Just six years ago, more than a third of all the houses sold in America were “distressed sales,” homes lost by families that could no longer make their monthly mortgage payments and who had lost their homes to foreclosure or short sales.
Foreclosures no longer make headlines, and many people may think they have fallen to negligible levels or disappeared altogether. In fact, distressed sales are still around, but account for only 6 percent of all home sales compared to about 40 percent in 2011.
The “foreclosure flood” created extraordinary opportunities for real estate investors to buy distress sales, fix them up, and either “flip” [...]
Here are a few of the reasons people refinance:
To lock in a lower interest rate for the future, when rates will probably rise. Experts keep predicting rates will rise again and return, to 5% and above. They’ve been wrong for several years, which means the odds are getting better they will be right next time. A lower rate reduces your monthly payment as well as the amount of interest you will owe the lender over the life of your loan by tens of thousand of dollars. To lower monthly payments. By getting a lower rate and/or using some accumulated equity to pay down the balance of the loan and by extended the term of the loan, borrowers can [...]An open-ended mortgage basically means that you can request an increase in a loan amount from a lender. This type of loan is for people who might need more flexibility than usual. For example, if they are buying land and then plan to build later, or in a situation where they believe it’s possible they will have to finance more at some point.
The big advantage of an open-ended loan is that a borrower can request additional funds without having to go through the loan process again. This means considerable savings on fees, closing costs, etc. However, there are strict limitations. An open-ended mortgage is basically like a home equity loan. [...]
A foreclosure is a disappointing experience but doesn’t have to mean the end of your days as a homeowner. In fact, with some patience and drive, a person can become a “boomerang buyer” and recover from a foreclosure, putting themselves back into a home they can own, cherish and use to build equity.
Millions of people who probably never dreamed that they would lose their homes faced that dilemma from 2007-2008 when the Great Recession hit and home prices collapsed. Don’t fret if you were caught in a foreclosure during that time period–You are not alone in not seeing the collapse coming. (In fact, Hollywood made an entire movie, The Big [...]
