No more flood Insurance

The national flood insurance program expired after the Senate failed to extend it when the left for a two week recess.

The program expires April 3rd and after that no new policies will be issued until the program is reinstated. The Senate is not scheduled to return until April 12th so a solution is not expected before that date.

FEMA says most of the 5.6 million current policy holders will not be affected by the temporary suspension but new homebuyers or anyone refinancing in a flood zone will not be able to close as scheduled if it falls in that window. Contact your local lender at once to see about resolving this problem. There are some local flood zones such as Old Town, White's Ferry and Georgetown, among others.

The Senate will resume debate on this issue after returning April 12th.

Chase (maybe others) does not record their HELOC modifications when reducing their credit lines. Example: You have a 100K first mortgage and a HELOC w Chase with a credit limit of 150K and 50K balance. You refinance the first as a cash out for 150K to pay off the HELOC balance and have Chase subordinate the second and reduce the credit line by 50K to keep the CLTV the same as before. Chase agrees to reduce the line but because they do not record the loan modification your customer will need to pay stamps on what Montgomery county assumes is 50K in new money. This doesn’t happen very often but if it does you could be paying additional fees as a result of the refinance. And not find out until the end. Clients know this could happen. Loan officers be prepared to possibly pay the difference according to the GFE rules now in place. You gotta love that “New” GFE. Next they’re gonna fix our health care system???

I made the right CHOICE

As of Feb 26th I no longer work at Choice Finance. In fact no one does. The company closed down that day due to the extremely difficult lending environment. However the former owners of Choice Finance have decided to keep their website up and running as a lead generation service I suppose. Nothing wrong with that but I believe they should be upfront with people and not act as if the loan officers still work there. Please don't be confused, there are NO loan officers at Choice Finance, you will be directed to Suntrust mortgage where some of the loan officers now work.

I began with Monarch mortgage a division of Monarch bank in early March. I interviewed with several different companies and feel that Monarch offers the best of both worlds. The financial stability of a bank combined with many different investors and programs. If you go to Suntrust or Wells Fargo all they can offer are their rates and guidelines. That is not the case here, we have multiple investors but ALL aspects from underwriting to preparing the final loan documents are done on the same floor in our office. If you don't think this is important think again. That was one of the biggest hurdles we faced at Choice Finance was that we had to send all loans out and lost control over the process. Even the bigger banks send some of the loans to remote locations for underwriting and processing. I welcome you to compare rates of Suntrust, Wells Fargo , Bank of America and any other local lenders. Our rates seem to be better on most loan products across the board. I am closing my first purchase in a few weeks and I was simply amazed how easy and fast it was for everyone involved. Monarch Bank "big enough to get it done" "Small enough to care"