Mobile Home Loans and Manufactured Home Production topics.
Mobile Home owners often fail to see that the consequences of a foreclosure are very unlike those of a Manufactured Home short-sale. A short sale might be one great alternative deserving serious consideration.
There are many reasons to buy your first home now, and purchasing a manufactured home can be more affordable than renting an apartment. The first reason to buy a mobile home is low mortgage rates. If you have good credit, and a down payment, you can get into a manufactured home for less than renting in most cities. Another reason to consider buying a mobile home right now is the state of the market. Prices on homes are hitting the bottom of the curve, many economists predict. So, if you buy now, there is a good chance that the property and home will increase in value over the next few years. Of course, it is always a good idea to invest in a home rather than rent because your money is going towards purchasing an asset.
Mobile home financing is difficult to come by compared to a year ago, but there are still options available. We can tell you in a short phone conversation how likely you are going to be approved, and at what rate. You’ve got nothing to lose by calling to find out if buying a manufactured home is a smart idea. Getting financing can be scary, but with seasoned mobile home loan experts behind you there is nothing to worry about.
How does the current Tax Credit work?
The current legislation grants a one-time credit of 10 percent of the home’s purchase price up to a maximum of $8000 to first time homebuyers or those buyers who have not owned a house in the last three years. Homebuyers can chose to claim the credit either retroactively on their 2008 return or on their 2009 obligation. If the buyer does not owe enough taxes to cover the credit the balance will be refunded to them in cash.
The new legislation is currently in front of the House Ways and Means Committee, the current First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit is very popular and could be extended beyond its current expiration date and greatly expanded. Congressman Coble’s is introducing the new legislation which would remove both the income restriction and the requirement that the home be a first-time purchase.
Around 13% of U.S. households with mortgages was in foreclosure or behind on its home loan payment during the second quarter of 2009, which puts added pressure on federal programs aimed at preventing foreclosures. However, foreclosures have slowed on the subprime loans that initially ignited the mortgage and banking crisis, loans extended to borrowers with good credit are deteriorating at a faster rate as falling home prices and mounting job losses effect more American households.
How can the situation to improve for the financial and real estate markets? There has been little reform of the housing finance system in this country. Fannie, Freddie, and the FHA still provide almost all finance for housing. Mortgage originators, the ones who make the borrower-by-borrower lending decisions, still retain absolutely no risk on the mortgages they originate. They still originate to sell, instead of selling to private investors, they sell to the government. The answer is in legislation.
An Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) spokesperson said that several independent mortgage companies made extreme changes in their loan product offerings. This includes an increase in writing FHA loans, a category which increased to 45 percent of loans in 2008 from 10 percent the year before. Lenders reported that they closed an average of 56.6 percent of all loan applications.
The Fed has been providing liquidity to the mortgage market in their purchase of Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS). Between August 13 and August 19, the Federal Reserve purchased a gross total of $26.640 billion agency MBS.
The Fed purchased an average of $5.00 billion per day, up from last week’s $4.08 billion per day. This doubled the average daily originator selling, illustrating that the Fed continues to provide a generous supply of liquidity to mortgage bankers looking to hedge their pipelines of committed and uncommitted loans.
We can only hope that the evolving mortgage market swings back to more responsible lending practices, especially in the mobile home market. Manufactured homes ar very difficult to finance and refinance currently, which is a sobering fact among the retired and elderly in America, because they are the majority of Americans being targeted as “risky” by lenders.
Banks were irresponsible with loose lending practices such as “stated income,” but now they are too tight in their lending procedures. Now, there are so few programs, that the entire mobile home mortgage market is at a standstill. With their retirement only a fraction of what it used to be, retired Americans cannot even pull equity out of their manufactured homes. This is because their homes have dropped in value, and lenders look for any reason to decline their loan application.
The moral of the story is that banks were too loose, now their too tight. And America is left asking: WILL LENDERS EVER GET IT RIGHT?
“The market is finally turning the corner after a severe three-year slump” said BMO analyst Sal Guatieri before the release. Many are expecting the fourth consecutive monthly increase in home sales. This increase would be the longest string increased home sales in five years.
Average rates for a 30-year mortgage fell to a 6-week low at 5.15%, which is increasing demand for purchases, refinancing, and new mortgages to all advance. The manufactured home market generally follows the housing market trends, but has also been known to stray.
Keep a tight watch on your mobile home financing and refinancing options by coming to our blog, and also feel free to call us at (800) 882-1999 if you have any specific questions about financing or refinancing your manufactured home. We’ve been doing this for 28 years, so we kinda know what we’re talking about.
Lenders are Tight on Home Loans
“Domestic banks indicated that they continued to tighten standards and terms over the past three months on all major types of loans to businesses and households,” the Federal Reserve’s survey of senior loan officers said.
Looking ahead, the Fed said most banks plan to keep lending standards tighter than average levels over the past decade, but that should be expected given the reputation lenders made for themselves leading up to the subprime crisis.
This is definitely expected, however very unwelcome. These tight standards that banks now hold themselves to can only be compared to a farmer that depletes all the resources from the soil as fast as possible, then blames the grocery store for their loss in livelihood. The banks have been taking supreme advantage of the loose legislation for half a decade, and they are very irresponsible for doing so. Now, the hens have come home to roost, and the banks are acting irresponsibly in the other direction. Lenders are finding phantom reasons to decline even the lowest risk loans.
In an economy that the banks are majorly responsible for ruining, they are now proceeding to decline America by acting reactively and not responsibly. A retired American with a good bank account, credit score and income cannot get a loan to purchase a manufactured home, even though Berkshire Hatheway recently came out and said that they are a lower risk than a traditional home loan.
Banks and their irresponsible tight lending practices are sending ripples throughout an already brittle economy, and the ripples are effecting the working and retired alike.
Credit Report and Manufactured Home Financing
If you are considering buying or refinancing a manufactured home, make sure you get a copy of your credit report and review it for its accuracy. It is possible that there are errors on your credit report, and if they aren’t corrected before you apply for a manufactured home loan, the errors can derail the entire process. Each year as a consumer, you can request a free copy of your credit report from each of the credit reporting agencies. You can contact them via phone to request or on line by visiting www.Experian.com, www.Equifax.com and www.Transunion.com. Please note, these reports will NOT provide a credit score for free, only a credit report. In order to secure a par interest rate you must have a FICO score of 740 or higher. If you are looking to use FHA financing, expect the rate to be higher than conventional financing.
This morning, we are seeing the best mortgage rates of the last several weeks. Each time rates fall below 5%, they have not remained there for very long. The last time we saw 4.875%, it was available for all of one day! This has been a very consistent pattern since early Summer. As such, I will caution you to not get too greedy. Can rates move lower? Absolutely, but there is much more room above for rates to go higher. Rates move much faster upward than they move lower as lenders are reluctant to pass along lower rates. If you can lock a rate today under 5% on your mobile home financing or refinance your manufactured home loan you might want to take advantage.
Using a manufactured home finance specialist will save you money and grief.
It seems like common sense that if you need financing for a manufactured home, then working with a lender or broker that specialize in your needs is the way to go. However, many mobile home buyers are lied to or deceived by desperate agents or companies that specialize in traditional lending, trying to break into mobile home loans. Only after dragging their customers through the entire (process and racking up quite a bill), do they realize that they could not secure financing for a manufactured home to begin with. Many of our customers don’t find us until another lender or broker has cost them up to $1,000. If this isn’t convincing enough, here are 3 reasons to seek out a mobile home loan professional to learn your financing options.
Only a specialist in mobile home finance will know the lenders that do and don’t lend for manufactured home loans. Many lenders that used to lend for mobile homes, stopped their programs within the past 6 months, and if they didn’t cancel their program they have changed it quite a bit. Only a firm that specializes in mobile home finance will know the ebb and flow of this highly specific niche market.
An agent or broker that only works with traditional loans does not know the intricacies of the mobile home market. This leaves the buyer, seller and any third party very exposed to legal action if the agent or broker’s ignorance causes any legal or regulatory snags in the deal. Manufactured homes are treated very differently in federal and state laws, and unless the agent or mortgage broker is in the know, there is a huge potential for a catastrophic mistake.
Real estate agents and mortgage brokers without mobile home experience try to apply their traditional housing experience to mobile homes, and this does not work. They will charge you to get an appraisal on a home that may not even have any comparable sales in the area, which makes it nearly impossible to finance. This will waste $400 of your hard earned money, and you’ll get nothing for it. A manufactured home specialist knows the process, and you will enjoy the wealth of experience they currently have, instead of being drug through the learning curve of a stick-built agent. Use a manufactured home finance expert from the beginning, and you are much better off.
Renting vs. Buying a manufactured Home
How do you know what makes more sense, renting an apartment or buying a mobile home? There are many factors that come into play, and the process of analyzing can be overbearing. So, here is a short and sweet post about where to start.
Not everyone is a CPA, and knows how to calculate the feasibility of buying a mobile home over renting an apartment. So, it is important to keep things simple. It comes down to two questions you must ask yourself if you want to own a manufactured home. If so, you must qualify for a manufactured home loan? Click to apply now.
If you decide that you don’t want to own and live in a manufactured home, stop reading now. If you are interested in becoming a homeowner and investing in your future, then read on.
Does it make Financial Sense?
First, take your current rent and multiply it by 12 (months) and then multiply it by 20 (years), then multiply it by 1.25 (to loosely account for rent increases). Now you know how much you will spend on rent over the next 20 years, and have nothing to show for it. If your rent is currently $500 per month, then you will spend about $150,000 over the next 20 years.
Do you trust the Real Estate Market?
In this market, it may be difficult to see real estate as a sound investment. But if you look at the big picture, it has traditionally been very strong. However, even with the recent housing market slump there has been about a 100% increase in housing prices. This means that if your $500 rent payment was made towards a mortgage, you could have a home worth $300,000 after 20 years, rather than nothing.
Can you get Approved for a Manufactured Home Loan?
The financial market meltdown has certainly made it more difficult to get financing for a manufactured or mobile home. However, there are still lenders and brokerage firms that know how to get you approved. You do have to be a very low risk to the bank, though. You must have good credit, no bankruptcy in the past 4-5 years, a down payment of atleast 10%, and a verifiable income. Taking all of this into account a mobile home mortgage broker can configure your ratios, and you are on your way to owning your very own manufactured home.