Rick Davis, MN Real Estate & Mortgage Source

According to HUD Mortgagee Letter Buyers are allowed to use their tax credit at the closing table. This only applys to FHA loans right now and still can't be used for the minimum 3.5% down payment needed but can be used to lower the loan amount as additional down payment or to pay for closing costs.

This should be good new for the industry allowing buyers to get the their credit right away and keep their mortgage payments lower saving thousands of dollars over the time they are in their homes. Lets give a hand to HUD for making another step in the right direction for a quicker recovery.

Rick Davis

American Pride

Just when you think the federal reserve bank has done all it can to help the housing and mortgage industry it pulls another rabbit out of its hat. Its buying back $300 billion in treasurys. Mortgae rates reacted positively and fell almost a 1/2 of a point down to around 4.5%. The lower interest rates and the Obama tax credit should bring some new life into the housing market as long as the consumers can keep their jobs.

Wow, I'm so excited. Low house prices along with record low interest rates should be a very good spring season. Then when you add in the extra $8000 taxcredit for new home buyers and also first time home buyer packages from the state of Minnesota. Ther is no reason not to buy a home.

With the recent lowering of mortgage rates anyone that took out a loan in the last 3 to 4 years can benefit by a refiance if they have the equity in their homes to to do it. Fortunately many people that bought foreclosed or distressed properties at below market value now have the opportunity to lower their payments and recoup some remodling or rehab cost,s and still lower their monthly payments. Other people that bought at the top of the market still won't be able to realize a significant savings unless they have a FHA, VA or other government loans that can be streamline refinanced without worrying about what the new value of their home is, even if the value of your home declined it is still possible to lower your monthly payments by streamline refinances. Because these loans can be done without a new appraisal But people that bought at the top of the market using conventional financing may be stuck with he rate they originally got quite some time unless they put significant money down when they pruchased their home.

Refinacing may or may not be possible for homewoners right now, that is why this time in history with low rates it might just be a refi bust. With almost everyone being able to benefit by low rates only certain people will be able to take advantage of it. Its too bad because right now certainly this country could use a nice a shot in the arm to help jumpstart the economy again.

Usda Rural Development loans have become a new and hot loan source for buying homes outside of metro ares. They have become so hot the USda has ouble their prouction from the prior year. For those of you not familiar with this loan program it still allows no money own and up to 6% in seller pai items and the program also allows improvements to be finance n the pruchase money loan up to the appraised value of the property that is being purchased. There are some draw back though, income limits and geographic restrictions apply. Doesn't this program sound great. I t sdoes sound great but right now in my area it took 9 business days for the loan to come out of underwriting and it came back with new conditions. WE have sent these back in now and are waiting for them to be cleared.

The purpose of this post is to warn anyone attempting to use this program or benefit this program to plan ahead. I would give 45 days to close from the day you submit the pruchase agreement. This allows time to get an inspection and appraisal and then be able to have seller or bank to fix repairs that need to be done. It also gives the overworked title companies reprsenting banks to get the tite work done. It also sets the expectation of your buyer to be patient.

Another key to this program is to choose a property that fits the program, if it needs lots of work you need to make the appraised value is high enough to finace the repairs. This program has special guidelines very similar to FHA so paint cannot be flaking, if its mentioned it needs to fixed or an esrow needs to be set up for future repairs. Many repairs of the property can be set up in an escrow account. So either pick a real nice property an it will go pretty smoothly or one that nees reapirs but plan on extra time for negoiating and or making the repairs.

Please coontribute your thoughts or experiences with this program.

Everything we do now should start with creating and staying active on a blog, but not just being active and typing new content but by being engaging, entertaining, rewarding and relavent.

Be active by interacting with the people reading the material and commenting. Everyone loves comments and most people love being responded to when they leave comments. By engaging with new visitors it helps create new friends, relationships nad new business and I think that's why most of us are here veiwing, typing and reading.

Try to be entertaining with your blogs and the will become viral. Write about something your passionate about and people will come and subcribe to your blog and share it with others. By writing about what your passioante about will bring out your emotions and the emotions of others. If you can bring out emotions of others they will find it interesting whether they agree with you or not they will respond and share it with others.

Be rewarding to other through your blog, give credit to others, respond to comments, post comments on other blogs. Be genuine and positive, don't flame someone for poor spelling, grammar or anything else trivial. I feel its O.K. to be critical in a polite fashion, cronstructive criticism can and usually does good for the individual your critizing and othe reading the blog.

The last part of this blog states try to be relavent, I think if you accomplished the first three items I mentioned above, I feel the blog will be relavent. U sually blogs are on current events, statistics, helping others or selling something. All of which are relavent but some times don't fit any of the 3 other categories.

I have been reading some info from Charles Helfin which brought out these thoughts. He eled me understand the importance of blogging and have a positive presence on the web.

Rick Davis, making the dream a reality