FHA Relaxes Anti-Flipping Rule

Beginning Feb. 1, the Federal Housing Administration will provide mortgage insurance for some purchases in which the seller bought the property and held it for fewer than 90 days.

The agency is changing what is known as the “anti-flipping rule” to speed up sales of renovated homes in communities with too many bank-owned and foreclosed homes, says FHA Commissioner David H. Stevens.

Waiving the 90-day rule will encourage private investors to buy vacant properties, fix them up, and quickly sell them to buyers who will be eligible to buy them using FHA financing.

FHA’s change “is going to be absolutely terrific” for first-time home buyers hoping to take advantage of the tax credit, says Bobby Taylor, an associate with Coldwell Banker Mountain West Real Estate in Salem, Ore.

Source: Washington Post (01/30/2010)

REALTOR® Magazine-Daily News-Loan Modifications Hit Credit Scores

Applying for a mortgage modification and being in a months-long trial period can devastate a home owner’s credit score.

Under the government plan, troubled borrowers can have their mortgage payments reduced to 31 percent of their pre-tax income. They are first put in a trial modification for several months to test whether they can meet the requirements of the new mortgage.
Borrowers who were previously current on their mortgages will see their FICO scores fall about 100 points while they are in the trial period, according to the Treasury Department. Borrowers who were previously late or missed payments will see their scores fall more, the government says.

The longer a borrower is in the trial period, the greater the impact on their credit scores, Once the modification is approved, the borrowers’ mortgage credit status will be listed as current and that should improve their scores, the Mortgage Bankers Association explains.
Even so, the delinquency remains on credit reports for up to seven years and can make getting credit for something else like a car difficult and expensive, borrowers report.

Source: CNNMoney.com, Tami Luhby (12/28/2009)

You can view more info about this at the news 3 website.

Sorry but I have a lot to say

It seems the game has changed overnight since the banks got their Federal Government bailout and they are cooperating less and less with a viable short sale, opting instead to string the process along until foreclosure is the only options.

I know this seems counter intuitive. Wouldn’t the banks want to save the cost of legal fees to complete a foreclosure and the costs of having the property sit on the market for what could be months in a declining market, potentially incur loss in value, the cost of repairs, and then the cost of paying real estate commission, vandalism, back taxes, and back Home Owners Association (HOA) dues.

In a Short Sale, the buyer is already here; ready to purchase and although the bank will incur some of these same costs such as closing costs and commissions, they save on legal fees and the cost of the property sitting on the market and deteriorating in value.

It doesn’t seem to make sense, but it is exactly what is happening. I’ve seen Loan Servicers willing to blow a deal that’s been in place for months over $1500 or less. I’m going to share with you a basic short sale process step by step and then explain how the lenders are benefiting from the manner in which they are delaying and not approving Short Sales.

First, in a Short Sale it’s important to remember you are dealing with the middleman, your Loan Serving Company, which in most cases does not own the loan, so much like the secretary that blocks your access to speak with the CEO, the “Loan Servicer” blocks your access to speak with the owner of the loan; the “Investor” which could be a pension fund, a Government backed Lender such as Fannie Mae, or even a private bank.

Each Loan Servicer has their own process, but all and it is starts out with the borrower either being in default and/or listing your home for sale. Next, the borrower’s Real Estate Agent must start what we call the “Faxing Campaign.” This is not your every day fax and many agents will not have the technology necessary to get through even this first step.

The Loan Servicer will request at a bare minimum what amounts to 70 to 100 plus page package depending on the program at the time. The Loan Servicers have been insistent in receiving the requested documents via fax only, despite technology such as email. This is just the first road block the Loan Servicer takes to delay and stall the process and force Home Owners into Foreclosure.

The documents may be required include: a hardship letter, your mortgage statements, two years of tax returns, bank statements, pay stubs, or P&L if self employed, and other additional items, such as utility bills or insurance bills.

Once you’ve faxes the 100 or so pages the Loan Servicer will advise you it takes a few weeks to be scanned or imaged into their system before they can see it. Of course when you call back a few days later, they haven’t received the fax and request it to be re-sent. These games can last for months if you do as they ask, and wait a few days and check to see if it shows up in the system.

The insanity of this practice in itself is evidence of Loan Servicer’s unwillingness to cooperate and a clear act of bad faith. I’ve have this conversations with almost every major bank, Countrywide, Bank of America, Indymac, Chase, Citibank, Coldwell Bank, GMAC, and more and the process is consistent. Why? If they deny receiving the faxed package the timeline in which they are required to start working on it doesn’t start.

I’ve been given every excuse from “we don’t know where the fax went, to “just try again” to “it’s not our fault you don’t know how to use a fax” and my personal favorite, “just because you have a confirmation of 100 pages faxed on your end doesn’t mean we got it our end.” In fact that is exactly what a confirmation of fax means, but I digress.

The requirement to fax docs just so they can be come out to a scanning department only to be re-scanned into the system is outdated at best and just moronic, especially when I’m faxing an already digital copy. There should be no need to print and re-scanned just to be uploaded to the proper location. This is a day and age when I can scan it and email with a bar code so it will go directly to proper upload location, or even an email as a pdf so it can be saved to the proper location on the server and it takes them 2 to 3 months or longer to find the documents faxed.

The Loan Servicers continue to insist on the archaic system of faxing and re scanning and then wonder why pages are lost and illegible.

Our solution is to create a document with a cover sheet on each item the Loan Servicer has requested and using software we digital fax in .pdf format repeatedly once a day until they acknowledge having received them. They receive multiple copies of our fax package, which the theory that statistically they must be able to find one of the many sent. Although there have been time we’ve been forced to resort to FedEx and even after being presented with a tracking number and signature it took over 6 weeks for the documents to show up in the system at the call centers.

Once the Loan Servicer has finally admitted to receiving the Short Sale Package with the requested documents, which include an offer, the next step is to have them assign a negotiator and order an appraisal and/or a BPO (Broker Price Opinion). Most of the time there are three phases to the process.

You must repeatedly request to be assigned a negotiator or you may never hear from them again. If one is assigned and they do not look at the file within a 20 day time period it goes back into the pool and may get reassigned. Persistence is key.

And even once they’ll ordered an appraisal and/or BPO, I have seen them lose, misplace, be unable to retrieve, or see in their system the appraisal once it’s completed for more than 2 months. The first excuse you get is it’s not back yet and that it can take 7 to 10 days before it’s scanned into the system. Then the excuses become more vague after about 4 weeks with responses such as “well I see the appraisal came in, but there is no value on it” I’m extremely persistent and it has taken as much a daily call for 12 weeks before I was able to get a supervisor to make a phone call and within 10 minutes or 24 hours in a couple of cases the appraisals became magically available. Of course they are now 8 to 10 weeks old so, the next delay tactic starts.

The Loan Servicer will state “since the appraisal if from 8 or 10 weeks ago: they will need a 2nd because it will expire before they can complete the Short Sale Approval process.” It probably goes without saying but the 2nd appraisal /BPO generally takes another 6 to 10 weeks with the same run around, all the while, the home owner has taxes and HOA bills being paid with money the Home Owner can’t afford or going to collections in default making it that much harder to close if and when an approval ever comes.

All of this leads to the next step which puts the entire process into a tail spin. The Loan Servicer now advises that all the home owner “Borrowers: financial documents previously sent are out-dated due to the time it has taken to get to where we are in the process which for all insensitive purposes is nowhere.

So now we must launch yet another “Faxing Campaign” with updated everything, from tax returns (if new ones have been filed), new pay stubs, new monthly breakdown of income and expenses, new company current YTD P&L (if self employed), new bank statements, updated hardship letter if situation has changed, and on and on it goes.

Once they finally admit to receiving these documents, months have often passed. It’s like they have an entire department of people in room full of scanners and fax machines with the papers flying out of the fax machine full speed, so fast they can’t catch them all in time and those they miss are sucked out of the room by a giant vacuum before they can be scanned, never to be seen and again. The pages they do catch must be rescanned into their system into the correct place holder. It’s just painful.

And then the kicker is, after all the months have passed and all the docs have been lost repeatedly and the Loan Servicer finally comes back with an approval with counter offer that asks for $10k or $15k higher than the property comps causing appraisal issues, or they take so long by the time they give you an approval letter the buyers have moved on. Even if you have an approval and even if you get another offer with exactly the same net proceeds the Loan Servicer will make you start over in many cases. Why you ask, because they say because it’s a different offer. The fact is the entire process is a total joke. Why?

The Loan Servicers do not want to complete the Home Owners Short Sale. One fact, they don’t want to have to hire additional staff to staff a department that’s sole responsibility to lose money as a Short Sale is from the Lenders perspective accepting less than owed on a debt.

But here’s what you don’t know, the Investors in many cases have purchased Mortgage Insurance (MI) on these loans. While the MI carrier wants the Short Sale to go through the Loan Servicer gets paid in full if it doesn’t go through allowing the insurance policy to payout.

Additionally, many of these servicing agreements are long standing and have bonuses to the Loan Servicer to foreclosure instead of approving short sales, which made sense when a home owner may have been foreclosed on due to a job loss and the home was worth more than originally purchased for or the home owners had equity in the home because they purchased conventionally with 20% before the new age of subprime lending and exotic loans.

But The Loan Servicers benefit further, if they accept a Short Sale, they can sell the Deficiency to a collection agency and get paid up front, while the collection agency gets the Deficiency Judgment and tries to collect on the debt.

They are also asking for cash up front or out of escrow to close the deal, or a promissory note from the home owner.

Then the investor then gets to 1099 you for the deficiency (the different between your mortgage balance and the net proceeds) and while this 1099 is taxable to you, it is a tax write off to them, just as if they’d paid an independent contractor.

And lastly, the one that really stings is while they collect the proceeds from the Short Sale, and ruin your credit in the process, and while they sell you deficiency for cash, and take it as a tax write off while you get the tax bill, they also get what to date amounts to Trillions in Government Bailout money. Your tax dollars or in this case, printed money the Government is making to give away without a single condition or requirement that they cooperate or act in good faith during these turbulent times as record numbers of Home Owners lose their homes.

Clearly, the government bailout money was not used to buy bad loads, complete loan modifications. If you read the news, three weeks after BofA took $15 Billion in Government Bailout money they invested $24 Billion giving them a 20% stake in the largest Construction Bank in China. Yes, you hear that right, China.

President Obama has made it clear that the Government bailout money was to help owner-occupied home owners, not “those people” referring to investors, never taking into account that Small businesses make up more than 99.7% of all employers and create more than 50 percent of the non-farming private gross domestic product (GDP).

These small business owners in many cases are “those people” that invested their life savings into real estate not as a gamble but as a retirement plan. After all many of us, may have gotten caught in the crash of real estate market, but we are not naive enough to think Social Security will be around when the time comes and we need it.
So Buyers we hope you are a saint and have the patience to stick with it and not write 10 other offers and pull out after 3 months. Banks if you’re listening you get paid 4 times over for each loan.

Question for the Banks: Is it really worth it to fight a Short Sale so hard over $100 or $1500 that the Buyer not only loses the home and is forced into foreclosure adding additional fees and costing your more? I’d be surprised what your shareholders would say. The longer this crisis lasts the real estate industry will continue to lose as agents, lenders, escrow agents, and title officers who try to close deals with services who aren’t cooperating for months only not to get paid.

By Olivia McClellan, Broker/Property Manager
Copyright © Triple8 Associates Inc. 2009

City Center VDara Makes History on the Strip

News on Nevada Foreclosure Mediation Program via Channel 4

Yesterday, the RJ posted a small piece buried in the back pages talking about the meager 15% or so that some banks have modifyed loans and others have modified ZERO.  Yes that is right ZERO,  they have taken the bailout money and not modified ONE LOAN.

Download the article and pdf…

If you aren’t serious angry with the oversight and they way the banks are flagrantly using taxpayers money for their own purposes something is seriously wrong.  I have more articles posted on www.OliviaSellsVegas.com under Investors that shows how Bank of Ameria invested Billions just weeks after receiving the bailout money,  the ex-countrywide executive who left and took employees only to start a company which business model was to buy bad loans and resell them for a profit.  Are you kidding me?

In one of the articles the writer posed a question:  “Would a bank give you a loan without knowing how you were going to use it?”   Of course not so why did the Obama Adminstration give out Billions with no guarantee they used to assist www.hopenow.com or help for homeowners?

Admin

What has your mortgage holder done for you lately? Is it Wells Fargo, Indy Mac, Bank of America AKA Countywide, or host of others. Some of the smaller ones are participating in the myrid of programs put out by Obama but the big ones aren’t participating.

Have you tried to do a refi or a loan modification? Been denied?

Have you had to fax documents into your mortgagee and they don’t respond or get your faxes. When you call in to ask they tell you 21 days to get faxes imaged into the system and call back.

Give me some feedback of what you are hearing whether you are doing it yourself a real estate agent or attorney.

Knowledge is Power.

http://www.hopenow.com

Bad loans still make money – Jul 30, 2009 12:06 PM — Scott Jagow

A group of former Countrywide people launched an IPO today with their new company, PennyMac. Take one guess at what they’re doing. And while we’re at it, let’s talk about why the government’s loan modification program isn’t working.

PennyMac is based in Calabasas, California (sound familiar?), and it plans to make money by buying up failing home mortgages from failed banks and then restructuring the loans. From Forbes/Reuters:

PennyMac’s chief executive is Stanford Kurland, a former president and chief operating officer of Countrywide. At least 10 other top PennyMac officials are alumni of Countrywide, which was also based in Calabasas.

Countrywide was once the largest U.S. mortgage lender, but its aggressive lending practices are widely considered to be a major cause of the nation’s housing crisis.

PennyMac’s business has drawn the attention of critics who have accused Kurland and other Countrywide alumni of trying to profit from a housing crisis they helped create.

Do investors have faith in the crew the second time around? Well, in May, PennyMac predicted its IPO would raise $750 million. It netted $320 million. But the company has raised hundreds of millions from private investors as well, so some people believe PennyMac will find a way to profit.

And why not? What’s left of the mortgage business seems to be doing just fine. The New York Times reports that one reason the government’s loan mod program isn’t going very well is that mortgage companies collect tons of fees on delinquent mortgages:

“It frustrates me when I see the government looking to the servicer for the solution, because it will never ever happen,” said Margery Golant, a Florida lawyer who defends homeowners against foreclosure and who worked in the law department of a major mortgage company, Ocwen Financial. “I don’t think they’re motivated to do modifications at all. They keep hitting the loan all the way through for junk fees. It’s a license to do whatever they want.”

More from the article:

“If they do a loan modification, they get a few shekels from the government,” said David Dickey, who led a mortgage sales team at Countrywide and Bank of America, leaving in March to start his own mortgage advisory firm, National Home Loan Advocates. By contrast, he said, the road to foreclosure is lined with fees, especially if it is prolonged. “There’s all sorts of things behind the scenes,” he said…

“For many subprime servicers, late fees alone constitute a significant fraction of their total income and profit,” said Diane E. Thompson, a lawyer for the National Consumer Law Center, in testimony to the Senate Banking Committee this month. “Servicers thus have an incentive to push homeowners into late payments and keep them there: if the loan pays late, the servicer is more likely to profit.”

One more note on a semi-related subject. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Senate has subpoenaed Goldman Sachs, Deutsche and other banks to inquire about possible fraud in the mortgage market:

The congressional investigation appears to focus on whether internal communications, such as email, show bankers had private doubts about whether mortgage-related securities they were putting together were as financially sound as their public pronouncements suggested. Collapsing values for many of those securities played a big role in precipitating last year’s financial crisis.

If they can’t prove fraud, how about absolute and utter negligence?

$877 PAYMENT FOR SOME NEVADANS

About 3,500 Countrywide Financial borrowers who lost Nevada homes in foreclosure can expect to receive checks for about $877 each early next year, the attorney general’s office said Friday.

The payments are part of a settlement announced in October with Countrywide over deceptive practices in making subprime, first home loans to borrowers around the country.

Subprime loans are those made to consumers with low credit ratings.

Former Countrywide subprime borrowers who lost their homes to foreclosure are expected to receive notices in a few days, Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto said in a statement.

To qualify, the first payment on the loan must have been due between Jan. 1, 2004, and Dec. 31, 2007. The borrowers must have lost their homes through foreclosure, a short sale or a deed in lieu of foreclosure. A short sale occurs when the lender allows the homeowner to sell the home for less than the amount owed.

Bank of America acquired Countrywide in July 2008 after the end of the period specified in the lawsuit.

The bank agreed to pay $150 million to borrowers in 39 states who went through foreclosure. Nevada was allocated $3 million for 3,467 former homeowners. In addition, the bank offered mortgage loan modifications to Countrywide borrowers and relocation assistance to some customers.

Consumers may phone Rust Consulting at 866-411-6987 or vis countrywidesettlementinfo.com to get more information about the foreclosure settlement.

JOHN G. EDWARDS LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

They have a few songs on Sandra Bullocks new movie “The Proposal”

This week Federal prosecutors said they would not pursue criminal charges against Beazer Homes USA Inc. as long as the company remains in compliance with an agreement to pay up to $50 million in restitution to homebuyers who were allegedly taken advantage of by the builder’s in-house mortgage company.

Who will be next?   Kimball Hills, not a chance their mortgage company changed names twice then closed it’s doors before any buyers came forward based on some of the appraisals we have seen.

Stay tuned for the next mortgage company to get caught pushing loans through, losing documentation and selling the loans on the secondary market faster than you can image.

This is why many real estate attorneys are having their clients demand their loan servicer to produce the original note signed.  If you loan has been sold 3,4 or 5 times what is the possiblity of them finding it?      You got it.

Ask me more.

We can tell you stories about starting, working through the process of completing a short sale in Las Vegas over the past year.  The Obama Administration has announced a “Uniform Procedures” which makes complete sense since every lender has a different procedure making the process more difficult.

If the borrower dosent qualify to have their loans modified it will give them options such as short sale or deed in lieu of foreclosure.   You can click on this link for a full briefing on the program

There are roughly over 25% of the local MLS Listings in the Greater Las Vegas MLS listed as Short Sales with the remainder being REO or Bank Owned Properties so the demand is there.   Most of the homes purchased since 2004 are underwater by 30% or more.  Different parts of Las Vegas may be hit harder to the tune of 60% or more underwater on the mortgages.

If you are selling your home and you owe more than it is worth, contact us today and we can discuss the short sale process.  We have a implemented a process to streamline the transfer or information from the borrower to Triple8 Associates then on to the lender all via a secure online process to do our best to close your transation in the shortest timeframe.

We can be reached at 702-372-2671 or visit our Website www.Triple8 Associates.com.

Smith Center to break ground – Concert hall, theater building to be completed sometime early 2012

A groundbreaking for the long-awaited Smith Center for the Performing Arts has been tentatively scheduled for May 26, with construction on the concert hall and theater building expected to be complete by early 2012.

The center is to be the anchor of Union Park, a 61-acre development in downtown Las Vegas on what used to be a Union Pacific railroad yard.

Plans for the center include a 2,050  seat multipurpose main hall, an education building that will house a 300-seat cabaret theater, and a 200  seat flexible studio theater for rehearsals, children’s theater and community events.

Great News for First-Time Home Buyers!

HUD recently announced that qualified First-Time Home Buyers who want to take advantage of the available tax credit of up to $8,000 now have another option available to them to help them become homeowners.

It’s clear that first-time home buyers have been having a major impact on the housing market this year. The National Association of Realtors announced that first-time buyers, who typically account for less than 40% of home sales each year, have been especially busy…in March, homes that were purchased by first-timers accounted for 53% of all sales, and this percentage is expected to hold true for all of 2009.

With home affordability higher than ever, available tax credits and some of the lowest interest rates ever recorded for home loans, who can blame them? Particularly as a first-time buyer, there may never be a better time to buy a home than right now.

However, the availability of a tax credit, while a great incentive, does not put the money in the hands of a buyer right away. HUD’s announcement now allows for prospective and qualified home buyers to borrow the money from approved agencies and lenders.

While details of participating lenders and HUD-approved agencies are not yet available, this should turn up the heat on prospective buyers to get busy searching for their next home. As further details become available, I will get them to you.

In the meantime, alert your database that one more barrier to homeownership is being removed and the time to start shopping is now!

Sincerely,

Matthew Mauzy
Signature One Mortgage
(702) 453-1111
mmauzy@sigonemtg.com

Bank of America, which bought Countrywide Home Loans last year, has officially changed the lender’s name to Bank of America Home Loans. So if you have an old countrywide lenders email address that was name_lastname@countrywide…. be sure to update it to name.lastname@bankofamer….  so it get’s to them.   Now whether or not the look at it or add it to the file is a whole nother story.

This category undefined because here lies some crazy photos taken in Vegas, not real estate related but out there.

Frank Ghery – Lou Ruvo Brain Institute

LOAN MODIFICATION: Plan aims to help homeowners threatened with foreclosure
Loan modification plan aims to help homeowners skirt foreclosure By HUBBLE SMITH
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL – Read this article online or view highlighted areas on a pdf version I have marked so you review some of the hot topics.

On a day to day basis working with multiple banks via loan servicing companies like countrywide, spf and others help is not coming soon. The bills passing bailing out big businesses is just that leaving you and I the tax payers paying the price.    More to come as new programs are being released

Heard this somewhere, a funny comedian…

“Next time your buddy asks you to mooch a ride to the airport, crash at your place or help him move, tell him/her the following:

You are a grown up, so

- Call a Cab
- Rent a Room
- Hire a Mover”

President Obama announced changes new changes in the pipeline some becoming available March 4th.

The President spoke about curbing the tide of foreclosures and creating jobs.  The programs backed by Freddie and Fannie will focus on owner occupied properties using refinancing and other methods to keep families in their homes.    The President made it clear there would be no assistance for speculators, flippers or people who obtained loans who should have gotten them.  See Release by Associated Press Below.

Stimulus Package/ Home Ownership

Here are some of the details regarding the tax credit that have been released so far – The tax credit has been scaled down to $8,000 from $15,000, or 10% of the value of the home for any first time homebuyers who purchase homes from the start of the year until the end of November.  It starts phasing out for couples with incomes above $150,000 and single filers with incomes above $75,000.  Buyers will have to repay the credit if they sell their homes within three years.  More details are to come, and we will be sharing with you the impact of the stimulus plan once we go through the final version that is signed into law.

Home Loan rates hitting 4% to 4.5%

We have already learned that the government will not be able to drive rates to any specific number. In December everyone screamed rates will be at 4.5% and even though rates did come down that magic number was not achieved. Now we hear the rates will drop to 4%. Can we count on that? Not likely! Only the free market can drive rates to the 4% across the board. We have consistently seen rates between 5% and 5.5% since December.

If we see any Government PAID FOR PROGRAMS, it will be for first time home buyers or stimulus for home sales but with restrictions! Today it would cost 6 to 8 points to buy a rate down to 4.0%, the cost behind that is overwhelming! Can the government afford to pay that to sell a home? The good news… if anything does happen it will be to help home sales… not for current home owners! Customers better find a home today and get the ball rolling!

Matt Mauzy
Assistant Branch Manager
Signature One Mortgage, Inc.
5875 S. Rainbow Blvd Ste 110
Las Vegas NV 89118
702-453-1111 (P)
702-453-1107 (F)

The Harmon has been resized from 49 to 28 due to construction flaws.  The top floors were slated for

condos were cancelled restructuring The Harmon to a hotel only.     The other buildings that make up MGM Mirage City Center, Aria Resort & Casino 61 Stories and 57 story Vdara Condo Hotel.

More as the story continues

You may be eligible for a tax credit of up to $7,500*.

If you’re a first-time home buyer (or haven’t owned a home in the past three years), the housing bill may enable you to receive this valuable tax credit.  Find out more about the first-time home buyer tax credit.

Please give us a call one of our knowledgable real estate professionals can assist you with finding a new home builder with fantastic incentives or refer you a list of mortgage professionals that can advise you on prequalifing for a mortgage and receiving this tax credit.