Archive for the 'Financing' Category
Identifying your property’s value is crucial. As a real estate investor, you need to be aware of the three ways to determine the value of your real estate investments to guide you with your purchase, justify your selling price, or simply learn the basic market valuation techniques.
Sales Comparables
The most popular method is sales comparables or more formally known as comparative market analysis. In this method, sales information about properties that were sold within the last three to six months as well as those that comprise the list of pending sales in the neighborhood are compared.
Half of refinance applications are abandoned or rejected, as are 30 percent of purchase mortgage applications, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. All told, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) says that well over 2 million mortgage applications were rejected last year.
Want to avoid falling into that number? It’s tough — especially in light of the fact that mortgage lenders have become increasingly restrictive in terms of their lending guidelines since the housing market crash.
Here, as a cautionary tale and primer on what to expect, are the top six reasons mortgage lenders reject applications.
This is an investing concept that’s not often thought about within the context of real estate, but it’s vital for you to understand the differences between these two types of debt.
Bad debt is typically referred to as consumer debt. What makes bad debt “bad” is the fact that it’s not being used on anything that produces cash flow or appreciates over time. Vacations, clothing, iPads, and anything else that doesn’t work for you in generating a return on that debt is considered bad debt.
Bad debt sources usually come from credit cards, but they can also include car loans, store credit, and personal lines of credit. Interest rates are usually high and are generally higher than most good debt sources.
If that isn’t bad enough, the interest you pay is almost never tax deductible. The only exception to this rule might be a qualifying business expense if you can deduct such an expense.
Using all cash to purchase investment property may be better than financing in two particular situations.
The first situation is a short-term deal, that is, you intend to sell the property shortly after you buy it (known as “flipping”). When you have the cash to close quickly, you can generally get a larger discount on the price of a property. In this case, financing could delay the transaction long enough to lose an opportunity.
You’ve heard the expression, “money talks, BS walks.” This is particularly true when making an offer to purchase a property through a real estate agent. The real estate agent is more likely to recommend to their client a purchase offer that is not contingent on the investor obtaining bank financing.
You may have heard the term “short sale” and wondered what it referred to – and what kind of opportunities these types of transactions offer in the real estate market. Let’s define a short sale first.
A short sale can occur when a home owner’s debt on a property is greater than the amount for which the property can be sold. The result – lenders are sometimes willing to accept less than the total amount due on the house if the economic situation dictates such an action.
Here’s where the term “short sale” came from: Assume a homeowner has an unpaid loan balance of $200,000, but the property will only sell for $150,000. The lender accepts that $150,000 as full payment. This is “short” of the full $200,000 amount.
By the time you read this, the new 2,300 page financial reform bill is likely to be making the headlines. The Senate has already approved the new bill and President Obama is expected to sign it into law this week – despite the fact that many of the provisions related to specific regulations have yet to even be written. If that sounds faintly disturbing, don’t worry, your concern is noted and shared by many experts throughout the nation. However, there are sweeping changes that are already apparent despite the lack of specific details.
Although broad in scope, home buyers and sellers are likely to be among the first impacted by the new provisions. They represent one of the most comprehensive – top to bottom changes to the finance, valuation, types of mortgage products offered and how lenders are compensated to take place in decades. In fact, there are even new rules for real estate investors that provide capital for the purchase of mortgages.
The US Federal Reserve is expected to keep US interest rates at historic lows when it meets later Wednesday, as it tries to keep a languishing recovery on track. The Fed’s top rate-setting body is widely expected to keep its main rate of borrowing at between zero and 0.25 percent to help spur economic growth.
Faced with reams of data showing the recovery is still fragile, the debate over whether the Fed should quickly raise rates to stave off inflation has all but disappeared in recent months. The Fed’s announcement will still be keenly watched as investors look for any hint that a double-dip recession is on the way, or that the worst of the danger has passed.
Jobs growth remains anemic with employers still reluctant to add permanent positions during the fragile recovery. The unemployment rate is expected to hover near 10 percent for quite some time as the economy regroups after the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s Consumers have been cautious about spending, which normally drives about two-thirds of the activity in the world’s largest economy.
Using self-directed IRA funds to purchase income-generating real estate is a profitable strategy an ever-growing number of investors are employing. These accounts (a.k.a. real estate IRAs) can buy rental property as an investment, just as they would buy stock market securities. This means real estate IRA holders can use their retirement funds to purchase real estate without incurring early distribution taxes or penalties and they can realize the rental payments as tax-deferred income within their IRA.
The challenge, however, is this: How do you purchase real estate that costs more than the money you’ve accumulated in your retirement account? Because the Internal Revenue Code prohibits account holders from extending credit (a personal guarantee) to their own accounts, personal loans can’t be mixed with IRA funds. So unless you have an IRA flush with funds, it would seem that your purchase options are slim to none.
Leveraging borrowed funds
There is a way out of this dilemma. Real estate IRA accounts can make use of borrowed money as long as the credit history, income and/or assets of the account holder are not used to acquire or guarantee repayment of the loan.
There is only one leverage option that meets these criteria: non-recourse loans.
FICO Scores are calculated from a lot of different credit data in your credit report. This data can be grouped into five categories as outlined in the chart. The percentages in the chart reflect how important each of the categories are in determining your FICO score.
These percentages are based on the importance of the five categories for the general population. The importance of these categories may be somewhat different for particular groups. For example, people with new credit or those who have not been using credit for very long.
Payment History
- Account payment information on specific types of accounts (credit cards, retail accounts, installment loans, finance company accounts, mortgage, etc.).
- Presence of adverse public records (bankruptcy, judgments, suits, liens, wage attachments, etc.), collection items, and/or delinquency (past due items).
- Severity of delinquency (how long past due).
- Amount past due on delinquent accounts or collection items.
- Time since (recency of) past due items (delinquency), adverse public records (if any), or collection items (if any).
- Number of accounts paid as agreed.
- Number of past due items on file.
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Nationwide, one in every 200 residential loans funded last year, totaling $14 billion, involved fraud, according to First American CoreLogic. Despite what looks like an unsettling amount of shadiness lurking within the mortgage market, the company says the fraud rate has been steadily declining for the past three years and is now about 25 percent lower than when it peaked in the third quarter of 2007.
Since then, First American notes, lenders have been more aggressive in curtailing mortgage fraud – a prudent reaction considering banks have been forced to buy back billions of dollars in fraudulent loans sold to investors during the boom, when standards were lower and many loans were made without verifying the applicant’s information. "In 2010, 2011, and 2012 you won’t see nearly the amount of [fraud] reports that you’re seeing today," said Tim Grace, SVP of fraud analytics at First American CoreLogic.
First American CoreLogic says 25 percent of foreclosures show fraud in the initial application, and as much as 70 percent of early payment defaults show indications of fraudulent activity in the application process. The company’s conclusions are based on its analysis of 80 million loans passing through its proprietary national fraud data repository.
The FHA has gone crazy, making sweeping new changes in several policies. You’ve got to keep these in mind when clients consider FHA loans. Here are some of the most extreme changes:
- Raised up-front costs for insurance
- TRIPLE down-payment requirements
- Cut seller concessions by HALF!
The government hopes the new policies will help the organization better handle risk. And they’ve got every reason to be nervous. 9% of all loans that the FHA insures are past due. FHA claims have been skyrocketing with the organization paying out of its capital reserves.
30% of all new loans (and 20% of refinances) are backed by the FHA. This is a 1,000 percent
increase over 2006. This seems like shaky ground for the company. The FHA is hoping to scale back to pre-crisis times and minimize their exposure.
Owner financing is the most common way to buy a property with "no money down". Instead of getting cash at closing, the seller agrees to finance all or some part of the purchase price. What this means is the owner of the property will act as a bank and lend the buyer all or part of the money needed to purchase the property.
It is estimated that nearly 35% of all the properties in the United States are owned free and clear (no mortgage financing). A surprising number of those owners would be willing to finance all or part of the purchase price as a mortgage and take payments over an agreed upon period of time.
Generally, you will be getting a second mortgage from the seller. That means you will get the majority of your financing (the first mortgage) from a primary financing source like a bank. The seller would provide most or all of the balance in the form of a second mortgage.
There are four types of owner financing to that you could ask for:
Improving your FICO® credit score may take time and often there is no quick fix. FICO scores reflect credit payment patterns over time with more of an emphasis on recently reported information than older information. Below are some general tips to follow that may increase your FICO credit score:
- Focus on the negative factors provided with your FICO score. These represent the main areas where your score could be higher.
- Don’t open new accounts for the purpose of providing a better credit picture – it probably won’t raise your FICO score and, in some instances, may even lower your score. Apply for and open new credit accounts only as needed.
- Keep balances low on credit cards and other “revolving credit”. High outstanding credit card debt can negatively impact your FICO score.
- Pay off debt rather than move it around from one credit card to another. The most effective way to increase your FICO score in this area is by paying down your total revolving (credit card) debt.
- Pay your bills on time. Delinquent payments, even if only a few days late, and collections can have a major negative impact on your FICO score.
Mortgage rates have been steadily climbing, from a low of 4.5% around November 27, 2009 to above 5% on December 22, 2009. For the past two months I’ve been warning that this will eventually happen. It’s not because the economy is recovering; it isn’t recovering. The reason mortgage rates will rise to 6% or above, sooner rather than later is because that is the "natural" market.
About a year ago, the Federal Reserve announced a $1.25 Trillion mortgage rates subsidy, by purchasing mortgage-backed securities in the open market, through March, 2010. Right before the subsidy was announced, mortgage rates were at or above 6%. The subsidy was referred to as Bernanke’s "nuclear option" meaning he was using an extraordinary monetary stimulus to keep mortgage rates artificially low.
One year and 12 months into the 15-month game, we’re at $1.07 Trillion spent on this open market MBS purchase program. This means that the Fed still has about $150 Billion to spend in three months, so mortgage rates should stay around 5%, right? After all, the Fed only spent $80 billion/month and they have at least 2 months of money left.
Markets are discounting mechanisms meaning that traders anticipate how potent the Fed can be. The Fed is just about out of bullets and MBS traders know it. Let me try to give you an example of what the Fed did by recanting the explanation I gave, to a Del Mar Realtor, on the beach this summer.
Leave it to the government to take a crippled housing market (which they helped destroy) and make it worse by prolonging its recovery.
Regulators have taken a loose and passive role watching the housing bubble inflate. Now, true to their nature, regulators are making the problem worse with their slow response and lack of real-world solutions.
Real estate investors, in my opinion, have been unfairly squeezed by the ever tightening underwriting guidelines. We are dealing with larger down payments, higher credit scores, larger cash reserves, and lower debt-to-income ratios.
As a real estate investor, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac require you to have a bullet proof credit profile to even be considered for financing. When you consider that investors put up a larger down payment than most home buyers, require better credit, and typically research and buy investment property with a cash-on-cash return, lenders and regulators should be more willing to finance these solid transactions. They would also help solve the housing crisis by reducing the excess foreclosure inventory sought by rehabbers and wholesalers.
