The purpose of this blog is to provide timely mortgage advice. You can ask me questions and I'll provide answers based on being a licensed broker in the business since 1990.
Currently, the mortgage lenders are tightening their underwriting standards which are beginning to affect borrowers who need stated income or no income verificaton type loans. Two states (Colorado and Minnesota) have already passed legislation that is so restrictive that some lenders have pulled the plug on those loans in those states. I would suggest that if you are planning on a stated income type loan, you might get moving on it. Rates are going up anyway so you might as well act on it. A lot of you financed 5 year ARM's in recent years and should be looking at refinancing those, especially with values dropping locally as well. Some people are going to lose the ability to refinance high loan to value loans.
Oddly, another gaining trend with lenders is the lender waiving appraisals. The way this works is the lender's computer is able to go onto the county's data base and see what the county values the property at. If there is enough value there the lender's computer sometimes waives the requirement for an appraisal. This too might be a time sensitive opportunity. Currently in my opinion, values are softening. But the values in the county's database are not reflecting that. So, in some cases this would benefit borrower's. I can't see this lasting too long, at some point the lender's are going to realize the county's values are sometimes higher than in "real life".
You can email me with questions I'll gladly answer at mackr@charter.net
Mack Ransom Mortgage, LLC
541-488-0340
MackRansomMortgage.com
