10 Ways to Lose Your Home

Very few home buyers want to hear their agent say, "Hey, you could lose your home." But more agents should explain how this could happen on the front end, even if buyers put up a resistance.

I talked to a loan officer yesterday about her increased volume of refinance activity. She's been inundated with requests to get rid of those nasty adjustable-rate second mortgages with prepayment penalties. These loans came into existence about 10 years ago, and by 2005, almost half of the first-time home buyer loans utilized 100% financing through an 80% first and a 20% second mortgage.

This loan officer had received a phone call from a woman who had bought her home several years ago. Both of her loans were adjustable, and she was spending 90% of her take-home pay on mortgage payments. To add insult to injury, if the home owner refinanced, she'd get slapped by hefty prepayment penalties on both loans.

There were a number of people involved in that transaction who could have pulled that home buyer aside and cautioned her. But nobody did. Not the agents, nor the escrow officer nor her loan officer, nobody stepped up to the plate. That's shameful and a poor reflection on the quality people in the real estate business. However, there are other ways to lose your home apart from lousy financing, and here are nine more . . . read more

More Articles by Elizabeth Weintraub, click below:

• 12 Ways to Find a Down Payment
  
• Open House Etiquette
  
• Home Start-Up Budgets

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_{At the time of writing, Elizabeth Weintraub, DRE # 00697006, is a Broker-Associate at Lyon Real Estate in Sacramento, California.}