start the short sale process many times we can extend that foreclosure date.
I have personally done one that we had the home owner in for almost a year from when they stopped making their mortgage payments. Its not uncommon to be two or three months past the original foreclosure date that they gave you which of course gives people a lot longer time to decide what they are going to do, especially if its a family, they are not in such a rush to move, they can keep their kids in the same school district, there are so many reasons that that is a good advantage.
So Kalyn the truth is that homes that are occupied generally are better off and easier to sell than vacant homes right? So long as people are in the house and taking care of the house, if the house looks lived in but not trashed. What you’re saying is lenders would just as soon leave them in the house then to have it vacant and potentially vandalized.
Definitely, the lenders prefer to have somebody living in there because they are taking care of the home, like you just said when the homes are vacant there is a high risk of them being vandalized, unfortunately and the worse the economic situation in the country gets the higher the vandalism rate on homes goes. In fact we were talking with a realtor in our office who typically takes listings in some of the lower income areas in town and they are going to stop putting signs on vacant listing because they are getting vandalized so much… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 2 – Were just going to go ahead if we could and just jump right into the short sale information. Jeri, again thank you so much for taking the time to be with us. What is the name of your firm?
Our group is Dream Vesting Group and our brokerage is Keller Williams Arizona Realty.
So that is great, licensed agents with Keller Williams and I know the two of you and I know of your history and we will talk a little bit more about that, but you have been working together for awhile. You and I had a chance to speak about the short sales and your success rate, very, very impressive proven results always helps. So the natural first question for those that are listening today. What is a short sale exactly?
A short sale is a property sale where the bank or lender agrees to accept less than what is owed to them. So the bank is agreeing to take a loss on the sale of your property, and I like what you said earlier about not trusting a loan modification or a short sale to just anybody, you definitely dont want to be the guinea pig and you don’t want to approach the bank yourself and ask them to please take a loss because you need to sell your home.
And that is one of the things that is funny nowadays. I know people have seen them pop up all over the town, the ugly yellow bill boards all over the place. Advertising on the radio about loan modifications and they have 100% success rate, all kinds of these different things. The same thing with short sales, you actually have a process and you have a lot of experience doing it, you know the ins and the outs and this isn’t a part time job this is a full time job.
Absolutely is a full time more than full time job, the last three Sundays I have been on the phones with lenders when they are open, one of them has a call center in India. I have been on the phone from 10 oclock at night until Midnight and again at 6am with the same lender trying to stop foreclosure.
Well that is good that you have the time, Take the time to do that. I am sorry that you have to work that many hours but you know Kalyn, is it not true that the sooner we get through all of these short sales and loan modifications the better off were all going to be anyway right?
Absolutely, a lot of people ask, what does it take? Who should be considering a short sale? If youre late on your mortgage currently, if your mortgage has adjusted, if you can no longer afford your monthly payment, if you foresee yourself not being able to afford your monthly payments, any of these instances plus several more, you should definitely be sitting down with someone and talking about your options which would be most likely a short sale or loan modification.
Yes the last thing anyone wants, and I mean anyone, is a foreclosure, that is the last resort. Nobody wants a foreclosure; you don’t want it on your record, you don’t want to have to deal with that. Its a very public event, a foreclosure is, the banks don’t want you to foreclose and that is probably why they are so willing to work with you would you say? Absolutely the banks don’t want the home back no matter what they tell you.
Exactly and on the loan modification side people try on their own to do this and its true that people can actually do a loan modification on their own but there are so many pitfalls and its just not something you want to try on your own. Surely you don’t want to try a short sale on your own. So Jeri let me ask you this, what are some of the main objections?
The main objection that we hear from most of our clients is the cost to them, they already cant afford the payment on their mortgage or they wouldn’t be in that particular situation 9 times out of 10 and so they are concerned about cost. Most people have already resigned themselves to the fact that they are losing their home and they don’t want to spend any more money on it.
The good news is in a short sale you don’t have to spend anymore money, all of the costs are absorbed by the bank. They agree to lose more money basically, so there is no realtor fees and the majority of the time we can negotiate an as is contract so if there are repairs that need to be made they don’t come to you and ask you to do it, its just factored into the cost. So its very effective for homeowners.
And again it keeps them from going into foreclosure. They get to stay in the house and they get to save whatever is left of their dignity, some people take it very pride fully as well. So Kalyn, the second most common objection is?… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 1 – Kalyn Roberts and Jeri league, welcome to the program. Jeri and Kalyn are short sale experts and have graciously decided to come to the program to discuss some of the short sale important things that people do need to know, and were going to get to all of this short sale information, but a couple of things important to mortgage interest rates. Today is a fantastic day in the mortgage rate world. Leslie and Staci at Velocity Financial were kind enough to put together a scenario for us so listen to this folks.
This is not the teaser, this is not the loss leader, this is the real deal as of today, a $417,000 loan amount, the interest rate is 4.875%, that’s 4.875% that is below 5% obviously, the APR is 4.948% and that is for a no cash out loan, and that is a special rate and we have a certain allotment of loans that were allowed to do at that special rate. If you’re interested in talking to a member of my staff or myself or anyone else about that program you would call. There are people there standing by to take your phone call.
Were a local licensed firm and one of the only 15% of the mortgage companies in the state of Arizona that is licensed to do FHA loans as well. Any mortgage related needs that you have were here to help but for the next hour were going to be talking about Short Sales.
Now over the last several months we have been talking about loan modifications on the show a lot, Velocity Financial was one of the first companies to work with a national network of attorneys, a 16 year old firm that were working with. They have done thousands of these loan modifications, and the loan modification industry in Arizona is for the most part unregulated, but you want to make sure you’re working with a licensed firm, and you want to make sure you’re utilizing an attorney.
You don’t want to be giving money to anybody that says they can get you a loan modification, the only money you give is to an attorney, don’t be giving money to people who come by and say they can help you out. You’re going to have to be very careful on how you handle that, but interestingly enough the loan modification is for the mortgage side, essentially the loan modification is to the loan officer what a short sale would be to a realtor.
Now the short sale part of real estate is not something you want to trust to somebody starting out doing short sales, unless they are being supervised by a pro, you don’t want to mess around with it. This is not a time to be trying it out, this is not a time for people to be using you as their guinea pig, not a good idea at all.
That is why we brought Jeri and Kalyn in and were going to talk about some of the specifics. You definitely want to make sure that if you need to do a loan modification, if you’re facing foreclosure or you want to do a short sale, whatever scenario is the better decision for you and your family, you have got to work with a professional, Jeri and Kalyn have extensive experience, they have an unbelievably great success rate.
It doesn’t have to take six months to get this done they can execute this thing for you and they are the pros so were going to go through some questions over the next hour, there is just one more thing I want to talk about and that is if a loan modification is something you think you need call the office and we have put together a video for you that you can watch, its very short, it explains the process and we will then get together with you and answer any questions that you have… RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com
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Part 8 – I have a question on that, it is my understanding and I could be wrong, but they don’t need a copy of the note, they need the original note.
You are correct. Your attorney of course will get a copy, because they are not going to send them the original.
Items that your attorney is going to ask for, and I forget the number, I think its 47 different items that the attorney could ask for. Here’s one. I’ve been in the industry for 20 years and I just heard this term a couple months ago, it’s known as an alonge. What the heck is an alonge? Well apparently it’s one of the documents that has to be in the file.
While essentially the whole purpose of this is to catch the bank, the lender having messed up your loan somewhere along the way. Because if it is true that they violated some kind of Federal Law in the past when they gave you the loan or are in violation of the loan now, you can then take them to court. And you can sue them. You can have your loan rescinded. Which basically means it comes off your credit report. This loan never happened. As good as that sounds that may not be the best thing for the home owner.
I want to back up just a little tiny bit, you mentioned the alonge, there’s more to the alonge then it sounds like. The bank needs to have the original alonge, more importantly, the person who signed the alonge has to have been authorized by the licensed entity to sign that alonge. And I know for a fact that several people in this town, in this industry, were signing alonges because they needed it signed before the loans could fund. And they were not qualified to sign.
So let’s go back to this discovery process, when we find the lender has to rescind. And I will admit after being in the real estate and mortgage industry for over 20 years, I would have to say that almost 100% of the loans that are originated, if you look at them hard enough you could find something wrong with them. Something wrong, where there could be a reason for you to rescind this loan.
So let’s say you go to that point and push it and get the bank to rescind your loan. Here’s the problem. The loan is gone, it is no longer on your credit report, but let’s say you have a $200,000 loan you took out two years ago, in that time, you would’ve paid about $35,000 in interest. You get a credit for the 35,000, and let’s say you had attorney fees to fight the bank, let’s say $10,000, I don’t think it would be that high but we are just throwing out numbers here. And $5000 in closing costs when you bought the house, so that total is $50,000. You get a credit for $50,000 off of the $200,000 loan, which means you still owe $150,000 on the house. You have to pay the difference.
You have to pay back to the bank $150,000. So its nice that we filed suit and won but frankly in this market where are you going to get the $150,000 from? I think it would be very difficult to find a bank or lender right now that will lend you $150,000 for your house. Chances are you may be several months behind on your payment and although the lender cant show your payment history because the loan was rescinded more than likely the new bank is going to say they need a mortgage payment history. And you say you have been in the house for two years, but the loan got rescinded and they say you need payment history, you cant produce it.
In this marketplace today you are not going to get that loan done. And so the attorneys know that and that’s why once they get the lenders attention they say to the lender, we don’t want to rescinded the loan, we don’t want to incur a ton of attorney fees but we will if we need to, if you don’t want to play ball with us. What we want to do is to work together to get the best possible loan modification for our clients. So we can keep them in their home, keep their family intact.
The reality of a it is, here what we are doing we are working with a national network of attorneys that care about you and you first.
You can go to http://mortgageanswerman.com where there’s going to be information about everything including, one thing I’ll add really quickly. I have something there that is known as a Decision Matrix. The Decision Matrix will walk you through step by step by step, every single step of the process regarding what you should do with your property, should you do a short sale, should you do loan modification, should you just let the bank foreclose? Is bankruptcy an okay idea for you, or not? What are the tax consequences?… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 7 – We have Dan Havey with us talking about loan modifications. This segment we want to talk about the specifics of the actual mechanics of, how does it actually work for the homeowner? Let me just start it off and if you would then explain the back end of how it works. Our job is to determine where you’re at now, be very specific about where you’re at with your mortgage now, what the rate is, what it’s done, those specifics. How much you make? We have to help the lender with one thing which is to establish a hardship which is crucial to this. You can’t be making half $1 million a year paying $5000 a month in a mortgage, they are not just going to lower your interest rate because you want it. There actually has to be some sort of change, financial change, hardship.
We determined that and then there is a significant amount of paperwork involved, Velocity Financial takes care of that for you. We fill out the paperwork along with your help, review all of the documentation, we then recommend be right loan modification, whether it be an interest rate reduction, or extending the term of your loan, waiving some of the balance that you owe which is very very rare. To make sure that once we’re done with this whole process you can sustain and live in that house and be happy forever.
So the process itself really is not that much different than what people went through when they got their loan in the first place. That is correct and it’s kind of funny, this has to be exactly the reverse. There is paperwork that we need to collect on your mortgages, we check the value of the property to see where you’re at and in most cases you’re underwater with the value. We don’t do an appraisal though, there is no credit analysis, we do review your finances, and these sorts of things but essentially it’s just like doing a loan. What we’re trying to determine is exactly what is sustainable for you.
So what we do at the modification hotline at Velocity Financial is to put together the entire package, just like we do for a loan package because we basically send this to a underwriter, they’re not known as an underwriter they’re known as a loan modification coordinator but at modification hotline we are the first set of eyes. We work with you directly, getting all the paperwork in, getting it put together because we know exactly what has to be in that file, how it has to be stacked, how it has to be presented, before it goes to the loan modification coordinator who works for the attorney.
Then once it is at the attorneys office with their modification coordinator, they take a look at it, they make sure that everything is in there, they make sure that it is a doable modification. This all happens before it is ever presented to an attorney.
There are a whole lot of steps and there is a lot of paperwork. The process like you said is very similar to a loan with the exception that there are no costs of the title company and all that other stuff. Those don’t exist, we don’t charge an upfront fee, and we do collect a retainer for the attorney. At some point during our process we make our recommendations and we turn it in. Then the attorney does their due diligence and that’s where I really want you to explain what happens, what are these attorneys looking for?
Well this is where it completely goes off track, versus what a homeowner would do if they were doing their own modification, because they would do everything we just talked about, they would fill out the paperwork, get together tax returns, pay stubs, whatever the lender wanted and they would present all of it to the lender. Now they probably wouldn’t know exactly how to stack some of the paperwork, and how to calculate some of the things that we know how to calculate, but they would put all that they work together.
Where the difference comes in is once it gets to the attorney because the attorney ultimately wants to get you a loan modification but they can’t just call up the bank and say hey I want loan modification, because he is going to get the same result you did. So what he has to do is he has to go through the file, and he has to look for things like, I am going to use a bunch of acronyms here, he’s looking for things like TILA, RESPA, HOEPA, HUD violations, all these different guidelines that the lender was required to meet while giving you the loan… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 6 – The next one is that your loan to value on your house has to be at least 90% of the property value. So in other words everyone under 90% gets foreclosed on? Right, if you only owe 80% of what your home is worth, they can foreclose on you, take your house and they don’t lose as much money.
Back when I was working with Fannie Mae selling repos almost 20 years ago now, they always gave us the figure that they lost 20% of the homes value every time they had to foreclose. So they have plenty of room to sell your house if you only owe 80% on it. So if you owe, lets just throw out some numbers here, lets say your house is worth $100,000 and you owe $80,000 on it, well they are going to lose a little bit but they are going to make it back when they sell your house for $100,000.
Yes, they would just as soon kick you out and keep their money. Yes, exactly I am not necessarily going to say that Fannie Mae is going to kick you out of your house, however the reason why they have this guideline is very simple, they are not going to lose money on you if they have to foreclose on you when you are under 90%. They certainly are not going to lose very much money.
If you have subordinate loans it may be left outstanding and will not be considered in the LTV, so lets just give an example here, your house is worth $300,000 and you have a $300,000 1st mortgage and you happen to have a $50,000 second mortgage. They will re-modify your 1st mortgage but leave the 2nd mortgage in place. So people get to stay underwater, or upside down.
Well certainly you would be in that case and it just does not sit right. The best thing I certainly would like to see them do if nothing else in a situation like that is combine it all into one loan at a much lower interest rate. Because you know that 2nd mortgage is probably going to have a high interest rate. So it would just be so much better.
We need verification of income that makes sense. Here is one I don’t get, 38% as far as your debt to income ratio. That seems kind of high to me. What do you think Michael?
Well I think that people who have gotten themselves into trouble and they need to do something like a loan modification then 38% is probably on the high side. People need relief, but they need relief that is going to last a long time. Even though this is essentially a trial-period loan modification this particular guideline of 38% really does not set well with me, I personally think it needs to be lower. People need a break; people need to be able to stay in their house.
Well what I was looking at is your average family; I always think probably pays about 30% of their gross income towards taxes, payroll, and things like that, so right off the bat Uncle Sammy takes 30%. Well now that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are owned by the government Uncle Sammy is going to get another 38% out of your paycheck which is a total of 68%, that doesn’t leave a whole lot of money does it? Especially if you have a car payment, or you have kids to feed, maybe who go to daycare while you go off to work, assuming you still have a job. The unemployment rate is pretty high.
Well in order to qualify for this you do have to have income so you do have to have a job. So moving on to the next one because we are getting a little short on time, what they are going to do is take all of your back interest, escrow advances, costs, fees, everything they are going to add it to the loan amount and have you pay it back over as much as 50 years, if they need to stretch it out that long. They’re going to give you a 50 year mortgage? I looked at that and thought, why don’t you make it interest only because you are never going to pay the thing off anyway.
Lowest acceptable rate that they’ll have is 3%. The real kicker, if they get you a rate of 3% it will be an adjustable rate because it’s below today’s market rate. Your rate will actually increase starting five years from now at 1% per year until it gets up to the market rate. So not only are they getting a 50 year loan that you will never pay off, they’re giving you an adjustable-rate loan on top of it. If they give you 3% today it will begin to adjust up in the five years until it reaches today’s market rate. I think today’s market rate is about 6%, so you may get 3% for a couple years but eventually they go back up to 6%… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 5 – We do realize that there are situations that people are in that they want to be out of and we want to move past. We have back in the studio, the author of Real Estates Future also the author of The Foreclosure Sharks white paper, a fantastic manual that he has put together that you can get for free. Dan Havey thank you very much for coming back. You can get a copy of the white paper The Foreclosure Sharks at http://mortgageanswerman.com.
So Dan I know that you have brought the just recently released new Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac guidelines, with their streamlined modification process. This is the kind of thing where the consumer can go and do-it themselves, right?
Yes, except that we would certainly advise against that. These are the guidelines that Fannie Mae came out with; they are effective as of a couple weeks ago now. But with Christmas and the holidays I don’t think a whole lot of people have figured out what this is all about yet. So as we said in the last segment the guidelines that they have come out with here, and what I have is a print out but I don’t know that this is the whole thing because I have heard some commentary on this that actually says that it is much worse then I am about to relay to everyone on the air.
I am just going to pick out a couple points about this and then I will let Michael laugh about them because some of these things are just crazy in the fact that it doesn’t really help the home owner and I also don’t think it is going to move us past the conditions we have to get people some really good loan modifications, the kind of loan modifications that we are talking about where you actually employ an attorney to help you with your loan modification.
The reality of it is we need to get through this mess we don’t need to stave it off, push it out further and in my opinion that is what this does. That is exactly what is going on here, there was an article I was reading by Fitch, which is one of the major bond rating firms and that is exactly what they said. They said that the alt-A arms are all coming back to roost now, I think the default rate was over 14% on all alt-A arms, being at least 90 days past due. And the comment in the article was something like, well we haven’t really seen a lot of losses from it yet and then it said in a caveat at the end, and we think its because they are not really foreclosing on any of these guys yet, so that is why they haven’t seen any losses. Well if you keep pushing it off into the future eventually you are going to have to see some of these losses.
We have the same thing here with Fannie Mae, which I think it is just another band-aid; it is not going to really solve the problem. First what they have here, and this one is pretty benign, that once they give you the new mortgage payment you have a three month trial period. If you make the payments during that trial period they let you keep the modification. So that one is not so bad.
The next one says that the qualified borrower cant be in litigation, bankruptcy, or have an existing work out plan, and you have to be at least 3 months behind or in foreclosure in order to be eligible for this streamline.
Ok I get to comment right? SO basically what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just told everyone, according to this that I am reading right here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just told you to be 90 days late on your mortgage. That is exactly right, they said that the only way they were going to be able to help you was to be 90 days late on your mortgage.
So I have been, over the past several months, heck Dan you helped us put together the package, you are the cofounder of the modification hotline and I am on the radio every week when we do a little blip about load mods from time to time, saying don’t trust anybody who tells you to be late on your mortgage. First of all no loan professional, no mortgage professional, no loan modification specialist will tell you to be late on your mortgage, however, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just said you need to be at least 90 days late on your mortgage if you want them to help you… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 4 – This whole loan modification thing reminds me a lot of the old Peanuts comics where every fall Lucy would get out with the football and she would set it down on the ground, and she would coerce Charlie Brown into coming along and kicking the football. Well of course as we all know Charlie never got to kick the ball, Lucy always pulled it out from underneath him and I kind of look at the mortgage industry, the servicing end of it in particular that way.
You have to think about it, in many cases the loan that you were put into was not a good loan in the first place. The person who gave you that loan knew it was not a good loan, the Wall Street banks that came up with these crazy ideas should have known better. Now admittedly they didnt otherwise they would not be out of business today, but they should have known that these were not good products.
Yet when you are faced with an issue regarding your house so many people go back to the bank, like Charlie Brown going back to Lucy and believing that THIS time Lucy is not going to pull the ball away. Well what is going to keep the bank from not pulling the ball away from you this time? Absolutely nothing.
I love that analogy; everyone remembers the Charlie Brown show and the comic books like you said. Another thing I want to point out too, going back just a little bit, you mentioned the lenders who put these home owners into these loans knew that they were not good loans. My thoughts after some of the mods that Ive seen, that you and I have seen doing the forensic audits, the home owner could have qualified for an FHA loan in those times, but it was so much easier for banks to put them into these sub prime loans because the documentation was easier, and it was just easier.
It is not just that they are easier; I know that your firm, Velocity Financial is FHA approved but what percentage of lenders today when, we probably have maybe 30% as many lenders as we had two years ago, what percentage today is FHA approved?
In the state of Arizona, of all the lending institution, less than 15% of all mortgage firm, banks, credit unions, less than 15% are licensed by the federal Housing Administration. Velocity Financial is proud to be one of those firms.
What I saw back in the peak of the market is of course everybody thought that real estate was going to go up for ever. Every body wanted to jump on board and buy 3,4,5,6 properties and I always tell the story that I knew we were in trouble, I knew we were hitting the top of the market long before I developed any of the models for Real Estates Future when I walked into our bank one day and I saw that they had a loan that was 100% financing for someone to buy an investment property and they didnt have to prove their income and they only needed a 620 FICO score.
Which considering everything now, I mean, to get a Fannie Mae loan today what kind of a FICO score do you need? If you’re an investor? If you’re an investor you need 720 and probably 20% down, at least 20% down and certainly it is not stated income anymore. No that doesn’t exist, and significant cash reserves, the whole nine yards.
So these banks knew the kind of garbage that they were giving to people and yet we are supposed to trust them to get us good loan modifications. I think that in one of the later segments we are going to talk about the newest guidelines that just came out from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regarding their new fancy-schmancy loan mod program and to be honest with you I don’t think it really does much for people at all. We will talk about that in the next segment and to the people who are in the mortgage or real estate industry or who have been in the real estate or mortgage industry it is going to sound a little bit like a comic bit because this might as well be bath tissue, I don’t even know why they came out with it.
We are going to talk about that along with a few other things, so real quick I know we haven’t had too much of a chance to talk about The Foreclosure Sharks, Dan but we will touch on that a little bit later. How do people get a copy of this white paper, The Foreclosure Sharks these are things that people need to be looking out for?
Yes, for The Foreclosure Sharks you can go to my website, http://mortgageanswerman.com. There will be a link there you just click on it and pick yourself up a copy and it will help if you are in a foreclosure situation if people come knocking on your door it will help you to at least know what to look out for. So mortgageanswerman.com for The Foreclosure Sharks… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 3 – In studio with us today on this fine New years eve is Dan Havey, the co founder of the modification hotline as well as the author of The Foreclosure Sharks a great white paper he put together. He is also the author of Real Estates Future and this segment we are talking about loan modifications and some specific information.
You also have a great story to tell about this to. Well unfortunately I have too many stories about people who have had to go through foreclosures, bankruptcies, loan modifications. The one story I want to talk about real quick is a friend of mine who unbeknownst to me went out and did a loan modification on her own and not to get into a whole bunch of technical details on it she ended up getting a pretty decent interest rate because they actually cut her mortgage payment in half and she was pretty happy about that.
She owed a little bit more than the house was worth, she wasn’t terribly upside down, but by the time they got done with her she certainly was going to be because the modification, and actually I should not call it a modification, I should call it a forbearance agreement, what they did to her was to say, OK we will cut your interest rate in half, we will cut your monthly payment in half, but we will take all of that deferred interest and tack it onto the back end of the loan. So that by the time her interest rate went back to where it had been, it was going to adjust up over the next five years, so that within that five year time period she was actually going to owe $60,000 in back interest on top of the principal balance that she had before she went to go talk to her bank.
What kind of a deal is that? I didn’t think it was a very good one and she ended up eventually not taking it and just recently let the house go back to the bank, because she just looked at it and said, Wait a second here, I am already $20,000 upside down, by the time I’m done with you guys I will be $80,000 upside down and so great I get a cheaper payment for a while. She moved into a rental property that was even cheaper then what she would have had to pay to stay in the house and from what she tells me the house is nicer.
Some of the unfortunate scenarios that come up that we get to see. Unfortunately we talk to lots of people that have similar situations, trying to do these on their own and it is possible to do a loan modification on your own. We know that, the program is designed for you to do that. The problem is it generally does not work out.
The re-default rate on loan modifications done on your own is significantly higher than loan modifications facilitated by an attorney that is representing you, for a number of reasons. Number one you have to pay an attorney to represent you. The other is that I think you are going to get a better modification based its not just a negotiation between you and the loss mitigation department for the bank. We are talking about using a professional attorney who is a trained negotiator to negotiate on your behalf with another attorney. By the way, they’re not talking to the same loss mitigation people in India that you may be talking too.
Here are some numbers that just came out from John Dugan who is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and they did a study of the loan modifications that have been done to date. In many cases these were forbearance agreements, not loan modifications. If an individual talks to his bank, generally speaking he will not get the same as result as what an attorney would do, so most of these are really forbearance agreements. And in that case, 36% had defaulted or were 30 days past due after 6 months and 58% were in default after 8 months. Again that is 58% in default after eight months and I saw some numbers the other day and unfortunately I didn’t bring them in with me today, that according to some study of the very few modifications that have been done using an attorney, I say very few, but it is still thousands or tens of thousands, but few compared to what is getting done directly with the bank, the number is only like 5% of the ones done with an attorney have re-defaulted and again I don’t have the numbers with me so I cant site the source… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 2 – So I have seen all kinds of things on the internet about how you can pay $495 and you can learn how to be a loan modification expert overnight. Well I can tell you after having worked with attorneys for 20 years that you are not going to know the laws, like the attorneys do, you are not going to have the negotiating skills, like the attorneys do, just by reading a book and filling out a couple of pieces of paper. That does not make you a loan modification expert.
And then the important thing to point out here is even though we joke around here, Dan, Arizona is known as the wild, wild, west, there is no restriction in this state, at this time, for the loan modification industry. For people that are jumping in, for people who are trying to do it on their own, in their spare bedroom, or their old office in their homes, and nothing could be the scarier thing for a home owner.
You need legal representation; you don’t want to pay anyone who is not a licensed entity or a member of the bar. That is what we do, we work with a national network of attorneys that work in all 50 states. They are experts and have done thousands of these over the last 16 years and that is why we aligned ourselves with them and why you and I came up with the loan modification hotline.
Well part of the reason why I would not do this any other way is, well several reasons. One is that you don’t learn how to do this by reading a book and the other thing is when I was working with people in foreclosure I would have somebody call me the night before their foreclosure sale and say, Hey I have been working with my lender trying to get a forbearance agreement which is not the same as a loan modification, even though a lot of people confuse them, but that is what a bank will give you if you call them directly is a forbearance agreement. We are talking about something different.
But they would say, I have been working with my bank for the last 3-4 months and trying to do this forbearance agreement and finally they didn’t want to work with me anymore, they disapproved it and they are done. So I have to ask them the story, what happened? They would say, I started the process four months ago and I sent them all the paperwork. And then what happened? Well they lost it all. Great, so what did you have to do? I sent it all back in again. Then what happened? Well they lost it all again. I cant tell you how many times I had clients tell me the exact same story that every time they sent in the paperwork, it got lost.
And then it comes down to the last two or three days prior to the foreclosure sale and the bank would say, we tried really hard to get that forbearance done but I am sorry we are not going to be able to give it to you. And it just barely gives the home owner enough time to do what I would advise them to do.
I am not an attorney in any way, but when someone is calling you at 9 pm the night before their foreclosure sale, I would say this is what you want to do, go get in line tomorrow morning at the bankruptcy court, file a bankruptcy yourself, and then here is a phone number of an attorney to call immediately afterward, retain him to represent you in the bankruptcy and also have him call the foreclosure trustee to make sure that they don’t go through with the foreclosure sale because that is even harder if you have to unwind that thing.
This is what happens to so many people, I understand people wanting to do these loan modifications themselves, and I appreciate that we are a do-it-yourself kind of a society. But the truth is you are dealing with a monstrous corporation, you could be talking to somebody in Bangladesh, or in Ireland, or in some other country, who knows where they might be. They don’t know you and they certainly don’t care about you.
Well the other thing too is they work for the loss mitigation department of the bank and the loss mitigation department that you are calling. The important thing to point out about that is the loss mitigation department is there to mitigate the loss for the bank; the representatives job is to protect the bank at all costs. You need someone to stand on your side and protect you at all costs, and that is one of the things that we do… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 1 – Dan Havey thanks for taking the time to be with us tonight. Thank you Michael for having me and you are absolutely right 2008 for many people was a very tough year. Tough year for pretty much everybody that I know, how many banks have we lost in 2008? Hopefully the bleeding is gone; hopefully there aren’t too many more banks to fail. Quite a few banks have picked up some of the slack, but the reality of it is so many people have been faced with such hardships, we have solutions that we are maybe going to talk about today that they can look forward to, to make 2009 a great year.
Definitely that is what we are doing here with your organization at Velocity Financial and with the Modification Hotline and with many of the other things I am working on right now to help people out. When I first got into this business it was back in the late 80s, I moved here from Wisconsin after getting a degree in finance and I started selling repos for Fannie Mae, Countrywide, and the RTC. The Resolution Trust Corporation was responsible for getting rid of all the real estate owned by the over 1,800 S&Ls that failed. So I cut my teeth selling those reposed properties and got to know a lot about the laws and worked with a lot of attorneys and then in the mid 90s I moved into the mortgage business, and I immediately started there working with bankruptcy attorneys for the most part.
I was helping people get out of their bankruptcies, chapter 13 bankruptcies, to avoid bankruptcies, to stop foreclosures and I did that up until the fall of 2007 and at that point the market really changed for me as we know most of the subprime financing went away. Some people might look at me and say, my god you gave people subprime loans, well if you are in a chapter 13 bankruptcy and your payment to the trustee is $1,500 a month and I can get you out of bankruptcy and reduce your total monthly outlay by $1,200, your mortgage payment would go up a little bit, I think this is a really good use of a subprime loan. And I certainly never had any complaints from anyone when I got them out of bankruptcy or I stopped their foreclosure and saved their home.
So late last year I moved out of the mortgage business for a while but I never really left it because it is pretty much what I have done my entire adult life. Over 20-25 years I have been involved with real estate, mortgages and finance and I worked for a while for about 6 months last year on a model for an idea that we came up with of being able to accurately predict the top and bottom of all real estate markets and we perfected it for Arizona and most of California. It worked really well to the point that we could actually predict the bottom of the market 6 months in advance and then after the bottoms hit all across the country we kind of stopped working on it.
It is one of the things I am going to start working on again over the next few months. The title of the book is Real Estates Future and you can go to my website at http://realestatesfuture.com and get a copy of that if you want to, it is not available yet but just put in your information and I am going to give away a whole bunch of free copies of it.
The reason why I went through this entire story is because a few months ago Michael and Velocity Financial came to me and said he was going to do loan modifications and I had been approached by other people and I had seen a bunch of garbage on the internet and the thing that he said to me that sold me was, You know Dan, you have to understand, were using attorneys to negotiate these loan modifications.
And that is, I didn’t mean to interrupt but that is the key; that is one of the reasons it took us so long to get in. Even though Velocity Financial was at the very beginning of this mad craze, heck you cant drive down the street without seeing a sign that says loan mod, kind of like back in 2006 in the heyday of the mortgage business where you couldn’t drive down the street and see a sign that said, if your mortgage payment is more than 1% you are paying too much. Well now everybody is jumping into the loan modification game and it is dangerous.
And that is exactly it, it is every unemployed loan officer has gotten into the loan modification game and I guess I am guilty of the exact same thing. It is just after having 20 years experience of working with attorneys, I know what they are capable of doing, I know how they can go in and negotiate and the biggest thing is they are there to protect the home owner, to protect the consumer, to protect their client because they have a fiduciary responsibility to that client… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 8 – So now the only question that I would have, Michael is you only lowered the guys interest rate by 1/8th of a percent, weren’t there a whole lot of closing costs associated with that? Good question, in this particular case no. There were no closing costs.
Well then it definitely makes sense to lower your interest rate if it’s not going to cost you anything and you can lower your monthly payment by 100 bucks a month you would be crazy not to do it.
His break even was one day, in that particular case.
It goes back to this Velocity of Money concept. If you’re not sure if it makes sense or not, it’s kind of a no-brainer, give the team at velocity financial a call. You will do the analysis for them to determine if it makes sense or not based, on their unique circumstance, and from there you’ll advise them on the appropriate type of loan.
You know it’s funny that people over the years they get so hyper-focused on the interest rate of the loan. Interestingly enough I had a recent client who’s focus was not on the interest rate, it was on the closing costs. The problem is there is a correlation between the cost of the money and rate, you have to pay it isn’t free for anyone. No cost loans are not really no cost, you’re paying a higher rate to get it, so where does it make the most sense for you and your family, how long are you going to use this mortgage? There are so many factors, there’s an incredible amount of discovery that needs to be done.
If you walk into your local financial institution it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bank and you ask what is the rate today? It’s vanilla, it’s not 31 flavors, its vanilla, this is what we have. Well we have a couple of other options, but that’s not how it works at the bank.
One thing I wanted to point out Michael was it was back in 2003, we saw interest rates that were close to what they are now and a lot of people got into the same kind of loan that I got into at that, I got into a three year adjustable loan. And I’m really kicking myself because I wish I’d gotten into a 30 year fixed, and I would say with anyone, especially with as low as interest rates are, they definitely have to get into this market. jump in and get themselves into a 30 year fixed and just be happy with it forever.
That’s a really good point, and it’s safe. If you have a 3 year ARM or two year adjustable, or a 5 year adjustable and you’re 1, 2, 3, 4 years into it, the 30 year is the safe way to go, more than likely the interest rate is going to be lower than what you have. In the case of the adjustable ARMs, adjustable-rate mortgages just don’t make sense today. If you have a 30 year fixed, its the safe bet.
Dan if you and I are wrong and real estate values continue to tumble, you know what, you have a nice safe loan and you don’t have to worry about it for a long time. On the other hand if you want to live there for 20 years, you don’t have to mess with it. I think its the right thing to do for most people
Well I think that anyone who is out shopping for a home over this weekend, and what they’re looking for is to not only ask the seller to pay as much of the closing costs as possible but first to get pre-qualified by calling you at velocity financial. They want to make sure that they get themselves a 30 year fixed, FHA is probably the best product out there right now because its such a low down payment, and if you’re a first time home buyer and you’re in the $60,000 a year range, you can go out there and buy up to that $250,000 house and have a place for your family to be in after the first of the year, and never have to you live in an apartment and have Christmas in an apartment again, you can have Christmas in your own home next year.
Absolutely, that is a really, really good point. We don’t want to forget about the $7500 tax credit that goes along with having a home, if you haven’t owned real estate in the last three years.
The other thing that I want to mention before the show gets wrapped up today, there is interest rate risk here just like there is in the bond market. Interest rate risk is you the buyer looking at what you can use to increase the velocity of money, increase the efficiency in your existing mortgage, or move to a new mortgage because money is cheaper today than it’s ever been… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 7 – We have Dan Havey the author of Real Estates Future in the studio today.
Michael, I was just curious, back when I got into the industry many, many years ago there used to be a rule of thumb that if you were going to refinance you had to lower your interest rate by at least two percent and I know as time went along and products changed that really became unnecessary, but I am just curious in today’s mortgage market its a lot different than we were dealing with even two years ago. Is that still true that there is a 2% rule? Whats going on now?
I happened to catch Suze Orman on television and she was talking about mortgages, the caller who called in to the program, the question became I believe similar to what Dan just asked, her comment was that basically if you’re in 6% interest rate or above now is the time to re-fi. That is what she said, a blanket recommendation. I know a lot of people put a lot of credence into what she says, maybe you could speak to that, the lowest interest rates you’ve seen in your career, you have been doing this for a while.
I have, and they are. You know there was a lot of speak the last couple weeks about the Fed, the Fed funds rate by the way is the lowest it’s ever been in history. As of this week the discount rate is to the point that banks are lending money to each other at nothing, the Fed funds rate for intrabank lending is at zero, the problem is the banks don’t have any money.
To be serious about the refinancing, because its a serious topic, I think people are starting to see their mail boxes filled with lots of advertising crap about refinance. I believe that doing the refinance is no different from doing a loan modification or buying a house, you need to sit down with the human being that’s local, that you can know is a legitimate source. You’re going to give all this personal information about you, your family, your kids, your Social Security number, you want to make sure you have somebody there that you know who’s legit.
In regard to the old rule of thumb 2%, nothing could be further from the truth, and I will expand, but to the point of Ms Ormond that if you’re at 6% or higher, that is a blanket statement and blanket statements never work. We just did a refinance for a guy who was at 5 1/2%, and it makes sense. Every situation is different, as far as how much do I have to lower my interest rate to make it work? It depends on the type of mortgage that you get.
The only type of loan to get today in December of 2008 is a 30 year fixed. I know that one of the things that was really interesting to me, and that you and I have referred clients to one another for several years, so we share a number of clients, were familiar with those families and those households, and this is Wednesday, on Monday and Tuesday of this week I’ve had seven phone calls from clients who you’ve already done loans for, refinances for, asking if this is the time to refinance a loan that is only a couple years old.
And I know in several of those cases the answer is yes you’re actually helping families right now with that process. I am and we do. To answer the question, you need to determine what the payback term is, in other words when your refinance is done it’s a new loan, there’s the title insurance, appraisals, lots of different things may need to be done, not in every case, but in most cases there are costs associated with that. The cost has to be offset by the amount of savings. Its a breakeven analysis
Absolutely it is, the shorter the breakeven the better the loan. I am working on a case right now which is going to be done in the next couple of days where the guy lowered his interest rate by an1/8 of a percent and it made sense for him. It’s not for everybody, 2 percent or lower, 2% is significant, now you’re talking about really significant savings in terms of cash flow… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 6 – I always tell people when I was dealing with them, with their bankruptcy situation or foreclosures or whatever especially when someone would call me and they would say, I want to file a chapter 13 to save my house and I would say, You don’t even think about doing that without an attorney and I would give them an attorneys name and it would work out for them because I think the numbers were like 95% of all chapter 13s filed by the home owner themselves failed.
And I think that is the kind of numbers were going to see in loan modifications, we saw numbers the other day that came out from the government saying that over 50% of the loan modifications are failing. I would suspect that 95% of those were not negotiated by an attorney.
You’re absolutely right, the other thing is people think they’re getting a loan modification because their lender told them that but they’re going to increase their payment over the next X number of months to make up for the back payments. That is not a loan modification by my standards, that is called a forbearance agreement and the majority of people who have failed its because they were put into a plan that was designed to fail.
For gods sakes if your lender is going to increase your mortgage payment by 50% how on earth are you going to pay it when you couldn’t pay it when it was right? To me its just mind boggling, they’re out of their minds in these loss mitigation departments. They’re not looking out for you, they’re mitigating the loss for the banks, you need someone who is going to fight for you. And that is what we do.
Well those guys are employed by the bank and they have a vested interest in seeing the bank do well. And they have huge, huge, huge, hundreds of millions and billions in losses that they need to make up. Its kind of a no-brainer, plus, you can’t discount the psychological element in this. If you’re in a stressful situation and you’re emotionally tied to what if, what if, what is this going to look like in six months? You cannot objectively negotiate your own case with the lender it’s just not psychologically feasible to consider that. Even if you have the time and could figure it out.
And one thing, to take it back to a personal level, there were many times when I was working with people who were in foreclosure and got the phone call the night before the foreclosure sale. They would ask me, can you help me?, and I would say yes, here is what you want to do. You want to go down to the bankruptcy court first thing tomorrow morning and file a chapter 13 by yourself. Now I am not saying go through the chapter 13 by yourself, because I would give them the attorneys number, but they have to be there in line by nine o’clock to get it filed and then go get an attorney to work with.
But why did they end up in that situation? In many cases they would tell me that they have been working to get what they called a loan modification, more accurately a forbearance agreement, that is what they were working on with their lender, they would send in all the paperwork that the lender asked for and they would call the lender back after 30 days. And the lender would say, oh well we lost it and so they would get it all together again, and they would send it in and it would be another 30 days, oh well we lost it. Or this, or that, or they would ask for more paperwork and eventually what it came down to is a couple of days before the actual foreclosure sale date the lender would call up and say No, we decided to not do your forbearance agreement for you. And then they’re calling me looking for help. Now if you were working with an attorney, I guarantee that lender is not going to lose your paperwork.
So I have this young lady of 50 years old call me today her husband had just passed away two months ago. Sad, sad situation, very difficult to talk with her because it just felt so horrible this was just unexpected. I probably should not say the name of the servicer, but she’s dealing with someone who would be considered a subprime lender, their loss mitigation department is in India. India doesn’t really have the same rules and guidelines, there is a huge language barrier between her and the person she is talking to try with to save her home… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 5 – I have been a part of these broadcasts where we have talked about the loan modification concepts exclusively and to your credit Michael and your team at Velocity I saw you guys as being first to the punch if you will, first to start introducing this concept not only to the listening audience but to your clientele whenever it might be appropriate for the people who need to look at that option. Now I am seeing on street signs that are handmade and posted on street signs all over the city, call me for loan modification. I am hearing commercials and radio broadcasts that are discussing this loan modification concept; I have seen infomercials regarding this now so its becoming a bigger and bigger scope, its a big buzz right now and maybe you could tell me, and I already know the answer to this how long have you been doing this? And then what are the criteria for someone to consider this process?
Its funny that the loan modification concept is new and its the new buzz word and everybody is talking about it and everybody is doing it and it has been around forever. People have been able to do this for many, many years. The banks don”t want your house back; they really, really dont. They may act like it and when you talk to them it may sound like they do but they don’t. Velocity Financial is working with a national network of attorneys that have been doing this for 16 years, they have done thousands of these.
These law firms have represented thousands of home owners helping them, keeping them from going into foreclosure. You will see yard signs, street signs, advertisements. As you know Velocity Financial does not advertise, the radio station does play a spot because its important for people to know there is legitimate, licensed help out there. What I want to point out is if you have tried to do it on your own and it didn’t work out, I am sorry about that and it doesn’t mean it cant be done.
Most importantly you want to deal with somebody that you can sit across the table from, that is here locally, and you don’t want to write a check to anybody other than a law firm. A licensed attorney needs to handle this, it is the best way to handle this. Velocity Financial does not charge an up front fee; we take care of all of the necessary paperwork, the discovery work. We do all of that and we dont charge for that. You do have to pay an attorney to represent you and after the case is done and modified and everyone is happy, they will pay us for the work that we have done. So don’t work with anyone who isn’t an attorney, that’s my opinion.
In most states its the law and in Arizona its the wild, wild, west once again as usual, loan modifications are just not regulated but you know what, if you need a legitimate firm, if you need a human being to talk to and sit down with and lets get this thing worked out.
Well as you know Michael I started in the business about 20 years ago and the entire time I have really been working with attorneys. When I was doing loans for 12 plus years, I worked almost exclusively with bankruptcy attorneys helping to bail their clients out of bankruptcy and out of foreclosure, and I had been approached by other people and seen plenty of stuff on the internet about how you can basically buy a book online for $495, or go to a seminar, or do whatever and suddenly you’re this loan modification expert after you read the book and filled out a couple of forms and that just doesn’t give you the knowledge, the background and especially the negotiating ability that you have when you’re dealing with an attorney… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 4 – You also talked about this graph you put together, it talks about the month of November was a 25% increase over the previous year. Obviously prices have gone down and it looks like it then has gone back up, and so once we finish selling off this inventory there is a good chance that were going to be finding or hitting the bottom.
I think just in that region of $150,000 to $200,000 region that prices have really stabilized at this point, they may go down a little bit more, but I think for the most part, because that is where the financing is right now, with the FHA and the conforming loan limits, anybody in that price range can still get a loan. If you’re looking to buy something over $400,000 you’re going to have a lot more trouble just because the financing is not available.
Well the financing is a lot more difficult over the $417.000 loan amount number. Luckily Velocity Financial still has some of the interim small jumbo financing available, still with decent rates and the larger jumbos there is still financing available but nothing like this median home price of $275,000 and below. Well and I think what that goes back to, specifically with the FHA’s, because, what percentage of the closing costs can be contributed by a seller on an FHA loan? Its pretty high right?
FHA financing, the Federal Housing Administration has had a standing rule for quite some time that the seller can contribute up to 6% of the sales price towards the closing costs. Realistically on a $250,000 purchase price you’re not going to need 6% towards closing costs, so you would want to use that money to lower the price or buy down the interest rate, or any number of different things. So in a situation like that you could have the seller come in, pay all of your closing costs for you, you can keep that money in the bank, you could use it to fix up the house, you can do whatever, and all you would be responsible for is a small down payment.
That’s correct, 3% of the sale price down, you can have the seller pay the property taxes up to a year in advance, the home owners insurance, the home owners association fees, they are called prepaid or escrows. They can pay all of that. What is the loan limit right now for FHA? Currently the FHA loan limit is $346,250, its kind of an odd number, that does go away at the end of this month, December. However if you’re lucky enough to have a home picked out in that price range, you want to try to get it done by the end of the year, so long as were able to get it underwritten in house, our firm will still be able to close on that with a higher loan limit after the first of the year.
The new limits probably going to be your next question, so as of January 1 in Maricopa County its $271,000. Even at 271, with the scenario I was talking about before, in Maricopa County, 70-80% of the home sales still would have fit within that 271 limit. Yes, one thing that I do want to point out is that when the Housing and Recovery Act of 2008 expires that huge loan limit of 346 expires, that was the deal, they are going to try to get it extended but we cant plan on that necessarily, but only 10% of the properties in Maricopa County fit into that 271 to 346 range.
Now I know the answer to this but you don’t happen to be qualified to do FHA loans are you? Yes Velocity Financial is FHA approved, were one of less than 15% of the lending institutions in Arizona that can do FHA financing, not only for purchases but for refinancing as well. Which I think is some of the stuff we want to talk about as well because some of the old rules for refinancing simply don’t apply anymore.
Brett did you have anything to add? Yes, two things stood out to me in that discussion and one of the things was the bigger picture concept in my mind that’s the way it works. Its how I am wired, I start with that then I narrow my way down to the specific scenario given a clients circumstance.
What that big picture represented to me and one of the things that you pointed out with your charting Dan and the work that you have done, is the year over year home sales is shrinking the inventory that exists in Maricopa County, and when that inventory shrinks, we all know that new homes and building had pretty much dried up, so allowing that inventory to shrink is a very positive thing in terms of stabilizing, or placing a bottom, or putting the housing market back on a path of growth long-term, and so that was one of the things that stood out to me… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 2 – On the other hand if you roll that into the loan it’s going to take you 160 months to break even on that. 160 months which is a little over 13 years, that is the antithesis of the Velocity of Money that we talk about on the show every week, so I am not convinced that its the right deal for the masses, but something that should be considered is what is the opportunity cost of taking the money out of Account X and the type of account you taking it out of has some impact too. If it’s from a brokerage account then you experience the market loss in that account and youre selling at these low price levels, I think the markets are going to turn and the opportunity costs over 160 months, you’re talking about a substantial amount of money. And the additional mortgage payment is insignificant.
Obviously no one is going to allow you to pay more than the house is worth, that’s not what were suggesting. What were suggesting is merely to look at instead of simply making a lower offer than you would normally make, I’m suggesting that you consider the closing costs and what the real closing costs are in this example.
Assuming that the house is already attractively priced, one of the things that this buyer in this example should consider instead of making a lowball offer on a house that’s already priced rather attractively in this marketplace, it might make sense to consider exactly what you’re describing now. And that would be take that money or that difference and ask the seller to include those costs as part of the deal to sell the house, versus why lowball offer the house when you already know the house is the right price.
That’s exactly right and one of the other points here is in a lot of cases the closing costs dont need to be quite that high. So there is the opportunity for the home buyer to buy down, for instance, use 1% of the loan amount to buy the interest rate down. I did a calculation here today, the cost of funds changes all the time, in fact we had four price changes today. Four mortgage rate changes today, just in one day. This doesn’t apply in every scenario, but that’s why you use a certified mortgage planner, that’s why they use a FHA certified mortgage firm to do the loan to make sure that it’s the right thing to do but here’s the example of today. 1%, paying 1 point to buy the interest rate down will lower your mortgage payment, on this example of a $300,000 house, would lower your mortgage payment by $118 a month.
It’s not simple it’s not just like going to your local bank and having them give you a quote on the rate, there is so much more to it these days. I think that one of the things you’re pointing out right now is the fact that this type of negotiating exists and should be considered when making this purchase. And I know that you have already espoused that you’re not a realtor in that sense, but your realtor should be talking to you about these options. If they are not, you may want to consider finding one who knows about that stuff.
They absolutely do and I’m not suggesting to anyone that they go out and find another realtor because yours is not working out for you. The reality of it is if your realtor doesn’t believe in the concept it may only be that they just don’t understand the concept. Have them give us a call, we can explain it to them. And I have simple illustrations we can share with them, how we would structure it financially, and they can, the realtor can set the price. That’s what their job is, but what our job is to make sure that you use every penny available to you to the best of your ability.
I have a question for you Brett, if you took $9000 and didn’t take it out of your savings, 401K, or whatever, what will it turn into with today’s market? What would that be like?
Depending on the way the money is allocated, invested in a fixed income investment, or an interest-bearing account in a bank or whatever, what I can tell you is over the same amount of time, that $9000, over 160 months, you’re probably talking about quadrupling the money. I would say that that is relatively easy and I’m not talking about taking on significant stock market risk. What I’m talking about is just compounding interest in some kind of interest-bearing account. I mean it could be a bank CD.
The other thing to do is we have this book called the Short Sale Playbook written by Ron Quinterro that we have available to anyone who is interested in it… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 1 – Today were going to be talking about mortgage strategies, buying real estate, all the different things that you need to know from here on out through 2009, lots and lots of opportunities. We brought back once again one of the best financial planners in the entire country Mr. Brett Fallon. We also have in the studio today a very good friend of mine Mr. Dan Havey. Dan has been in the real estate and mortgage industry for over 20 years, in fact he got me into the industry, he was instrumental, in fact the major hand behind putting together of the loan modification hotline.
Velocity Financial is a financial services firm, were primarily focused on doing mortgages for residential purchasing and refinances. One of the things that we have seen is that the purchasing market has picked up quite a bit and looks in my eyes like we very well may have hit the bottom on prices. You can buy a 3000 square foot house for $150,000 these days, and one thing that we’ve recently found is most of the sellers are willing to pay closing costs on behalf of the buyer. Its a known fact that it’s a cold sellers market and sellers are happy to have an offer, whether it be a low offer or not.
Now I have a couple examples I want to share, it’s important to point out that I am not a realtor, I dont want to be a realtor, those people that take the time to get a license to be realtors they know what they’re doing and they do it very well, however you being the person that is going to buy a home, you need to protect every penny that you can. The example I have written down, and Brett feel free to chime in at any time if I should happen to miss something here.
I’ve put together a scenario of purchasing a $300,000 house, now if you buy a $300,000 house and you have to put 3% down as in my example that works out to be about $9000. Let’s just say that the closing costs associated with purchasing that house plus the prepaid interest, setting up an escrow account, paying a year’s worth of homeowners insurance, there is also property taxes that must be paid, home owners dues, all these different things, those can add up. They don’t need to be 3% they can be less, they can be more. This example is just making it simple so that you can understand it.
If you buy a house for $300,000 you put 3% down and 3% for closing costs, your out-of-pocket for this example is going to be about $17,500. Now if you were going to buy that home and have all of that prepaid escrow and closing costs deferred to the seller and actually paid $309,000 so that you actually roll the closing costs into the cost of the home, and only came out-of-pocket 3% you would be out-of-pocket about $8900. So the savings there is $9000. Your mortgage payment will go up, however with a payback of about 160 months. So in other words if you take the money out of your account today you’re going to lose that and have a lower payment…
You are absolutely right; they have essentially admitted to it, they have a $150,000,000 settlement. I just want to throw one more thing out there, they have a $150,000,000 bill that they have to pay because, according to the Attorney General, deceptive business practices, a hundred and fifty million dollar check that they have to write, somebody is going to have to make that up. And that is a good point, the point of this would be to take this action yourself prior to these banking institutions making the decisions on your behalf, they’ve already done this, they have already made those decisions on your behalf, whether or not you knew exactly what type of loan program you were getting involved with when you took out the loan and all of that.
If you find yourself in a position of not being able to maintain your existing mortgage payment under the terms that you have been issued by the bank, modification is something you should consider, you make the terms going forward, you should use the professional expertise and the negotiating abilities of these attorneys that specialize in this area and make this work for you before the rules are placed at your feet yet again.
We talk about people doing this on there own, what I see being the problem is they are going to send you out a packet of paperwork, maybe email it to you or fax it. I have seen the paperwork that they send out, it is more than 36 pages of legalese, once it goes back it is going to sit in front of the loss mitigation department in a stack, Ive seen the stacks, literally thousands of cases sitting there waiting to be reviewed by someone who may very well not be qualified to make a real decision, in my opinion using the loss mitigation department at the bank you may be dealing with a clerk that was answering sales calls for someone else two months ago.
Versus going to the legal department and dealing with those individuals directly. There is no doubt you absolutely have to use professionals, you need to put your head on the pillow and turn this over to somebody who knows what they are doing, an expert negotiator, a paid attorney that does this for a living, put your head on your pillow and keep your family safe in your home… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 8 – I have here in my hand something from the office of the attorney general Terry Goddard, this is in regard to B of A and Countrywide. The state has alleged that prior to 2008 that Countrywide used unfair and deceptive tactics in its loan originating and servicing activity and placed borrowers in structurally unfair and unaffordable loans. These are not my words folks this is from the office of Terry Goddard the Attorney General of Arizona.
They are talking about lowering peoples rates for the first year only. Look a good loan modification, you don’t need a 12 month reprieve if you are 2, 3, or 4 months behind on your mortgage, it is going to take a little bit more than 12 months to get back on your feet. I was going to say what an important point that you are making is because the announcement today by Paulson regarding the money not being used to buy these bad mortgages any longer, because of Barney Franks comments about how banks need to do more to help avoid foreclosures for mortgagees, what that really is amounting to for me as someone who studies the financial marketplace every single day as part of my profession, what that really amounts to is banks being able to set terms, and the short term reprieves, and the importance of what you are doing right now is critical for people to understand.
You are ahead of the curve, you go to the bank for these modification purposes, you take the proactive steps to make the terms suitable for you, my point is if the bank, by Terry Goddard’s letter, already has asserted that they have made some type of poor judgment in the way that they treated their mortgagees or the people that they gave loans to, why would you then go back to that bank as the owner of that mortgage and try to negotiate with them on your own? Why then would you have the trust in them that it was going to work to your best possible out come? I find that to be absurd.
You are absolutely right; they have essentially admitted to it, they have a $150,000,000 settlement. I just want to throw one more thing out there, they have a $150,000,000 bill that they have to pay because, according to the Attorney General, deceptive business practices, a hundred and fifty million dollar check that they have to write, somebody is going to have to make that up. And that is a good point, the point of this would be to take this action yourself prior to these banking institutions making the decisions on your behalf, theyve already done this, they have already made those decisions on your behalf, whether or not you knew exactly what type of loan program you were getting involved with when you took out the loan and all of that.
If you find yourself in a position of not being able to maintain your existing mortgage payment under the terms that you have been issued by the bank, modification is something you should consider, you make the terms going forward, you should use the professional expertise and the negotiating abilities of these attorneys that specialize in this area and make this work for you before the rules are placed at your feet yet again.
We talk about people doing this on there own, what I see being the problem is they are going to send you out a packet of paperwork, maybe email it to you or fax it. I have seen the paperwork that they send out, it is more than 36 pages of legalese, once it goes back it is going to sit in front of the loss mitigation department in a stack, Ive seen the stacks, literally thousands of cases sitting there waiting to be reviewed by someone who may very well not be qualified to make a real decision, in my opinion using the loss mitigation department at the bank you may be dealing with a clerk that was answering sales calls for someone else two months ago.
Versus going to the legal department and dealing with those individuals directly. There is no doubt you absolutely have to use professionals, you need to put your head on the pillow and turn this over to somebody who knows what they are doing, an expert negotiator, a paid attorney that does this for a living, put your head on your pillow and keep your family safe in your home… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 7 – Important to point out folks that Velocity Financial is a full service mortgage broker, the majority of our business is writing and originating and underwriting mortgage loans for homeowners, people to buy real-estate, people to refinance their homes, people can still refinance out there, loan modifications are not for everybody, in fact they are for a small segment of the market.
I’m the founder of the Modification Hotline and we put that in place to help people right now, people don’t need a salesman when it comes to these loan modifications, I heard a story today from a home owner that I just couldn’t believe, this person that is trying to get loan modification told them that she had to pay them $1500 a month for 4 months and by the time she was finished paying them they guaranteed her some kind of ridiculous, I just don’t understand why it is like that.
Right now we need to help you get through the situation, we are here for you, we are going to do everything in our power with our national network of attorneys, who are expert negotiators, so it is important that you call.
I just want to make the distinction so it is clear for everybody, Velocity Financial is a full service mortgage firm, all things mortgage related and the concept of today’s show being loan modification program is a division of something that you kind of created and had some foresight about all of these issues that are effecting not only mortgage holders but the economy at large, thus this topic and wanting to help these people.
That’s correct, a year and a half ago I was approached by someone that I respected very much in the industry, asked me to get involved with the loss mitigation process and I essentially declined the offer, once I reanalyzed that a number of people calling us needed loan modifications. We did do some research and found the debt advisory alliance with a gentlemen that I have know for years, and he had already put together the national network of attorneys, so we are working with these people who have done thousands of these loan modifications.
We are the affiliate, we are doing the discovery and due diligence, they are taking care of the expert negotiations, that’s not my job, that is not what we are good at, what we are good at is putting together a case that will get modified the best for you, and your kids and everything else to keep all of you in place… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 6 – So it doesn’t matter if it is a $100,000 property or a $500,000 property the cost to the lender is $50,000 on the average nationally.
So the idea of the upside down scenario, you may see banks more willing to entertain a broader audience of loan modifications or a broader request of loan modifications based on the fact that they know that now, what we are calling toxic assets, not only exist on their balance sheets, but they want to do something to avoid the additional cost of foreclosing on the property, to avoid the additional impact on our economy nationally with all these foreclosures mounting. So a loan modification that may not be the best or most ideal candidate today, don’t throw the option completely out of the window.
And to that point I would never tell a home owner to stop making their payments just to get a better loan modification, because as of today, this may not be the case two weeks or two months from now, but as of today, your servicer is not going to entertain a loan modification unless you’re late in most cases. Here’s the situation, though at first you may get mad at that and they get mad at me for it, but the reality of it is we have a real problem now with lots of people who are two, three, four months behind on their mortgages, this loan modification we are jumping in, we are getting attorneys involved and getting right in front of the asset managers or the attorneys for the servicers to get these foreclosure proceedings stopped.
Im absolutely certain that in the foreseeable future they are going to allow people that are not late yet to do these loan modifications, hold on, I said I would never tell a home owner to not make their mortgage payment to get a loan modification, the other thing I would never tell a homeowner to do, never ever, is to take money out of your 401K to pay their mortgage payment because you cant go forward.
There are other stops in place, if you don’t make your mortgage payment because of hard times you are going to get a loan modification. I talked to a guy the other day that had a 23 year, huge 6 figure income, he lost his job, big huge firm here in the valley, he is probably listening to the show right now, this guy drained his entire 401K, I mean a huge one, just to make his mortgage payments.
And the average 401K participant, investor, does not understand the ramification of what that is, just because your company plan allows you to take a loan against your 401K doesn’t mean it is the right thing to do. There are ramifications beyond our time and the scope of this discussion regarding that decision. Loan modification first, if you are taking money from a 401K to make a house payment you are not only inefficient in creating the velocity of money but you are costing yourself in penalties, taxes, and that is certainly something we can be forthright about talking with anyone who wants to call.
And in this case the poor guy used up every dime of his 401K because his lender told him NO, NO, NO, three separate times because he was not late, well he wasn’t going to allow that to happen. Unfortunately knowing what he knows now he would have looked at it differently.
Loan Modification is not for someone who has no income at all, the investor, the servicer, the bank that holds your mortgagee is not willing to do a loan modification because you don’t have the means to pay. Even if it is a modified loan, you still cant make the payment. Right in some cases where you have significant cash reserves, but I have not seen one of those done.
That wouldn’t be the ideal candidate, describe a little bit about who should be doing this loan modification and I know we are getting close to a break but people need to know that this option exists. They are hearing all these different concepts in the news and they are hearing in the media the spin about Hank Paulson and what the treasury is doing, and hearing about this bailout package and what that represents, and now they are hearing that the money is not going to be used to buy back bad loans, and mortgages, bad assists. So what does that do to the underlying holder of that mortgage? The owner of that house?
It is pretty scary for the majority of them, the loan modification lenders are getting very aggressive when being approached with a lawsuit or being addressed by an attorney, receiving a subpoena in regard to a specific loan case. They are paying attention to that and those are the people who are going to be getting the best options at this time… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 5 – Welcome back once again my guest Brett Fallon, Brett is a regular guest on the show, he is a registered financial consultant with RG Capitol and AIG Financial Advisors Brett W Fallon welcome back to the show.
It is nice to have the financial advisors perspective on some of these things so many people dont have a financial advisor so for thousands and thousands of people listening right now you are their only option for that, financial advisory services are typically not for the masses but again you are here to help and your services are available to quite a number of people you actually work with fortune 500 companies is that correct?
Yes, I do a number of workshops for fortune 500 companies that are headquartered here around the valley, the idea is to help people create efficiency with all assets, understanding that their home and home mortgage is typically the largest asset that most Americans have and if you are not treating that with efficiency, the retirement accounts and investments accounts, and all the other stuff has to work in concert, so I’m happy to weigh in with information and give you my viewpoints and my perspective.
We were talking just a few moments ago about utilizing an expert negotiator when trying to do a loan modification, people are getting mail from bogus service sources, we have already covered that, but from their servicers saying if you need help with your mortgage, help is here, give us a call. I’m certainly not going to tell everyone in the world that they cant do their own loan modification because some people are qualified to negotiate on their own behalf, though in my opinion they will still be emotionally attached to it and if they hear something that sounds good, it may be enough for them to essentially bite at the offer which is exactly what the loss mitigation department wants you to do.
It goes back to the disinterested third party, that expert negotiator, negotiator being the key word in that phrase. One of the things we were talking about and I want to make sure that we address this especially in this segment, we are talking about loan modification of mortgages of people that have some financial constraints, some pressure whatever the source of pain is, for them knowing that this option exists to take an existing mortgage loan and modify it to their best or better interest, from what it currently is, so who should and who should not do a loan modification, lets start with that.
Ill tell you and lets start with people who shouldn’t do a loan modification. Someone who thinks their interest rate is too high and owes more than the house is worth, feels that they are entitled to a loan modification, is not really a good enough reason or a hard enough hardship for those types of people unfortunately. This is essentially a handout that is being offered because of some of the malpractices, if you will, that were happening within the mortgage industry over the last several years.
With these big huge banks offering these products that were teaser loans, toxic mortgages, as we call them now. We certainly didn’t call them that then when the consumer calls me up and says I want that 1% loan that’s going to be my ticket. Unfortunately people took theses loans but what they didn’t realize is that someday this loan with the ridiculously low interest was going to reset and their payment was going to quadruple and who on earth could have known that the economic times would be as bad as they are and they would have no option to get out of these loans.
So someone who simply finds themselves upside down on their home, owing more on the house than the actual value of the house, does not necessarily need to consider a loan modification. No they may not qualify on those merits alone in most cases.
I just want to make a point, I was reading an article in the wall Street Journal about this stuff and basically the gist of the article was that the average foreclosure on any property in the United States costs the lender $50, 000 from start to finish… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 4 – Yes, I think that makes perfect sense, the only analogy that I can come up with is I could probably figure out how to change the oil in my car, but its not my expertise. I’m certainly not going to take the time away from what I have expertise in in order to figure out how to do that, I’m going to have a professional do that, and it is the same idea with when someone is considering a loan modification.
You can probably call up that loss mitigation department of that lending institution versus going through the legal department and try to work through that scenario. But you don’t know what you don’t know, and if you take that approach and make that attempt it could cost you money, it could cost you a higher interest rate, it could cost you something that you are not even aware of. That’s where your team and the loan modification professionals and this attorney network that you exclusively work with come into play.
Again you talk about choosing to not change your own oil, of course you could figure it out, you wouldn’t operate on yourself, if you got yourself into some legal trouble and you were an attorney you wouldn’t represent yourself. Even though you may know what to do and how to do it, you are just not going to do it because you need an unbiased, 3rd party that is truly going to fight for your rights.
And who has expertise in this particular area, specifically focused on working on the mortgage holders, the consumers best possible outcome.
That’s right and that is a great point, we have example after example of people who have tried to do the loan modification on their own and most of the time what we see is a situation that is best for the bank, a temporary fix, well people don’t need a temporary fix.
Temporary being the key word there, well make it better for one year, three years, five years,
whatever it is, but we will tack it onto the life of the loan. One of our strategic partners was just sharing a story on the break about someone he knows personally that did this, they did this themselves without the benefit of an attorney and the end result was a temporary, short term fix today, all of the back interest, costs etc. were tacked on to the other side of the loan, of this mortgage. That is not what you are after, with a loan modification.
And when you think about it a temporary fix is what put most of these people in the situation to begin with it, were a temporary fix. Remember the billboards that said if your mortgage payment is only $500 a month you are payment too much, call us for a 1% interest rate. Give me a break, people fell for it, everybody fell for it, it was a disaster. You don’t need a temporary fix you need a real fix.
A real fix that is going to meet your needs as a consumer, that is going to meet the needs of your family so you can stay within the home and that’s going to meet the needs of your cash flow monthly, to get a reduced payment, whatever it is going to be for you and your family, that is the whole idea behind modifying your existing loan.
Another important item we hammer down on so many of these issues, a loan modification is not for somebody who doesn’t care. This is if you care and it appears that you will be faced with foreclosure, if you are late on your mortgage, if it is getting ready to go up, any number of genuine true hardships financially that happen to you. Your main goal has to be that you want to stay in your house, keep your family in that house, you need to call, we are here to help, we are not salesmen.
If you are able to find another solution, you know what we are happy for you, the more people in my opinion that are affiliates of my firm that are out there to help us through this process the better off we all are, the sooner we get through this loan modification, these toxic mortgages, the sooner all things economic will recover. The housing market is the basis for this economic crisis and everybody knows that.
There is no question and a number of experts that have weighed in and who have credibility that I receive advice from in terms of helping my own clients, they talk about the stock market in terms of when does it improve and when do stocks get a foothold and go forward and the economy starts to rise and recession come to an end and all those things… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 3 – As promised just before the break, I told you to, listen in if you know anyone who has a GMAC Mortgage, this is one of those too good to be true things. Here’s the thing, I have no issues what-so-ever with GMAC, that’s not what I’m saying, what I’m saying is there is a scam of sorts that is going around. A client of ours received a letter, we did a second mortgage for this person a few years ago, they received a letter from GMAC, it looked like GMAC, it sounded like GMAC, and it said that we are willing to forgive your second mortgage of 200 and some thousand dollars in lieu of a one time payment, payable within the next 30 days, of say 20 thousand dollars.
I don’t recall the exact amount or what it was. There is a phone number on there, it says loss mitigation department on it, a person assigned to this case. They called the phone number, they answered the phone as if you were calling into the loss mitigation department, and verified if you just send us this amount they will release the lien. Well it is completely false. It is absolutely not true.
These people are not going to seek you out on their own, now whether it be GMAC, today we have actually seen that one, there may be other ones out there. Folks, if you are getting stuff like this you need to verify it and you need to verify it by sources other than the information on the letter that you have received. If you get an email that says your bank account has been tapped into you need to check, chances are it is some kind of a phishing scam and this is no different.
We have gone back to identity theft through the mail and if you have been a party to this you need to verify and check into it, and you need to contact the authorities immediately for more information, if you need help with this sort of situation you are welcome to give us a call at 480 Velocity.
It is pretty amazing that that kind of thing still exists, and with the announcement by Paulson today that the fact is they are no longer willing to buy bad mortgages off the books of the banks. When you come across a phishing scam such as this one there is not a bank out there, I dont care what kind of trouble they are in, that is going to take $0.10 on the dollar to forgive a loan.
In a situation where things are going well, you are right in a situation where things are going well, and the status quo, they are going to be pursued by an attorney, that is entirely different, they are not just going to volunteer up and give you the money, its not going to happen.
Absolutely not and that’s where we get back into what a loan modification is, who it benefits, and how it works and so forth, you are starting to see these wheels in motion amongst all of these banks. One of those wheels is certainly not well forgive $200,000 in debt if you write us a check for $20, 000.
And when we have talked about this Brett you and I have had many conversations in regard to what does it take? Can a person do this on their own, we will get to that a little later, but the answer is Yes. A consumer can actually do it on their own, up until very recently with the new announcements made from some of these major servicers and investors, up until then, a person trying to do it on their own would take days upon days and hours and hours on the phone not getting calls back trying to find time during the day while working to get this done and in many cases they are going to get a temporary fix.
The loss mitigation department for the bank that you have your mortgage with, their job is not to mitigate your loss its to mitigate their loss. They are out to protect the bank, that’s why we use the national network of attorneys that we do, that are specialists, that have done thousands of these loan modifications, that go to bat for you. By the way folks, they are not going through the loss mitigation door that you would have to go through they are going right to the legal department, they are going to threaten suit if necessary, they are going to do discovery work, they are going to find out if there was anything that was misrepresented either by the bank or the broker and take that angle… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 2 – Well, in the past we have talked a lot about loan modifications and since the first time we started talking about loan modifications the whole space has changed. Everything about loan modifications since our very first broadcast talking about it, we don’t talk about it every week, but we do talk about it allot. It has changed so much, when we started anybody who had a significant hardship, or financial hardship, or had one of these toxic mortgages, that had adjusted, would be able to qualify for a loan modification. These things have changed all of a sudden, and not all across the board. Brett you made a comment earlier that people are concerned that once these servicers do these modifications they could be subject to lawsuits right?
Yes, it is amazing how quickly things have changed over the course of the last couple of weeks, it seems this information, and this news is changing almost hour by hour, at this point one of the things that came out regarding this mortgage modification program is from Barney Frank, “Congress should act to restructure the servicing of home mortgages.” So the idea is that they are catching on to something that you and your team at velocity financial were ahead of the curve on in terms of loan modifications.
Knowing that those rules for a hardship and why you are entitled to one have definitely changed. Now it is more of a situation where in order to stop foreclosure, to stop the problems associated with this mass foreclosure market place, modifications are being talked about amongst the banks now. Barney Franks comments today, he stressed how these voluntary inducements to get these private entities to protect homeowners from the government has fallen short, and Hank Paulson has fallen short of putting their weight behind this concept.
Although I personally believe that is the next evolution of this. Loan Modifications are a critical step for people who are feeling this economic crisis, and for people who want to stay in a home, for people who need this type of assistance. The idea is you have a short window of opportunity here before something else significant changes where you may no longer be entitled to.
You heard Citigroup, you know this we talked about it, Citigroup came out and made the announcement that they were going to suspend their pursuit of foreclosures in certain areas of the country that have the highest unemployment rate, that was the caveat. We will see how big the scope of that gets, but the whole idea is for you as a mortgage owner, as a home owner with a mortgage, if you need to establish a modification to an existing loan, in order to have more favorable terms in interest, a more favorable monthly payment, a way to keep that home, you have to look at this option.
Yes, and I appreciate you saying that one of the things that Citigroup announced they were going to be doing was giving people teaser rates of 1%. Look anybody with a brain can realize that that is ludicrous. What got us into this situation in the first place was huge banks, just like that one, giving people toxic mortgages, with fake interest rates, and pick your own payment, do whatever the heck you want to. It is exactly what they are trying to do again.
Essentially what they are talking about is giving people a short window of a very low interest rate, but they are going to be back in the same situation in the future. That’s why the loan modifications that we do, that we hire on your behalf, the national network of attorney’s that we use. We go for the throat, we are not looking to get you a 1% interest rate for the next 12 months. We are looking to get you a lifelong, or for the term of the loan if possible, the very lowest interest rate available, and fix it or extend the term so you can actually sustain that payment well beyond the short term.
One thing I want to point out before we have to go to a break, if you know of anyone out there, that has a GMAC mortgage, whether it be a GMAC first mortgage or second mortgage, you have got to tune in to the second segment you are not going to believe this scam that’s out there, going against people with these loans… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 1 – Brett has brought with him some updates on the economy and how things are changing theses days and he brought some great information to discuss with you. We talk about all these different things in the economy and let’s be honest there are a lot of problems out there, no one can dispute that, the unemployment rate is the highest it’s been in many year, with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac AIG being taken over by the government, Lehman brothers Bear Sterns, WAMU, Countrywide all gone, banks and insurance companies getting their bailout, the auto industry is the next one to get a bailout, were already working on our second stimulus package.
95% of the people according to President elect Obama are going to be getting a tax cut soon. Where is all of the money for all of this going to come from? It just seems to be a downward spiral. Brett’s got some great insight on this that he wants to talk about and some more, unfortunately, a little bit more dismal news, just want you to know before you drive off a cliff there is light at the end of the tunnel. We are going to talk about that so Brett, why don’t you share a little information if you could.
Yeah, I would be happy to, you mentioned a couple of things in your opening comments and one was about, the market seems to be anticipating bad news, and it certainly is not surprising it was a pretty significant down day on Wall Street again today, most of that was attributed to two things. Retailers such as Best Buy and Macy’s came out with their projections for consumer spending. Best Buy actually said something to the effect that it is the lowest level of consumer spending that they have ever experienced in the history of their business. Best Buy is actually one that hopefully will stick it out as we know Circuit City is filling for bankruptcy.
The other thing that you mentioned was jobless rate has climbed, the number has definitely increased, the NEBR is the government agency that is responsible for reporting when a recession begins and when it ends. They call it. They officially have not called one, but I think every reasonable person believes that we have been in one and probably have been in one for some time already.
So right supposedly there is some technical factor that says this is a recession that doesn’t mean that we flip the switch and boom here we are out of the recession is that right?
That is absolutely right and in hindsight is how they judge that time of when it started and when it comes to an end, and it’s usually several months after the fact, but it remains to be seen. We believe we are in a recession but we are going to talk about a couple of things that people are feeling this economic crunch and what they can do about it, specifically as it is regarding their home ownership and their mortgages.
A couple of interesting things that came out, Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson today made an announcement this morning regarding a change in the governments, they call it a rescue plan. Others call it a bailout. That’s the 700 hundred billion dollar plan, and apparently Wall Street is unhappy with the changes that took place, pretty significant.
The idea at the time this legislation was passed in congress and ultimately signed by President Bush into law was to use the funds to buy the bad assets, mortgage backed assets from banks and lending institutions, they changed that and recanted that today, Hank Paulson specifically announced that they are no longer going to be using those funds, that the current plan calls for 250 billion dollars of the 700 billion to be used to buy stock of those banks and financial institutions
Does Hank Paulson, does he need to get approval for this? One of the things that have been discussed all week long has been, was the fact that as this legislation was passed and approved, is that he has full power to make these types of decisions, without the benefit of it being discussed through congress and those traditional channels. He is currently the most powerful man in the world. He has the whole checking account to himself to decide what the best distribution of those funds is. It certainly appears that way and apparently he changed his mind and announced it today… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 8 – Credit scores now are a major factor with interest rates. You see the liars up on the internet with interest rates being at 4.625% and all this kind of hocus-pocus, its not true. You are never going to qualify for that rate today. They are going to lie to you, once you sign and see the fine print you are going to realize that it is a ridiculous idea to pay that amount of money in fees.
Credit scores have to be significantly higher than they used to, but again I have to tell you, its my opinions that a 70% no doc loan with someone who has a 720 or higher credit score I believe is a good loan. I personally believe that at some point it will be brought back.
I am not arguing with that, with a good FICO score I can agree with a 20% down for a stated income loan. People are encouraged through our tax system to write off all of their expenses and so often we have small business people who really are making money but because they take advantage of our tax system they are not able to get a loan. They cant qualify based upon their income.
In a lot of cases yes, but once again I definitely want to point his out just because someone is self employed and owns a small business and they do write everything off, that does not mean that they will not qualify. They may have been told now that they have to go stated income because of tax returns, but most people, the small business owner, the consumer doesn’t know how to analyze his taxes, whether or not he is going to qualify for financing that’s not his area.
Most CPA’s don’t even know how to analyze taxes to extrapolate enough income back out where we can use it as income, so just because a person is self employed does not mean that they cant qualify for financing and honestly nothing could be further from the truth. Plenty of people self employed, small business owners will qualify using their tax returns.
I think that anyone right now who doesn’t own a home should be giving you a call getting pre-qualified. If nothing else give you a call and see what you can do. So you say, I wrote off a bunch of stuff last year and I am not going to be able to buy a house well maybe you can. But get in there, have a professional, have someone who knows what to do, who’s been in the business for 15 years, have them take a look at it and decide whether or not you can really get that loan.
One of the things with my mortgage education; I am a certified mortgage planner. I am a certified mortgage analyst and a certified mortgage planning specialist. The significant part of that training and those certificates is in analyzing complex tax returns and we analyze complicated tax returns for professional athletes, for professional musicians, all the time. There is income always, it is just a matter of knowing how to get all of it out there. So I think we have kind of hit that.
So yes if you don’t own a home today and you have been told NO, you need to find out if the person who told you no is qualified to tell you no, #1, and #2, less than 15% of the lenders in Arizona are qualified to do FHA loans. Those are the loans we are talking about, $100 down to buy a HUD-home, less than 3.5% down to buy a house with the best interest rates that we have seen in my career, its crazy not to look at your options.
If a lender does tell you no, it would be like going to a doctor and he says you have to have your arm amputated because you have a pimple on it. I think you are going to go get a second opinion, maybe even a third. To make sure you don’t have to have it cut off. And that is exactly what we have here, if you go to a lender and he says, Well you are going to have to put down 20% you know he is not an FHA lender. So run out of there and call Michael at Velocity Financial and get yourself pre qualified.
Dan Havey, you have a great website, its called discountdreamhome.com and why don’t you talk real quick about that. Its real simple, if you are looking to buy a foreclosed home, and as we discussed earlier they are many times the best homes to buy right now, they are vacant, they obviously have a highly motivated seller. You don’t have to deal with all the troubles you would have to deal with from a regular or as we refer to them, an organic seller, because a lot of these people are upside down… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 7 – Ok I was just checking because I thought this was a story about all the mortgage backed securities that were going under. It started at the top and it worked its way down. The reality of it is that people were buying homes, not reading what they were signing, not understanding how it worked and shame on the people who were putting it in front of them, knowing that they didn’t know and we all need to take a little responsibility here for this past crisis. It is not just the Wall Street firms; its not just the mortgage companies and banks, the brokers have little in fact to do with it, we didn’t create the loan products that people were buying, we were merely disseminating it to the public. I am glad to say I was not a part of any of that. I was able to stay away and do traditional, conventional type financing for people. So luckily I didn’t have a lot of clients who got stuck into that nightmare.
Speaking of that nightmare, Dan when we talk about the people who have had foreclosures, their lives have been turned around, turned over and they think that there is no where for them to go. One of the nice things about the Federal Housing Administration loan, the FHA loan, that’s the first time home buyer type loan, the minimum down payment loan, its only 3 years after you have had a foreclosure that you can qualify to purchase a home again. So it is important if you have had a foreclosure, you need to point your future away from the flame, you need to save your money, do your best, work as tightly as you can on a budget and look forward to that time when you can go back out and buy a home again.
Property values are going to be up from where they are today, but there is still going to be plenty of great value out there and there are not going to be loan products that are going to get you in trouble again. They wont exist. What really caused the great inflation in home values starting in about 2002 was the financing was just getting crazy. I wont get into a whole lot of technical stuff about mortgage backed securities and all that, but the lenders were creating products, selling them off their books, thinking that they would never have to worry about them again. They sold trillions of dollars worth of these loans and those are the ones that are going bad.
Ones that were toxic in the first place: the stated incomes, the option ARM’s, all those loans are all gone now. I was saying earlier today that we are back to where we were in financing in 1992-1993, back when the median home price was $75,000. Now I don’t think we are going to go anywhere near that again, I think at $130,000 we are getting real close to the bottom of the market and what I was thinking was when I got into the business in 1995 and you were in at about the same time I was, and I remember talking to a guy who comes into our office to sell us loan programs, now this is the very beginning of the really crazy stuff, and he was saying we can do 70% no doc loans.
We go, what do you mean? If somebody puts down 30% they don’t have to verify anything, they dont have to verify their employment; they don’t have to verify taxes, anything. We were absolutely floored, but by the peak of the market we were doing 100% no doc loans. If you were breathing they gave you a loan and the credit scores didn’t have to be that high, I think I saw them as low as 600… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 6 – In the last couple of months, 40% of all the total sales in Maricopa County were foreclosures. 40% of the total market was foreclosures and that’s not including short sales, and so normally someone is doing a short sale because their bank is not willing to work with them to do the loan modification. So we could be taking 50% maybe 60% of the supply off the market and as soon as we do that we are going to start to see the bottom of this market.
So right now again I think it is a fantastic time to get out there, with government intervention, its a great time to get out there and buy a house. Most people who are out there looking at homes today they have already met with a realtor or they have met with their mortgage planner or both and they are ready to get out there and go. One of the things that is still happening out there is it is still a hot buyers market. The buyer can still go buy a home that fits their needs, their families needs, that they can grow with and the seller in most cases is willing to pretty much do whatever they can as long as they get somewhere close to what they need to yield on the property.
They are willing to pay all of your closing costs in almost every case and if there are some repairs that need to be done then they are willing to do those again in almost every case. It has to be of course within reason and it also has to be repairs that need to be done. For instance, if you want granite countertops because you don’t like the Formica, the lender is not going to pay for that. But if there are no countertops then the lender in most cases will do that. It has to be a primary residence. They are not going to do this for investors.
We have had a lot of cases moving past this month. You can get the lowest interest rates weve seen in years and get the seller to pay most of your closing costs, but you do need to get in and get preapproved, not prequalified, preapproved, for a loan so you have that check with you when you go out to make an offer. If you are approved we can close that loan in a hurry and you will not have any problems.
One thing especially here in Arizona there are so many people who are upside down in their homes right now. You have the same issues in Florida and California everybody knows the states where they have been really hard hit. It is really difficult for a seller who is $100,000 upside down in their home to put their house on the market and get it sold and be able to give a good deal to a first time home buyer, so that’s why I think in this market right now the foreclosures are some of the best deals out there.
You have a motivated seller, you have a vacant house and in some cases you even have financing available from the seller of the property. Being a Fannie Mae, FHA or VA who can provide financing, so the foreclosures right now are definitely the hot spot in the market. What we were saying a couple of minutes ago was that there’s a potential that coming six months from now these foreclosures could be gone. And that is great for everybody
Yes it is great for everybody and now is the time to get in there and snap them up and I have heard anecdotal stories, just recently my brother picked up a couple of REOs and he is paying somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000 for these properties, two of them were tri-plexes. And I know someone just the other day bought a home for $45,000. It was a three year old house, they had to clean the carpet and moved the tenant in the next day and that was actually someone who worked in your office Michael. Pretty easy to cash flow on a $45,000 house. Its really easy to cash flow on a $45,000 house and the rent on that was probably about $1200. So I don’t know, what are they making $500, $600, $700 a month?
But what I am saying is that’s the kind of prices you can get. Now I am not saying go buy the $45,000 house, because I don’t know what the neighborhood was like. He said it was brand new, but maybe you have to buy the $150,000 house. But the biggest thing is make sure you get pre-qualified first. Don’t start looking at foreclosure properties or any other property until you go to Velocity Financial and get yourself pre-qualified… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 5 – So we are back in studio today with Dan Havey. Dan and I have known each other for many years and we have worked very close over the years in real estate. Dan and I are not necessarily 100% in agreement with where the market is today and whether we are at the bottom or not. I tend to believe that we are. Let me tell you my thinking on this.
Dan uses actual facts and figures to make his prognostications. Here’s what I know, I know that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have put a moratorium on foreclosures. What that means is that they are slowing the supply of repos. What that means is that they are putting fewer homes on the market, which means the supply has been reduced to a 9 month supply of resale homes on the market. The builders are gearing up, getting ready to start building again, but they are not building again just yet. That’s a great indicator.
Interest rates couldn’t be better. They haven’t been better than they are now, so not only can you buy a house at the same price you would have paid for that house in 2002, but you are going to get a significantly lower interest rate then it would have been then. Effectively a house today is going to cost you less than it would in 2002, with the interest rate and the home value being what they were. Now if property values do continue to increase and the average rate of 4%, your internal rate of return on your investment will increase exponentially.
One of the things that Dan Havey did say, and I kind of think you need to pound on this a couple of more times is this, you don’t buy a house for you and your family as an investment, you buy a house because you want to live there, because you want to raise your family there, because its right for you. The investment part of it will come in time on its own. For now owning a home, owning that dirt, raising your family, making your new memories, is the best thing in our opinion that you can do.
Dan, why don’t you take a minute and talk about the year over year numbers that you have. Well, there is a number of things I agree with you on Michael and one of the things I was really surprised by when I started looking at the numbers the other day is that since June of 2008, so 7 or 8 months ago, since then, year over year sales actually increased and in many cases have doubled. So lets just say for a specific example if there were 5,000 sales in Maricopa County in June of 2008 that would mean that there were 2,500 a year earlier, and so anytime you see an increase in sales year over year and especially when you see this big of an increase, 100% increase year over year for most all of the last 8 months, that is a huge indicator that the market is starting to recover.
Now there are other factors as Michael said, the builders are not quite building yet, but I like the fact that there is the moratorium in many cases now on the foreclosures going through, and with the Mortgage Bailout Bill that came out today part of it was $75 Billion that they were going to throw at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and all of the other lenders who received TARP funds to help modify loans.
One of the requirements is if the lender, Fannie, Freddie, or the servicer is working with the home owner they have to stop the foreclosure process, so hopefully what this is going to do is over the next six months its going to help out millions of people. I am not quite sure how they are going to get all of these loans done, there are an awful lot of people that need to have their loans modified, but even if they can just help some of these people to delay the foreclosure sale, help these people get their loans modified.
First off it is going to help keep people in their homes but the biggest thing from the standpoint of property values and first time home buyers is that its going to start taking some of that supply off the market there are going to be less repos out there for people to buy and because of that property values are going to begin to stabilize and quit dropping… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 4 – You mentioned earlier that property values are up 71% long term, even though we had this 50% drop. Youre talking about the average 4% appreciation per year since 1992.
Right, I did some calculations I was working on a book last year and one of these days I may get around to publishing it. Its called Real Estates Future and what we were looking at was a statistical model to be able to pick the top and the bottom of all the real estate markets.
I hadn’t looked at the thing for about a year until I was working with Michael the other day and I started pulling it out and going lets run the model and see where we are in regards to the market, and one of the things I looked at is the last time we saw the bottom of the market was when I was selling houses for the RTC and that was in 1992, the median home price was $76,000. Median home price now is $130,000. That means from 1992 until now it went up 71%, thats after we just saw a 50% decline. So it is up 4% per year on average, and where else are you going to get a return like that? Even if you put 3.5% down on a house you are getting a heck of a lot more than a 4% return. If you look at the internal rate of return it is significantly greater.
Right and dont buy a house because you are looking at a rate of return. If you are a first time home buyer and you can qualify for this program, if you have been living in an apartment for the last three years and you just want to have a better place for yourself and your family to live, I know right now there are a lot of fabulous houses out there for $130,000. I saw one the other day that was listed at $100,000 that I know was probably at least $250,000 a couple of years ago. Yes, four bedroom-three bath houses, we are currently working on several cases at $150,000 or below, in good parts of Maricopa county.
I ran some numbers before as well just looking at the number of homes that sold in Maricopa County in January and in that month 45% of all the houses that were sold, sold for less than $130,000. And when I had the example earlier about the median family could buy a $280,000 that was 85% of the market. 85% of all the houses that were sold in Maricopa County could be purchased by a family of four with a median income.
And you know with the loan limits the way they are with FHA with 3.5% down you can go all the way up to $358,000 and still only put 3.5% down. Pretty much anyone can get in and I would probably say that 90-95% of all the houses sold were within the FHA loan limit. That means you can still get in with 3.5% down, you dont have to have perfect a credit report, you cant have a lot of bumps on it but it doesnt have to be perfect, you dont have to have a huge FICO score.
Do they even look at FICO scores? Its complicated, the Federal Housing Administration does not have a minimum FICO score requirement, however all of the mortgage banks have overlays, so in other words nobody uses just the FHA guidelines, they have their own parameters on top of the FHA requirements. One of the main reasons why you would want to go to a broker instead of directly to your bank is they may or may not have enough overlays that will work in your favor. As a broker we have all of the major mortgage banks and we know the guidelines, so we can make anyone fit into a house that can get approved.
Right and thats always the nice thing about working with a broker because you have, lets say you have 20 banks that you are signed up with and you are FHA with all of them, so you have 20 different sets of guidelines that you can fit the borrower into. If a home buyer went to a bank and they had to do an appraisal and a credit check and all that and then they denied you, you would have to go to a different bank and they would have to do all that same stuff all over again. When you are working with a broker they do it one time and then shop it to 20 different lenders.
Yes, and I have to point something out more importantly, if you go directly to your bank and you do get declined after you have spent the money on all these different things the process is much more difficult because you have to start all over again and the reason you were declined has to be explained as well and it becomes a much more lengthy process. Where as when working with a broker you don’t have to do that. We take the hit for you and we move you into the right lender of your choice… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 3 – We have back in the studio today Mr. Dan Havey. Dan and I have worked together in the mortgage industry for about 14 years and we are happy to have him back. He has seen a lot of changes in the market and thanks again for being here.
Michael, here is a question I wanted to ask you, there is so much misconception in the marketplace today as far as what is still available for financing. I think a lot of people have this idea that it is impossible to finance a loan or get a mortgage or that you have to be able to put 20% down or have a 720 FICO score. Can you let people know whats really going on out there?
Well you know a lot of things have gone away. There are a lot of those old loan programs that were fancy ways to sell money and finance real property and a lot of that’s gone. The reality of it is, if a person has a minimal amount of money down, there is absolutely financing through the Federal Housing Administration with 3.5% down. You can buy up to about $358,000 with only 3.5% down. Now with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we actually do have a few investors that will allow us to only put 5% down with those and that loan amount maximum is $417,000. So there is still plenty of financing for primary residences.
Now in regard to looking at investment properties believe it or not there are actually still some stated income loans out there, but the stated income loan is for a non owner occupied property, the interest rates are very high and you know what, if you can put 20 to 25% down and prove your income you are better off using conventional financing, it is absolutely still available.
Now if you are a first time home buyer living in an apartment and you are getting kind of tired of it, you are looking at low interest rates, you are looking at the property values have come down over 50%, FHA is generally going to be the direction that person is going to want to go, right?
Absolutely and you know Dan with the $8000 first time home buyer tax credit you know that is a check that the government sends you for up to 10% of the sales price of the home up to $80,000. Its capped at 10%, you are not going to get more than $8,000 back and you may get less if you buy for less than $80,000, but whats really interesting about this is you can, if you have already filed your 2008 tax return, you can file a 1040X and get that credit sooner. You don’t have to wait until April 15th of 2010 to get your tax credit. You put the money down today, close on the mortgage, move in, file your 1040x, there is a form that is called the 5405 but that’s not all that important, and you can have that money back in your pocket right away.
So I know that was part of the plan that came out today and just to make it a little bit clearer for people. Let’s just take an example. Let’s say you buy yourself a $150,000 house and you buy it as an FHA, it doesn’t really matter how much money down or how you buy the house but if you buy a $150,000 house, you are going to get an automatic $8,000 tax credit that you can take off of the taxes that you owe the government. So lets take an example where you are a W-2d employee and you pretty much break even at the end of the year, you don’t owe the government any money and they don’t owe you any money the government will actually write you a check for $8,000 for that tax credit and if you buy it this year you can amend your tax return for 2008 and get a check from the government for $8,000.
And that’s not including the other tax write offs that you get for writing off the taxes on the house writing off the interest on the house, so again with a $150,000 house with 6% interest roughly you are going to be looking at another $10,000 worth of write offs on top of that. Now that is a write off not a tax credit, like the other one so you are going to save whatever your tax rate is. So lets say your tax rate is 30%, that is another $3,000 in taxes saved. So if you buy a house this year you are going to put an extra $11,000 in your pocket.
So if you buy a $150,000 house and you have to put 3.5% down, That’s what? Lets just say roughly $5,000, you just made $6,000 and you get to own a house. ($11,000 tax savings minus $5,000 down payment) And your mortgage payment is more than likely less than or equal to what you are paying for rent and you own it.
Exactly and you get the benefits of having your own house… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 2 – And now I mentioned Dan Havey is back in the studio with us, Dan has done a lot of great things in the mortgage industry. He left us about a year and a half ago, is that right Dan?
Yes, I left the mortgage industry in October of 2007. Tell us a little bit more about yourself.
As you know I came originally from Wisconsin, where I got a degree in Business Finance and I came out here in 1989 and started working with my brother selling real estate owned-REO, bank owned properties for Fannie Mae, Countrywide, and the Resolution Trust Corporation-RTC which was the government entity that was put in charge of disposing of all the real estate owned by the 1800 S&Ls that had failed. I did that until about 1995 when I moved into the mortgage industry and there for 12 years I worked predominately with bankruptcy attorneys helping their clients get out of bankruptcy and foreclosure. I left the mortgage industry in October of 2007. Now I am working predominately in the arena of marketing for real estate and mortgage companies, helping out companies, just like Im here helping out Michael today, to get people to realize that right now actually is a really good time to buy.
There are a couple of points I want to make and it was something that Michael had said earlier. The first one was that 4% interest rate. Originally Obama said a couple of weeks ago, when he rolled out the mortgage plan, that they were going to take the $200 billion and use it to buy mortgage backed securities, well the article I was reading today said it appears that plan may have changed. Instead of buying the mortgage backs they were actually buying the stock of Fannie and Freddie to help support the company and keep these companies going under. I dont quite understand why being how they own them now.
Well youve got to hand it to the government they have really done a heck of a job helping Fannie Mae out, for instance today the stock is up to $0.41. Wow, doing so well, I remember when it was $150 or so, where it was at the top of the market.
Today, right now is definitely the best time even if rates don’t get down to the 4% point. The beauty of it and were going to talk more about this in a later segment, is that we have seen a 51% decline in home values from the peak of the market. So you don’t have to have the absolute greatest interest rate in order to be able to buy a house today. The median home price right now is $130,000 in Maricopa County, it was $264,000 just two years ago.
So the median home price is $130,000? We are going to talk a little bit about what a person has to make to actually qualify for that. Well it is definitely well within the means of a median income family. Right now a median income family makes about $64,000 in the state of Arizona according to the US Census Bureau and HUD. I ran some numbers today, I think at 6% interest and at that rate they can buy a $280,000 house. So you can buy twice the median home price if you are making just what the median income family would be in the state of Arizona. So the median household income buys double the median priced house in Maricopa County. That is correct, at 6% interest.
And the reality of it is interest rates are not even that high right now. So for people to be waiting for that perfect interest rate of 4% it doesn’t really matter if it gets here or not because right now is such an incredibly fabulous time to be buying a house. There are so many foreclosures out there on the market right now, there are so many short sales out there on the market right now, and the point you made earlier is very important, that people have to get in and get prequalified, know exactly what they can buy. Now in many cases you are going to need a down payment, so get with your mortgage broker, get with Velocity Financial and start working on that program of getting those funds together for the down payment as well.
Dan Havey we talked in the past about whats available for financing these days, interesting to give little pat on the back for Velocity Financial is one of less than 15% of all of the lenders in the state of Arizona that are qualified to do FHA financed homes. Now FHA financing, people used to think it was only for first time home buyers, that’s no longer the case. The FHA loan which only requires 3.5% down payment it doesn’t matter if you have owned a home before and in many cases you can own another home now so long as your new purchase is going to be your primary residence you can utilize FHA financing and put only 3.5% down… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 1 – We have a special guest back in the studio today. Dan Havey has been a great promoter for Velocity Financial . Dan and I have been working together for about 14 years now. Dan has brought with him some really, really interesting facts and figures for people who are wondering whats happening, wondering if we are at the bottom of the market, wondering how much further we are going to have to go. We are going to talk about lots of different things like that. Hes got some really good information, in my opinion some good stuff, some good solid data to make some good decisions about whether or not you should or should not buy right now.
So, Today was the official day that President Obama’s Plan was rolled out. It was designed to help some 8 to 9 million homeowners, responsibly homeowners they called them, people who purchased homes at the peak of the real estate market with 20% or more down. The plan is just so darned convoluted, it is very complicated, people are calling wondering whats real, whats not real, whats going to happen. The bottom line is about 19% of all the homes were financed utilizing Fanny Mae or Freddie Mac financing. People, who have Fanny Mae or Freddie Mac loans, these conventional type loans, that put 20% down, that used full documentation, which means tax returns to qualify for the loan, those are the only people that are actually going to be helped with this program, and there are so many little caveats to it. I believe its not going to help nearly the number of people as intended. Its very unfortunate that its just not going to be as popular as we thought.
The other thing that people were hoping for, and we have heard this a lot that they are waiting for mortgage rates to get down to 4%, it is not going to happen. If you are out there ready to refinance but holding out waiting for rates to get back down to 4% you need to get off the fence and get something done now. The trend is upward, mortgage rates are going to go up, yes the Fed is buying mortgage backed securities so that should help a little bit. The reality of it is 4% is just not going to happen in this lifetime, so if you are in the middle of the process find something that works good for you and make it happen.
The other thing we are going to talk a lot about today is when rates do go down, which there very well may be a little dip in the next couple of weeks everyone tries to rush in and take advantage of that rate and that’s not really what you should do. What you should do is get in with your lender and get the information to them now so they can start working on your loan, put your case together and have everything ready to go so if the rates do drop you will be ready to execute immediately. Interest rates are really good and we are going to spend a lot of time talking about interest rates and how to buy a home, first time home buyer programs and things like that today. But I just had to mention that I get this question all the time when can I lock in 4 and a half or 4%? Well there you go that’s my prognostication I am certain that I am right but we will just have to see as time goes on… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 8 – So with the real estate market, we know here in Arizona, there are literally hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people that are confronted with a very difficult decision, declining home values, upside down in the home, the home value is worth much less than they actually owe, we need to give them options. If the option is foreclosure, short sale or loan modification, I would take the modification approach, most likely we would have to look at a person’s situation a little bit closely, but as I am going down some of the things that we have prepared for the show today, it looks like there are four main issues that people should know they need to consider, the cancellation of debt income, capital gains tax issue, the deficiency judgments side, and the credit report side and Mike, I know you can talk to some of these things.
But we brought up in the first segment what I think this might represent and then I think we started to talk about how Mike can help people minimize the impact of what that would look like on the tax return or eliminate based on the situation, so let’s make sure that the people know these four concerns are something they should consider as they seek advice.
Absolutely, and it’s really important that you talk to each arm of the team. You’re not going to be able to make all of these decisions just by talking to your tax guy, or your mortgage guy. They all need to be on the same page, because one of the decisions by one of the three is going to impact the other two aspects of the situation.
Mike, that’s a really good point. And that’s one of the reasons why we work together, Brett and I are working together and you and Brett have been working together for years and the three of us have like ideals and also know for the most part what the ramifications are from any one of our decisions. And we make sure were able to do the very best for the homeowner every single time, whether it be tax, financial advice, or loan modification, or even refinance.
People forget that we talk so much about loan modifications. It’s kind of nice because youre listening to all these lying ads about refinancing and other crap that’s gone on out there But the reality of it is there is still money out there to lent. Were still helping people out with refinancing and refinance is the first thing people should try to do with a bank that’s licensed by the federal government to do these types of high loan to value FHA type loans.
You cant muddle through the tax issues without Mike Patenella working with you, and you sure should not be making huge financial decisions without Brett Fallon and his team. So we all work hard to make sure that your ultimate goal is in your best interest.
I know were getting up to the end of the hour the show is about to draw to a close, but to just give people a sense that what were talking about today is the ability to have your personal financial situation accessed. Were going to take a look at modification options or refinance options. If your mortgage is distressed were no longer suits your needs. You’re looking to move whatever it is. We will look at your tax ramifications and Mike Patenella will be happy to go through those issues with you step by step basis. And I would be happy to take a look at your overall financial picture and give you some guidance or suggestions on things that will improve the financial situations… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 7 – You know I am glad that were back, when we went to the break we were talking amongst ourselves about some of these concepts, I really want to bring this back down to the listeners. So they really understand what this means to them. You have three strategic partners, each of them experts in their field, sitting around these microphones in the studio talking about how these factors have an impact on the listening public, the people listening to this station right now.
Velocity Financial is an expert in all things mortgage related. It represents the largest asset many people have in terms of their home. What were talking about is, we know the economic pain that exists, you probably read that Arizona has the dubious distinction according to the Case-Schiller index of having the highest property value declines in the country. People are feeling some pressure here and for those people who want to consider what a loan modification might do for them, should call you and talk about what that represents.
Then from there, you can refer them to people like Mike Patenella to talk about the tax ramifications, Mike can speak to some of those items and I can talk about their overall financial planning. But to start with let’s talk about what the loan modification process really represents and who can benefit from.
We have talked about all the different things you can do with your home as a home owner, there is the loan modification and there’s several different types of loan modifications, there is the option of a short sale, which can have huge tax implications that people may not be aware of. There is the option of foreclosure, which is almost the last thing you want to do and there is also bankruptcy.
Loan modification is essentially for the person who is unable to make your payment, because there was a material change, and the change that I am talking about is your not making as much money. You may have lost your job. You have one of these mortgages that are toxic, where the interest rate has gone up significantly.
I would not buy the story from some guy with an ugly little yellow sign on the side of the road that says, hey I can help you and I have a 99% success rate with my loan modifications. That is essentially a guarantee and there is nobody in their right mind that would buy the guarantee. There are so many different types of mortgage servicers out there, literally thousands of mortgage companies out there and you cannot predict what any one of these mortgage companies is going to do.
Certainly not guarantee anyone any result. Were definitely going to try our best, thats why we use a national network of attorneys, 45 out of the 50 states have some kind of recourse involved with short sales and foreclosures, loan modifications. This is not something you can just figure out on your own and certainly don’t buy into some story that there is somebody who can reduce your mortgage by 50%. That’s not going to happen, or that they have a 99% success rate, things are just not realistic.
You should know better and I know I am putting it bluntly, lets be honest. You should know better. It sounds too good to be true folks, it is. These no cost loans, these goofballs are selling on the radio, saying they don’t cost anything, let me say this, someones got to pay for it. Try walking to one of these big banks right now that’s trying so hard right now to make up for some of their losses, so if anyone is offering you something that sounds too good to be true. It probably is, call an expert, call someone who knows what they’re doing, and our team has 16 years of loan modification experience. Our national network of attorneys are dedicated to getting loan modifications and work with almost every major lender, use a pro.
Now Mike, I wanted to throw it over to you to reiterate a few of these things to talk about the different options that people are looking at. The reality of it is that a loan modification, if it works is the absolute best.
That would appear to be the case. You don’t want to file bankruptcy, which would be your last choice. Trying to say you’re insolvent might be difficult when you factor in all of your assets, so the foreclosures and the short sales, I think those just destroy your credit. Am I right on that?… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 6 – In Arizona, typically its not a recourse state, so if they are telling you that they’re going to garnish your wages because you didn’t pay back your entire mortgage, there is a local bank ,that was threatening a very good colleague of ours about a small second mortgage that person had taken out. Threatening to send it to collections and garnish her wages. It simply isn’t going to happen.
But nevertheless, there is still the tax implications that apply, if you need to navigate through this maze. There is a lot to it, you need to protect yourself. You talked about bankruptcy is one of those exclusions, right? One of the problems with bankruptcy is people don’t understand the bankruptcy laws. They are so tight now and your feet are really held to the fire from the federal government right now. It’s not like you just didn’t make your mortgage payment, so you go file bankruptcy, it’s just not realistic. Assuming bankruptcy is the last resort option for everybody. And we certainly want to avoid that, it would not be sound financial advice from any credible source that I can think of.
Let’s walk through a case scenario, somebody who is listening to this broadcast, their head is spinning right now, they’re thinking, oh my gosh. I should have known about the tax implications, a short sale versus loan modification. Let’s start at the top and work through a quick scenario. And then we’ll point out the specifics of what they should be considering right now.
For example, we talk about this all the time and to your credit Michael Barnes and to Velocity Financial’s credit, you were early in bringing out the loan modification for people who were in a distress situation regarding a mortgage, maintaining or keeping up with the mortgage payment. So you started going down the path where the refinance started to become a much more difficult option, with new constraints and all the other factors that led to part of this economic crisis, a loan modification has become a buzz topic today. Driving to the station today, driving down Camelback Road, I see a sign on the corner. You know, one of those stick in the ground, homemade jobs, that says don’t refi a Loan, modify, with some success rate and the phone number.
Hang on there I want you to say the success rate. The sign literally said, 99% success rate, and it goes back to the point that you made when they say that they can reduce your mortgage principal by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, thats the absolute last resort for any lending institution. That’s not what this is about, so let’s start with that, then we will work on the tax ramifications of how that might work in the overall financial strategy.
I am familiar with the loan modification industry here in Arizona. There is no regulation, unfortunately. We at Velocity Financial work with a national network of attorneys, so if you’re the guy in El Centro California, or you’re in Phoenix, or you’re in Alaska it doesn’t matter where you’re at. We have someone who is an expert in that field in that state because the laws are different. But without the regulations some person with the ugly yellow sign on the side of the road says he has a 99% success rate, I don’t believe him it’s probably not using an attorney, who knows, don’t buy into that garbage. Were going to tell you the truth, if we cant do a loan modification, we will tell you that we cant do it. And if a loan modification is not the best thing for you, you can find the some of these other options… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 5 – Welcome back to the Velocity of Money I am Michael J. Barnes Arizona’s and I’m with Velocity Financial and were here every week talking about all matters financial, regarding real estate as well as finances. Brett Fallon is back on the air with us again along with Mike Patenella who is a certified public accountant for the last 20 years and amazing brain, were glad he’s back on.
Mike we were talking before the break about loan modifications, my point before going off the air was that people think they’re going to get this huge amount of money waived on a loan that they have, realistically what most loan modifications are going to look like is extended term, significantly lower interest rate, generally a fixed interest rate for the entire time, and in some cases they will do some principal reduction, and there is some exclusions for people having to pay tax on that, is that correct?
Yes, there is, before I get into that keep in mind that with taxes normally not one rule applies to everybody, were going to talk general but everyone’s going to have their own specific situation, that they’re going to have to really check with somebody and make sure they’re doing the right thing. In 2007 in response to the economic situation, they passed a mortgage forgiveness debt relief act which essentially allows people to not pay tax on $2 million dollars debt forgiven on their principal residence. That’s in regard to be principal reduction, loan modification.
Right, so in your example if $50,000 of your loan is being reduced, if your situation fits, under this new law, we might be able get you to avoid the tax on that.
Once again a very good reason for you to go to a professional CPA like yourself for that help, not something the average person is going to be able to figure out on their own. You have to keep up on the tax law and that’s almost a full-time job.
Hey how many pages is that tax code now? On last count I heard you say it was something like 9000 pages.
I don’t know the exact number of pages I know it’s in the several thousand and as Mike knows quite well, and I am aware of also is the tax code has been morphing and changing more than I have ever seen in my entire career here recently. Going back to the tax act of 2003 to the present there have been literally hundreds of changes. So for the average person who’s listening to this broadcast who is considering a loan modification, trying to take care of a portfolio, and take care of their taxes at the same time, WOW! Good luck to you
So exclusions to the income, can we talk about a few different ones?
Sure bankruptcy is one exclusion, if you’re filing bankruptcy; the other one is if the taxpayer is insolvent which essentially means that their liabilities exceed their assets. When you factor in assets you factor in retirement accounts and all that, its not that easy to fall under that one.
Oh so the value of my 401(k) goes into that on the other side of the balance sheet. So for the most part if you don’t fall into one of these two you’re going to try to rely on this new tax law to exclude some of the debt forgiven.
How long ago was that past? I am sorry I don’t remember, was that August of 2007? It’s called the mortgage forgiveness debt relief act of 2007 and it only applies to qualified principal residences. Is that ongoing? Is there a cap on the time?
Well originally it was set to expire at the end of 09. Then in 2008, since the economy kept getting worse they extended that another three years or so through 2012
Well we hope were all well through of this mess sooner and we won’t have to need this any longer after 2009. Actually I want it gone now… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 4 – So for people who find themselves in a very difficult situation considering these options whether it’s a loan modification or a short sale, whatever they need to do to relieve themselves of this particular burden of a mortgage, that for whatever reason they’re no longer able to maintain, they are not always considering the tax ramifications associated with taking a specific course of action, like this example the short sale option.
Right there is actually two pieces of tax component here, you have the forgiveness of debt income that we talked about, they still have the fact that you sold your house and you have to see if there was a gain on that. Over and above the cost basis of the home.
We talked about the 1099Cs a few moments ago, did you say that the lender sends a copy of the 1099C to the IRS? Absolutely.
Now I’m the guy for a few minutes ago who bailed on $400,000 and sold it for $300,000 am I going to get a copy of the 1099C if I haven’t given my lender my new address. Well that could be a problem, they will send it to the last address they have on record for you. And as a homeowner it’s my problem.
The IRS will get a copy, so they will look for it on your return, if you forget to put it on then you’re going to get a friendly notice from the IRS.
If somebody is going to do a short sale, its a fairly civil transaction and when I say civil I mean going for a short sale is horrible for them and their family, but it beats the alternative which is foreclosure, and I think the real problem is when there’s a foreclosure and the guy just walks away and moves off to El Centro California, he’s the one who’s really getting hurt.
So in the event that somebody takes a course of action, and I know that Velocity financial and Michael Barnes, you’re not necessarily advocates for that short sale approach. It’s not normally the best course of action, we’ve been talking about loan modifications and it would help me when I talk to clients, or people who call from radio broadcasts who asked questions about loan modification process as part of a financial strategy, help me with some of the tax ramifications. Let’s say that I have a loan and I know the best thing for me is a loan modification, am I going to be faced with a 1099? A tax bill at the end of a loan modification?
Yes, the first of the two tax implications will apply which will be the debt forgiveness part.
I didn’t mean to interrupt you Mike, well I said there are several different types of loan modifications, I believe are you asking about when the loan modification is where they actually do forgive some of the debt?
That’s a point, I know there’s been a lot of discussion on the use of the TARP funds especially from the federal government regarding these banks that qualify for some of these funds, they have to do principle reductions for their mortgages. So let’s say there isn’t a principal reduction involved, from that aspect, its not a taxable event that could take place, since I’m not reducing my principal, I’m simply getting a reduction in my term or my rate.
That’s right, the only time that taxes would come into play is when the principal gets reduced because that’s forgiveness of debt.
So let’s take that one step further, whatever mortgage interest I’m able to deduct on my taxes may be impacted if it’s a lower percentage, right because youll be paying less interest, but there’ll be no surprise 1099 coming your way if its just an interest modification.
One of the things that I like to make thing clear is that were trying to do the best for you the homeowner so you can stay in your home. The situation I’m talking about, the $400,000, the lender is more likely than not is not going to forgive $100,000, however the same lender is more than willing to reduce your interest rate so that your payment would be the same if they have done the principal reduction, because it’s not a permanent loss for the bank. If there is someone out there who’s telling you that they can have your mortgage reduced by tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, it’s not going to happen and I doubt it’s going to happen anytime soon… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 3 – So we talked about 20 million homeowners are upside down on their mortgages, thousands of their homes are being foreclosed on every week, property values may still be declining in some areas. Homeowners are walking away, they are doing foreclosures, there is a deed in lieu that people may not be aware of, loan modifications in many different shapes, forms and fashions and short sales.
These are all things that do have tax implications that a lot of people are not aware of. Each has its own consequences that’s why we have asked Mike Patenella, a CPA to be with us today on the air. Mike tells a little bit about yourself.
Well I am a CPA. I have been in public accounting since 1988, I have my own tax practice and operate out of Scottsdale, and we focus on tax-preparation, advance planning for high net worth individuals and small businesses throughout the Valley. I moved to the Valley in 1990 back from New York.
You know, I have had the opportunity to work with Mike as a strategic partner as well and I share a number of clients. Each time I have had the honor of providing him a referral for tax work the outcome has exceeded expectations, so I am really pleased to be part of the discussions today and to work with such a great group.
It has been a pleasure, and again if you’re talking about that strategic partnership, the financial power team, as our good friend Dan Havey likes to call it, the outcome is important, but when a client calls you up or a homeowner calls you up and says thank you so much for sending me to Brett or Mike, what a great job, wow. That”s the greatest, again Mike thats why you’re here with us today
So we should probably dive right in. I know we’ve been talking a lot the last few weeks about loan modifications and how Velocity Financial can help in that regard. But, help me out, even for my financial planning perspective what are some of the implications of taking this approach. For example how does the IRS look at people who don’t pay back their debt?
Well they do have a record of who does not pay back their debt because the banks have to send a form 1099C to anyone who gets any debt forgiven and what that does is it lists how much debt youre able to walk away from. And the reason they want to track that is unless you qualify under certain exclusions that is taxable income to you.
A question for you on that and I honestly don’t know for sure the answer to this, so let’s use a simple scenario, my favorite one is a guy owes $400,000 on his house and he does a short sale for $300,000. A laymen would think that there is going to be $100,000 he is going to get a 1099C for, a 1099C form from the lender that they didn’t pay the moneys back for. What about the other cost the lender incurred? For instance even though they sold it for $300,000 there are still real estate commissions, title, deeds all kinds of closing costs, and things like that, that the lender loses below that 300. Do you know if that’s included?
Yes that would be almost like lending you additional money to cover those costs.
So in other words if I owe $400,000 and sell it for $300,000 in a short sale, the bank is going to spend $112,000 I saw in a report today, you’re getting a 1099C for that right?
In that example yes
The foreclosure cost, I just read today, the average foreclosure costs $112,000, average cost, that’s legal fees, carrying cost, all these different things. That’s a lot of 1099C income… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 2 – Brett, wow what an exciting four days
Yes the last four days in the stock market have been a really wild, you know the doom and gloom. I will give you an example, the year to date low closing of the S&P 500 at 752 was the value for that index. And that occurred last Thursday, November 20 the last four days in the stock market has virtually gone straight up, as a matter-of-fact, reporting a yearly 15% gain in those four trading sessions.
What people fail to realize is that level of gain, coming off a loss in your portfolio is really important to get you back on the right track, so those who are wondering if its time to buy or should I have sold. I say November 20 you can’t afford to miss a 15% rally. I can’t tell you what the market will do come Friday, which is a half day or next week, but I can tell you there is a growing consensus among multiple economists, and experts say were in for the mother of all rallies in an otherwise bear market economy.
And one other thing that I want to point out really quickly, that’s so important to the listeners out there in regard to this show specifically. We spent a lot of time talking about strategic partnerships, and today is a perfect example of what Velocity Financial and the Velocity of Money Radio Show are all about.
We have strategic partnerships to work towards the best possible outcome for the listeners that are tuned into the broadcast. They are looking for a ray of hope, they’re looking for education, they’re looking for information. And when you put those factors together and introduce tax experts like Mike Patenella, the certified professional mortgage strategies such as you, registered financial consultants like I. That’s how people, when we have these experts and strategic partners working towards the best possible outcome.
That’s a really good point. And I like the way you illustrated that, one of the things that so many people like to do today, is to do so much on their own and that’s okay. When you do things on your own, typically people learn more about it. The problem is, now is not the time to try to figure out what to do with your money in the stock market. Now is certainly not the time.
If you’re facing foreclosure, or you’re considering a short sale, you’re possibly losing your house, you can’t make your mortgage payments or you need a loan modification, its not something you should try on your own, its one of those things where you just don’t know the ins and the outs. More importantly, talking about doing these types of things on your own, do you really have the time to dedicate to what it is you’re trying to do.
For instance there is a silly commercial on the tv, Mike where the guy is getting audited and the lady says oh, let’s talk to the box. That’s a classic example of somebody who wants to go buy a box of software at a warehouse store to do their own taxes, and Mike I know for example that you have still have people who have tried to do it on their own. And in most cases you find many things that are missed.
Yes that’s why we’re in business. It’s worth it to have us help you out, you’ll save money and you will pay us less than you will the government. Our goal is to work for you, work with the mortgage guys and financial planners and coordinate an effort to help you out.
Brett Fallon and I have been working together for years, we share most all of our financial sense or ideals are parallel. I have learned a lot about finances from Brett that I never knew. And Brett and Mike have been working together also for many years, it has only been a year or so since you and I have met.
But having said that you could do your own taxes, you could do your own investing. You can get one of those online accounts. Well, you could do your own loan modification, but in any case, that I have ever been involved in, in regard to loan modification, doing your own taxes, or doing your own finances, you will inevitably miss something. It’s just worth paying a little bit more to hire a professional, versus trying to do something like that on your own.
Especially the impact the situation where there is substantial, job loss, loan modification or any of these potential types of situations… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 1 – Today’s show has a timely message. We have with us, an expert in the tax ramifications of the different types of mortgage situations that people find themselves in, we have brought in Mike Patenella, that I will introduce in just a moment, as well as Brett Fallon is back with us. Were going to be talking about the tax ramifications of short sales, foreclosures, and some of the different types of loan modifications.
Now if you listen to our show regularly, of course you know, we have been over the last several weeks, talking about loan modifications, but we have been getting hundreds of e-mails and calls requesting more information on the loan modifications. There are also some interesting questions that people ask about whats going to happen in regard to taxes. That’s the one thing that so many people are not talking about.
Well we need to talk about it. Its something that we need to bring to you that you can hear and thats what were going to focus the majority of today’s show on. Before I introduce Mike I need to introduce one of my very best friends and the best financial advisor I have ever known, Brett Fallon. Brett thanks for being on the show today.
Brett also has some information in regard to the markets and there is some really great, exciting stuff out there. But before I throw that back over to Brett, we have our expert guest today. He is a CPA and his name is Mike Patenella, thank you for being on the air with us today.
Mike is an expert in taxes, he is a CPA, he knows the ins and outs of all matters tax. His expertise in this particular area is widespread. Mike is an expert and will have specific answers to questions that we have put together. If you have had a foreclosure or you’re facing foreclosure or if you’re considering a short sale or bankruptcy, any number of things. Were going to touch on each just a little bit.
But we have a few numbers on our staff who are experts in loan modifications, we have put together a great video that helps explain the process, it’s about seven minutes long. And we will get that sent out to you in immediately… Real Estate Marketing This Week
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Part 8 – And what rent skimming is, a “shark” as I like to call them, a shark will go out and find a vacant house, and they will go in and change the locks and maybe clean it up a little if need be but then they will rent it out to somebody. They will move that person into the house, they will get their $1,000 or $1,500 a month rent payment on the house, and 3 or 4 months down the road the repo man comes knocking on the door and says, hey you have to get out. He says this to the tenant of course and the tenant says, hey you don’t own the house, and it turns out that the guy that they were paying rent from for the last 3 or 4 months didn’t own the house either.
So you are talking about somebody, a shark, who goes out and finds a vacant house, breaks in, changes the locks, cleans it up, puts it up on Craig’s list and rent’s it out and collects the money. He never owned the house, he never had any rights to the house, then all of a sudden the sheriff shows up and says you have to go. How can that be legal? Well it’s not legal; it’s not legal at all. Because the person who rented you the house knows that they don’t own the house, now of course the tenant doesn’t know that.
Now under Fannie Mae’s new guidelines, that tenant, if they are lucky enough to have Fannie Mae own that property, or own that note, you may actually get to stay in the house because Fannie Mae has some new guidelines that if they have a tenant in the house, they will re-sign a contract with them and let them stay in the house. It didn’t say how long but they will let them stay in there for a while.
Wow, that is fantastic. I actually didn’t know about that, so Fannie Mae is getting into the property management business. Yes, our government is now becoming a landlord as well as the entity that likes to just hand out trillions of dollars. I believe that you and I have a differing of opinion on this, Dan. I actually think that that is the right thing for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to do, primarily because if they sell right now they will sell at a huge loss and they have an opportunity to pick up some capitol at some point, don’t you think?
Well, I don’t know, it all depends on whether property values keep going up or property values keep going down. But the real issue becomes, is our government in the business of owning real estate? And we can argue about this all day long. There is no need to; there is too much other information you are going to talk about, too many other sharks out there.
What is the crime, I mean realistically, some guy goes in, breaks into the house. Sounds like its breaking and entering to me, then he is collecting monies on a vacant house and well there are a number of crimes, I have to admit I don’t have the statute with me but I do know in Arizona there is a statute specifically about this very practice. And that would be Terry Goddard’s website? I would suspect that you could go there and find it.
But real quick here before we run out of time, there are two other quick things I wanted to talk about one just happened to a friend of mine recently where her daughter moved out of a house that she had been living in for years and she moved to another state and the house went vacant. Well, she hadn’t been gone for more than a few weeks and the mother, who was going to help her work on a short sale, went over to the house one day and found that the locks were changed.
And I immediately think, Oh, Oh we’re dealing with a rent skimming situation here. Well it turns out the lender, who does not own the house yet, because there has not been a foreclosure sale, came by, saw the house was vacant, opened the door, changed all the locks on the house and now essentially is not really willing to give the keys to the owner. I couldn’t quite figure that one out, especially when I found out that two weeks later they still had not gotten the keys from the lender.
So just be careful of that and the one thing I want, the last thing I will talk about is that a buddy of mine works repos over in California and I think its happening here a little bit, where what will happen is when you are in a foreclosure situation you will have all kinds of people knocking on your door. Some of these people want to come by and buy the stuff out of your house.
Now there is certain stuff you can sell. Anything in my mind that is not physically attached to the property you can sell. Stuff like a washer, a dryer, and a refrigerator, you can sell that stuff. But you are really not supposed to rip the cabinets off the wall, or rip the pipes out of the wall, and sell it to somebody who is coming by knocking on your door offering you $1,500 for everything in the house. That is what is going on in a lot of cases in California; in fact they are completely trashing houses.
Now the other thing you have to look out for is you are obligated under your deed of trust to not destroy the property when you leave. So I am just putting that out there, just be really careful when these people come by and offer you some money and you are hurting for it, just be really careful because you don’t want to trash the house before you leave.
And that is really good advice. They can come after you, maybe they will, and maybe they won’t. But that does not matter you are committing a crime; you just should not do it. And the other thing if you think you are maybe involved with a rent skimming scheme you can go to maricopacounty.gov and see who actually owns the property. And again if you think that you are having trouble you obviously want to call the Attorney General’s office and talk to them about it if you think that in anyway that the person you are writing that rent check to doesn’t own the property.
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Part 7 – “The Foreclosure Sharks”, you have written this book or I think it’s called a white paper. Free report whatever you want to call it its packed full of really good and interesting information. It’s called “The Foreclosure Sharks – A look at the rampant theft of Americans’ homes through foreclosure rescue scams”.
And folks I have to tell you I think we’re going to spend the next week, the majority of the show talking about what the heck is going on out there. And what you need to do to protect yourself in case you should happen to be against this problem. You really need to know what your options are. This free report is available online at mortgageanswerman.com. You have got to get this. The information is really good, and one of the tag lines that you have here Dan is, “There’s blood in the water and the sharks can smell it”.
Right. What made me actually write this was a number of years ago I had been working with people in foreclosure for years, and it was just a way to let them know what was going to be going on once the foreclosure was filed against them. Now in many cases, these people were already experiencing what was going on.
And again I’ve recently had a friend or two go through foreclosure and I had them collect all of the paperwork that they got from all of the foreclosure guys out there trying to help them sell their house or do whatever it was, and I was surprised at how thin the stack was. This one gal in particular, lives in Scottsdale in a very nice house and she didn’t have more than maybe 6 letters. In the past, a couple of years ago, especially at the peak of the market, when somebody was in a foreclosure situation they would have seriously a stack 6 inches thick.
People would be knocking on their door 24 hours a day, calling them, dropping off stuff. There were cars driving by all the time and it really got to be a nuisance. And frankly I think it hurt the home owner and their standing in a neighborhood, with all of that traffic and of course everybody knew that they were having problems. So that is why the report was originally written and why I wanted to talk about it today because of all the foreclosures going on in the market right now.
Now let me ask you a question, you are saying that two years ago if I were in a foreclosure my mail box would be chock-full of marketing products. You’re telling me now that there is virtually none?
Well I think that part of it is that back then there was financing available to be able to come in and refinance the people. I certainly myself did dozens of loans, at least, to bail people out of bankruptcies and foreclosures, and also people had equity back then. Property values were continuing to go up. I forget how many scams I pointed out here in the book, I think there are 18 or something in here, and most of them are essentially people attempting to get your house away from you, either refinance it, sell it for you, take a lease option, there are all kinds of different scams involved, but I think the reason we see so much less of it today is because there is so much less equity. So if you are upside down by $300,000 in your house, i don’t care how good of a scammer you are, you are not going to make a lot of money off that.
But there are a couple of scams going on right now that I want to talk about because there are a couple of things that happened just recently that harkened me back to when I first got started in real estate here in Arizona in the late 1980s. I was selling repos for Fannie Mae, Countrywide, and the Resolution Trust Corporation, which was in charge of selling off all of the real estate owned for the 1,800 or so Savings and Loans that failed in the late 1980’s early 1990s. There were so many scams going on then, I mean we had just tons of vacant houses we were selling, and one of the big scams that I thought was actually being perpetrated on a friend of mine the other day is a little something known as rent skimming… Part 8 – Beware Rent Skimming
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Part 6 – What their ratings were based on was simply that nobody thought real estate would go down again. They were just going to keep going up forever, doesn’t really matter if you call it Triple A or Triple B. Isn’t going to matter if the note never get’s called.
We certainly saw that for years in the mortgage industry. We would refinances somebody and a couple of years later they would call us up again and say hey my house went up $100,000 in value and I bought a car and a boat and my kids need to go to school and give me another hundred grand out of my property, and it just kept going up forever and ever and ever and as long as that was happening everything was just fine. But then as we know everything just stopped.
There’s only so much leverage that could exist out there and that is why the stop started if you will. Because as that leverage continued to balloon; how much more leverage can a Wall Street firm or a bank take on to buy up more mortgage backed securities? Oh I know we’ll carve out these tranches and we’ll sell them off overseas. So that is where it ballooned, how wide reaching and impactful has it been?
Well we see it now it’s a global recession. It’s not a US recession for that reason. And that is starting to clean itself up, not only by the Fed aggressively here at home, by working with other developed nations around the world with their equivalents of the Fed in those countries they are doing the same thing. They are acting aggressively and that’s great for the short-term but that is like putting a band-aid on a carotid artery that has been severed, it doesn’t work. That is okay for today and tomorrow, long term there are bigger issues, bigger issues translate into inflation. Where I am going with this is the fact that right now with money being cheaper than it has been at any other time in the history of the United States.
That’s your motivation, if you’re looking for a loan, if you are looking to refinance a loan, if you’re looking for a loan modification, whatever your circumstances are, this is your opportunity. I am of the opinion that five years from now we’ll look back on this time period and say, my gosh look at all the mistakes the Fed made.
One of the things I want to go back to is something you said earlier about how all these mortgage derivatives were broken up and put back together. And most of them certainly many of them got bought by hedge funds. A lot of them got bought up by foreign governments and whatever around the world. One of the things about where that’s coming in is it’s causing a massive structural problem, especially in the mortgage industry when it comes to the servicing aspect and a loan modification aspect.
These hedge funds are now coming along, and they are suing the servicers because the servicers are doing what they had a right to do under the contract that they signed with the hedge fund in the first place which was to modify these loans. While the hedge funds are saying if you’re going to modify the loan we want all the money and the servicers or the bank or whatever is saying, no we’re not going to so now they are getting into a big fight and I have a feeling we’re going to see a lot of lawsuits, which is only going to hurt the American homeowner, because unfortunately it’s only going to delay a loan modification process.
But it’s also one more reason why you want to have an attorney on your side negotiating with the servicers, negotiating with the bank, maybe even negotiating with the hedge fund for all we know. But negotiating with somebody on your behalf, somebody with the legal power, negotiating for you so if they need to go after the bank for lack of standing, because maybe that’s what it takes to get their attention, go after them and prove they have a lack of standing and say, oh great now that I have your attention let’s do something to help the home owner.
Well, I want to point something out here because Brett, Dan, and I have talked about this many, many times, every single case that we have that is a loan modification case through Velocity Financial and through the debt alliance law firms that we use. Every one of these cases where the people tried to do this on their own, eventually they gave up, they were told No. One case that we were successful in a loan modification was a case where they were told No three separate times by his servicer. Three times, they told him No. I have this case documented, I know this person well. He was told No three separate times and we sicked the law firm on them and we got that loan modification that has actually relieved him of about $30,000 in interim monies… Part 7 – Beware Foreclosure Rescue Scams
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Part 5 – We just talked about the process regarding your mortgage lender and having “standing”, which is a legal term, which was a little complicated Dan. I’m not going to lie to you. That is why all the information is on the website, MortgageAnswerman.com And you can also go to VelocityFinancial.com. There is a link there to Dan’s website.
Dan is talking about breaking these mortgages down and eventually selling them off to Bangladesh in different tranches. Some of the servicers are actually in India, of all places. If you have a mortgage that you’re having trouble with and you need to call somebody to get help, you are actually calling India to talk to somebody about your mortgage here in Phoenix. I don’t really know why, but none the less, Brett, you wanted to address this from a financial advisor standpoint
Yes, I am pretty immersed in this because what Dan was describing in these collateralized debt obligations, CDO’s, CMO’s etc., does get a little complex. I think I can clarify it a bit as you may feel that this doesn’t apply to me, is this something I should consider in my own strategy. It works like this, this is true for most people who took out a mortgage in the last couple of years, you start your mortgage and get your payment book, and you are writing a check to Bank A, and then you get a notice maybe 30, 45 or 60 days into this loan that says “thank you for your business you are now writing your checks to Bank XYZ”, your payment to Bank XYZ. That is exactly what was happening.
When you slice the loans up this way, and you get it spun off.
Wall Street wanted their piece of profitability right? The mortgage industry was running rampant in terms of profitability. And so Wall Street says hey I want a piece of that and I know how we can do it we can sell mortgage backed securities, asset backed securities. Well they’re safe, that’s the way Wall Street was selling these to the investing public. Yeah they’re safe as long as housing values keep going up 15% a year, which is completely unrealistic.
It’s an asset class just like any other asset class. It’s cyclical, what goes up does come down in any investment asset class. So people wanted to put the blinders on, they paid no attention to that. As property values declined and all of these Wall Street Firms that are today bankrupt and are no longer in business, they were leveraging that debt, meaning they were borrowing more money to buy more debt.
So for this collapse, what is it all about, how does it affect you, the individual. How does it impact you the mortgage holder, it impacts you by saying does this strategy makes sense, should I refinance, can I get a better rate or should I look at a loan modification option. That’s the simple answer.
You go to the website and you do your due diligence then you call the guys at Velocity, the team at Velocity and you start working through the process, because I can tell you this from a financial advisory perspective. It’s all about efficiency; investment efficiency, tax efficiency, and interest rate efficiency. All these things are combined, and that is how you win the financial game, that’s how you stay ahead of the recession. That is how you create your own Velocity of Money, you have got to make the call. We have to look at these efficiencies.
So you’ve got all the way down to where the money is broken down. Dan explained it on a technical level. You kind of broke it down a little bit more that we actually got to the point of the CDO? Actually explained what the CDO represents?
Well yes, we did, the CDO is a whole bunch of mortgages that a rating firm decided all had the same credit class. Well let me ask you a question, I have heard a lot of buzz about these rating firms not having a standard
I will interject on that one because that is absolutely correct, the rating firms, Standard and Poors, Moody’s, Fitch’s. These are the companies that are responsible to call a security or bond or CDO as A paper all the way down to C paper. It’s actually rated all the way from ‘Triple A’ to ‘Triple B’, the low rating. Triple B is you’ve heard the term junk bond? They don’t call them that so much anymore. It’s not politically correct to say junk-bond, but you’ve heard them called high yield after Milkin went to jail, the scandals and all these things, so yes there is a politically correct spin that is associated with it. So now these rating agencies have been called into question, their objectivity, they’ve been called into question as to how they arrived at this rating, they’ve been called into question on all these things, so that investors are sitting out there saying okay so these ratings are bogus… Part 6 – Is Inflation coming soon?
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Part 4 – Now, I put the colorful title on “How to Screw the Bank that Screwed You” for no other reason than to get people to click on it to get the information, because frankly, a lot of people were given really bad loans, were given really bad advice, and sometimes you have to fight back.
Here is one of the things and again I’ll try to make this as uncomplicated as possible. Let’s say you bought the house and you got the loan through a mortgage broker. Well that mortgage broker didn’t really give you the loan. They bought that loan from a wholesaler of mortgages. That wholesaler of mortgages, in turn bought that loan from one of those big huge Wall Street banks, most of which are out of business right now.
Important thing to point out if I may, Velocity Financial is a mortgage broker, we do get our money from several wholesale banks, I just wanted to point that out because we’re glad we’re a broker.
Just to continue the analogy. So the broker buys it from a wholesaler, who buys it from the Wall Street bank, and like I said, most of them are out of business now. And what the Wall Street bank did with thousands of these loans worth billions of dollars, they put them all together into what is known as mortgage backed securities. That is the stuff you hear like Fannie Mae is selling and there is an interest rate put on them, and what happened to these mortgage backed securities is they in-turn were bought up by other Wall Street banks, combined with other mortgage backed securities and they were called collateralized debt obligations.
Well then these brainiacs on Wall Street decided to chop these collateralized debt obligations up into what is referred to as tranches. So let’s say you had your best quality ‘Triple A’ borrowers in the top tranch . And obviously your ‘Triple Z’ borrowers were in the bottom tranch. Each one of them was given a specific interest rate, each one of them was rated by a bond rating firm, and each one of them was given insurance.
Well, what happens is as these got split up and sold over time the notes on the mortgages go with the debt itself. So CDO over in Bangladesh owns your mortgage now, but here is the problem, they don’t have the paperwork.
So the reason I went through this whole story is in case your bank comes to you and says we’re going to foreclose what you want to do is go and get yourself an attorney and you want this attorney to go to this bank and say “we want you to prove to us that you have “standing””, that they have the legal right to come after you and foreclose on you. And here is the thing, if they don’t have the paperwork, if they don’t have the note on the property, they can’t prove that they have “standing”. So whether it’s the wholesaler, who is foreclosing on you, whether it’s the servicer, whoever it is, chances are very good that they don’t have this note.
So again, he got a little complicated. You want to go to the website mortgageanswerman.com and there are several articles there, and a lovely little chart that I drew up, except that it will be much nicer than this piece of paper, and I will have all the information there. I had a friend just recently who was in foreclosure and she made the phone call, and she said, you cannot foreclose on me without the original note. Now eventually it got foreclosed on, but it delayed it several months until they were able to find that note. Chances are they may never be able to find that note.
And in many states, including Florida and Ohio they are very successful at using this tactic to stop or completely do-away-with the foreclosure sale. We don’t necessarily want to encourage people to go down this path, right? We’re looking for a stall essentially?
Well, hopefully no one will ever have to get to that point. But if you believe that your servicer, your mortgage company is not being nice to you. Especially if you call them up and want to do a loan modification, and they are dragging their feet, filing foreclosure and coming after you, you have to protect yourself. And this is one of the ways you can protect yourself by hiring an attorney and suing them for “lack of standing”
That is one of the things that I want to talk about that Velocity Financial is involved with a national network of attorneys who do this sort of work. Velocity Financial does not charge an upfront fee for these types of loan modifications, we do hire an attorney and they work with the national network of attorneys to work on your behalf. They do charge a retainer, of course, if they are going to fight for you they need to be paid, however, there are no upfront fees… Part 5 – Bond Rating Agencies
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Part 3 – Now we were talking in the previous segments about the current economy and the pitfalls. Let’s talk about that more deeply, these jobs numbers. What should we make of this?
You know, it’s an interesting point, I keep hearing the media spin that this is the next Great Depression, talking about bread and soup lines and free government cheese and all that kind of stuff. That is absurd to me. The actual jobless number that was reported before the end of November for the past month reached a higher level for us as a country of 6.7%. There were 530,000 jobs lost during that month, but when you put that in the context of the 6.7% onto other historic recessions that number is still quite low. Yes it’s tough, I get that, but we were riding high for so long that we tend to forget that and think this is as bad as its ever been.
Yes we got accustomed to job creation and this euphoria existed in the United States for decades. And that’s fine. These are economic cycles that will continue to happen into the future. This is nothing new. To say this is a new place for the United States to be economically speaking, that is absurd. This definitely is a slowdown, this is definitely a recession. It might even be in depression, but what people fail to realize is how resilient this economy is and what this represents.
This show is dedicated to the home buyer, everything mortgage and real estate related. Well let’s put that into context. In the first segment Dan was talking about the effects of his data and what that represents and what the median home price represents in Maricopa County specifically. So if you take that data and start to look at the people who still have a job, still have the ability to pay a mortgage – the buying opportunity that we need to address is real. So how do you end a recession in the United States? How do you end a recession for you? You pay your bills, you tighten your consumerism up a little bit, so you are not spending money on credit or leveraging yourself, you do buy a house which will be an appreciating asset.
And I know everybody likes to talk about how houses are never going to go back up in value again, really? That is totally absurd as well. Returning to a little bit of a normal level is what we’re experiencing and to put this into context for the listening audience. This is the time to consider a purchase of a home or consider a refinance of a home. If you are struggling, financially speaking, the loan modification options and those things that this show represents, it’s more about the truth, not this spin that I am frankly quite sick of hearing about everyday.
The reasons why a year ago we started doing this radio show and going on the air. You have been here for quite a few of the shows. And we talk about all things financial, and all things real estate. We’re kind of here to offset the media stuff, the stuff that sells. People don’t necessarily want to hear it, but it’s kind of like a train wreck. You know you’ve got to look. And so people listen to the media. A perfect analogy.
Well, and one of the things that I deal with everyday, unfortunately, it’s the flip side of what you guys are talking about. One of the things I think is really important to talk to people about is the many different ways that we can help people who are having problems with their homes, who are having the foreclosures filed, who are behind in their payments. Loan modification of course is one of the ways, Short sales are another way, even something as simple as giving one of us a call, bouncing some ideas off of us about what you have going on. What is going to happen if unfortunately I am going to lose my house? What is going to happen after that? How do I clean up my credit? Things like that.
The other day, I was going through a bunch of materials and I found something that’s becoming more and more prevalent, out in the courts of America today. You know this might get slightly complicated, but all you need to know is on my website mortgageanswerman.com there will be this information under the banner… Part 4 – MBS’s, CDO’s and Tranches
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Part 2 – And Michael as we mentioned before I’m in the middle of writing a book that is entitled “Real Estate’s Future”. And again what it is, is essentially a scoring model, where we have taken hundreds of different factors, enter them all together and what we look at is that this model can actually call the top and bottom of the real estate market. With this model we were actually able to call the top of the real estate market in Phoenix, Arizona six months before it happened.
Now we’re working on creating a national model. What we’re seeing today in the building numbers is that they came out really bad. And there was something on Zillow the other day that said that Americans have lost trillions of dollars in real estate value. And its easy to get all emotional about this especially if you’re one of those people who are losing their homes. And you are one of the people in trouble, but eventually we will get to the bottom market again. Hopefully by then I’ll have my Book complete and we will be able to warn people that we think it’s going to be the bottom of the market.
I always joke about, you know it’s the bottom of the market when something happens called “capitulation”. When essentially everyone has given up, and if you’ll both recall when we were at the top of the market back in 2005-2006 you couldn’t go to a party without having at least 10 people tell you about all the real estate that they were buying, and all the millions of dollars that they were making.
And now my definition of when we’re going to hit the bottom is when you go to a party you tell someone you are going to buy some real estate and they all take you out back and slap you around because the think you’ve gone crazy. And that’s how you are really going to know that we have hit the bottom. Because you are not going to know we have hit the bottom until long after we have.
So I think that right now is the absolute fabulous time, especially for first time home buyers to jump in there. I said my brother went out the other day and picked up a couple of repos for like $30,000 apiece. One of them, he moved tenant in to a week later. It was broom it out, paint and carpet, and put the tenant in the house.
Now, to tie this all back into the economy you mentioned the jobs market. Do you have those numbers? I do and one of the things that still sticks out in my mind from the previous broadcast last week is Dan pointed out some numbers talking about housing sales in Maricopa County as compared to this time a year ago, and what those numbers represent now, that number has actually increased pretty significantly.
And when I looked at and started thinking through the process of what that means in terms of the marketplace, the real estate market specifically, there is a number of positive influences that the media sure is not going to sell any papers with, that’s why it’s become such an important discussion. Dan, do you still have information about this?
Yes I do still have those numbers here and that’s one of the things that we look at in the book that I am working on writing, “Real Estate’s Future”. And actually if you want to get on the list to get a free copy of the book, I am going to give away the first hundred copies for free. You can go to my website, realestatesfuture.com and just put in your e-mail address and your name and I’ll make sure you get a copy as soon as were done printing it, which could honestly be more than a few months from now. But I’m guessing before we see the bottom of this market.
But one of the things we look at is year over year home sales. In the last six months we have seen home sales increase from ‘07 to ’08, in some cases, 30 to 40% per month, the home sales have gone up. And at the same time were seeing the median home price come down to the $150,000-$160,000 range. Now we’re definitely in a place where the median income family can go out there and afford to buy that house. When you have 78% of the houses selling for less than $250,000, virtually every family in Maricopa County can afford to buy one of those houses… Part 3 – Media Hype and Property Values
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Part 1 – Thanks to my very great friend Brett Fallon for taking the time to be here in studio today. Brett is one of America’s finest financial advisors. And of course the infamous Dan Havey. Now we all love Dan Havey because he was instrumental in getting me into the mortgage industry about 14 years ago. Most importantly, Dan was instrumental in helping us put together the loan modification hotline and he is the author of “Real Estate’s Future”.
So today we have a few things we want discussed in regard to the economy, what’s happened, we’re wrapping up the year. You may have heard about this in the media, of course the media’s job is to scare you. Well our job is to tell you the truth. So Brett you have some data and some information that you wanted to share
Some of the things you hear in the media, you can’t escape, its pretty much doom and gloom, sky is falling, this is the next Great Depression. It’s over for all of us and we should all just pack up and go. That kind of stuff is pervasive out there and creates fear and a lot of anxiety amongst people who are either investors, people who are looking to buy a house, looking to refinance a mortgage.
People don’t realize there are certain tools that exist that we will talk about during the course of the show today. They should understand that some of the things that we discussed prior to today’s broadcasts were interest rates. Interest rates are at historic lows. Money is cheaper right now than it has ever been. We know the Fed recently reduced the Fed Funds Rate and that is the rate that banks are lending money to one another at.
Right now that rate is zero. Historically, that’s never happened in the United States before. The Fed’s idea is to help to unfreeze this credit market and we keep hearing all this talk about how credit markets are still frozen, that the global recession is deepening, there is evidence to the contrary of that. Some of the moves that the FED is making are working. We’re starting to see, and you and I were talking recently about some clients that were helping in terms of refinancing existing mortgages. Well, if the credit markets are frozen how come we got those loans complete?
Well, that’s a good point, and you got a call I think it was last Monday or maybe the Monday before, someone called you and asked if there was any money to refinance. What can I do? Well the reality of it is there is plenty of money out there for refinances, in some cases there’s issues with property values. That’s why there are different options for those types of people
Well from a buyer’s perspective, today’s property valuation is a good thing, if I’m a buyer. That’s a good point too. People are interested in buying and the huge opportunity today. This is an unprecedented opportunity in my opinion, both in terms of the dollar and the real estate market. And for those who understand those dynamics and are willing to entertain the deal, they will be handsomely rewarded. There is no doubt about it.
And as we spoke on the last show, home prices in November for Maricopa County show that the median home price is down as low as $160,000 already. And it reminds me a lot about when I got into the industry, way back in 1989 and the type of financing we had then was FHA and Fannie Mae. And we’re back to that again now. We’ve got sanity back into the market and home prices have come down. But right now, it’s a perfect time, especially for first-time home buyers or a move up buyer who can buy under the Fannie Mae limit of $417,000. If you can get into that range, and as we spoke before that 78% of the homes in Maricopa County that sold last month sold for under $250,000. I think that right now is the time just to get out there and find a house to move your family and children into with an FHA loan.
Michael, you don’t have to have exactly perfect credit do you? You can have a couple of dings if need be, right? You’re exactly right, each case has its own merits, every FHA loan is underwritten individually. There are many cases where collections are okay, there needs to be a explanation. You don’t have to have the 720 plus credit scores like you do for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get the best rates… Part 2 – Bottom of the Market?
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