Mortgage Renegotiation
 

A friend of mine bought a new motorcycle last week, so Saturday he was visiting most everyone he knows, showing it off.
He rode down to Delaware to visit a friend that was up to his ears with an ARM mortgage that was approaching 20%, and in danger of losing the house.

The guy told him the mortgage company (CITI I think) had contacted him to renegotiate the mortgage. They said it was part of the "bailout" deal and gave him 2% for three years and 4% after that on a fixed rate mortgage.

He also had a home equity loan with the same company, and they gave him the same 2%/4% deal on that.
Now he won't lose his home and his wife is smiling again.

This is the first positive result of the "bailout", I've personally heard of.

That's a great deal for your mates mate Bruce.

Maybe the bailout will help those it's meant to help after all.

Have heard on the news about a local bank, Banner Bank, offering 30 fixed first mortgages at ... are you sitting down? 3.875%. Wow.

The catch is this rate is only available to customers with good credit, and only on select properties. Namely, properties whose construction has been financed by Banner Bank. The contractors/homebuilders are on the hook at the same bank and the bank doesn't want to own the houses first. So they're doing to get the money and the inventory moving.

Call your lender. Do it today.

Trust me.

Almost makes me wish I had a mortgage... almost. :rolleyes:

It still begs to ask, why are we helping so many people who made bad decisions when all those who pay on time are still screwed with the deals they made?

There was a letter in my parents' horrible right wing paper the other day. I rarely agree with anything written in it, but this one made me smile.

It suggested that the Government gives everyone over the age of 18 £500 to be spent in this country in the next three months. It claimed that this would be a far better deal that bailing out hundreds of different companies (and more specifically the banks) would cost less and would give the economy the boost it needed without printing more money.

It couldn't work of course - for a start you could never police the conditions, and the infrastructure needed would cost a fortune. But I liked the idea. Of course I did! £500? Yes please. I would spend it all on me & Diz. After all, everyone I know would have the same amount.

Anyway, glad that someone has had some joy out of the economic downturn though Bruce*. And that companies are acting responsibly now. Funny how news travels isn't it? Almost like in ye good olde days, when people would ride from farm to farm. Except this horse runs on petrol. And the internet thing... Nope, can't think of an analogy. Pigeon post?!

* Actually I have too. No-one seems to think it's weird that I am living with my parents again. Mum's friends do not ask "What's wrong with her?" Everyone assumes because I previously lived in London I had a high powered job in banking or finance and am just weathering the storm here. Which gratifies Mum more than me, but in doing so makes my life easier ;)

We could give every American two million dollars and not approach the level of money being thrown at big business.

That would be $600 trillion. It'll be a few more years before even our debt reaches that.

I understand the argument to be it would take too long to sort the wheat from the chaff, they need to get things stabilized ASAP.

It's sucky but it's the bitter pill.

Keeping people in their homes by re-structuring their mortgages isnt welfare or helping only those people who made bad decisions...it seems like good business sense considering the alternative.

Part of me wishes I could renegotiate, but I've been far too responsible and taken far too few risks so even though each month I barely scrape by (just sent my mortgage payment this morning with only five days to spare!) I doubt I could qualify for a restructure, and frankly with only 14 years left at 5.5% I'm not sure it wouldn't put me in a worse position if I did.

So I just have to hope I can keep scraping up that mortgage payment every month for 14 more years.

Yeah, without enough income, all the restructuring in the world wouldnt help us either. If hubby loses his job, we lose the home.

The new "Making Home Affordable" mortgage assistance program is not only (or not even primarily) for those who "made bad decisions."

It is for those who "pay their mortgages on time but are not able to refinance to take advantage of today’s lower mortgage rates perhaps due to a decrease in the value of their home"

And those homeowners "struggling to make their monthly mortgage payments either because their interest rate has increased or they have less income."

More on the FinancialStability.gov website.

Including self-assessment tools to see if you are among the 7 to 9 million homeowners who did not necessarily "make bad decisions" and are paying their mortgage on time or who might be struggling to meet payments because of recent job loss.

The Fact Sheet (pdf) has more details.

That was useful to know... I might even go for it, thank you!