Santa Clarita Real Estate

I was fortunate to be able to attend a roundtable meeting today given by Mike Meena of Augusta Financial to discuss today’s current mortgage situation.  I was thrilled to be included as I’ve been asked almost daily about our current market and what my opinion is about it. The following is a snippet of Mikes Newsletter, a recap of what has happened over the last few years and where we’ve been.

With the greed of the banks wanting to write more and more loans, interest rates started going up in 2004, many of those banks opted to take on riskier loans to open the home ownership dream to a larger pool of people…including many people that probably should not have been buying as their credit was very low. As rates and prices continued to climb, lenders started pushing the interest only loans and Payment Option ARM’s. Mike says that the interest only loans were a good solution for many homebuyers however he takes a firm stance in the Payment Option ARM’s in that they were something he could not sell. Mike is of the opinion that many brokers and lenders sold those loans and the loan was not properly explained or the ramifications of having a loan like that.

Where we are headed, At today’s meeting Mike had very encouraging words for Realtors in attendance for their home sellers and home buyers.

We’ve all weathered the storm but the future does look bright!

Mike reminded us that this is no different than the mid 1990’s and he goes on to say that we are already 2 years into this with the banks tightening their guidelines.

While many of the programs that were available over the last few years are no longer available, Mike did mention several programs are in the pipeline among them the FHA loan for first time buyers and that there is a chance that the current limit of $417,000 may be raised which is really good news. FHA loans allow many people to buy a home with a lower down.

Mike also suggested that home sellers may consider to offer seller carry backs for the home buyer as an alternate method.

There were lots of good ides at the meeting and I’ll be adding more to this topic as I have a chance to review my notes.