Tu Phan is a lender we work with frequently, he’s the President of 
Premier Mortgage Group here in the Portland area and has offered to write a blog entry for us here and there about whats going on in lending, here is his very first entry!
Thanks Tu!
Thanks to Kristie and Scott for allowing me to participate with a mortgage blog. First things first, we just finished off our first month with the Mortgage Disclosure Improvement Act (MDIA). I will have to commend all my processors, lenders, and escrow officers for making sure we were on top of all of our legal disclosures to ensure timely closings for all transactions that required loans.
For those not familiar with the Act, it went into effect July 30. In essence as a loan officer, I cannot collect any funds from the borrower except for a credit report within 7 days of the initial application if the good faith and truth in lending were sent in the mail. We managed to limit these days by making sure we had face to face meetings with clients to ensure documents were dated in front of the loan officer. (Back to the days of personal face to face client contact). Lastly, if the APR should change by .125 or 1/8 % then the borrower would need to be resent the disclosures 3 days prior to closing. I believe as a whole many of us loan officers were on top this and made sure we stayed in compliance. (IE no last minute marking up of fees). However, I will preface that as time goes on I’m sure many of our lenders will go back to make sure all these loan closings were compliant. And should they not be… we may see additional changes coming from the lender level… fun.
The big topic in the real estate community would be life after HVCC (Home Valuation Code of Conduct). It is in place. There maybe even legislation to put a moratorium on it, unfortunately it is here and we have to work with it. No more… I’ve got a friend of a friend whose a really “Good” Appraiser. In most cases we are ordering appraisals through a third party (AMC – Appraisal Management Company). They in term randomly choose an appraiser from their database to complete the appraisal. Once assigned there is no contact allowed between the appraiser and loan officer. Pretty straight forward… to some degree this has given some appraisers the right to complete reports with sheer impunity. IE, lower values and some cases lower than the purchase price. Calling for unnecessary repairs…As a whole I believe the industry is experiencing the lower valuation part which really doesn’t help the borrower half the time and has cost them the appraisal fee.
One last subject to touch on, Interest Free loans. An article recently came out in the Oregonian. Referenced by the link below about interest free loans given out as part of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (another well thought out and fantastic government program)…. I will have to say for the individuals that are able to receive this loan… what a great opportunity for them. My estimate is that between 35-45 loans may be available for each county depending on how much the respective entity chooses to lend out. The program similar to Cash for clunkers could be exhausted within a week? I’m not a big fan of this as probably 1000 homebuyers will line up for this and be rejected and in being rejected decide they really don’t want to buy a home.
My feeling is, mortgage rates are extremely low right now. Which should be the main incentive for wanting to purchase (or refinance) now, the second biggest incentive is that it is still a buyer’s market…. And throw in an $8000 dollar government incentive for first time homebuyers. This should cover the reasons why it’s a GREAT time TO BUY A HOME, not whether you get an interest free loan or not.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2009/08/foreclosure_program_could_help.html
Tu Phan
President Premier Mortgage Group
You can contact Tu here:
503-496-0531
Tu at Premgi dot com
Tags: Lending, premier mortgage, tu phan