Register Real Estate Advisors

The following article was taken from an email I received from SHANE GUILLORY, a Senior Loan Officer at Moncor Mortgage Bank in Magnolia, Texas. If you need to pre-qualify with a lender you can contact Shane at sguillory@moncor.com. The website for Moncor Mortgage is www.moncor-bank.com. Many of my buyers and sellers are confused about Seller Concessions and Shane does a great job of explaining them and other changes that will be affecting buyers and sellers now and in the future.

Seller Concessions

• What are they? Contributions that sellers kick in to help defray a buyer’s costs. They can include closing costs, inspections, appraisals and free upgrades.
• What’s changing? The FHA proposes slashing allowable seller concessions in half, capping them at 3 percent of the home price instead of the current 6 percent.
• Why? FHA analyses show a strong correlation between high seller concessions and high default rates, possibly because the concessions can lead to inflated home prices. The theory is that some sellers might make concessions only to add the cost to the price.
• What does this mean to me? This buyer’s perk will soon become less generous. The proposal does not ban concessions above 3 percent. But concessions exceeding 3 percent would result in a dollar-for-dollar reduction in the home’s sales price and reduce the amount of the allowable loan.

Credit scores

• What are they? Three-digit numbers that help lenders determine how likely a person is to pay back a loan in a timely manner. The FHA uses the most common scoring formula, called FICO, with scores ranging from 300 to 850. The higher the number, the better the rating.
• What’s changing? This year, the FHA plans to impose a minimum credit score requirement: 500. Borrowers with credit scores below 580 would have to make a down payment of at least 10 percent instead of the usual 3.5 percent minimum.
• Why? Low-scoring borrowers default at a higher rate than more creditworthy ones. As of January, the percentage of FHA borrowers who were seriously delinquent was three times as high for borrowers with scores below 580 than for those with scores above 580.
• What does this mean to me? Lenders are already imposing tougher credit score requirements on FHA borrowers than the agency is proposing, which could explain why only 1 percent of borrowers with FHA-insured single-family home loans have scores below 580.

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ANN ARBOR, Mich. (CMPS Institute) – The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is giving homeowners and buyers until Oct. 4 to lock in a low monthly insurance premium on FHA loans, according to Gibran Nicholas of the CMPS Institute, which trains and certifies mortgage bankers and brokers.
After that, the monthly insurance premiums on FHA loans will increase by over 63 percent.
A homebuyer purchasing a $200,000 home using a $193,000 FHA mortgage before Oct. 4 would pay an insurance premium of $88.46 per month. If the same homebuyer waits until after, the insurance premium would jump to $148.01.
Although the upfront mortgage insurance premium is going down, “the real impact to the homebuyer is actually a net increase in their out-of-pocket costs because the monthly premium is going up by 63 percent,” Nicholas said.
“Remember, sellers can pay the upfront premium or it can be financed into the loan amount, so homebuyers rarely pay the upfront premium out of pocket,” he said. “On the other hand, the increase in the monthly premiums will be paid right out of the homebuyer’s pocket with their mortgage payment each month.”

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (CMPS Institute) – The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is giving homeowners and buyers until Oct. 4 to lock in a low monthly insurance premium on FHA loans, according to Gibran Nicholas of the CMPS Institute, which trains and certifies mortgage bankers and brokers.
After that, the monthly insurance premiums on FHA loans will increase by over 63 percent.
A homebuyer purchasing a $200,000 home using a $193,000 FHA mortgage before Oct. 4 would pay an insurance premium of $88.46 per month. If the same homebuyer waits until after, the insurance premium would jump to $148.01.
Although the upfront mortgage insurance premium is going down, “the real impact to the homebuyer is actually a net increase in their out-of-pocket costs because the monthly premium is going up by 63 percent,” Nicholas said.
“Remember, sellers can pay the upfront premium or it can be financed into the loan amount, so homebuyers rarely pay the upfront premium out of pocket,” he said. “On the other hand, the increase in the monthly premiums will be paid right out of the homebuyer’s pocket with their mortgage payment each month.”