Let FHA Loans Help You buy a Miami FL HOME

FHA loans have been helping Miami FL homebuyers become homeowners since 1934. How do we do it? The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) – which is part of HUD – insures the loan, so your lender can offer you a better deal.

Miami Low down payments mortgage options Lower Miami mortgage closing costs Easier Miami mortgage  credit qualifying

What does FHA have for you?

Buying your first Miami FL home?
FHA might be just what you need. Your down payment can be as low as 3.5% of the purchase price, and most of your closing costs and fees can be included in the loan. Available on 1-4 unit properties.

Want to buy a Miami FL fixer-upper?
FHA has a loan that allows you to buy a Miami FL home, fix it up, and include all the costs in one loan. Or, if you own a home that you want to re-model or repair, you can refinance what you owe and add the cost of repairs – all in one loan.

Financial help for seniors
Are you 62 or older? Do you live in your home? Do you own your Miami FL home outright or have a low loan balance? If you can answer “yes” to all of these questions, then the FHA Reverse Mortgage might be right for you. It lets you convert a portion of your equity into cash.

Want to make your Miami FL home more energy efficient?
You can include the costs of energy improvements into an FHA Energy-Efficient Mortgage.

How about Miami FL manufactured housing and mobile homes?
Yes, FHA has financing for mobile homes and factory-built housing. We have two loan products – one for those who own the land that the home is on and another for mobile homes that are – or will be – located in mobile home parks.

Ask an FHA lender to tell you more about FHA loan products.

Did you know, the Miami FHA loan program provides more security for Miami homeowners than ANY other Miami FL mortgage program today? In cases of financial difficulty, you have a higher probability of NOT losing your home if you have an Miami FHA mortgage Vs. those who have a conventional or Sub-Prime home loan. Plus, all Miami FHA mortgage loans are FULLY assumable adding one more layer of protection for you and your family!

 The fact is, there are a wide range of FHA home loans available to qualified Miami FL applicants. And the real truth is, these FHA mortgage do not consider your credit score. Many people find this very difficult to believe, but it is in fact dictated by HUD guidelines that credit scores cannot be considered during underwriting, only credit quality instead. This gives consumers who might not otherwise have the ability to secure a low fixed interest rate mortgage ample opportunity to succeed. It is one of the biggest benefits that many FHA home loans offer to people just like you. Want to learn more? Visit http://www.fhamortgageprograms.com/florida/Dade-County/

 Did you know the Miami FL FHA Mortgage program typically only requires a 3.5% down payment and allows 6% seller-paid concessions towards your closing costs? Try getting that with a conventional loan program!

 Using the FHA home loan to purchase a Miami FL home is really no different than a conventional loan. There are some additional documentation requirements, but these are actually blown out of proportion to discourage the loss of business by those FHA mortgage lenders who can’t actually originate the FHA mortgage program and want to push you into a conventional mortgage loan program.

 Refinancing an existing Miami FL FHA home loan is actually called a streamline refinance. However, streamline only applies to properties for which you are refinancing your Miami FL home for rate and term improvement only. If taking cash out, or refinancing with an FHA home loan, you will have to go through the traditional qualifying processes.

Amazingly enough, you can finance Miami FL mobile home and land with the FHA home loan program. In some instances, you can even get up to 96.5% loan-to-value and much, much, much lower rates than you will get through any other loan program available today!

 The Miami FL FHA reverse mortgage program is designed for Seniors who are wanting either to cash-out their equity in their home or create a monthly income stream to supplement their income. In both cases, you make NO monthly payments and it’s backed by the Federal Government!

 The Miami FL FHA 203K Mortgage program is perfect for that “fixer upper” house you want to buy the one that’s perfect for you, in the perfect location, but just needs some renovation!

 For those can’t qualify for the traditional FHA underwriting standards, in some areas, we can help with our Exclusive FHA Credit Flex program. This program was developed to help qualified applicants in qualified communities to buy today. If your credit has been recently beat up, this FHA home loan program could be the perfect alternative to renting.

As you can see, our FHA mortgage product diversity is uniquely ours. We serve a broad range of clients across the country and it goes without saying, whether you have outstanding credit or credit challenges, the Miami FL FHA loan programs offer homeowners and home buyers alike unmatched benefits with exceptionally competitive rates.!

Should FHA home loans be more expensive?

The federal FHA mortgage insurer’s reserve fund has slipped below its mandated minimum. Now the FHA and some lawmakers want to raise the minimum requirements-

 FHA loan Advantages Include:

Minimal Down Payment and Closing Costs.

Down payment less than 3.5% of Sales Price Gift for down payment and closing costs allowed. No reserves or required. FHA regulated closing costs. Seller can credit up to 6% of sales price towards buyers costs.

Easier Credit Qualifying Guidelines such as:

Minimum FICO credit score of 540. FHA will allow a home purchase 2 years after a Bankruptcy. FHA will allow a home purchase  3 years after a Foreclosure. 

Easier Debt Ratio & Job Requirement Guidelines such as:

Higher Debt Ratio’s than other home loan programs. Less than two years on the job is allowed. Self-Employed individuals o.k.

www.FHAmortgageFHAloan.com

Should it be more expensive to get a FHA mortgage insured by the Federal Housing Administration?

That is the question the House Financial Services Committee examined on Wednesday afternoon.

Currently, FHA home loans comprise more than 30% of the entire mortgage loan market. But as some of those FHA insured loans have defaulted, the FHA mortgage  loan-guarantee fund has slipped below the Congressionally mandated 2% level. As a result, some lawmakers are suggesting that FHA mortgages need to be more expensive to obtain.

In fact, a House bill, the FHA Taxpayer Protection Act of 2009, would increase the FHA loan minimum down payment required to obtain an FHA loan to 5% from 3.5%. That, sponsor Rep. Scott Garrett, R, N.J., believes, would make FHA mortgage applicants more committed to maintaining their FHA home loans.

Almost 90% of FHA mortgage loans issued between January and August 2009 had FHA Home loan-to-value (LTV) ratios of 96 or higher, according to written testimony from Robert Story, chairman of the FHA Mortgage Bankers Association. That amounts to a very small commitment on the parts of FHA mortgage applicants.

Housing and Urban Development secretary Shaun Donovan’s testimony said he is committed to raising the expense of utilizing FHA mortgage loans, though the agency and is still exploring the best options and doesn’t necessarily support raising the FHA down payment requirement.

“We have made the decision to exercise our authority to increase FHA’s up-front cash requirement  that a borrower has to bring to the table in an FHA insured home loan — to make sure that FHA mortgage applicants have more ’skin in the game’ and a stronger equity position in their FHA home loan,” he said.

Still, he added, “FHA is not ‘the next subprime’ as some have suggested.”

He disputed Garrett’s statistics that tried to make the case for increasing down payments. Garrett said that FHA home loans with loan-to-value ratios of 100 were twice as likely to fail as those with LTVs of 95.

Donovan responded that many of those failed 100 LTV loans involved seller-supported down payment programs, which contributed disproportionately to delinquencies. Last year Congress prohibited those FHA mortgage programs.

Donovan outlined three options for raising FHA borrowers’ skin in the game:

Increase the down payment requirement, currently at a minimum of 3.5%; Raise the up front premium insurance premium from 1.75% to as much as 3%, which the FHA already has the authority to do; and Decrease the allowable seller concessions for closing costs, which are now 6%, to 3%.

Critics of increasing the up front borrowing costs claim it’s both unnecessary and could imperil the weak housing market recovery.

“While the FHA mortgage program is experiencing shortfalls in its excess reserves due to our economic crisis, The FHA mortgage remains financially strong and a critical part of our nation’s economic recovery,” said Vicki Cox Colder, president of the National Association of Realtors, in her written testimony before the committee.

Besides, she added, “It is important to recognize that this is not FHA’s only reserve fund. FHA also has a Financing Account separate from the Capital Reserve. FHA’s actual total reserves are higher than they have ever been with combined assets of $30.4 billion. This is an increase of 13% over the previous year.”

Donovan acknowledged problems at FHA, including antiquated systems and equipment and inadequate personnel numbers.

“Little of this may have been obvious when FHA’s mortgage market share was 3% as recently as 2006,” he said in his statement. “But when our mortgage markets collapsed last fall, and homebuyers increasingly turned to the FHA home loans for help, the potential consequences of these lapses in risk management became very clear.”

The agency has acted to lower risk over the past several months. It hired a chief risk officer to improve risk assessment; increased enforcement efforts that resulted in suspending some FHA mortgage lenders and withdrawing FHA-approval for many others; and strengthened underwriting, including instituting FHA loan procedures that should improve appraisal accuracy.

“Charging more [for those with lower FICO scores] is not necessarily the answer,” said the HUD secretary. “It could even work against it by making it harder for FHA mortgage applicants to pay off their FHA home loans.”

Besides that, Donovan expressed a real reluctance for the idea of FHA mortgage loans becoming an even bigger player in the FHA mortgage market than it is now. Raising prices for borrowers with low FICO scores and lowering them for those with high scores could put the FHA in direct competition with private FHA mortgage  lenders for the lower risk borrowers.

FHA -loan risk has also declined, some industry analysts believe, thanks to the drastic improvement in the quality of borrowers it services. According to Keith Gumbinger of HSH Associates, a publisher of mortgage industry information, their average credit score has jumped to 693 from the low 600s two years ago.

Janis Bowdler, a director for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights organization, said, “According to the FHA, had loans not been made using seller down payment assistance programs, known for being a haven for fraud and abuse, its capital reserve ratio would still be at the recommended 2%.”

She emphasized how important affordable FHA loans are to the minority community, which accounts for a much larger share of these mortgages than the greater mortgage market.

Ann Schnare, a partner with Empiris, an economic consulting firm and a veteran mortgage industry figure, said she thinks the agency could take a few small steps, like increasing the down payment requirement, to ensure the account’s viability.

“While FHA mortgage are required to put 3.5% down, they are also allowed to finance the up-front premium and a portion of their closing costs,” she said. “The net result is that many FHA borrowers are in a zero or even negative equity position the moment they move into their homes. This dramatically increases the risk of foreclosure, particularly in a bad economic environment and a weak or declining housing market.”

She also recommends an slight increase in monthly insurance premiums to build up the reserve fund.

Donovan said stepped up enforcement itself could help restore the Capital Reserve Account. Most of the projected losses over the next five years, 71%, will come from loans already on the books. Many of those loans were of poor quality due to negligence on the part of lenders.

He wants to go after those lenders to make them responsible for the losses the FHA suffered. 

When it comes to sourcing for the funds that you need to finance the purchase of an automobile or a car that you can call your own, taking up an auto loan is your best bet. From a professional perspective, an auto loan is a type or kind of credit facility that you can take up whenever you are in need of finance or funds to finance the purchase of a car.

An auto loan is actually a credit facility and a loan, thus when you take up an auto loan, you would be expected to pay it back before the stipulated repayment time. Auto loans do attract interests, charges, and surcharges. Hence, when you take up an auto loan, in addition to paying back the loan, you would also be required to pay the necessary interests, charges, and surcharges

Concerning taking up an auto loan, the process of taking up an auto loan entails, searching or sourcing for an auto lender, putting in an application and then securing approval. Concerning securing approval for an auto loan application, being able to secure approval for an auto loan application entails having a good credit report, in addition to possessing and being able to meet all lenders requirement.

The process of applying for an auto loan is very rigged, stringent, and stiff. When applying for an auto loan, besides being able to determine your ability to secure or gain approval for your auto loan application, your credit report or rating, is also what determines the amount that you would be required to pay as interest rate, down payment, charges and surcharges.

Taking an auto loan to finance the purchase of a car is very advantageous; hence, I would recommend that you should take advantage of it if whenever the opportunity presents itself.

FHA Loan Requirements About to Get Tighter

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) isn’t broke, but its monetary reserves aren’t quite where they’re supposed to be either.

FHA’s capital reserves are supposed to be at least 2 percent of outstanding mortgage loans. According to the actuarial review for fiscal year 2009, the reserves are a mere 0.5 percent. By the time you read this, FHA’s capital reserve requirements might have disappeared entirely, thanks to the increasing number of FHA foreclosures and banks going south.

All FHA mortgage applicants pay a mortgage insurance premium. These FHA insurance premiums go into the FHA’s capital reserves fund and are used to pay for loans that are foreclosed upon. As FHA home loans have become more and more popular since the subprime crash, and  unemployment numbers have  skyrocketed, more of these FHA home  loans have gone bad, requiring more payments from the capital reserves.

 Other FHA loan Advantages Include:

Minimal Down Payment and Closing Costs.

Down payment less than 3.5% of Sales Price Gift for down payment and closing costs allowed. No reserves or required. FHA regulated closing costs. Seller can credit up to 6% of sales price towards buyers costs.

Easier Credit Qualifying Guidelines such as:

Minimum FICO credit score of 540. FHA will allow a home purchase 2 years after a Bankruptcy. FHA will allow a home purchase  3 years after a Foreclosure. 

Easier Debt Ratio & Job Requirement Guidelines such as:

Higher Debt Ratio’s than other home loan programs. Less than two years on the job is allowed. Self-Employed individuals o.k.

APPLY NOW AT www.FHAmortgageFHALoan.com

Unlike the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which recently proposed that banks pay three years of insurance premiums at once in order to replenish the FDIC’s reserves, FHA can’t require current FHA Mortgage borrowers to pay more. But it can change the rules going forward that will make it more difficult to qualify for an FHA insured home loan.

According to a senior officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), conversations are ongoing to determine what will make the most sense for and prolong the stability of the FHA Mortgage program..

“Nothing will be taken off table,” the official said. “Everything needs to be assessed through the lens of the FHA core mission as well as the broad economic policies of the Administration with regard to stabilizing  the housing market.”

There are at least six different ways FHA/HUD is looking at stabilizing FHA:

1. Increasing the minimum required down payment. FHA is looking at whether increasing the required minimum down payment from 3.5 percent to 5 percent (or more) will help stabilize defaults. If FHA mortgage applicants have more “skin in the game,” FHA officials wonder, will they be less likely to default on their FHA mortgage loans?

2. Changing the FHA mortgage insurance premiums. HUD officials are considering whether changing the way FHA mortgage insurance premiums are structured will keep more FHA Mortgage applicants from becoming delinquent. Should there be an extra fee up front? Should the FHA insurance premiums amount paid over time change for maximum stabilization? (FHA mortgage applicants  currently pay an upfront fee and a monthly charge for mortgage insurance.)

3. Raising the minimum credit score required for an FHA mortgage loan. While credit scores have been lousy at predicting what happens to people with good credit who lose their jobs, they have been more accurate in identifying risky behavior. At the height of the housing boom, FHA mortgage loans  approved FHA mortgage applicants with credit scores below 500. Discussions underway wonder whether the minimum acceptable credit score should be 620 or higher.

4. Dialing back how much money sellers can give FHA buyers. Right now under FHA loan guidelines the  sellers can give buyers up to 6 percent to help cover closing costs and fees. Experts recommend reducing that to 3 percent.

5. Requiring FHA mortgage lenders to have more cash on hand. Like borrowers, FHA lenders need to have more “skin in the game.” Right now, FHA lenders need only have $250,000 in cash to cover fraud-related loan originations, but FHA loan officials want to see that amount rise to $2.5 million. That will reduce the number of FHA Mortgagee lenders that can offer FHA loans, and hopefully cut down on mortgage fraud.

6. Eliminating abusive FHA lenders. HUD is asking Congress for more power to prevent abusive lenders from making FHA loans. According to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan’s testimony before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, FHA mortgage lenders will be required to “indemnify the FHA fund for their own failures to meet FHA requirements” and will be held accountable nationally for any improper activities. Donovan said that HUD “will also develop a FHA mortgage Lender Scorecard that will summarize the performance of lenders who do business with the FHA. This scorecard will be posted on (the department’s) Web site to ensure transparency and accountability for FHA lenders, borrowers and the market.”

FHA officials say the quality of the FHA mortgage portfolio has improved over the course of 2009. The typical FHA Mortgage applicants  debt-to-income ratio has declined, meaning the FHA mortgage payment is a smaller portion of the borrower’s monthly income.

While HUD officials are pleased to see borrowers with a stronger personal finance balance sheet, there are two big concerns. First, the number of borrowers who are delinquent in paying their mortgages is growing. If those borrowers don’t figure out a way to make up their missing payments and start paying their FHA mortgage on time, more homes will fall into foreclosure, further depressing housing prices.

The second concern is rising unemployment. “If unemployment continues to track at high levels and goes to 11 or 12 percent, that’s a real struggle,” the senior HUD official said. “The big risk is a stagnant, slow recovery that keeps unemployment rates high because there is no loss mitigation technique for that.”

In other words, if FHA Mortgage applicants lose their jobs and can’t find replacements that pay enough to cover their monthly expenses, the FHA’s capital reserves fund sinking into the red will be the least of the government’s problems.

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) does not directly make loans to borrowers but rather provides insurance on loans made by approved lenders. FHA-insured mortgages can be obtained for single-family, multi-family, manufactured and mobile homes, and hospitals.

The FHA was created in 1934 by congress to help Americans to obtain a mortgage and purchase a home. Until the FHA came into being around 60% of Americans rented their homes, and most mortgages had high monthly payments, short loan terms, and stringent approval requirements. In 1965, it became part of the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD).

FHA loans differ from conventional loans in a number of ways. The down payment required for a conventional loan is typically much higher than for an FHA-insured loan. FHA loans also have lower credit requirements than conventional loans, making them more available to a wider range of potential homebuyers.

FHA mortgage insurance appeals to lenders because it protects them against loss should the borrower default on the loan. That is the key difference between FHA mortgages and conventional mortgages – that lenders still get paid no matter what. Because FHA mortgages are more preferable to lenders than conventional loans, it’s far easier for a borrower to get approved for one. It is therefore quite often to a potential homebuyer’s advantage to pursue FHA-insured mortgages.

FHA loans offer borrowers several other valuable benefits, not least of which is those aforementioned smaller down payments. Unlike a conventional loan, which ordinarily requires 10-20% down, FHA-insured loans only require down payments as low as 3-5%. The FHA is also more flexible in calculating factors to determine whether or not to approve the loan, factors such as household income and repayment ratios.

The borrower is the one who pays for the mortgage insurance, usually by having it folded into their monthly mortgage payment. The cost of FHA mortgage insurance typically drops off when the balance remaining on the loan is greater than three-quarters of the property value or after 5 years, which takes longer.

Having insured over 30-million properties since its formation in 1934, the FHA is the world’s single largest mortgage insurer. It is funded completely by way of self-generated income, via the mortgage insurance payments made by its mortgagees (or borrowers). Currently, the FHA has nearly 5-million single-family homes and nearly 15,000 multi-family homes in its insured-mortgage portfolio.

The FHA is considered a boon to the housing market and the nation’s overall economy, as it promotes house building, jobs, schools, tax bases, and community development.