Dean Rizzi

90% Jumbo loans are back!
May 25, 2011 · · 3 Comments

Good news for home buyers looking to take advantage of current real estate prices. After a long hiatus, 90% jumbo loans are back in the game for higher-priced homes. Up until recently, a down payment of 20% was mandatory for jumbo loans over $729,750. We at Guarantee Mortgage have an exclusive contract with a small credit union that will lend up to $979,200 with a down payment of only 10%. That means you can purchase a house or condo up to $1,088,000 using a 5/1, 7/1 or 10/1 ARM. The program requires excellent credit and income and monthly mortgage insurance.

Dean Rizzi 
www.deanrizzi.com

Kathy Wall

Bank or Mortgage Broker? Who to Use?
October 5, 2009 · · 4 Comments

Where is the best place to get your home loan….a bank or a mortgage broker?   Over the course of my many years in real estate, I have waffled back and forth over this question.    Many times my decision on whom to refer would be based on the credit of my buyers.   If they were self employed, had a small down payment or not-so-good credit, I would usually suggest that they talk to a mortgage broker.    If they had excellent credit scores and a good down payment, I would usually suggest that they might be better off going directly to one of the major banks.

Now, after an incredibly negative experience with one of the largest banks operating here in California, I am leaning much more towards referring all clients to mortgage brokers, because I know that they will do the job and, most importantly, will actually care about my clients.  Read more

Mark Hasha

8 Tips to Save Your Sanity
June 3, 2009 · · 5 Comments

I received some great advice from one of the great lenders I work with and I wanted to share it with you. Timely loan approval is critical in today’s real estate market and I wanted to share his tips with you.

frustrated-home-buyer8 Tips to Save Your Sanity

A buyer’s guide to the loan approval process.

 

Guidelines and requirements for loan approvals have recently become more rigorous and each transaction is processed with much more scrutiny. Keeping just a few things in mind could save your sanity, stress level and funding schedule.

1. Be expedient and thorough. When initiating a loan, and throughout the loan process, it is imperative to provide complete documentation to your Mortgage Advisor as quickly as possible. For instance, if all pages of the bank statement are requested, it really means all pages. While you and I might not think it’s necessary to include the reconciliation page of the statement, the lenders do. And, when they receive only five of the six pages of said bank statement, the loan process can become inefficient and stalled. Read more

What a Way to Get Your Down Payment!
May 13, 2009 · · 6 Comments

More good news for prospective homebuyers!  The following article is taken directly from the latest news came out of National Association of Realtors®.

Tax Credit Can Be Used for Down Payment
Shaun Donovan, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, on Tuesday said that the Federal Housing Administration is going to permit its lenders to allow home buyers to use the $8,000 tax credit as a down payment.

 Previously, most buyers wouldn’t receive the funds until after they filed their tax return, and that deterred some people from using the credit. The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® has been calling for the change.         Read more

Nicole Machado

SSF Real Estate becoming a competitive sport…
March 8, 2009 · · 8 Comments

2009-01-07-boxing_glovesGet on your boxing gloves and jump in the ring, but don’t wait for the bell to ring or you’ll be knocked out of the competition.  In the past few weeks homes in SSF have been flying off the market. I have been working with first time home buyers for about a month now that desperately want to purchase a home in SSF.  They are solid buyers that have excellent credit and a good down payment, however they keep getting beat out on properties by all cash offers. The two most recent homes they bid on had a tremendous amount of activity. One had 18 offers and the other had multiple offers within a few Read more

How to Apply “Free Money” Wisely Toward a Home Purchase?
February 22, 2009 · · 5 Comments

In my previous blog, “Stimulus Package – What It Means to Bay Area Homebuyers”, some prospective homebuyers and comments  have expressed that the $8,000 tax credit in the Stimulus Package is “just not enough” to stimulate them to get off the fence.  Understandably, the incentive seems too insignificant when we are talking about an average housing price of $500,000 in the Bay Area. 

On the flip side of the coin, $8,000 is unarguably a substantial amount of money – don’t we all wish to have an extra $8,000 in our bank account?  Since a tax credit is a dollar for dollar reduction in income taxes (e.g. if you have $8,000 tax credit, you will pay $8,000 less tax that year regardless of your tax bracket), it is essentially like “free money”. Therefore, for someone who intends to purchase a home this year, there could be a number of ways in which this money can be wisely applied toward the purchase.  Here are some examples: Read more

STIMULUS PACKAGE – WHAT IT MEANS TO BAY AREA HOMEBUYERS?
February 13, 2009 · · 9 Comments

Our Broker posted a blog yesterday about “STIMULUS PACKAGE, WHAT REAL ESTATE PARTS MEAN?” Since I am currently working with a few prospective first-time homebuyers, I thought I’d picked their brain during my follow-up calls after the blog was posted. In particular, I asked them “if the stimulus package is finalized and homebuyers will get the benefit of the $8K tax credit, is that a good incentive for you to buy a house now?”  Read more

Lee Ginsburg

Loan, Gift or Partner to Help Children Buy A Home?
January 9, 2009 · · 6 Comments

As parents we all love our children and only want to help them. In the Bay Area parents almost have to help with a down payment. Do you give your children a gift or a loan? Is it better to be a co-borrower with them? Maybe be partners. If you help one child, you have to help the others. California is a community property state and that creates other issues. It is difficult to bring it up but more than half the marriages wind up in divorce and gifting child money to purchase a home is possibly giving your child’s ex-spouse a very generous gift. Asking a child to sign a promissory note is not always comfortable. In many families Money is a “taboo” subject. I helped my son purchase a home with the idea he was to pay it back when he could. My wife and I always had a good relationship with my son so we did not see any need to have a signed document. Hope that does not come back to bite us. He got engaged a year later and married a short time later. Read more