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?

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.

1. The banking and real estate market changes every day, and this includes the mobile home market.

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.

2. Manufactured home finance has it’s own laws and regulations.

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.

3. Using a mobile home loan specialist will save you money, short term and long term.

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.

We are still the "go to" company for manufactured home finance

The old days of stated income, stated asset, no down, and B Paper lending to mobile home buyers are over. As underwriters have tightened their belts, you now must have decent/good credit, with no lates or missed payments and a down payment on the home you are looking to buy. A new obstacle in manufactured home financing and refinancing is that home values are declining, and comparrisons are dragging the appraisal prices down. In times like these, it helps to know a great lender or broker, and we are both. We can still get a good amount of our customers loans, but its not as easy as it used to be. I hate to think about how hard other companies have to try to get funding, without the experience we have. It must feel like banging your head against the wall. The only people we feel worse for is their customers who pay hundreds of dollars, out of pocket, just to get declined on their loan. Since we know the programs that are still available for manufactured home financing, and we can even fund our own loans, we can offer the best rates and a far greater chance of completing your financing. Call us today, or fill out our secure online application if you are interested in mobile home financing.