Why to Avert a Foreclosure on your Mobile Home

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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.

What Effects Your Credit Score?

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Everyone has a credit score, whether they know it or not. Your credit score is used by lenders to asses the risk involved with lending to you. By now, you are probably wondering  what your credit score is. Getting your credit score is very easy, and free if you cancel the service right after getting your score. One of the most popular credit score websites is Free Credit Report, you have probably seen one of their obnoxious commercials. The next question is how your credit score is formulated, which is a big secret, but we do know some of the really important factors:

  • Payment history (35%). Your score is negatively affected if you have paid bills late, had an account sent to collection, or declared bankruptcy. The more recent the problem, the lower your score — a 30-day late payment today hurts more than a bankruptcy five years ago.
  • Outstanding debt (30%). If the amount you owe is close to your credit limit, that is likely to have a negative effect on your score. A low balance on two cards is better than a high balance on one.
  • Length of your credit history (15%). The longer your accounts have been open, the better.
  • Recent inquiries on your report (10%). If you have recently applied for many new accounts, that may negatively affect your score. Promotional inquiries don’t count.
  • Types of credit in use (10%). Loans from finance companies generally lower your credit score. FICO says this is most important when there isn’t a lot of other information upon which to base a score. Although this is a good guide as to what credit scoring companies deem important, keep in mind that some companies may consider different factors.

As long as you keep on top of these five considerations, your credit score should be respectable, and when you need to get financed for a Chevy Camero, new pool and Spa, Apple computer, or  mobile home loan, you should be deemed lendworthy.

Lenders Profit as Mortgage Market Changes

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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?

Banks Remain Tight on Lending Standards

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Lenders are Tight on Home Loans

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.

Manufactured Home Finance or Refinance: Get a Credit Report

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Credit Report and Manufactured Home Financing

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.

The Housing Market as it Relates to Refinancing your Mobile Home

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Because the interest rates are very low, now is a very good time to refinance your manufactured home loan to lower your interest rate or lower your monthly payments. Now is generally not the time to take equity out of your mobile home or site-built home, because the housing prices have hit a low point. “We’re starting to see signs of stabilization in the mortgage market,” says Jim lockhart. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have refinance almost 1.9 million mortgage loans. Housing Prices are beginning to look as though they have hit a bottom, and this usually means that they will slowly start to climb again.

Are Mobile Home Loans more Difficult than Real Property Loans?

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Mobile Home Loans

Many people are curious, or stumped, when it comes to the differences between loans for mobile homes and loans real property site built homes. A lot of lenders that finance condominiums and single family real property homes do not lend on mobile homes, and a lot of people do not understand why. Well, there are some big differences in the properties themselves, and these differences affect the types of loans that can be done on the homes.

Basically, when you are looking at getting a loan, you need to put down collateral for that loan. The collateral for your loan is going to be the main factor where there are differences between a Mobile Home and Manufactured Home Loan and traditional “stick built” home mortgages. Just like how getting a loan for your vehicle and getting a loan for your business are two different types of loans, so are loans for mobile homes and real property site built homes.

In the United States, a mobile home loan is also referred to as a “chattel mortgage”. Chattel mortgages are securitized transactions, governed by Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. The lender on a chattel loan secures the loan with a mortgage over the chattel, or the Mobile Home. Because chattel is defined as personal property, movable or immovable, for example, a book, a coat, a pencil, growing corn, a lease, a mobile home is considered a piece of personal property that could, for all intents and purposes, be moved; often times mobile homes are considered as riskier collateral than a real property, site built home.

Traditional homes that are built on site and include real property are a bit different from chattel, or mobile home loans. A mortgage loan for this type of home is a loan secured by real property through the use of a Note, which is a document that evidences the existence of the loan. Real property mortgages can and should be additionally evidenced by a Deed of Trust document, which is recorded with the County Recorder. The Recorder is a county official that insures that instruments are recorded, giving public notice of such transactions. The Deed of Trust will be recorded with the County Recorder of the County where the real property is located. Because there is no real property ownership involved with a mobile home loan, a lender cannot record any documents against the title to a mobile home, to further secure the loan.

Mobile Home Mortgages are not recorded or secured in the same fashion as real estate, or real property loans. The title information for mobile and manufactured homes is maintained by agencies directed by The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. In the State of California, The Department of Housing has “Registration and Titling” offices that are specifically assigned to maintaining the title information on Mobile and Manufactured Homes. The homeowner, or purchaser, of a mobile home shall be shown on the title as the registered owner, and the lender shall be shown as the Legal Owner to the mobile or manufactured Home. When a mobile or manufactured home is encumbered by a Legal Owner, the actual Certificate of Title to the mobile home is issued to the lender, or legal owner. The homeowner, or borrower, is issued a Registration Card, which evidences the homeowner´s Registered Ownership interest to the mobile home. With site-built, real property homes, the homeowner retains a Grant Deed to evidence their ownership in the home, and the lender maintains the Note and Deed of Trust to evidence their ownership interest in the real property home.

It´s helpful to understand these title and security differences, as they play a major role in determining the actual loan type, qualifying agents and the loan process itself. Manufactured Homes  and real property site built homes are not only built differently, but titled differently and mortgaged uniquely as well.

Manufactured Home Financing Has Changed

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We are still the go to company for manufactured home finance

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.

Mobile Home Loans in the Economic Recovery

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Mobile Home Loans in the Economic Recovery

In the current economic recession, it seems like the average American is able to afford less and less.

These unfortunate circumstances have placed affordable housing in quite high demand. It’s no surprise now that manufactured homes and mobile homes are paving the way when it comes to reasonably priced housing. With this increased demand, there will be more and more Americans living in factory built homes. As ownership of manufactured and mobile homes has increased, so has the demand for Mobile Home Loans.

At the introduction of manufactured and mobiles to the housing market, most of the average mortgage banks were uninteresed in offering Mobile Home Mortgages. Most mortgage banks lumped Mobile home loans in the same category with car or vehicle loans. Much like vehicles, manufactured and mobile homes were thought to quickly depreciate in value, unlike a traditional stick-built home or condo that typically sees equity gaining over time.

Due to the lack of equity appreciation, for many years it was improbable that a manufactured or mobile home refinance or equity loan would be made available to owners of factory built homes at all.
As time went on, home values skyrocketed faster than general income could keep up with. The depreciation of manufactured and mobile home owner’s equity started to slow down.  Eventually the equity losses  stopped altogether. Manufactured and mobile homes soon were actually increasing in equity, in part due to the increasingly superior quality and safety of manufactured and mobile housing, coupled with federal and state laws governing the factory-built process.  While mobile home owners invested in their homes and continued to maintain and improve them, they gained precious equity.

Today, rate-and-term mobile home refinance loans and cash-out equity loans have become readily available to eligible owners of manufactured or mobile homes. It has become reasonably easy to locate what was considered “non-traditional” and even undesirable financing for manufactured or mobile homes.

As the current real estate market begins to recover, the manufactured and mobile home market endures the same loss of value as the “stick-built” and condominium homes. In the midst of the recovery, manufactured and mobile homes still remain viable for financing at terrifically competitive interest rates. These loans should be eligible for rate-and-term refinancing in the not-too-distant future and perhaps even “cash-out” equity loans in the somewhat-near-future.
There was a time when a manufactured or mobile home loan was frowned upon as a mere “car loan”.
Those days have long passed as manufactured and Mobile Homes have emerged as the last affordable housing in America with competitive financing available to qualified buyers.

Recent American Chronicle Article about Mobile Home Finance

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Mobile Home Loans : American Chronicle Article

Mobile home loans or manufactured home loans can be financed as a chattel mortgage or a personal property loan. In this article you will learn the differences, and how they relate to tax write-offs, payment structures, credit scores, bankruptcy, and much more.

When searching for a mobile home loan, it is very important to find an expert that specializes in manufactured home finance. Otherwise you may end up losing your approval in the eleventh hour because the underwriter realizes that they just can´t approve a loan for a manufactured home.