FHA and Investor Specialist

A teacher asked her children in her Sunday School class, "If I sold all my furs and jewels on E-Bay, and gave all the money to the church, would I get into heaven?"

The children all yelled, "No!"

She then asked, "What if I cleaned the whole church, mowed  the lawn, and got new candles, would I get into heaven?"

The answer again was a resounding "No!"

She then asked, "What would I have to do to get into heaven?"

One boy yelled, "You have to die first!"

     A recent article entitled Mortgage giants may help borrowers by AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon describes new programs being developed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help borrowers keep their homes in the light of rising foreclosure rates.  Fannie Mae is calling their new program "Homestay" and is designed help borrowers by offering fixed rates and adjustable rates with longer fixed terms than the traditional subprime 2 year fixed loan.

     There was no mention of whether these programs will be offered for purchases or are just going to be for refinance transactions.  The article also points to the liquidity of the market as a possible reason for higher delinquencies, due to the distance between the ultimate servicer of a loan and the borrower.  It appears Fannie and Freddie are looking to offer a more flexible and consumer friendly type of loan.

     Personally, I think this is a great opportunity for Fannie and Freddie to positively impact the mortgage market.  Maybe rolling out a program that rewards a subprime borrower with 12 consecutive timely payments by reducing their rate(similar to their "timely rewards option" on EA loans) slightly or offering a lower rate by completing a credit counseling course would be a great first step.

     Any thoughts?

Ths joke reminds me of some of the stupid things I have called a helpdesk about:

A new employee calls the Help Desk to complain that there's something wrong with her password. No, it's not the usual caps-lock problem.

"The problem is that whenever I type the password, it just shows stars," she says.

"Those asterisks are to protect you," the Help Desk technician explains, "so if someone were standing behind you, they wouldn't be able to read your password."

"Yeah," she says, "but they show up even when there is no one standing behind me."

Jack wakes up with a huge hangover after attending his company's Christmas
Party. Jack is not normally a drinker, but the drinks didn't taste like
alcohol at all. He didn't even remember how he got home from the party. As
bad as he was feeling, he wondered if he did something wrong. Jack had to
force himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of
aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table.  And, next to them, a
single red rose!

Jack sits up and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed.
He looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, spotlessly
clean. So is the rest of the house. He takes the aspirins, and cringes when he
sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror. Then he
notices a note hanging on the corner of the mirror written in red with
little hearts on it and a kiss mark from his wife in lipstick:

"Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to get groceries to make
you your favorite dinner tonight. I love you, darling! Love, Jillian"

He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast,
steaming hot coffee and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the
table, eating. Jack asks, "Son... what happened last night?"
"Well, you came home after 3 A.M., drunk out of your mind. You fell
over the coffee table and broke it, and then you puked in the hallway, and
got that black eye when you ran into the door."

Confused, he asked his son, "So, why is everything in such perfect order
and so clean? I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for
me??"

His son replies, "Oh THAT!... Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she
tried to take your pants off, you screamed, "Leave me alone, I'm married!"  

Harry the mortgage broker was a Type-A personality.  One day when arguing with underwriting, Harry had a massive heart attack.  While being rushed to the hospital, Harry had an out of body experience.  He encounters St. Peter, who says "Harry, it's a shame to see you so soon.  Would you like to tour heaven and hell before you decide which one you would like to spend in eternity?"

Harry is confused, and never realized he had the option of which to choose.  Harry said, "Well, I would like to see hell just to see what it is like."  St. Peter then summons Lucifer, who takes Harry on a tour of hell.  To Harry's surprise, there are many of his friends there, playing golf on a lush, green golf course.  A drink and cigar cart is nearby as is a pool.  Harry thinks to himself hell isn't so bad after all.

Suddenly, Harry wakes up and is in the hospital.  His recovery is slow and he starts off with good intentions.  Eventually he starts smoking again.  Before long he succumbs to a fatal heart attack.

Once again, Harry sees St. Peter.  St. Peter again asks him if he would like heaven or hell.  Harry, remembering hell, chooses hell.  St. Peter says "very well" and off Harry goes.

Hell is not what Harry remembered, it's over 110 degrees and he is given a pick and sent to work chipping the hugest rock he has ever seen in his life.  Hot coffee is the only beverage, and 2 hours of rest are granted per day. 

Harry says to Lucifer:"The isn't the hell I saw before!" 

Lucifer responds, "You should have locked in when you had the chance!"

With the subprime and alt-a industry recently restricting their guidelines on 100% financing, what options remain?  Thanks to Jeff Belonger's recent blog about FHA Grant Money available, there are a few ways to get 100% financing through FHA.  Another great program that has been out vogue as of late is the VA 100% Financing Loan program.

With many recent veterans of the last 2 Gulf Wars, including National Guardsmen/Women and Reservists, a VA loan provides many benefits to potential buyers.  One benefit is the dreaded VA Appraisal.  Although VA Appraisals are known to be conservative and often repairs are required to be completed by the seller, today is a buyers market and this is in place to protect the buyer.  In a buyers market, sellers are listening to all offers and a VA offer is an offer.

Other benefits of VA loans include 4% seller concessions, no monthly MI, reduced lender closing costs, allowances for manufactured housing, and less restrictive underwriting guidelines regarding credit.  When qualifying or meeting with a first-time or 2nd time homebuyer, be sure to ask if they have served in the military in order to keep their financing options open.

At a computer expo, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 mi/gal."

General Motors addressed this comment by releasing the statement, "Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?"

And...

1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.

2. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.

3. Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail and you would have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you would accept this too.

4. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought "Car95" or "CarNT". But, then you would have to buy more seats.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.

6. The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much slower.

7. The oil, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.

8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

9. The airbag system would say, "Are you sure?" before going off.

10. Some of the "free" car parts would stop working after 90 days, after which point you would have to buy them.

There was a certain bartender who was quite famous for being able to accurately guess people's IQs. One night a man walked in and talked to him briefly and the bartender said, "Wow! You must have an IQ of about 140! You should meet this guy over here." So they talked for a while about nuclear physics and existential philosophy and had a great time.

A second man walked in and soon the bartender has guessed about a 90 IQ for him. So he sat him down in front of the big-screen TV and he watched football with the other guys and had a hell of a time.

Then a third man stumbled in and talked to the bartender for a while. The bartender said to himself, "Jeez! I think this guy's IQ must be about 29!" He took him over to a man sitting at a little table back in the corner and said, "You might enjoy talking with this guy for a while."

After the bartender left, the man at the table said, "So what do you think interest rates will do?"

This is meant to be comedy, although there is a grain of truth behind many of these:

10.  Their 1-800 number has been temporarily disconnected.

9.  They recently consolidated 13 regional offices to 1 centralized office as a "cost-saving" measure.

8.  They recently dropped a whole segment of loan programs with little or no notice.

7.  They started offering loan programs in a market segment they did not pursue previously.

6.  Their corporate website is now ad-supported.

5.  You google them and #1 on google's search is www.lenderimplode.com

4.  You find out they are threatening legal action against sites which reported they are having financial trouble.

3.  Your AE issues a statement declaring their company financially fit and secure.

2.  The CEO issues a statement declaring the company financially fit and secure.

1.  60 Minutes's   preview for next week is featuring a report on them.

I still think these are funny.

Michael Byrne

www.mortgageprosforum.com   and  www.cafepress.com/buyfromclarence