Home Affordable Refinance Plus program - Is your home loan qualified?

Recently, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just rolled out programs to help underwater properties and allow home owners to refinance their loan up to 105% loan to value without paying mortgage insurance and higher rates. Below are instructions to check if you can benefit from this great news:

1. Owner occupied home and loan amount has to be $625K or under.

2. Check if your loans are owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie at below link. Half of US residential loans are owned by the 2 companies, although your original bank/lender are still sending your monthly bill.

Fannie Mae look up tool http://loanlookup.fanniemae.com/loanlookup/

Freddie Mac look up tool https://ww3.freddiemac.com/corporate/


3. If your loan is owned by them, and ratio over 80% please talk to your loan agent or let me know and I can refer to you one who might be able to help you. Rates change daily, and current no-point no-fee rates for this high ratio 30-yr fixed program are about 5.0% for up to$417K loan, and 5.5% for up to $625K loan (per one of my loan partners last week).

If you find your loan is owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and interested in a refinance, please contact your mortgage lender or servicer (the organization to whom you make your monthly mortgage payments) to confirm these results and ask about the Home Affordable Refinance Plus program.

If you find your loan not owned by one of the two companies, here is what you can do:

• Try the look-up tools again. Abbreviations or typos can cause an incorrect result. Be sure that all information entered in the look-up tool is typed completely and accurately.

• Contact Fannie Mae at FannieMae.com, or 1-800-7Fannie to see if they own your loan.

• If you are currently in the foreclosure process, contact your mortgage servicer, the organization to which you make your mortgage payments, as soon as possible. Ask to speak with someone in your servicer's Loss Mitigation Department. The telephone number and mailing address of your mortgage servicer should be listed on your monthly statement. There are also a number of organizations that may be able to help you. Visit our "Working With Your Lender to Stop Foreclosure" page to help prepare for your call.

• You can also contact the Homeownership Preservation Foundation’s Homeowner’s HOPE™ Hotline at 888-995-HOPE. Additional information can be found on the Homeownership Preservation Foundation website at www.995hope.org.

• The Department of Housing and Urban Development offers assistance to distressed borrowers. Visit the HUD Web site at www.hud.gov/foreclosure.

• You can review www.FreddieMac.com/avoidforeclosure for general information for consumers about avoiding foreclosure and the steps borrowers currently in the foreclosure process should take immediately.

More information can be found at MakingHomeAffordable.gov.

Please feel free to give me a call at (510)552-0580 if I can be of any assistance.

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Feb 2009 California Median Home Prices

C.A.R. reports February home sales increased 83 percent, median home price declined 40.8 percent.

Quick Facts:
• Existing, single-family home sales increased 83 percent in February to a seasonally adjusted rate of 620,410 on an annualized basis
. The statewide median price of an existing single-family home decreased 40.8 percent
in February to $247,590
. C.A.R.’s Unsold Inventory Index fell to 6.5 months in February, compared with 15.3 months in February 2008
. The median number of days it took to sell a single-family home declined to 51.5 days in February 2009, compared with 69.3 days in February 2008.

. Thirty-year fixed-mortgage interest rates averaged 5.13 percent during February 2009, compared with 5.92 percent in February 2008, according to Freddie Mac. Adjustable-mortgage interest rates averaged 4.87 percent in February 2009, compared with 5.03 percent in February 2008.

According to the report announced by California Realtor Association on 3/25, The median price of an existing, single-family detached home in California during February 2009 was $247,590, a 40.8 percent decrease from the revised $418,260 median for February 2008. The February 2009 median price fell 2.3 percent compared with January’s revised $253,330 median price.

For the overall San Francisco Bay Area, the median price was $399044 which is a 0.9% decline from prior month, and 43.5% lower than the same period last year. Clicks links below for more analysis and summary of regional sales and price activity, as well as median price in each county and city.

Data for Alameda county is not available at the release. However, I can get it from our local MLS. If you are interested in finding out the median price and sales data for a particular city, please send me an email to meimei@calMBArealty.com to let me know.

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