MarvinRanks

Despite happy talk and new products, they’re a last resort for seniors. Reverse mortgages, once thought to be a bad move for seniors, appear to be losing some of their stink. Why? A couple things have changed: * Congress has been loosening the rules to let seniors pull more money out of their homes (read [...]

Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECMs) and private reverse mortgages gave birth to a new asset class, but the sharp financial minds on Wall Street missed this seminal event for almost a decade. Then in 1998, Lehman Brothers tapped a young investment banker to start its reverse mortgage business, the first on Wall Street. To understand [...]

Great Oak Lending Partners, a Timonium broker, is being fined $11,000 for what U.S. officials describe as misleading advertising about Federal Housing Administration mortgages. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees FHA, said this week that its mortgagee review board found several problems with Great Oak Lending’s direct-mail ads. In addition to the [...]

FHA WITHDRAWS THREE LENDERS, SUSPENDS A FOURTH: Mortgagee Review Board underscores FHA’s stepped up lender enforcement efforts The Federal Housing Administration’s Mortgagee Review Board (MRB) today announced that it is immediately and permanently withdrawing the FHA approval of three mortgage lenders and is suspending a fourth. The MRB withdrew the FHA approval of Strategic Mortgage [...]

SALT LAKE CITY — The economy may have had a chilling effect on many legitimate mortgage options, but the FBI and the Utah Division of Real Estate say mortgage scams are alive and well. The two agencies have released their Top 5 list of the most common, and most recent, scams in Utah. “You have [...]

In a recent column, we explored some of the steps suggested by longtime housing experts that would allow traditional forces to return to the market. While the initial moves are not easy, they are somewhat logical: Scrutinize the loan-qualifying process. Subsidize those who would be temporarily displaced from the homes they could never afford to [...]

Mortgage broker: Marty Appel, Holmgren & Associates, Oakland, CA Property: A two-bedroom, two-bath condo in Walnut Creek Appraised value: $360,000 Borrowing: $218,000 Loan type: Reverse mortgage Rate: 5.56 percent, fixed Back story: A single 72-year-old was downsizing from a larger property in Orinda. He used the proceeds from a reverse mortgage to purchase a unit [...]