For the second year in a row, Santa Clarita homebuyers utilizing FHA insured mortgages will be relieved to know that the Federal Housing Administration has extended the waiver of their anti-flipping policy.

The anti-flipping policy affected FHA homebuyers who wanted to purchase homes that had been owned for 90 days or less. The government wanted to protect themselves with such a policy, from insuring loans on homes that were just being flipped, and not necessarily rehabilitated.

That policy made it difficult for many first-time homebuyers to have access to a growing inventory of flipped homes. It’s beneficial not only to first-time homebuyers to have those types of homes as options when house hunting, but it helps the investors who own them by broadening the buyer pool that much more. It helps the greater real estate market overall by stabilizing home prices through increased buyer competition. No doubt that the communities harder hit by foreclosures welcome this news of the anti-flipping waiver by the FHA.

The majority of our clients that are Santa Clarita first-time homebuyers utilize an FHA insured loan. With more and more investors flipping properties, it will remain important for the government to continue this policy of waiving the anti-flipping policy.

341 Santa Clarita Flip Homes in 2011

From data available to us via our Santa Clarita Foreclosure Radar tool, we can see that in 2011 there were 341 homes purchased by 3rd party investors at the trustee sales, for properties located in the Santa Clarita Valley. Not all of these properties were flipped, but it’s likely, that the majority of them were. If 200-300 of them were flipped, that’d mean that FHA insured homebuyers wouldn’t have access to that many of these types of sales, were the anti-flipping policy not waived.

Conventional loan for 3% down? Wow! That could be useful. Listen in and watch Keith Renno from the Renno Lending Team @ Pacific Funding Mortgage, and gain some insight as to what’s happening in the mortgage market, and how it may affect Santa Clarita real estate.

There are so many condo and townhome communities in the Santa Clarita Valley that aren’t FHA approved. That means you can’t get an FHA loan there. Which also means no 3.5% down payment option if you happen to like a community that’s not FHA approved. Well, if the guys at Pacific Funding Mortgage can get you into one of those communities by approving you for a Conventional loan, where you only have to put down 3% (not 3.5%!), that could solve a lot of problems homebuyers are running into with these non-FHA approved communities.

Thank you to Keith Renno for another great update for us here at The Robert and Brian Team.

Santa Clarita Mortgage Video Update October 2011

On October 1, 2011, the maximum loan limits for conforming FHA/Conventional loans will change. The Santa Clarita real estate market will be impacted. But how much? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at he directive of the US Government, can no longer buy loans that have a loan amount more than $625,500. This is a change, a decrease, from $729,750. Some areas of the country never went as high as $729,750. Their decrease will vary. It depends on what county it is, which state, and the home values there.

For instance Los Angeles County is by in large a more expensive area for homes, in contrast to other parts of the State or Country. The maximum loan limit here was $729,750. It will be decreased to $625,500. Santa Clarita specifically, however, has a median homes sales price of just over $300,000. We won’t feel the impact here, as much as other areas of Los Angeles County, where median home sales prices can reach well over $500,000.

For a homeowner, who might have been contemplating moving up, from their $350,000 house, and buying a $700,000 house in Santa Clarita, this might impact their decision to make that move. By deciding not to, that decision could impact the inventory available for entry level homebuyers, that may have been interested in their entry level home they were moving from. There is a domino effect. None-the-less, the high majority of home sales in Santa Clarita are well below the $625,500 loan maximum, as it will be starting October 1, 2011.

This should have a minimal impact to the Santa Clarita real estate market. With the quantity of short sale listings, and bank owned homes still to hit the market, they should keep a somewhat healthy inventory in place, here in Santa Clarita.

On our latest episode of SCVRealEstate360, our Santa Clarita real estate YouTube channel, I went into detail about this subject of changing loan limits that the Government is putting in place, come October 1, 2011. We’ve been waiting to see if they extend the current loan limits, but that’s not likely to happen at this late hour.

Enjoy the episode below.

Interested in speaking with a lender about how much a home you qualify for, and what loan products best suit your needs? Give us a call, we’ll refer you to one of our trusted lending partners.

Interested in discussing the details of a home you saw listed for sale here in Sata Clarita? We can help you with that. Contact us, here at The Robert and Brian Team!

In an effort to keep homeowners current, and give them some skin in the game, so-to-speak, Ocwen has just introduced their principal reduction program that they call SAM, short for Shared Appreciation Modification program. This program will aim to reduce upside down homeowners’ mortgage principal balance to 95% of market value, and in return the investor on the loan(s) being serviced will receive 25% of the appreciation/profit once the home is eventually sold or refinanced.

This is per the press release that Ocwen just released on July 26, 2011: Found Here

Here is the phone number to Ocwen Customer Service: (800) 746-2936

Upside down on your mortgage? Is it being serviced by Ocwen? Call them to find out if you qualify for this program?

Here’s our SCV Real Estate 360 video on the new Ocwen SAM program, call us if we can ever be of any assistance for any of your Santa Clarita real estate needs.

*don’t call us for help with loan modifications, we do not help or advise on such subjects, please contact your lender directly for help

Thanks to Keith Renno at The Renno Team of Pacific Funding Mortgage, for hanging out with me today on the ScvRealEstate360 show. Today we discussed the most popular and currently relevant questions that homebuyers and borrowers, are asking about mortgages.

Interest Rates? Down Payment Assistance? What’s the difference between Conventional and FHA loan programs?

When searching for a home to purchase in Santa Clarita, give the Renno Team a call to discuss their rates and programs. They are serious home loan pros, and have got the job done for so many of our clients. Keith is a wealth of home loan knowledge, so take take a moment, watch, and listen to what he has to say about the most popular mortgage questions that Santa Clarita homebuyers are asking him.

SCV Real Estate 360 – Popular SCV Mortgage Questions

With so many condominium communities within the Santa Clarita Valley, and to be sure, across the country, losing their FHA approved status, homebuyers are scrambling to find other options that enable them to purchase a home.

Within just the Santa Clarita Valley, 11 more communities will lose their FHA approved status on July 31, 2011, joining the 25 other communities that have already lost their approval. These approvals can be gained back, but not until some serious hoops are jumped through, by someone. Yes, someone. There isn’t one persons job to get these communities re-approved. Most often, a lender that has a borrower who wants to get an FHA insured loan within a particular community that’s not FHA approved, will be the one to navigate the gauntlet, and try to win back the FHA approved status for the client, and thus all other potential future homebuyers.

One popular option, that is by no means perfect, is the 5% down conventional loan option that some lenders are offering. While the down payment is higher, this seems to be the best answer to enable a homebuyer to purchase a condo in a community that’s not FHA approved. Most buyers of course, would rather come in with a lower down payment, especially if it has been hard to save money, but coming in with the extra 1.5% down isn’t a stretch for some.

Lets take a look at the differences in what your monthly payment would be with a few assumptions (fyi purchase price assumed is much higher than most condos in Santa Clarita – but you’ll get the idea):

Conventional 5% down loan vs. FHA 3.5% down loan – payment difference:

Conventional 5% down 30 year fixed:

Purchase Price: $425,000

Rate: 4.625%

Down Payment: 5%, $21,250

Total Loan: $403,750

Monthly Payment: $2,075.84

APR: 5.231%

Total Housing Expense (includes monthly mortgage insurance, hazard insurance, taxes): $2,914.82

FHA 3.5% down 30 year fixed:

Purchase Price: $425,000

Rate: 4.375%

Down Payment: 3.5%, $14,875

Total Loan: $414,226

Monthly Payment: $2,068.17

APR: 5.231%

Total Housing Expense (includes monthly mortgage insurance, hazard insurance, taxes): $2,980.97

As you can see, the extra down payment doesn’t buy you much less of a payment. The interest rate, at least of the day this was calculated by the trusty Renno Lending Team at Pacific Funding Mortgage, is higher on the conventional loan.  The mortgage insurance is also higher on the FHA loan.

If you’d typically go for an FHA insured loan for your Santa Clarita home purchase, but have found out that the community you’d like to buy a home in, is not FHA approved, then be sure to ask your lender if they can do a 5% down conventional loan, to side step all of this FHA approved/not approved drama.

If you’re looking for a great lender who can help you, we recommend calling The Renno Lending Team at Pacific Funding Mortgage. They’re located in Valencia, and you can visit Keith and Jason Renno here.

Today Bank of America sent out an announcement, making it clear that going forward, when a homebuyer walks away from an offer on a short sale, they can be substituted by another buyer’s bank-up offer without restarting the entire short sale approval process.

This is great news for homebuyers interested in pursuing homes that are short sales. Here in Santa Clarita, short sales make up approximately 40% of the inventory of homes for sale. Quite frequently, homebuyers run into the situation where a home is reported as an approved short sale, however once a few details are uncovered, they often learn that while the short sale was indeed once approved, it has to go through the approval process again, simply because the previous interested buyer walked away from the deal.

This is also good news to sellers in the short sale position, as well as agents representing them. It’s no small chore to get a short sale approved on a home. And to have to go through that approval process once again, when substituting one buyer’s offer with another, is not ideal.

Kudos to Bank of America for making this change, and allowing for a more streamlined offer and approval process, when considering short sales.

Thank you to The Renno Lending Team for putting together this Santa Clarita mortgage update. It’s very important for you homebuyers out there that will be utilizing an FHA insured loan, that the insurance premium for them, will be going up as of April 18, 2011. That’s next week, if you’re reading this now!

If you’re not already under contract, it’ll be hard to do anything about this. If you’re planning on buying in the near future, it’s important to know how this increase in the annual insurance premium will affect your buying power for a Santa Clarita home or condo.

Without further delay, please listen into Keith Renno below, as he elaborates a bit about this increase and change. Enjoy!

Thank you to Keith Renno at The Renno Lending Team for putting together another Santa Clarita mortgage video update. Keith warns in this update about the upcoming increase in the mortgage insurance premium associated with FHA insured loans. This will result in a monthly increase in payments for homebuyers who lock in their loan after the effective date for this increase, April 18, 2011.

The increase will raise the annual premium from .9% to 1.15% of the loan value. It was last raised to .9% in the Fall of 2010.

Perhaps this will nudge some fence sitters into buying a home? We’ll see. Prices aren’t tanking. And the cost of buying a home at today’s market value is about to go up for the numerous FHA insured borrowers.

Enjoy this video, and please, if you have any questions about home loans, feel free to Keith and Jason at The Renno Lending Team @ 661-513-3116.

Thanks again to Keith Renno of Prospect Mortgage, and The Renno Lending Team, for putting together this Santa Clarita Mortgage / Home Loan Update for our team.

What’s up with rates and changes lending standards with respect to FICO scores? Listen in, below.