10 Ways to Lose Your Home
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
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Comments
This is a little off topic but I think people will find this info useful. My husband and I have been looking for a house in the Portland area and at first we were using Zillow, but after getting valuations that were not very accurate I tried housefront.com and found the information much more reliable. I was even able to use my cell phone to text message information about homes while we were driving around.
I have used housefront as well. It’s useful for getting the details on a house and the seller’s information immediately delivered to your cell phone, but the value hasn’t always been accurate.