Minnesota Short Sale Expert

Here are the homeowner eligibility requirements that were recently released by the Treasury Department:

• Foreclosure actions are suspended during the trial period or while borrowers are considered for alternative foreclosure prevention options. If homeowners fail to qualify, foreclosure proceedings may resume.
• No minimum or maximum LTV ratio for eligibility purposes.
• Loans are eligible for only one loan modification under the program.
• Subordinate liens (such as second mortgages or home equity loans or lines of credit) are not included in the Front-End DTI calculation, but they are included in the Back-End DTI calculation.
• Servicers should follow any existing express contractual restrictions with respect to solicitation of borrowers for modifications.

Applicants will be accepted into the program until December 31, 2012 (the program expiration date), but incentive payments will continue up to five years after the date of entry into the Home Affordable

Modification Program. Monitoring will continue through the life of the program.

Please keep in mind that these eligibility requirements are simply government guidelines. Avoid the temptation to qualify or disqualify yourself based solely on what the eligibility requirements indicate. Consult a loan modification specialist who works with lenders on a daily basis to review your situation and determine whether you are likely to qualify. Sometimes the only way to determine whether you qualify is to actually submit your loan modification application.

FHA loan limit in the 11 county Twin Cities area has officially been increased to $365,000 up from the previous limit of $316,000 for the Twin Cities. 

These higher loan limits are great news for buyers (and sellers) in the $315-375 price range.  They now have an option to buy with a down payment as small as 3.5% ($10-12,000).  Before this change, they would have had to use a Conventional mortgage, that typically requires 10% down as a minimum for non-first time buyers ($31-37,000 in this price range).

For first time home buyers this means much less to come up with on your own especially since your FHA down payment can be a gift from a family member.  For move-up buyers if you can sell your smaller home and scrap together the $10-15 grand you need, you can make quite a jump up in the quality of your home.  Factor in the lower interest rates and you might not even be increasing your payment that much once the property taxes come down on the new home next year.

If you are in the market to purchase a home and/or sell your home feel free to contact me directly at 763-242-6303.

A BPO is known as a Broker Price Opinion. This is what most people would think of in the same manner as an appraisal. The lenders that are involved in a short sale will receive an offer from the listing agent to consider. However, although the property is located say in Minnesota the lender may be located out on the east coast. If an offer comes in a property at $200,000 the lender has no idea if it is worth $200,000, $225,000 or $175,000 so they need someone locally to go out to the property and report back to the lender what the property is actually worth in the current market.

The lenders will hire local real estate agents to do these BPO’s at a rate of $50-$100 instead of hiring a licensed appraiser to do basically the same thing at a rate of nearly $400. Although the actual methods and reports that a BPO agent and appraiser uses they usually end up coming up with about the same market price. This is all that the banks really want anyways…what should it sell for in the current condition and with the current state of the market in that particular area.