Mortgages Just Got Harder to Get

Topics: Newsroom Posted on August 1st, 2009

There’s good news and…there’s the bad.  The good news is, you still have 119 days to meet the deadline for the $8,000 tax credit if you’re a first time homebuyer.  Or, someone who has not owned a home in the last 3 years.

Now for the bad.  Home loans are taking longer to process. Regulations have gotten tighter- and tighter.  For example, this last week the government put just one more restriction in place with regards to teh APR (annual percentage rate).  The APR is the actual “cost” of the loan including fees in the first year.  All the fun stuff is calculated in like, the appraisal fees, the escrow fees, origination fee, lender fees.

You could have say, a 5% interest rate with an APR of 5.475%.

Now there’s a new twist.  Any change in a cost/fee that changes the APR more than .125%, has to be disclosed to the byer at least 3 days before the closing.  Here’s where it’s a problem.  What if a fee changes, or the lender (or title company) fails to include one of their fees and it puts it in the day before closing.  Guess what?  NO CLOSING!

While it is not impossible to close in 2 or 3 weeks, it is waaay more difficult now than it was 6 months ago.  The bottom line?  Always, always seek good counsel.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 1st, 2009 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Newsroom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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