irishlady -> 2.25% 30-YEAR FIXED RATE…was that a typo, or is the APR actually 2.25% and, if it isn’t a typo, can anyone go thru that service, regardless on if they have been on time or not on their current mortgage payments?

brian w.
here is the website for irish lady’s comment
https://www.naca.com/index_main.jsp?language=null

2.25% is impossible. Lowest possible interest rates available in this market today are in the mid 5’s.

It may well be that these past due homeowners are in fact actually working with their finance company at this point in time. That was our case, over the last 3 mths our company told use not to make a payment while they worked though using the stim. package to help us refinance our home. This infact made us legally default on our loan, and we received a forclouser notice. Let me tell you that was a very nervous time. It was also a tremendous boon, we were able to take the money freed up by not paying our house payment and payoff most of our past due bills. We are now set into a refinced loan and have not only saved our home, but also went a long ways towards putting us back where we were 2 years ago when my wife lost her job. We are very thankful for the help that was given us. It has been a long 2 years of deepening decline, but we are at last seeing daylight ahead.

I understand Brett’s concerns but my thoughts are: 1. Will the - tax breaks - be a good as they are know? I’ve heard of 8K gov’t and upto 5K in some areas…NOT the city of course. 2. - Interest rates - will they be as low as they are today. 3. The – inventory - will be less desirable the longer you wait because the houses (foreclosures) will need a lot of work.

But most importantly people please don’t buy a house based on your current rent situation, many of those in trouble now did. I pay 1K in rent so I can pay the same in MTG WRONG….there are a lot of other expenses involved with homeownership. Single folks beware don’t tie yourself and money down money down in hopes of buying the American Dream. Most importantly couples PLEASE don’t buy a house based on both incomes as a Rule one income should be able to pay all bills including car payments. So if one loses their job you won’t be so strapped….this is what happened in conjunction to those who bought more house than they realistically could afford. Best wishes

Brett, I read your comments and just wonder why you are buying a house at all. In fact, I wonder why many Americans even buy a house. First off, most people buy a house to stop throwing money away. Rest assured, when you rent, you are generally throwing money out the window. Also, rent will generally go up in time. When you buy a house you have stopped the payment escalation. Your price is set. Sometimes home values go up and sometimes they dont. Thats a risk we all take. In most cases they do go up in value but so do most other homes. It’s all relative.

When you say that housing prices will be less next year then you must have a power that most dont have. Right now, prices are great and the loan rates are great. Too many buyers think they are so smart to wait and then when prices rise they are kicking themselves. I wish you luck but I dont see you are correct. I would be looking strongly for a house today. Prices are really good.

Dont forget, all the money you pay for rent can never be recaptured. Dont be to smart because it may bite you in the rear. I have had many clients who thought they were so smart and more often then not they lost in the end. Don’t be one of them.

When are all these people going to quit sponging off the wealthy in America. Why don’t these people just go out and get jobs. There’s jobs everywhere! All you have to do is walk in to a place these days and they’ll hire you. Everyone knows that all this recession talk is just to scare people. I see people lighting their cigars with $50 dollar bills and using money like confetti. Thanks to George Bush this is the best economy we’ve ever had in all of history. He was the Greatest President ever in History and the whole world loves him except the liberals in America.

Sad to say I’m in the business of foreclosure. If you got an ARM, that’s your problem. We live in this instant gratification society. Must keep up with the Jones’. THOSE DAYS ARE OVER! High end is OUT! You got a loan you never should have been given. Not all your fault, I admit. Have the dream home right away, big tv’s, whatever. If you spend more than you make there is a HUGE problem. Pay the minimum on your credit cards, you’ll be in debt forever. I can’t say I enjoy kicking people out of their homes with kids, actually it sucks! I just hope we all learn from this. I’m SO da__ jaded at this point it’s sad!

Superdave, rent money provides me with a place to live, so it isn’t “throwing money away”. If I owned real estate I’d just be “throwing money away” on depreciation, interest, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, opporitunity cost of my down payment, etc.

The threat of rising rates is not a reason to buy. Higher interest rates would further stiffle any housing recovery. If a house isn’t worth $900 today, then it certainly isn’t going to be worth $1200 a month from now just because rates rose. It just means house prices will need to come down that much more to become affordable.

The deliquency rate for PRIME mortgages has tripled over the last year. And those are the best loans that were underwritten! The default rates on all the creative financing like subprime, 0% down, option arm, ALT-A, undocumented loans, etc will be much higher.

Since loan defaults are up sharply, rising foreclosures will depress home values, pushing more homeowners underwater. And when people are underwater they walk away from their bad investment… even if they can afford the monthly payment. Strategic default as they call it.

Increased unemployment, deliquencies, option arm recasts, huge housing inventory, foreclosure backlogs, etc all pretty much guaranteed house prices have further to fall.

In such a nation [as ours], there is one and one only resource for loans, sufficient to carry them through the expense of a war; and that will always be sufficient, and in the power of an honest government, punctual in the preservation of its faith. The fund I mean, is the mass of circulating coin. Everyone knows, that although not literally, it is nearly true, that every paper dollar emitted banishes a silver one from the circulation. A nation, therefore, making its purchases and payments with bills fitted for circulation, thrusts an equal sum of coin out of circulation. This is equivalent to borrowing that sum, and yet the vendor receiving payment in a medium as effectual as coin for his purchases or payments, has no claim to interest. And so the nation may continue to issue its bills as far as its wants require, and the limits of the circulation will admit… But this, the only resource which the government could command with certainty, the States have unfortunately fooled away, nay corruptly alienated to swindlers and shavers, under the cover of private banks.

I sincerely believe… that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

[The] Bank of the United States… is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution… An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?

The art and mystery of banks… is established on the principle that ‘private debts are a public blessing.’ That the evidences of those private debts, called bank notes, become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from the repayment of these debts beyond a give proportion (generally estimated at one-third). And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead of paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we see in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is levied again on us through the medium of commerce. And they are so ready still to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to let themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them the same premium of six or eight per cent interest, and on the same legal exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the debt, when it shall be called for.