meeny's Blog

Is your mortgage causing you trouble? Are you having difficulty making the payments? Has it adjusted and you cannot afford the new payment? Are you unable to refinance to a loan that would better suit your financial situation? Then it is probably time for your to investigate modifying your loan.

1. As a home owner it is vital to identify that the mortgage on your current property is a lawful one. Be sure that there are no Truth in Lending Act Violations or RESPA violations and Lender wasn't fraudulent who originated your loan. Have a professional, experienced mortgage attorney and/or legitimate, credible law firm focused in loan modifications examine your loan documents for these potential violations.

2. Develop and maintain a complete written life of loan history attempting to highlight all phony charges and fees included in your mortgage balance. Also, you should make sure that any inflated appraisal and/or loss of property values are included and calculated.

3. Compare the loan you got with the one you thought you were getting. Are the terms the same? hat is, is your Annual Percentage Rate ("APR") the same as the one you were quoted? Are your total monthly payments the same as you were told they would be? Is there a prepayment penalty, and if so, were you told about this prepayment penalty?

4. If you have ever refinanced, then the first thing you should look at is the "notice of Right to Cancel" which is also called the "Three Day Right of Rescission." You usually has three days after signing loan documents to change your mind and cancel the loan. The borrower must be told of this right in writing. If the creditor fails to properly provide notice of this right to cancel, the right of rescission may be extended for up to three years. When the right is extended for three years you can rescind the loan at any time before three years, meaning that the loan is treated as if it never existed. Essentially, you become entitled to all profits made by the creditor as a result of this loan. This means that the creditor must refund all interest paid, all closing fees, all broker fees, and even pay for your attorney fees. As you can imagine, this amount can be quite significant. The extended right of rescission is a powerful tool to help borrowers who have been victims of predatory lending, and helping our clients exercise this right is often the first step in holding a creditor responsible for illegal behavior.

If it is determined that no laws have been violated on your mortgage, then it's time to approach your lender for a possible loan modification. Here are the factors that will be looked at and addressed:

Hardship causing your mortgage issues
Loan amount
Amount owed
Ability to pay
Equity in the property
Debt to income ratio
Future financial situation

Which approach will best benefit the lender in the long run - to foreclose or pursue a loan workout with you and or modify your loan

A loan modification generally occurs where all parties involved with a problem loan mutually agree to create a new and better loan. The loan modification should concur previous financial issues, ensuring new obligations are met seamlessly.

When applying for a loan modification, make a game plan on how exactly you are going to approach your bank or lender. When working via phone, your lender has at least two levels of employees who talk with delinquent borrowers. The first is usually the collections department, which consists of people who are trained to force money out of you and get you current on payments. The second group should embody loss mitigation specialists. Depending on your lender, some other frequently used labels of these departments include; foreclosure prevention, loan resolution and delinquency customer service. It can be difficult to get through to the loss mitigation department, hence the need for a professional, experienced mortgage attorney and/or legitimate, credible law firm as mentioned above.

Once you get a live person, you need to work your way up to a decision maker. This is sometimes harder to do for a homeowner than a 3rd party authorized professional. Sometimes to get to this point you have to put up with level 1 collection departments through a process of filling out their forms and information. They will ask for you to provide them with items such as pay stubs, tax returns and a multitude of all types of other personal financial information. At this point, some lenders will assign the file to someone higher up in the loss mitigation department.

The most crucial element to this whole process is your budget and if you have done your due diligence, you'll be ready. They will ask you for a detailed list of your monthly expenses. If your financial situation is too tight, you may not get approved. If you have too much extra income you are going to have an outrageous payment plan and should agree to it!

Do your research, be prepared and trust that the attorney you chose to retain to assist you in this matter will do the best they can to rectify your current home loan and financial issues.

A lot of people don't really understands what it means to refinance your mortgage, Though it a popular term but it has been greatly misunderstood.Despite the several factors that may influence it, there are different benefits to refinancing your mortgage.

Refinancing your mortgage has a lot of advantages in this our fast paste world where making more money and the quest to save is the priority of every individual. To be honest money makes the world go round. Therefore we can confidently say, financial gains is the biggest benefit to refinancing your mortgage

When you are settling for refinancing your home opportunity, your desire is to get lower interest rates and do you know that the real estate market is constantly changing and there are many periods of time that will see lower interest rates on mortgages when compared to the ones you are currently paying. This can lead to some financial benefits

You will get some new amount of money to pay after refinancing your mortgage and these can help you save some money on a monthly bases, Don’t also forget taxes and fees. You need to be a mathematician to know the amount for each.

If the amount you gain by refinancing is higher than the sum of taxes and fees payable you will have no reason why to not do the move. This is the number one and most important benefit from refinancing your mortgage: more money saved on every single month of your loan period. This can be exciting and tempting. It can make you go all the way.

Be observant and very keen when refinancing your mortgage, you can also do changes to the period of the loan and you will also gain benefits from this deal. You basically have two options. The first one stands in creating a longer period loan.

By doing so you will have even more money saved each month because you will gain from lowered interest rates and a lower amount to pay each month because the loan period is longer. On the other hand, if you only want to take advantage of the lowered interest and you have no problems with affording the current monthly payment, you can opt in for a shorter loan period. This can leads in to financial benefits from lower interest rates and from paying your debt sooner.

The second most important benefit to refinancing your mortgage stands in exactly the main asset you have: the home you use for the mortgage. As time goes on the value of your house changes together with real estate evolution and different improvements you brought to the home. Having this in mind, we have a higher home value that can be used as equity in refinancing your mortgage.

You can thus receive better terms and save even more money in the process. This benefit of refinancing your mortgage is usually overlooked but needs to be properly taken into account because of its importance and value..

Lastly let see one more also have another benefit to refinancing your mortgage that is oftentimes discarded. So many people are stuck with a mortgage that comes with flexible rate mortgage and this means that the interests you need to pay will vary from one period to another.

The implication of this mean it can drop but also with the possibility that it can also go up. Changing to a fixed rate mortgage brings more stability and it also means that you can plan your budget more accurately with your detailed plan. This benefit may seem to be a small benefit to refinancing your mortgage but if you sum up the amounts you will notice that it can become a very important savings option than anything else

We can not exhaust all the benefits to refinancing your mortgage, another important benefit might come from various mortgage brokers that can offer special deals or incentive in order to have you as a client. This can be a bait because the want to keep you as a committed client. Be on the look out in order to cash in on every possibility this market has to offer because we can’t just exhaust all.

If you want peace of mind that you would not be at risk of losing your home to repossession then consider taking out mortgage payment protection. A policy would provide you with an income after so many days of unemployment or incapacity and would payout for a certain length of time which is set by the provider. You would not have the worry of falling into arrears with the mortgage and the lender taking you to court to seek possession of your home. You would be able to make a recovery or look around for work knowing that your mortgage payments were safe.

Lenders will not repossess at the drop of a hat, but they will as a last resort and if you cannot continue paying your mortgage while catching up on the arrears then repossession is a strong possibility. Repossession means losing your home and the memories built up in it. It also comes with stigma of eviction and of course your credit rating is in tatters, which makes borrowing again extremely hard in the future. One way of ensuring that you are not faced with this possibility if you lose your income is to keep up with the payments of the mortgage by taking out mortgage payment protection. Relying on any help from the State is not the best option. You would have to meet criteria set out and even then you would only receive help with the interest part of the mortgage. You could also expect to wait several months before you would see any benefit. If you were relying on savings as a way of keeping up with the mortgage then savings could soon deplete if you were to be unable to work or could not find work for many months.

Mortgage payment protection can be taken cheaply with a standalone provider. This is a better way to take out protection than having it included into the mortgage. High street lenders charge highly for their protection when adding it onto the mortgage at the time of borrowing. A standalone specialist will also provide you with all the information you need to ensure that a policy is right for you. You are able to choose the level of protection that is most suitable. You could insure against accident, sickness and unemployment together, accident and sickness as a standalone policy or just for unemployment. This will reflect on the cost of the cover as will your age and the amount you wish to protect of your mortgage repayment.

When your policy would begin paying out and for how long would depend on the provider. Some policies would provide you with an income tax-free after the 30th unemployment or incapacity date. Other providers could ask you defer from claiming until the 90th day and some could back pay to day one of you being made unemployed or of suffering accident and sickness. Once the term of the mortgage payment protection policy has been reached then the policy would expire regardless of whether you had found work or recovered and gone back to work.