Posts Tagged ‘houston fha’

FHA Loan Rundown

Monday, March 1st, 2010

If you are a first-time homebuyer, have less than perfect credit, or simply just do not have a 20% down-payment, then an FHA loan may be for you.

We know everything there is to know about FHA loans. While FHA has been the hot and “new” topic for the past few years, we have been doing FHA loans for over 10 years.

We know how important it is to make your home affordable and this is why we have chosen to excel in the FHA loan program.

With an FHA Loan, you get:

  • Low Down Payments
  • Great Interest Rates
  • Easier qualifications than normal financing

Whether you are looking to simply learn more about how much you can get approved for or needing to refinance out of your high interest rate loan, we can help!

We make the FHA mortgage process simple and stress-free by offering you great advice, great rates, great service, and most importantly, and great experience.

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Identity-of-Interest Transaction Down Payments

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

An Identity-of-Interest transaction is where a sales transaction is made between parties with family/business relationships.

To break it down very simply, and this is USUALLY always the case, when a family member sells to ANOTHER family member, FHA looks at that as an Identity-of-Interest Transaction.

I get at least 1-2 calls per month with this scenario, and want to post it on my mortgage blog to educate YOU, the consumer.

So even though FHA has a minimum down payment requirement of 3.5%, in THIS case, you would have to put down 15% percent.

Here is ONE of the exceptions to this rule:

1. The family member has rented the property for at least 6 months predating the contract, in which case a rental agreement will be needed.

If you are in this type of  situation and do not have the 15% to put down, feel free to contact me for more info and some other tips that may help you out!

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Very Crazy Week for FHA Mortgage Rates

Friday, January 30th, 2009

Rates are up, rates are down… they are even going left and right. What should YOU do?

Freddie Mac VP, Frank Nothaft said that rates were holding steady.

Well Franky my man, I disagree. Yes they may have held steady considering the economic reports that were coming out, but they DEFINITELY were moving. Maybe he was talking about the Fed Funds rate that stayed 0-.25%.

2 days ago, FHA rates were at 5%, now they are creeping up to 5.75%+.

How is that steady?

Yesterday the Fed bought around $16.8 billion in mortgage backed securities. You would think this would help mortgage rates, but completely the opposite. At one point yesterday, MBS was down about 98 basis points.

Hopefully everyone has been taking advantage of the rates while they were as low as they were, but now I’m predicting a slow, but steady increase within the next 3 months. Now is the best time to have a mortgage consultant watching the market and letting you know whats going on. One bad decision can cost YOU thousands in the long run.

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Quick FHA Fact

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

Military Income:

In addition to just the base pay, military personnel may be entitled to additional forms of compensation. Income from variable allowances, clothing allowances, flight or hazard pay, rations, and proficiency pay is acceptable, provided that its probability of continuance is just verified in writing. An additional consideration may be the tax-exempt nature of some of these payments which can be grossed up by 25%.

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Updates to 2009 FHA Mortgage Limits

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

As a result of the appeals process outlined in Mortgagee Letter 2008-36, single family mortgage limits for 2009 have been updated for 54 counties. Those counties represent five Metropolitan Statistical Areas and one non-metro county.  A listing of affected counties, with the final median prices and FHA (forward, non-HECM) loan limits for 2009 is posted on HUD’s Website at: http://www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/sfh/fha2009.pdf

FHA accepted appeals for those counties where it did not already have a comprehensive listing of property sale transactions for the look-back period (January – August 2008), and where the median price from the transactions provided by the appellant was higher than the median price used in the preliminary loan-limit calculations completed by FHA last month. There were no changes to the 2009 HECM loan limits from these appeals. The HECM loan limit is the national conforming loan limit of $417,000 for all areas except for certain high-cost counties in the special exception areas listed in the National Housing Act (Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, Virgin Islands).

A complete schedule of FHA mortgage limits for all areas is available through the internet at https://entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/hicostlook.cfm

The mortgage limits described in this notice are effective for those loans which have credit approval on or after January 1, 2009, and apply to mortgages insured under the following Sections of the National Housing Act:  Sections 203(b) (FHA’s basic 1-4 family mortgage insurance program), 203(h) (mortgages for disaster victims), 203(k) (rehabilitation mortgage insurance), Section 255 (Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECM)) and 234(c) (condominium units).  There will be no further appeals of FHA loan limits for 2009.

Source: HUD

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