St. Louis Home Loan and In-House Financing News: Millions Shut Out of Refinancing
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According to a new Federal Reserve studay that was released in September 2011, approximately 2.4 million homeowners could have refinanced their home loan mortgages last year if they hadn’t owed more than their homes were worth or if lending standards weren’t so strict.

Long-term mortgage rates are currently near record lows and have been consistently below 5 percent for all but two weeks in 2011. The average rate that the industry if offering on a 30-year fixed loan is now 4.09 percent.

The normal mortgage standard is most lenders typically require homeowners to have some equity in their homes in order to refinance. Then you have the new credit requirement since 2008 that being many lenders are approving only borrowers with high credit scores.

Looking at current mortgage payment statistics, roughly 22.5 percent of homeowners which the total number at about 11 million households, are “underwater“ which means that they owe more than their homes. These findings have been confirmed by CoreLogic, a real estate data research firm.

However, the St. Louis Refinancing Group news team noticed that these figures don’t exactly show how many of the homeowners obtained loans during the housing boom when lending standards were easy going compared to today’s standards. The end result which helped cause this mortgage fiasco was that numerous lenders approved loans to consumers with poor credit, no employment checks and little or no money down.

The Federal Reserve has commented that somewhere around 4.5 million refinancing applications were approved last year. In a healthy housing market economy, that figure would have been much higher being closer to 6 million. A big jump in numbers..

The Federal Housing Finance Agency(FHFA) has said it is currently in the process of reviewing a program it launched nearly two years ago to see if adjustments can be made to expand and which would allow more homeowners to qualify.

Their program, called Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, permits homeowners whose homes are underwater by up to 20 percent to refinance at lower rates. But in order to be approved for this program, homeowners must be current on their mortgage payments from 2009 or later.

Practically 837,000 homeowners have been refinanced through HARP since July 2011. Government politicians and officials had hoped at least 4.1 million Americans would take advantage of this updated program. The question is how many consumers actually know about this option?

Ongoing studies being conducted by the Federal Reserve has been compiled from 7800 lenders nationwide. Taking into consideration mortgage data for the past six years, the number of approved mortgages fell sharply from nearly 9 million in 2009 to fewer than 8 million in 2010. The peak was 15.6 million in 2005 thanks in large to lax lending standards.

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Business Owners and Medical Groups: You can now offer customer financing and consumer finance programs to your customers and patients. We are the lender and have approximately $2.7 Billion dollars to loan. Best of all, there is NO risk, NO recourse and NO new equipment to lease for your and your company or medical group. Once your customer is approved, your money is in your bank account within 48 to 72 hours. Turn your credit declines into cash by calling Floyd Tapia at (314) 627-5729.

In addition, if you need commercial financing or a merchant account company that will save you money, Floyd Tapia and his lending and new business resources team can focus on bringing you innovative private lending solutions and financial services to meet all types of financing needs. Let us turn your challenges into closings (or from being underwater equity wise) and help you get a St Louis commercial lending, mortgage or financing loan.

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St Louis Mortgage Lending and Loan Modification News: More Foreclosures Means Fewer Underwater Mortgages, Right?

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There were fewer homeowners underwater on their mortgage at the end of the third quarter than the second quarter in 2010. But the reason is probably not what you are thinking. It’s because more properties that had severe negative equity were foreclosed upon and not because of an increase in home values.

CoreLogic said 10.7 million residential properties, or 22.8 percent of all U.S. homes, were in negative equity at September 30th, down from 10.9 million, or 22 percent, the prior quarter.

“Negative equity is a primary factor holding back the housing market and broader economy,” according to Mark Fleming, chief economist with CoreLogic.

He goes on to say: “The good news is that negative equity is slowly declining, but the bad news is that price declines are accelerating, which may put a stop to or reverse the recent improvement in negative equity.”

The data analytics firm said the number of borrowers who owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth has decreased by more than 500,000 this year.

Still, another 2.3 million homeowners had less than 5 percent equity in the third quarter, and 27.2 percent of all mortgages are in negative equity or near-negative equity.

CoreLogic said five states including California, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Florida continue to have the largest numbers of underwater mortgages.

Approximately two-thirds of Nevada mortgages are for more than the property is valued.

Conversely, nearly half of New York homeowners have 49 percent or more positive equity.

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Business Owners and Medical Groups: You can now offer customer financing and consumer finance programs to your customers and patients. We are the lender and have approximately $2.7 Billion dollars to loan. Best of all, there is NO risk, NO recourse and NO new equipment to lease for your and your company or medical group. Once your customer is approved, your money is in your bank account within 48 to 72 hours. Turn your credit declines into cash by calling Floyd Tapia at (314) 627-5729.

In addition, if you need commercial financing or a merchant account company that will save you money, Floyd Tapia and his lending and new business resources team can focus on bringing you innovative private lending solutions and financial services to meet all types of financing needs. Let us turn your challenges into closings (or from being underwater equity wise) and help you get a St Louis commercial lending, mortgage or financing loan.

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St Louis Mortgage Broker and Consumer Lending News: Home Values Fall Again
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Real estate data firm Zillow said its home value index fell 3 percent in the first three months of the year from the previous quarter, and was down 8.2 percent year-over-year. The number of homeowners underwater amounted to 28.4 percent of single-family homeowners, representing a peak since Zillow began calculating the data in 2009. 

That was up from 27 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. 

National and St Louis foreclosures also rose, following the moratoriums that had been in place in late 2010 but then resumed.

In March 2011, one out of every 1,000 homes was in foreclosure. 

Given all those factors, it is unlikely home values will reach a bottom this year, Zillow said, and the firm pushed its forecast out to 2012.

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Business Owners and Medical Groups: You can now offer customer financing and consumer finance programs to your customers and patients. We are the lender and have approximately $2.7 Billion dollars to loan. Best of all, there is NO risk, NO recourse and NO new equipment to lease. Once your consumer is approved, your money is in your bank within 48 to 72 hours. Turn your credit declines into cash by calling Floyd Tapia at (314) 627-5729.

In addition, if you need commercial financing or a merchant account company that will save you money, Floyd Tapia and his lending and new business resources team can focus on bringing you innovative private lending solutions and financial services to meet all types of financing needs. Let us turn your challenges into closings (or from being underwater equity wise) and help you get a St Louis commercial lending, mortgage or financing loan.

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St Louis Loan, Mortgage Refinancing and Consumer Lending News: Drowning In Negative Equity
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If you have no desire or need to sell your home, then falling home prices are just on paper and likely temporary, right? Depends on how you look at it. 

Falling home prices put more borrowers in a negative equity position, that is owing more on their mortgage(s) than their homes are worth.

We call that ‘underwater,’ and for good reason, because for some borrowers that sense of drowning in debt has profound implications.

Today Zillow.com reported a new high in negative equity: 28.4 percent of single family homes with a mortgage (remember, 32 percent of all homeowners do not have a mortgage). 

That’s a national average, but the numbers are far worse in some of the nation’s big metros.

Atlanta, for example, has a 55.7 percent negative equity rate. Denver, 41 percent, Chicago nearly 46 percent.

This is on top of all the foreclosure hot spots like Phoenix, where close to three quarters of all borrowers are underwater.

“Higher rates of negative equity are creating a lot of latent vulnerability in the housing stock, where if the household then encounters some economic shock, like the loss of a job or divorce or death, then that household is much, much more likely to go into foreclosure,” notes Zillow’s Stan Humphries.

He continues: “So it just means that higher rates of negative equity, we’re going to see elevated rates of foreclosure for the next two to three years.”

But higher rates of foreclosure put increasing pressure on home prices, causing them to fall further, which in turn puts even more borrowers underwater.

One begets the other begets the other.

Humphries thinks this is a bigger deal than the ‘walkaway’ issue (or strategic default); that’s where borrowers see no chance of ever having equity in their homes, so they walk away rather than becoming permanent pseudo-renters, responsible for the high cost of the home’s upkeep but reaping no equity benefit. 

“The best research that’s been done right now seems to suggest that negative equity impact on strategic defaults really kicks in at very high rates of value to loan ratio, so that means when people are more like 30-40 percent underwater does it start to create proactive behavior where they want to walk away from the mortgage. And even at those rates of loan to values, you’re still seeing strategic defaults be a relative…not a majority behavior,” says Humphries.

Well there are certainly plenty of large metro markets, as I cited previously, where negative equity is that high.

And here’s a little more food for thought: What about mobility?

As the economy improves, and we see those jobs numbers rise, as we did last Friday, we have to consider the fact that many people taking these jobs may be required to move for said jobs.

Those same borrowers may not be able to take the loss on the home that’s required to sell it. What then? 

What is the fate of the nation’s credit quality. It’s already tough enough to get a good mortgage when you have good credit.

Home buyer confidence and demand are the only remedies right now for the housing and foreclosure crisis. Sadly, we have neither.

Contributions By Olick

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Business Owners and Medical Groups: You can now offer customer financing and consumer finance programs to your customers and patients. We are the lender and have approximately $2.7 Billion dollars to loan. Best of all, there is NO risk, NO recourse and NO new equipment to lease. Once your consumer is approved, your money is in your bank within 48 to 72 hours. Turn your credit declines into cash by calling Floyd Tapia at (314) 627-5729.

In addition, if you need commercial financing or a merchant account company that will save you money, Floyd Tapia and his lending and new business resources team can focus on bringing you innovative private lending solutions and financial services to meet all types of financing needs. Let us turn your challenges into closings (or from being underwater equity wise) and help you get a St Louis commercial lending, mortgage or financing loan.

Check back daily for more financial news.

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St Louis Mortgage Refinancing and Lending News: More Loan Modification Options Coming
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Six months after the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) announced an $11 billion refinancing initiative for these “underwater” borrowers, nearly two dozen lenders have agreed to take part in a new loan modification program.

The FHA program called Short Refi requires major concessions from lenders, which must agree to write off at least 10 percent of the principal balance, and from investors, who, if they own the mortgage, must also agree to the deal.

To qualify, homeowners must be current on their monthly mortgage payments and not already have an FHA home loan.

The size of the new primary loan cannot be more than 97.75 percent of the current value of the property; refinanced loans for homeowners whose properties carry second liens cannot exceed 15 percent of the property value.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which oversees the FHA, said this month that 23 lenders had signed on to the Short Refi program, though it will disclose only the names of the five lenders that have already restructured a total of 44 loans.

They are: Wall Street Mortgage Bankers of Lake Success, New York; 1st Alliance Lending of East Hartford, Connecticut; Nationstar Mortgage of Lewisville, Texas; E Mortgage Management of Haddon Township, New Jersey; and Glacier Bank of Kalispell, Montana.

HUD estimated that 500,000 to 1.5 million borrowers could be eligible for the program.

Even so, it faces challenges in Congress; on Thursday, the House of Representatives voted to end it.

One mortgage expert, John Diiorio, the owner of 1st Alliance Lending, said that big banks were taking part behind the scenes, by referring homeowners to third-party lenders that could restructure their mortgages.

He added that 1st Alliance had “several hundred FHA Short Refi” loans in the pipeline.

Because the FHA announced the program only last September 2010, and because such loans take three to four months from start to finish, Mr. Diiorio said, the number of refinanced loans should increase in coming months.

He said that, on average, 1st Alliance had negotiated a principal reduction of $86,000 on a $256,000 loan, a 33.5 percent cut, to $170,000.

But he said lenders and investors had agreed to reduce principal for only half of the loans he had worked on.

The refinanced borrower, Mr. Diiorio said, had to pay a slightly higher fixed rate, typically 6 or so percent.

But he added that the financial impact was the same as a 5 percent rate on a higher-balance loan of $100,000, with less principal forgiven.

“It seems counter-intuitive,” he said, “but the economics work both for the consumer and for the lender.”

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Business Owners and Medical Groups: You can now offer customer financing and consumer finance programs to your customers and patients. We are the lender and have approximately $2.7 Billion dollars to loan. Best of all, there is NO risk, NO recourse and NO new equipment to lease for your and your company or medical group. Once your customer is approved, your money is in your bank account within 48 to 72 hours. Turn your credit declines into cash by calling Floyd Tapia at (314) 627-5729.

In addition, if you need commercial financing or a merchant account company that will save you money, Floyd Tapia and his lending and new business resources team can focus on bringing you innovative private lending solutions and financial services to meet all types of financing needs. Let us turn your challenges into closings (or from being underwater equity wise) and help you get a St Louis commercial lending, mortgage or financing loan.

Check back daily for more financial news.

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St Louis Beauty Supply and Avon – Kristin Tapia

In-House Financing, Consumer Lending and Customer Financing

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St Louis Mortgage Refinancing and Loan Reduction News: Greenspan Says Stimulus and Housing Programs Hurt Recovery
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Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in February that massive government intervention to save the economy is to blame for the lagging recovery.

Greenspan argued for less government intervention to get the recovery rolling and businesses investing in equipment and plants.

“What we need to do now is to calm down; let things move by themselves,” he said at a forum at the Council of Foreign Relations.

Greenspan continues: “And indeed the rate of activism has decreased significantly and the ratio of capital flow has inched back up.”

Greenspan’s views are starting to gain an audience again.

Many Republicans share his opinion that intervention has created uncertainty and deterred private sector investing.

Greenspan targeted deficits created by the $787 billion 2009 Recovery Act as the main culprit behind the current sputtering recovery.

Why are deficits to blame?  Because the Treasury Department’s borrowing “crowds out” companies from finding similarly low interest rates to borrow funds for capital investments on equipment and plants.

At the same time, he acknowledged that America’s biggest and most-trusted companies aren’t having trouble finding good interest rates. But smaller companies, he said, are struggling.

“Microsoft is not being crowded out,” Greenspan said.

He goes on to say: “It’s those who find an 8 or 9 percent interest rate, which are required of junk bonds and small businesses, which is too high.”

He said he estimates that government borrowing is effectively reducing long-term capital investment by one fifth.

But Greenspan goes further in his criticism of government intervention, also blaming housing programs for having delayed and prolonged foreclosures.

He said such efforts have created uncertainty about when the housing market will hit rock bottom, at which point speculators can rush in and start buying up houses.

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Business Owners and Medical Groups: You can now offer customer financing and consumer finance programs to your customers and patients. We are the lender and have approximately $2.7 Billion dollars to loan. Best of all, there is NO risk, NO recourse and NO new equipment to lease for your and your company or medical group. Once your customer is approved, your money is in your bank account within 48 to 72 hours. Turn your credit declines into cash by calling Floyd Tapia at (314) 627-5729.

In addition, if you need commercial financing or a merchant account company that will save you money, Floyd Tapia and his lending and new business resources team can focus on bringing you innovative private lending solutions and financial services to meet all types of financing needs. Let us turn your challenges into closings (or from being underwater equity wise) and help you get a St Louis commercial lending, mortgage or financing loan.

Check back daily for more financial news.

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In-House Financing, Consumer Lending and Customer Financing

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St Louis Mortgage Lending and Loan Reduction News: 26 Percent Of Home Sales Are Foreclosures And Short Sales
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According to a RealtyTrac report released yesterday, 26 percent of all homes sold last year were foreclosures and short sales.

Homes already foreclosed on and repossessed by banks, called REOs (real estate owned), sold for an average of 36 percent less than normal sales, RealtyTrac reported.

Meanwhile, the discount for homes sold while they were still in the foreclosure process (short sales) was 15 percent as followed by the St Louis Refinancing Group news team.

“It’s like the post-holiday sales at Macy’s where they’re trying to clear out unwanted inventory,” said Anthony Sanders, a real estate professor at George Mason University.

Nevada had the highest percentage of distressed sales of any state at 57 percent. That was, however, less than 2009, when 67 percent of sales there were foreclosures.

In Arizona, 49 percent of sales were distressed properties; in California, 44 percent; and in Florida, 36 percent.

Foreclosed properties sold for the biggest discount which ended up being 50 percent off in New Jersey.

These investment opportunities are not going away.

Nearly 30 percent of mortgage borrowers are underwater on their loans, owing more than their homes are worth, according to Stan Humphries, chief economist for Zillow, the real estate web site.

These owners are very vulnerable to foreclosure so the number of distressed properties that will go on sale only the next year or two will probably remained high.

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Business Owners and Medical Groups: You can now offer customer financing and consumer finance programs to your customers and patients. We are the lender and have approximately $2.7 Billion dollars to loan. Best of all, there is NO risk, NO recourse and NO new equipment to lease for your and your company or medical group. Once your customer is approved, your money is in your bank account within 48 to 72 hours. Turn your credit declines into cash by calling Floyd Tapia at (314) 627-5729.

In addition, if you need commercial financing or a merchant account company that will save you money, Floyd Tapia and his lending and new business resources team can focus on bringing you innovative private lending solutions and financial services to meet all types of financing needs. Let us turn your challenges into closings (or from being underwater equity wise) and help you get a St Louis commercial lending, mortgage or financing loan.

Check back daily for more financial news.

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St Louis Finance and Mortgage Refinancing News: HAMP Found Lacking, Again
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Approximately twelve months ago, the Congressional Oversight Panel found the program HAMP to be struggling to get off the ground despite having been in action for nearly a year and a half.

The latest evaluation of the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) came out and the result was the same deal.  HAMP has undergone several  tweaks since April 2010.

But the Congressional Oversight Panel, created to issue periodic reports on the TARP bailout program, found little improvement in performance according to a St Louis mortgage broker.

Instead of helping 3 million to 4 million struggling mortgage borrowers keep their homes, as originally projected, HAMP will prevent only about 700,000 to 800,000 foreclosures.

That number is dwarfed by the 8 million to 13 million foreclosures expected to occur by 2012.

Through the end of October 2010, there have been 519,648 permanent loan modifications made.

And, since the Treasury Department lost the authority to further restructure the program at the end of October, bolstering its prospects is no longer likely, the report said.

In fact, banks are offering more modifications through their own process than through the government’s.

The new report cited several reasons for the program’s failure.

For one, servicers, the companies hired by banks to manage the loans, earn extra profits through fees imposed during foreclosure.

Because of that, servicers were preventing or delaying modifications for their own monetary advantage.

Another big obstacle was that many loans in trouble often came burdened with second mortgages in the way of  home equity loans or lines of credit where those banks had to sign off on potential deals.

Because so many homes are worth less than the borrowers owe or negative equity, there is little money to cover the first loan, let alone a second mortgage.

So many banks in the second position refused to sign off unless they were paid something.

The oversight panel also faulted the Treasury for not having effective means of collecting and analyzing HAMP data.

The department, said the panel, did not even set meaningful goals against which to weigh the program’s effectiveness.

Because participation has been so limited, HAMP will probably only spend about $4 billion of the $30 billion allocated for it.

Even the loans that have been permanently modified through HAMP have not performed well.

Many have already re-defaulted, and that basically means taxpayer money down the drain.

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Business Owners and Medical Groups: You can now offer customer financing and consumer finance programs to your customers and patients. We are the lender and have approximately $2.7 Billion dollars to loan. Best of all, there is NO risk, NO recourse and NO new equipment to lease for your and your company or medical group. Once your customer is approved, your money is in your bank account within 48 to 72 hours. Turn your credit declines into cash by calling Floyd Tapia at (314) 627-5729.

In addition, if you need commercial financing or a merchant account company that will save you money, Floyd Tapia and his lending and new business resources team can focus on bringing you innovative private lending solutions and financial services to meet all types of financing needs. Let us turn your challenges into closings (or from being underwater equity wise) and help you get a St Louis commercial lending, mortgage or financing loan.

Check back daily for more financial news.

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In-House Financing, Consumer Lending and Customer Financing

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St Louis Mortgage Lending and Loan Reduction News: Strategic Default Risk May Increase
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The 2011 housing market started off to a bleak pace.

Home prices were expected to drop another 20 percent before hitting bottom, according to economists at A. Gary Shilling & Company, raising the risk that approximately 39.7 percent of borrowers will simply walk away from their home in a strategic default.

The firm reported in its December Investment Insight that home prices are already 29 percent below their peak in the first quarter of 2006 and fell 2 percent between the second and third quarters of 2010.

Essentially, the economists wrote, things will get worse before they get better.

“Housing normally spurs economic growth early in recoveries as this interest rate-sensitive sector responds to earlier rate cuts by the Fed,” the report said.

It went on to say that “this time, it’s been a dud due to the collapse in prices.”

According to Pew Research, 34.9 percent of Americans said it is acceptable to stop making mortgage payments. That is a little over one-third of consumers who openly welcome a strategic walkaway.

These underwater borrowers are more likely to walk away from their mortgage, or strategically default, because they lack incentive to make the payments.

Economist Nouriel Roubini, of Roubini Global Economics, echoed the Shilling economists’ sentiment when he told CNBC this week that he believes the housing market is currently experiencing a double dip.

“It’s pretty clear the housing market has already double dipped,” Roubini told CNBC, citing the recently released Case-Shiller Index which dropped 0.8 percent in October.

He continues: “Even a 5 percent fall in home prices will push an extra 8 million in negative equity with risk of millions walking away from their home.”

The Shilling economists said home prices are dropping because of excess inventory, “the mortal enemy of prices.”

According to the report, there is a 1.6 million surplus of housing inventory.

There are currently 4.1 million homes on the market, compared to the 2.5 million that is considered the normal working level.

“That’s a lot considering the average home construction of 1.53 million annually over time,” the report said.

The economists added that a category in the Census Bureau’s U.S. housing inventory data called “vacant units held off the market for other reasons” (such as homeowners pulling their home off the market in hopes of a better price) has grown to 3.6 million from 2.6 million since the housing bubble burst.

Roubini attributed the drop in home prices to the expiration of the homebuyer’s tax credit and the ongoing chaos with mortgage documentation.

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Business Owners and Medical Groups: You can now offer customer financing and consumer finance programs to your customers and patients. We are the lender and have approximately $2.7 Billion dollars to loan. Best of all, there is NO risk, NO recourse and NO new equipment to lease for your and your company or medical group. Once your customer is approved, your money is in your bank account within 48 to 72 hours. Turn your credit declines into cash by calling Floyd Tapia at (314) 627-5729.

In addition, if you need commercial financing or a merchant account company that will save you money, Floyd Tapia and his lending and new business resources team can focus on bringing you innovative private lending solutions and financial services to meet all types of financing needs. Let us turn your challenges into closings (or from being underwater equity wise) and help you get a St Louis commercial lending, mortgage or financing loan.

Check back daily for more financial news.

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In-House Financing, Consumer Lending and Customer Financing

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St Louis Finance and Loan Reduction News: Home Values Fall $9 Trillion Since 2006
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The U.S. housing market has taken a hard hit value wise. American homes were worth about $1.7 trillion less in 2010 than they were worth in 2009, according to a report released by real estate website Zillow.

Last year’s drop in home values is 63 percent larger than the $1 trillion dip in 2009, and brings the total value lost since the housing market’s peak in 2006 to a whopping $9 trillion.

While the home buyer tax credit helped revitalize the housing market in the second half of 2009 and the first half of 2010, home values continued their slide in the second half of the year.

Almost $700 billion in value was lost in the first half of the year, compared to Zillow’s estimates of $1 trillion in the second half of 2010.

Only 24 percent of the 129 markets Zillow tracked increased in total home value this year.

Home values increased $10.8 billion in the Boston metropolitan statistical area (MSA), and $10.2 billion in San Diego (MSA).

The areas suffering the biggest drops in home prices include New York City, which lost $103.7 billion in value and Los Angeles, where home values fell $38.6 billion.

The steep declines in home values are pushing Americans further underwater with growing negative equity every year.

In the third quarter of 2010, 23.2 percent of single family homeowners with mortgages owed more on their mortgage than their home was worth which was up from 21.8 percent in 2009.

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Business Owners and Medical Groups: You can now offer customer financing and consumer finance programs to your customers and patients. We are the lender and have approximately $2.7 Billion dollars to loan. Best of all, there is NO risk, NO recourse and NO new equipment to lease for your and your company or medical group. Once your customer is approved, your money is in your bank account within 48 to 72 hours. Turn your credit declines into cash by calling Floyd Tapia at (314) 627-5729.

In addition, if you need commercial financing or a merchant account company that will save you money, Floyd Tapia and his lending and new business resources team can focus on bringing you innovative private lending solutions and financial services to meet all types of financing needs. Let us turn your challenges into closings (or from being underwater equity wise) and help you get a St Louis commercial lending, mortgage or financing loan.

Check back daily for more financial news.

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St Louis Beauty Supply and Avon – Kristin Tapia

In-House Financing, Consumer Lending and Customer Financing

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