Cornerstone Mortgage Offers the Best Rehab Loans in the Twin Cities! | Investment Mortgage Guy.

Rehab Loans are a great way to make a run down foreclosures and other distresses fixer upper bargains and turn them into great home to live in.

Here’s a quote From Rob’s article, “Where most buyers and investors think they need cash, Cornerstone Mortgage offers great rehab financing for both owner occupied buyers and real estate investors. For the owner occupied buyer, Cornerstone likes to utilize the FHA 203k loan. This loan requires only 3.5% down payment and allows a buyer to finance renovations with a total project cost up to $365,000. Projects as low as $5000 on up will be considered. Rates for this 30 year fixed product are currently around 4.5%. There are a few lenders in the market that offer this program but I believe Cornerstone is one of the best at it.  We close most of these loans in 60 days or less. We also underwrite and fund the loans and draws in-house so the delays are minimized.”

Technorati Tags: 203K, fixer upper, Foreclosures, Rehab

Low Ball Offers on Bank Owned Foreclosure Properties | Investment Property Expert

Fellow Minnesota Real Estate Team member, Scott Ficek’s blog is always a great source of information for investors.  In this article Scott answer’s one of the most commonly asked questions,

“How low of an offer can we make on this foreclosed house”?

Just Google QR scan codes and see what the buzz is all about.

You will need code scan application to use the symbol I posted.

So what does this say about those websites that are only compatible with IE and not compatible with Chrome, Mozilla, Safari etc?

Is Microsoft only interested in doing business with dumb people?

I heard former Supreme court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor on MPR today. iCivics was her vision to help young people learn how our government works.

I thought this was one of the coolest ideas I’ve seen in a long time!

Bostic  states the obvious harm that a moratorium would do.  He also mentions some news most people are not paying attention to.  Namely that foreclosure starts are DOWN 30% from the peak last year.  If you follow the time line of the foreclosure process from start to finish it takes about a year or so.    The logical conclusion is the 2009 peak in foreclosure “starts” has translated to the 2010 foreclosure peak.

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By Raphael Bostic, Assistant HUD Secretary for Policy Development and Research
When I accepted the invitation to write a guest column for RealtyTrac in mid-summer, I fully expected to be writing about the continuation of months of improvement in the foreclosure environment and how the Administration was preparing for the next phase of our assault on the greatest crisis the U.S. housing market has seen since the Great Depression.

The experiences of the past few months have borne out this expectation, and we have seen real progress in the housing market.  Foreclosure starts are down by nearly 30 percent from the peaks of a year ago.  In the last 18 months, more than 3.3 million families have received restructured mortgages with more affordable monthly payments, which is more than twice as many foreclosures that have been completed during that time.  And a steady stream of foreclosure completions means that the backlog of distressed properties — the source of a gloomy overhang over housing markets across the nation — is starting to settle out.

Unfortunately, the recent revelations about foreclosure processing — that some banks may be repossessing homes of families improperly — have cast new clouds over this optimistic and hopeful landscape, and these warrant commentary.  The Administration clearly understands the threat this represents, both to general recovery efforts and, more importantly, to homeowners across the country who now fear that banks and servicers might be taking shortcuts that cause them to lose their homes.  That is why the Obama Administration is marshalling the resources of a broad coalition of law enforcement, investigatory and regulatory agencies to examine the issue and take appropriate action if wrongdoing is found.

The importance of this is obvious — no one should lose their home as a result of a bank mistake. Given the problems that have already been found and admitted to by some servicers, the Obama Administration fully supports the voluntary moratoria that are already in place and others should they be deemed necessary.

While voluntary moratoria have been established in many quarters, some have argued for the need to go further and impose a national moratorium to halt all foreclosures by every servicer in every state.  I do not favor this as a pre-emptive action, as it would likely do more harm than good.  Vacant and abandoned homes destroy the value of neighboring properties like almost nothing else, with their negative impacts being more than three times greater than the impacts of occupied homes just entering the foreclosure process.  Halting foreclosures would halt the resolution of these properties, hurting both the neighbors that must endure the continuing negative effects of a foreclosure sign near their homes as well as those who see these properties as opportunities to become homeowners, some for the first time.  And with foreclosed homes making up 25 percent of all home sales in some markets, a full scale moratorium would put a chill on precisely those housing markets that need these distressed properties to be sold and renovated in order to return to stable footing……………………………..

Full article