All posts in Mortgage

What Is Mortgage Acceleration

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The typical homeowner may think that mortgage acceleration is the act toward reducing the indebtedness on residential property by making larger repayments or more frequent ones than the loan contract requires. The short answer would be this is correct. Mortgage acceleration simply put means to speed up the process for paying off the loan. The part that becomes a little vague, or downright mysterious, is just what method is the most effective to accomplish this.

Creative Methods for Mortgage Acceleration
There are several hot methods that have hit the mortgage marketplace in recent years that make even 15-year fixed rate mortgages with bi-weekly payments look like financial dinosaurs. Although critics of these financing methods claim them too good to be true, the actual review dictates that when conducted with the proper information and education, many of the proposed goals stated from applying mortgage acceleration tactics are reasonably achievable.

How Can These Practices Benefit a Homeowner?
Through restructuring a mortgage correctly, an average homeowner can repay the loan in seven to 15 years. There is no sacrifice in living expenses made and, in fact, can cut total debt in half. Hearing this statement elicits instant disbelief from most responders wondering if the statement is true, then why s it not prevalently known to all? Good question! Most believe there is some insidious catch to the practice, its probably fraudulent, illegal or, at best, quite unethical. Not true!

Mortgage History Shows Conservative Mindset
The lending of money has always been mostly a conservative activity. Yes, some venture capitalists take high risks lending money but require great rewards doing so. The home mortgage market has been relatively a conservative arena based upon business practices that basically benefited the lender first. Traditional mortgages 100 years ago called for a 50 percent down payment that our grandparents slaved years to save. Our parents faired a little better, but never dreamed of no-money down arrangements or ever saw a plethora of mortgage products such as adjustable rate mortgages or interest only mortgage loans. And more recently, use of negative amortization loans have become popular mortgage vehicles for short-term real estate investments. Traditional products like a 30-year fixed mortgage possess an amortization schedule that favours the lender. However, in recent years some clever people discovered inside lending institution secrets that could help consumers win the interest war.

Interest Only Mortgage Is Key
At the heart of any successful mortgage acceleration process is an interest-only loan. About 20 years ago in Australia, someone discovered that if an interest-only loan was obtained and repaid in a specific way will allow a consumer to pay down all personal debts three times faster than associated with conventional financing. It requires a great deal of discipline including gaining a month ahead for repayment of an interest-only loan and also associated depositing money, a pay check, into an interest-bearing account. Additionally, through making your loan repayments earlier than required, you can essentially prevent any additional interest from accruing.

Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC)
This is the vehicle that allows a consumer to deposit money directly into an account that consolidates all your debt mortgage, credit cards, auto loans into one vehicle that allows you the draw off the balance of this loan using checks or a debit card.

Check with your trusted mortgage broker for greater details about mortgage acceleration.

Good And Bad Are A Matter Of Perception

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There is an infinite balance in the universe that equilibrates the ups and downs of life evenly and equally at all times. Like gravity or magnetism the balance is invisible to the eye and has to be examined and studied, to be brought out of obscurity into understanding. Sir Isaac Newton observed, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. While Newton was referring to the laws of physics his theories extend beyond the commonly accepted science to include the very fabric of the universe and govern the lives of each and every person living on the planet.

To put it simply good and bad exist in harmony together at all times and in all places, but it is a persons perception and perspective that create the illusion of things being either good or bad. If people understood perfectly the laws of physics that Newton uncovered they would begin to see that for every perceived bad circumstance, event or situation there is an equal and opposite good perception waiting to be identified and vice versa.

The economy may be down and people have lost jobs, but that is only the beginning. The housing markets have dropped because of the foreclosure rate that may be bad for those that have been forced to find alternative places to live, but on the opposite side of all the perceived negatives are the positives. People forced to move out of homes that they could not afford are finding that they can now manage their finances better as people that once thought home ownership was beyond their reach are buying homes that are now available at discounted prices. Even the banks and lenders are benefiting again by the drop in interest rates that are allowing people to take advantage of low mortgage rates and refinancing options that they could not expect to see before the economic downturn.

Veteran loans and refinancing options are helping people to have the good amid the bad and turn the economy around by extending home loans to people that are taking advantage of the positives with lower interest rates and home prices that may appear to be negative to some but that demonstrate an equal and opposite balance in reality.

While things have been dark there has always been an equal amount of light shinning in the darkness for those that have the wisdom to see both sides of good and bad and are able to see the balance that exists between the two polar opposites with unbiased perspective. Look for the opposite, believing that it exists and you will being to see the truth of Newtons law pertaining to the there being an equal and opposite force or action to every event, every situation and every circumstance that comes into existence. Reality is the balancing of perceptions and understanding that both opposites must exist together in order to sustain the unseen laws of the universe that support life.

Bi-weekly Mortgages Versus Mortgage Accelerators

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Bi-weekly mortgages are a good way of saving money on a home mortgage, but a mortgage accelerator is far more effective. Mortgage accelerator systems save far more money than bi-weekly systems.

Every month, most of your mortgage payment goes toward interest, and only a very small amount goes toward reducing the principal. If you could do something that would cause less of that monthly payment to go toward interest, more of it would go toward principal! Is this possible? YES!

How? Use a mortgage accelerator! It’s a method that makes more of your monthly payment go toward principal. If you think this means making bi-weekly mortgage payments, you’re wrong. Real mortgage accelerators don’t change your regular monthly payment but more of it goes toward principal, and less to interest. Basically, you’re earning money on your own mortgage!

Mortgage accelerators are misunderstood but don’t be put off. Not only do they work, but also, using one can cut the time it takes to pay off a 30 year loan to just 10 years, and save you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Banks naturally don’t want you to know this and how much better it is than a bi-weekly mortgage. Actually, bi-weekly mortgages only save about 5 years.

The best mortgage accelerators use the “Australian method”, so-named because it was first used in Australia in the mid 1990’s. Since then, many people in countries around the world have used it with great success. Still, in the USA, it is not well-known. But don’t be put off because it really works and can save the average homeowner a fortune in mortgage interest.

There are several companies selling mortgage accelerators, and some of them charge thousands of dollars. Still, they are all based on the Australian model and so all will work, so you don’t have to spend more than a few hundred dollars.

One of the best values is the Mortgage Magic System.
The Mortgage Magic System lets you use the bank’s money to your own advantage.

Using this System, you will owe less money to the bank each month, and more of your monthly payment will go toward paying down your loan – in effect, making money on your mortgage.

Here’s how it works: you are going to use your regular income to offset your mortgage loan by having your income reduce your mortgage balance. For every dollar of income, you will owe a dollar less on your mortgage.

By using your regular income to offset your mortgage balance, you owe less on your loan. As a result, you owe less interest for the period! But you also need your income to pay bills and pay for my daily needs. No problem, because you have access to it anytime you need it to pay your bills.

If you’re excited about a system that is so much better than bi-weekly mortgages,there’s more. You see, if you can pay off your largest debt (your mortgage) in about 10 years, you’ll have all those extra years where your monthly discretionary income will increase by thousands of dollars each month. You’ll be able to quickly grow your retirement savings over those years, instead of paying all that money to the bank each month!

You think this sounds too good to be true, but it’s not, and there’s absolutely no risk of using a mortgage accelerator. So, if you want to save money on your mortgage with a bi-weekly mortgage system, use a mortgage accelerator instead.

Mortgage Scams Lead to Debt And Harassment

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The Federal Trade Commission has stepped up its investigations and prosecutions of mortgage relief scam artists. Since the start of 2013, the FTC has obtained settlements from over 20 individuals and companies involved with scamming distressed homeowners. In the most recent cases, two individuals and seven companies settled FTC charges that they victimized more than a thousand people through “mass joinder lawsuits” and “forensic loan audits.” They violated the Mortgage Assistance Relief Services (MARS) Rule, which was set up to curb deceptive and unfair practices related to such services.

The FTC contends that Sameer Lakhany, Brian Pacios, Precision Law Center, Inc., Precision Law Center LLC, National Legal Network, Inc., and Assurity Law Group, Inc. targeted consumers with a mass joinder scam. They promised homeowners that they could stop their foreclosures or obtain some other mortgage relief if they joined together to sue the lenders. The defendants represented themselves as a law firm called Precision Law Center, charging between $6,000 and $10,000 in up-front fees. But every suit was dismissed soon after it was filed; the victims saw none of the promised relief.

One of the scam artists, Lakhany, was also involved in a “forensic loan audit” scam, along with The Credit Shop, LLC, Titanium Realty, Inc., and Fidelity Legal Services LLC. These defendants called themselves nonprofit organizations, with domain names like “FreeFedLoanMod.org,” “HouseholdRelief.org,” and “MyHomeSupport.org;” but really they sold people an auditing service, which supposedly found lender violations in mortgage documents. The defendants charged $800 to nearly $1,600 for this service, which never led to a single favorable loan modification for the victims.

The FTC settlements require the defendants to surrender many assets and pay $4.75 million in restitution. All except Assurity Law Group, Inc. are banned from mortgage relief and debt relief services; Assurity is required to surrender $100,000 in funds and has been ordered to cease any deceptive practices. In February, the FTC settled with another predatory group, composed of Ryan Zimmerman, Consumer Advocates Group Experts, LLC, Paramount Asset Management Corporation, and Advocates for Consumer Affairs Expert, LLC. These entities also used the forensic loan audit scam, and charged people almost $2,000 or more for the audits-they failed to make good on their false claims. Besides receiving a $3.5 million judgment against them, the defendants are banned from marketing relief services or products, and from making any misleading claims about any other type of product or service.

In January 2013, eight other defendants settled with the FTC, for selling fake relief services to distressed Spanish-speaking homeowners over the phone. The defendants-David F. Preiner, Daniel Hungria, Freedom Companies Marketing, Inc., Freedom Companies Lending, Inc., Freedom Companies, Inc., Grupo Marketing Dominicana, Freedom Information Services, Inc., and Haiti Management, Inc-collected over $2 million from people over three years. They simply didn’t provide the services they said they could. Part of this settlement, in which the defendants received a $2.39 million judgment, bans them from marketing relief products or services, and from making misleading claims about anything they advertise.

Is Mortgage = Konut Kredisi (home Loan) In Turkey

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Below is a list of important changes that are brought with the new mortgage law in Turkey:

New Mortgage Products
Before the mortgage law, it was only possible to lend home loans at fixed interest rates. The law introduced floating interest rates (or a combination of fixed and floating rates) as an additional mortgage type. In floating rate loans, the interest rate is determined from the sum of a fixed margin that is determined by the lender and the inflation rate as measured by the Consumer Price Index. This way banks do not have to face the interest rate risk on their own and may share the risk with the borrowers. In summer of 2007, some banks started to offer variable interest rate loans but so far there does not seem to be much interest in this new type of mortgages and more than 99.9% of the loans are still fixed-interest rate mortgages.

Tax Benefits
Before the law passed on March 2007, there were some plans about providing tax relief to borrowers, however, the only tax relief mortgage law provided was a minor 5 percent Banking Insurance Operating Tax (BSMV) exemption and abolishment of several other smaller operating fees. As an example, before the law passed a monthly mortgage interest rate of 1.30% would be actually 1.3965%. For a 10 year loan of 100,000 YTL, with BSMV exemption the new mortgage law reduced the monthly payment of 1,722 YTL to 1,650 YTL, about 4.2% reduction in the monthly payments.

Loan Length
Before the mortgage law, Turkish banks could offer only shot-term loans up to a few years. This had a very limiting effect on the real estate economy in Turkey. Because of short maturities and high interest rates, funding of houses was mainly done with savings (60+ percent) and relatives/friends (about 25 per cent). The home loans were only making less than 5 percent of the total housing funding.
With the new law in effect for about 6 months, this picture started to change dramatically. The introduction of the new Turkish mortgage law already made a few banks (e.g., HSBC, Sekerbank and Finansbank) give loans up to 30 years to finance. It is expected that the other lending institutions will offer similar mortgages in the near future as interest rates decrease further and demand for longer mortgages continue to increase.

Lending Institutions
Before the mortgage law, only deposit, investment and participation banks could issue home loans. Under the new law, however, consumer funding companies are able to issue home loans too. A few mortgage companies are in the process of starting their operations; it is likely that the growing competition will lower the interest rates, which are very high when compared to those of developed countries. Let’s also note that as these new lenders are allowed to invest in capital markets to create funds for the home loans, it is expected that the financial markets will develop and will have indirect positive effects on the rest of the economy.

Early Payment Fee
Before the law, there was no penalty for early payment of the loan, however, due to the pressures from the banks, the new mortgage law included a penalty up to 2% if borrower pays before due date. This early payment fee is only valid for the fixed-interest rate loans. There is no penalty for the adjustable interest rate loans; they can close their accounts any time without incurring a charge.

Securitization of Loans
With the new law, banks are now able to bundle the loans into securities creating covered bonds and mortgage backed securities. Covered mortgage bonds and mortgage backed securities are debt securities backed by cash flows from mortgages and let the banks eliminate or share the mortgage risk with the rest of the world in a secondary market. Let’s also note that Turkey’s sub-investment grade sovereign rating may not be a big problem in the making good deals in the secondary market as covered bonds typically get higher ratings than the sovereign ratings of the countries. Therefore we expect that the secondary mortgage market is likely to stimulate the growth in the mortgage market substantially and decrease the interest rates when it starts to operate in early 2008.