Part 6 (Excerpt)

Using Retirement Funds to pay your Mortgage is just a bad idea Get a Loan Modification

So it doesnt matter if it is a $100,000 property or a $500,000 property the cost to the lender is $50,000 on the average nationally.

So the idea of the upside down scenario, you may see banks more willing to entertain a broader audience of loan modifications or a broader request of loan modifications based on the fact that they know that now, what we are calling toxic assets, not only exist on their balance sheets, but they want to do something to avoid the additional cost of foreclosing on the property, to avoid the additional impact on our economy nationally with all these foreclosures mounting. So a loan modification that may not be the best or most ideal candidate today, dont throw the option completely out of the window.

And to that point I would never tell a home owner to stop making their payments just to get a better loan modification, because as of today, this may not be the case two weeks or two months from now, but as of today, your servicer is not going to entertain a loan modification unless youre late in most cases. Heres the situation, though at first you may get mad at that and they get mad at me for it, but the reality of it is we have a real problem now with lots of people who are two, three, four months behind on their mortgages, this loan modification we are jumping in, we are getting attorneys involved and getting right in front of the asset managers or the attorneys for the servicers to get these foreclosure proceedings stopped.

Im absolutely certain that in the foreseeable future they are going to allow people that are not late yet to do these loan modifications, hold on, I said I would never tell a home owner to not make their mortgage payment to get a loan modification, the other thing I would never tell a homeowner to do, never ever, is to take money out of your 401K to pay their mortgage payment because you cant go forward.

There are other stops in place, if you dont make your mortgage payment because of hard times you are going to get a loan modification. I talked to a guy the other day that had a 23 year, huge 6 figure income, he lost his job, big huge firm here in the valley, he is probably listening to the show right now, this guy drained his entire 401K, I mean a huge one, just to make his mortgage payments.

And the average 401K participant, investor, does not understand the ramification of what that is, just because your company plan allows you to take a loan against your 401K doesnt mean it is the right thing to do. There are ramifications beyond our time and the scope of this discussion regarding that decision. Loan modification first, if you are taking money from a 401K to make a house payment you are not only inefficient in creating the velocity of money but you are costing yourself in penalties, taxes, and that is certainly something we can be forthright about talking with anyone who wants to call.

And in this case the poor guy used up every dime of his 401K because his lender told him NO, NO, NO, three separate times because he was not late, well he wasnt going to allow that to happen. Unfortunately knowing what he knows now he would have looked at it differently.

Loan Modification is not for someone who has no income at all, the investor, the servicer, the bank that holds your mortgagee is not willing to do a loan modification because you dont have the means to pay. Even if it is a modified loan, you still cant make the payment. Right in some cases where you have significant cash reserves, but I have not seen one of those done.

That wouldnt be the ideal candidate, describe a little bit about who should be doing this loan modification and I know we are getting close to a break but people need to know that this option exists. They are hearing all these different concepts in the news and they are hearing in the media the spin about Hank Paulson and what the treasury is doing, and hearing about this bailout package and what that represents, and now they are hearing that the money is not going to be used to buy back bad loans, and mortgages, bad assists. So what does that do to the underlying holder of that mortgage? The owner of that house?

It is pretty scary for the majority of them, the loan modification lenders are getting very aggressive when being approached with a lawsuit or being addressed by an attorney, receiving a subpoena in regard to a specific loan case. They are paying attention to that and those are the people who are going to be getting the best options at this time…

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Part 3 (Excerpt)

Beware of phishing schemes and bank scams GMACs clients hit hard

As promised just before the break, I told you to, listen in if you know anyone who has a GMAC Mortgage, this is one of those too good to be true things. Heres the thing, I have no issues what-so-ever with GMAC, thats not what Im saying, what Im saying is there is a scam of sorts that is going around. A client of ours received a letter, we did a second mortgage for this person a few years ago, they received a letter from GMAC, it looked like GMAC, it sounded like GMAC, and it said that we are willing to forgive your second mortgage of 200 and some thousand dollars in lieu of a one time payment, payable within the next 30 days, of say 20 thousand dollars.

I dont recall the exact amount or what it was. There is a phone number on there, it says loss mitigation department on it, a person assigned to this case. They called the phone number, they answered the phone as if you were calling into the loss mitigation department, and verified if you just send us this amount they will release the lien. Well it is completely false. It is absolutely not true.

These people are not going to seek you out on their own, now whether it be GMAC, today we have actually seen that one, there may be other ones out there. Folks, if you are getting stuff like this you need to verify it and you need to verify it by sources other than the information on the letter that you have received. If you get an email that says your bank account has been tapped into you need to check, chances are it is some kind of a phishing scam and this is no different.

We have gone back to identity theft through the mail and if you have been a party to this you need to verify and check into it, and you need to contact the authorities immediately for more information, if you need help with this sort of situation you are welcome to give us a call at 480 Velocity.

It is pretty amazing that that kind of thing still exists, and with the announcement by Paulson today that the fact is they are no longer willing to buy bad mortgages off the books of the banks. When you come across a phishing scam such as this one there is not a bank out there, I dont care what kind of trouble they are in, that is going to take $0.10 on the dollar to forgive a loan.

In a situation where things are going well, you are right in a situation where things are going well, and the status quo, they are going to be pursued by an attorney, that is entirely different, they are not just going to volunteer up and give you the money, its not going to happen.

Absolutely not and thats where we get back into what a loan modification is, who it benefits, and how it works and so forth, you are starting to see these wheels in motion amongst all of these banks. One of those wheels is certainly not well forgive $200,000 in debt if you write us a check for $20, 000.

And when we have talked about this Brett you and I have had many conversations in regard to what does it take? Can a person do this on their own, we will get to that a little later, but the answer is Yes. A consumer can actually do it on their own, up until very recently with the new announcements made from some of these major servicers and investors, up until then, a person trying to do it on their own would take days upon days and hours and hours on the phone not getting calls back trying to find time during the day while working to get this done and in many cases they are going to get a temporary fix.

The loss mitigation department for the bank that you have your mortgage with, their job is not to mitigate your loss its to mitigate their loss. They are out to protect the bank, thats why we use the national network of attorneys that we do, that are specialists, that have done thousands of these loan modifications, that go to bat for you. By the way folks, they are not going through the loss mitigation door that you would have to go through they are going right to the legal department, they are going to threaten suit if necessary, they are going to do discovery work, they are going to find out if there was anything that was misrepresented either by the bank or the broker and take that angle…

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Part 1 (Excerpt)

Forget the doom and gloom, First Time Home Buyers can buy with FHA

Thanks to my very great friend Brett Fallon for taking the time to be here in studio today. Brett is one of America’s finest financial advisors. And of course the infamous Dan Havey. Now we all love Dan Havey because he was instrumental in getting me into the mortgage industry about 14 years ago. Most importantly, Dan was instrumental in helping us put together the loan modification hotline and he is the author of Real Estates Future.

So today we have a few things we want discussed in regard to the economy, what’s happened, were wrapping up the year. You may have heard about this in the media, of course the media’s job is to scare you. Well our job is to tell you the truth. So Brett you have some data and some information that you wanted to share

Some of the things you hear in the media, you cant escape, its pretty much doom and gloom, sky is falling, this is the next Great Depression. It’s over for all of us and we should all just pack up and go. That kind of stuff is pervasive out there and creates fear and a lot of anxiety amongst people who are either investors, people who are looking to buy a house, looking to refinance a mortgage.

People dont realize there are certain tools that exist that we will talk about during the course of the show today. They should understand that some of the things that we discussed prior to today’s broadcasts were interest rates. Interest rates are at historic lows. Money is cheaper right now than it has ever been. We know the Fed recently reduced the Fed Funds Rate and that is the rate that banks are lending money to one another at.

Right now that rate is zero. Historically, that’s never happened in the United States before. The Fed’s idea is to help to unfreeze this credit market and we keep hearing all this talk about how credit markets are still frozen, that the global recession is deepening, there is evidence to the contrary of that. Some of the moves that the FED is making are working. We’re starting to see, and you and I were talking recently about some clients that were helping in terms of refinancing existing mortgages. Well, if the credit markets are frozen how come we got those loans complete?

Well, that’s a good point, and you got a call I think it was last Monday or maybe the Monday before, someone called you and asked if there was any money to refinance. What can I do? Well the reality of it is there is plenty of money out there for refinances, in some cases there’s issues with property values. That’s why there are different options for those types of people

Well from a buyer’s perspective, todays property valuation is a good thing, if I’m a buyer. Thats a good point too. People are interested in buying and the huge opportunity today. This is an unprecedented opportunity in my opinion, both in terms of the dollar and the real estate market. And for those who understand those dynamics and are willing to entertain the deal, they will be handsomely rewarded. There is no doubt about it.

And as we spoke on the last show, home prices in November for Maricopa County show that the median home price is down as low as $160,000 already. And it reminds me a lot about when I got into the industry, way back in 1989 and the type of financing we had then was FHA and Fannie Mae. And were back to that again now. We’ve got sanity back into the market and home prices have come down. But right now, it’s a perfect time, especially for first-time homebuyers or a move up buyer who can buy under the Fannie Mae limit of $417,000. If you can get into that range, and as we spoke before that 78% of the homes in Maricopa County that sold last month sold for under $250,000. I think that right now is the time just to get out there and find a house to move your family and children into with an FHA loan.

Michael, you don’t have to have exactly perfect credit do you? You can have a couple of dings if need be, right? You’re exactly right, each case has its own merits, every FHA loan is underwritten individually. There are many cases where collections are okay, there needs to be a explanation. You dont have to have the 720 plus credit scores like you do for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get the best rates…

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