The Bergen County Homes Blog

JP Morgan Chase announced this week that they will be hiring 1,200 new mortgage loan officers by the end of 2010.  This means that Chase will increase their loan officer numbers by 60% which is huge because the bank is one of the major players in mortgage loans in the US. 

JP Morgan Chase said that the bank sees early signs of stabilization in the US real estate market and believes that the housing market has bottomed out .  Expecting the real estate market to recover after next year, JP Morgan is hiring new loan officers to put themselves in the best competitive position by making sure it has the best market share coverage for home loans. 

CNN’s article on this is at  http://tinyurl.com/New-Chase-Loan-Officers

Bergen County homes have done better than most in the US real estate market but like elsewhere, our home values have depreciated over the past few years. For many homeowners this has created a horrible situation where they are facing a short sale or foreclosure.

For those who have seen their mortgage rates reset to a loan they can’t afford, the situation soon deteriorates to a short sale or foreclosure because their loss of equity makes it impossible to get the appraisal needed to refinance to today’s low interest rates. This is why the Federal Government stepped in to help.

On July 1st HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will begin refinancing mortgages with loan-to-value ratios as much as 125%. This means you can be 25% negative in the value of your house and still refinance. The idea is to try to match the loss of equity so that homeowners who’ve been paying their mortgages and have good credit can stay in their homes.

While this is just part of the Bergen County housing market, it allows many people to keep their home and helps stabilize real estate values by avoiding foreclosures and short sale transactions.

If this works for you or someone you know, get in touch with a licensed mortgage banker. You need a top level loan officer’s help to qualify for this program; if you need a recommendation, just let me know.

The most important first step in buying a home is financing which involves getting prequalified for a home mortgage.  It doesn’t matter if you’re buying Bergen County real estate or a home somewhere else – because your mortgage loan is so critical to your home buying process, you are naturally interested in any news about these loans.  Here is where you begin what I call Mortgage Rate Madness.

People afflicted with this disease believe that they can get mortgage rates at levels not seen because they don’t exist.  The other day I had a call from a consumer who had this disease – a really bad case of MRM!  She thought she could get a mortgage rate of 4%.  The reason she was so sure of this was simply because one of her friends heard this on the radio and someone else saw it on TV.  Hmm…..maybe at 3 in the morning you might see some infomercial where all sorts of nice people are sitting in their Bentleys (which they rented for the hour) telling the world all sorts of mysterious fables.  You know, the folks who make millions without working and get tons of free money.  It isn’t your fault if you get the MRM disease.  This virus is everywhere – it’s on the radio, it’s on TV, it’s online, it comes from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from…and on and on and on.

OK – how about a good dose of reality?  Mortgage rates are indeed low.  In fact, they’re so low that they’re truly at historic lows.  But the interest rate on your mortgage depends on many things – for example, if you have a small down payment, for almost everyone that means a FHA loan.  Because your down payment is small, the risk is greater to the lender so the interest rate is a little higher; the FHA specializes in such loans.  It’s all in the details as they say.

It also depends on how much money you are going to borrow.  Up to $417,000 it’s one rate, at $417,000 – $1 million it’s about one half point higher, etc.  Mortgage rates vary depending on how much you borrow, your down payment and, of course, your credit score.  What I can tell you is that there’s a cure for MRM disease – work with a good licensed mortgage banker.  Invest some time in getting properly educated and pre-approved for your mortgage.  It’s usually the biggest loan you’ll ever have.  If you go to the Financing section at www.BergenCountyHomes.com you’ll find several.  Trust me – if it’s too good to be true, it’s MRM disease!

Buying a home for most of us means getting a mortgage and, of course, the interest rate on that mortgage is determined in large part by your credit score.  Actually, whether or not you qualify for a mortgage is often determined by your credit score alone.  While it’s true that your income as well as your debt and assets are also important, your credit score is critical to the interest rate charged on your mortgage.

Credit scores are vital to your financial well being in so many ways that have nothing to do with purchasing a home.  For example, your credit score can impact what you are charged for auto insurance or whether or not a utility company requires a security deposit in order to get the lights turned on in your new home.

Here’s a good tip to improve your credit score – don’t pay off your credit cards; instead, get them all down to half or less of what you’re allowed to charge.  Ellen Jacobson is a Senior Mortgagage Banker with JP Morgan Chase and someone I’ve worked with for years.  She told me that most of the folks she sees think that they should pay off one credit card at a time in an effort to have fewer credit cards.  “Nothing could be further from the truth” she told me.  In fact, she said that closing a credit card can hurt your credit score. 

Of course no one is advocating that you maintain credit card debt but if you have several credit cards, try to make sure you keep them all no higher than 50% of what you are allowed and you should see an improvement in your credit score.  It’s also a smart idea to consult with your mortgage banker before you do anything.  Being careful is always a good idea.

I’m not an economist – I’m just a real estate agent.  But, as opposed to what some of my friends will tell you, I am not crazy and I have a lot of common sense.  This is why what has happened makes no sense at all to me.

It all starts with the mortgage.  If you go to my website at www.BergenCountyHomes.com you will see an entire section devoted to how to buy a house the right way.  And what is the first thing I tell you to do?  Go to a licensed mortgage bank.  I refuse to work with any buyers who will not go to a credible financial institution.  Period.  End of story.  No way.  Can I be more direct?

It makes no sense at all for anyone to go to a credible banker who tells them they can afford $100 and then shop around on the internet and find a miracle – you can now afford $150!  Miracles, voodoo dolls, fortune tellers, glass balls with smoke inside, tarot cards etc. are not how you figure out what you can afford. 

I keep telling people, the first thing you do before you look at one house is to work with a licensed mortgage banker.  This is why what happened makes no sense to me.   Realistically I understand how it happened – of course I do.  But it still makes no sense at all to me that so many people found miracles and believed them.  What’s even worse were the people stirring that miracle pot of magic and proclaiming that they were Merlin the Magician or the Wizard of Oz.  Where was Dorothy when we needed her?

And how about those Hedge Fund folks and all the others who churned those packages of bogus loans?  Years ago you had to justify the credit worthiness of a loan to get an investor to buy it.  Well, I guess that went out the window into some dark hole.  But, again, it all comes down to that individual who only wanted to buy a home and wanted a miracle.  But, it wasn’t entirely his fault.

Have you ever tried to read a mortgage document?  If you’ve bought a home in Bergen County, you’ll remember your closing as a blur of papers you had to sign.  They are supposed to be in understandable English but no one, perhaps not even the Pope, can understand it all. 

So between greed from the mortgage broker (notice the expression mortgage broker – it doesn’t say licensed mortgage banker now does it?) who was motivated to sell a loan and get a commission, the real estate agent who was motivated to sell a home and get a commission, in many cases that agent’s manager and company who wanted even more transactions, the banking system who wanted that loan no matter whether or not the buyer could pay for the mortgage and the international investors who wanted US investments and took it “on faith” that what some salesperson was telling them (disguised as a financial advisor, trader, investment banker, hedge fund, international institution, etc) was the truth, we went down this road to a crash literally heard around the world.

So, for those of you who want to buy a home and are nice enough to work with me, understand why I have been telling people for over 20 years that you do not go to alphabet soup mortgage brokers, you go to such places as JP Morgan Chase, Huson City Savings & Loan, Classic Mortgage, New Jersey Lenders or ISB.  These are all strong, solid institutions and no they do not have the lowest rates published – I can almost guarantee you of that.  What they do have is something we used to call a “true rate” (as opposed to untrue?) which tells you what it really costs.

Remember, if these folks tell you can afford 100 or 150, that’s what you can afford.  Because not only do they figure in your mortgage amount, but good, ethical licensed mortgage bankers also figure in things like property taxes and home insurance.  As a result, the figure they give you is credible and usually not as terrific as ABC Mortgage’s phony pie in the sky miracle rate.  But, it is real and so you are protected. 

If you need some good bankers to refinance or buy a home, go to http://bergencountyhomes.com/financing.htm (and in case you’re wondering, I receive no sponsorship from any of them; they don’t participate in conflict of interest behavior and neither do I)