The National Association of Realtors has estimated that as many as 180,000 buyers who signed contracts by April 30th may have missed the June 30th closing deadline due to delayed closings.

The bill, already passed by the House on Tuesday, will now head to President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign it into law.

The BAD news is -
the Senate must still approve the bill and they better act fast – the deadline is currently Wednesday, June 30th. As it stands now, if you don’t close your loan by the end of today, you won’t get the tax credit.

This bill only changes the deadline for closing or finalizing your loan to qualify for the tax credit (your sales contract had to be signed by April 30th).  It doesn’t help anyone currently shopping for a home or who signed a sales contract after April 30th.

Other steps you can take to prevent unwanted solicitations:

• Register your home & wireless phone numbers on the National Do Not Call list. Your phone numbers will remain on this list indefinitely.
• Register your home & wireless phone numbers on the Texas No Call list. Your phone numbers will remain on this list for a period of three (3) years.
  
• Cut down on postal junk mail by registering your name & address at DirectMail.com.

Hope this helps you control your personal information and prevent unwanted solicitations.

This should kill a lot of the trees. Where else are we going to get enough paper to comply with this requirement.

Check out this article on CNNMoney.com by Neil deMause that explains in more detail the Health care laws massive, hidden tax change.

On April 22nd, the House Financial Services Committee voted unanimously to approve H.R. 5017.  H.R. 5017, the Rural Housing Preservation and Stabilization Act of 2010, now goes to the full House of Representatives. We could see a vote as early as next week by the house on this very important bill.

If passed, the bill will correct the current Single Family Housing Guaranteed Loan Program, designed to assist homebuyers living in rural areas to obtain affordable mortgages guaranteed by the Department of Agriculture (USDA), to make it self-funding. The new legislation increases the Guaranty Fee from 2% to an amount up to a 4% of the loan amount. The increased Guaranty Fee is designed to allow the program to be more self-sustaining. The bill authorizes the department to guarantee up to $30 billion in loans in FY 2010.

UPDATE 04/28/10:
The House of Representatives passed H.R. 5017, the Rural Housing Preservation and Stabilization Act of 2010, on April 27th by a vote of 352 to 62. No legislation has been introduced in the Senate yet.

The current VA 30-yr fixed rate is actually 1/8 lower than conventional rates at 4.875.

The cost of securing FHA financing will rise tomorrow when the upfront mortgage insurance cost, a premium charged at closing as a percentage of the loan amount, is boosted to 2.25% from 1.75%.

The benchmark 10-yr T-Note yield has now moved over 4%, which many economists predicted it’s peak for this year would be.

We expect rates to continue to rise…

It’s not unusual for the USDA to run out of funds for this loan program, but it usually happens near the end of the year. Since this is the only loan program, other than VA loans, that allows zero down loans, it has become quit popular. This has caused the rapid depletion of available funds for 2010. Say thank you to your government for their continued shortsidedness and absurdity in running our country. Let’s hope they come to their senses and provide special funding for this very important loan program before the usual refunding of this program in 2011.

RESPA requires that borrowers receive disclosures at various times. Some disclosures spell out the costs associated with the settlement, outline lender servicing and escrow account practices and describe business relationships between settlement service providers.

RESPA also prohibits certain practices that increase the cost of settlement services. Section 8 of RESPA prohibits a person from giving or accepting any thing of value for referrals of settlement service business related to a federally related mortgage loan. It also prohibits a person from giving or accepting any part of a charge for services that are not performed. Section 9 of RESPA prohibits home sellers from requiring home buyers to purchase title insurance from a particular company.

RESPA covers loans secured with a mortgage placed on a one-to-four family residential property. These include most purchase loans, assumptions, refinances, property improvement loans, and equity lines of credit. HUD’s Office of RESPA and Interstate Land Sales is responsible for enforcing RESPA.

For additional information regarding RESPA, please visit the HUD website here.

For those who don’t feel like taking notes, it is a study on the sweetheart deal they cut, complete with an example of a bad $478,000 loan with six months of missed payments purchased at 70% for $334,600. The borrower is forced into a short sale on property at $ 241,000, so the loss on the original loan is $244,200. The FDIC pays 80% of the loss calculated from the original price, not the reduced 70% reduced price, bringing the loss payment to the purchaser to it to $195,360. So the short sale proceeds plus the FDIC guarantee totals $436,360. Already the profit for the purchaser is $241,000+$195,360 – $334,600 = $101,760, and on top of this, the original borrower was forced to sign a promissory note for $75,000.

If you are the seller on one of these deals, make sure you are not being taken advantage of by the bank holding the loan.  Also, a good thing to remember is that when you go to buy another home, the lender/underwriter can treat this short sale just like a foreclosure. Your credit scores can be impacted the same way as well. You will have to wait 3-5 years under current guidelines before you are able to purchase again.

If you purchased your home after November 6th, 2009, you may or may not have discovered there is a problem with filing for your tax credit with the IRS. Seems the IRS has not issued the official form required to file for this latest homebuyer tax credit. It was supposed to be ready the beginning of January. Hopefully it won’t take too much longer for them to revise the old form and issue it. In the mean time, you’ll just have to wait to file for your tax credit. 

It’s been reported that the IRS is having so much trouble with fraudulent claims for the original $8000 first time homebuyer tax credit that ended November 30th, 2009 that they are now requiring proof that you actually did buy a new home. Hard to believe they weren’t smart enough to ask for the “proof of purchase” from the beginning. Isn’t that how ALL rebates work?