Master of your own destiny

Tags

monthly payment, mortgage calculator

Do you tire of having to go to BlueGill, Key Bank of America Fargo or some sleezy real estate broker’s site to figure out what your mortgage is going to cost you monthly?  Good news!  For people using Windows 7, the built in calculator includes ta-da, a mortgage calculator feature!

Fill in 4 of the known fields, and it will provide you with the 5th.  The default is monthly payment, but if you needed to know how much you could afford, select the Purchase Price option, and work backwards to see what range you should be looking in.

To access this handy tool, from your Start menu choose:

• All programs
• Accessories
• Calculator
• View
• Worksheets (at the bottom of the drop down dialog box)
• Mortgage
• Voila!

 

A year and a half later

Do not be discouraged if you are either the buyer or seller on a short sale.  They do eventually have a conclusion!  Happy to report one I’ve been working on for over 18 months finally closed today.  Happy buyers, happy sellers, happy broker.

For your clients

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auction, Bank of America, Chase Bank, Debt, fraud, lien, MERS, robo-signer

Washington agents – if you need a resource for your clients who are losing their home, frustrated with an inability to modify or concerned that when the interest rates go back up, their ARM is going to send them into financial ruin, I now have a source of help you can recommend to them.

Read the fine print

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Chase Bank, data

Do you have a mortgage that was serviced by EMC?  If you missed the mailings, it is now being serviced directly by Chase, and your payment location is rolling to the Chase website.

Although other information is migrated from the EMC database, your pay-from accounts need to be re-verified in the new system.  Chase offers you two options:  the traditional deposit and verify or “Instant Verification System.”  I’m a fine print reader.  Although the IVS appealed to me so I could get on with paying the mortgage, I took the time to read.  In Internet verbiage, OMG. 

So much for so little

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appraisal, curb appeal, homeowner, value

Looking at listing your property?  One of the ways that you can generate curb appeal for your properties is through a beautification effort and that does not mean taking a hit from your operating budget. Here are three ways to get free or inexpensive trees or plants for your properties.

Free Trees & Plants – Very simple way to get trees and plants. This is a not-for profit foundation that collects plants from nurseries that would be thrown away. They nurture the plants and ship them to you. You only pay for shipping and handling. http://www.freetreesandplants.com/

Odd things I learned today

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mortgage

I was reading an article “7 Odd Things You Can Buy at Costco” and came across this interesting tidbit:

Mortgage Services

Okay, you can’t actually buy a house at Costco — but the wholesaler can help you secure a mortgage.

Members can chose from a group of national lenders that commit to low fees. According to the company’s Web site, members save 64% on lender fees.

Costco has teamed up with First Choice to provide this mortgage service. Lender fee caps are priced at $600 for executive members and $750 for business and goldstar members.

The list of lenders includes CapWest Mortgage, RMC Vanguard, West Star, Wyndham, Sterling Savings Bank, Bank of Internet and Real Estate Mortgage network.

As a full disclaimer, although I have a Costco membership, I am not being paid to advertise this service, nor have I yet referred anyone to them.  However in these interesting times, when loans are challenging, this might be an alternative to keep under your hat, especially with capped fees so low!

Don’t forget while you’re there, Costco also sells wedding dresses and caskets, in case you’re having other major life events along with buying that house.

Outside the box

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cloud on title, fraud, lien, robo-signer

As a child, did you ever know anyone who purposely got in trouble in order to be sent to the principal’s office?  Usually it was either a crush on the administrator or more likely, a test to be avoided.

The Associated Press gets high marks for a story today about the continuation of robo-signing, which we thought was dealt with because we’re decent folk, aren’t we?  We get told, “Don’t do that,” so we don’t!  Or maybe not.

The AP uncovered not only foreclosure documents still being signed, but also other types of real estate papers, citing mortgage discharge documents in one particular instance.  What the AP didn’t do is figure out if the banks are perpetrating a naughty in order to get sent to the principal’s office.

Shoot yourself in the foot

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HOA, loan, qualify

I feel “under the gun” today.  I just had coffee with a very nice representative of Old Republic Title Company and during our discussion he mentioned having read this blog.  He also said it appeared I updated it regularly.  Ack!  The pressure.  Ommmmmmm.  OK, I’m better now, but definitely feel the need to pull out a draft I was working on and get it into everyone’s eager waiting hands.

Disclaimer – I spilled coffee on my desktop keyboard this morning.  It’s been sent through the wash and rinse cycle (just kidding, sort of) and is now drying out.  I am typing on my laptop, connecting remotely and making all “soorts” of keyboard errors on the smaller keypad.  Bear with me, leave me your cryptic editing notes and I promise I’ll fix the “ishews” later!

Today’s topic?  How to kill a really excellent deal.

The new checking account

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BECU, loan, PMI, rate

This morning I took my daughter to BECU to open a checking account before she left for her summer adventure.  While there, I took advantage of their new University of Washington card, replacing my boring red one with the Purple and Gold (Go Dawgs).  Conversing with Tim, the nice account manager, I also stumbled across a piece of fantastic information, which I’d be thrilled to share with you.

BECU does [I think exclusively] portfolio loans, which means they are not farmed out to the secondary market.  When a loan goes bad and the house is foreclosed on, BECU lists them on the MLS, but also on their website (keep reading and I’ll give you the link!).

Readable contracts

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computer, Internet

Passing documents back and forth between agents and their clients, each transmission gets a little more difficult to read.  Beginning in the fall the NWMLS is going to have online signing, which will speed things up, and make the documents more legible.  Hooray!

NWMLS will offer an electronic signature service to its members and subscribers beginning Fall 2011.  The Authentisign service provides a secure browser based online document signing process which enables multiple parties to participate and sign documents online.  Authentisign will be integrated with Xpress Forms to allow for a convenient and efficient electronic signature process.