Mortgage News | Refinancing Articles

Mortgage lender Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corporation, which shut down its operations in August, left many of its customers in disarray.

It has been weeks since its shutdown, but many of its borrowers still do not know where they should send their monthly home loan payments. Many of them are also concerned about the payments of their taxes and their homeowners insurance policies.

Before its closure, Ocala, Florida-based Taylor, Bean & Whitaker was the 12th biggest home loan provider in the U.S. It was also the third-biggest provider of loans guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration in June, based on data from trade publisher Inside Finance.

One of the states significantly affected by the bankruptcy of Taylor Bean is Illinois. Across the state, 25,000 homeowners are asking a lot of questions and expressing a lot of concerns about their mortgage loans.

Alan Anderson, the chief counsel for mortgage banking at the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, said that the process of resolving all homeowner concerns in the state is a massive undertaking.

Meanwhile, mortgage lender Taylor Bean said it has not processed automatic debit payments since August 10. According to Alan Anderson, Taylor Bean borrowers are confused because they were not clearly informed about which servicer is taking over their mortgage. They are also bothered about letters of loan reassignment from various servicers.

Based on information from the web site of Taylor Bean, borrowers with Ginnie Mae home loans should make their payments to Bank of America. Freddie Mac borrowers are advised to pay to Cenlar FSB, Ocwen Loan Servicing or Saxon Mortgage, depending on the status of their loans.

Last week, the state discovered that Taylor Bean has not stopped servicing almost 1,800 home loans in Illinois. After participating in 14-state legal action against Taylor Bean in June, the state of Illinois sued the lender again last week.

Among other accusations, the state claimed that Taylor Bean inaccurately informed over 15,000 homeowners in Illinois that their home loans were already in default.

The state also instructed Taylor Bean to update the state daily with a list of all home loans being moved to other servicers. Taylor Bean must also make sure that all new servicers give a two-month grace period for borrowers to make their loan payments without any assessment of late fees.

Lastly, mortgage lender Taylor Bean was also told not to proceed with any foreclosure in Illinois until further instruction is provided.

A home equity loan program has been launched by U.S. Bank in Colorado for homeowners who plan to make green improvements in their homes. Qualified projects would enable owners to take out a home equity loan or a line of credit at rates lower by three-eighths percent than standard home equity loan rates.

Qualified energy efficient home improvement projects include improvements on windows, doors, insulation, ventilation, heating, roofing, air conditioning and water heaters and the incorporation of biomass stoves, solar energy systems, fuel cells and ground source heat pumping systems.

In addition to benefitting from the U.S. Bank loan program, energy efficient home improvement efforts may also benefit from existing energy efficiency tax credits.

According to Lisa O’Brien, environmental affairs director at U.S. Bank, the bank is committed to helping homeowners create or use environmentally friendly goods and services in order to help protect the environment.

She said that the green auto loan launched by the bank in April was successful so they have decided to launch a program for green home improvement. She hoped the home equity loan program will contribute significantly to the promotion of environmental protection efforts.

Hassan Salem, head of U.S. Bank in Denver, said the bank chose to launch the initiative in Colorado because the state has been leading other states in the promotion of energy efficient home construction. Residents of Colorado are also known for their love of green living and the outdoors. A rising number of consumers have also been taking advantage of existing energy efficiency tax rebates and incentives.

To make its pilot program more effective in promoting energy efficient living, U.S. Bank coordinated with the Colorado Governor’s Energy Office and with State Representative Joe Miklosi and State Senator Gail Schwartz. The support of government officials for the program would step up publicity for the loan promotion.

Tom Plant, director of GEO, said that the selection of Colorado as the pilot state for the U.S. Bank program is another indication of the effectiveness of Governor Bill Ritter’s New Energy Economy initiative. He added that green home improvement directly improves energy consumption levels.

U.S. Bank, which is the sixth biggest commercial bank in the U.S., runs 2,850 bank branches and 5,173 ATM units in 24 states. Its parent company U.S. Bancorp has $266 billion in total assets. In addition to providing banking, mortgage, brokerage, insurance, payment and trust services, U.S. Bank now offers its innovative energy efficient home equity loan program.

Home mortgage refinancing is worth your effort and time if the resulting refinanced loan helped you avoid foreclosure, if it is sustainable and if it reduces your total home loan costs.

Typically, during the boom times, the main reason for loan refinancing was to take advantage of the home equity. Homeowners refinanced their loans to get a higher principal and then use the extra cash to consolidate other debts, to finance their children’s education, to buy a new car, to pay medical bills or to make other major payments.

During this downturn, loan refinancing has become one of the options for avoiding foreclosure. It is one of the schemes offered by the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable program for homeowners whose mortgages are owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

Under the Home Affordable Refinance Program, your lender will provide you a copy of its loan refinancing estimate, which shows your new mortgage rate, your new monthly payment and the total amount you are going to pay over the number of years specified for you to pay the loan.

If you compare the new payments and terms and conclude that the refinanced loan is not an improvement over the original loan, then home mortgage refinancing may not be for you.

But do not compare only the monthly payments, especially if your original loan is an adjustable loan mortgage. In ARM refinancing, your monthly loan payment will always increase if you are converting into a fixed higher rate. For you, it would seem that the new rate is higher because you were given a teaser rate or you were given the option to pay only the interest of the loan, but ultimately the fixed higher rate would enable you to sustain your loan.

A loan refinancing for an ARM that is expected to reset to a much higher rate in the next several years is worth it because it will help you sustain payments in the long term. It will also help you cut your interest costs because of the record drop in mortgage rates.

If your home loan is fixed rate and you already have made payments for several years, consider carefully refinancing because you just might be increasing your total loan costs. In home mortgage refinancing, consider whether you are refinancing to a shorter or longer term and whether your refinancing costs will be covered by your savings from refinancing.

President Barack Obama launched a home refinancing program this year to help homeowners cope with the financial crisis that has hardly hit the country. Since real estate suffered the worst of all the consequences brought about the economic recession, Obama saw that it was imperative to create something that would help troubled homeowners who are [...]

Refinancing one’s mortgage is perhaps the preferred solution of many troubled homeowners. It is certainly effective in lowering their monthly mortgage obligations and preventing foreclosure. If you are among these homeowners, you might want to take advantage of the currently low mortgage rates for a 30-year loan, as reported by Freddie Mac. For the period [...]

Personal loans are often easy to obtain, but they are also often given at high costs – high interest rates, high processing fees and very short terms. If you browse the Internet for personal loans, you would be overwhelmed by the number of web sites and companies offering personal loans that you can get online [...]

Home mortgage rates for loans that are fixed for 30 years experienced an increase this week. This was even as the real estate market experiences its lowest borrowing costs that produced the largest jump in the purchases of new houses. The average 30-year fixed rate home loan rose to 5.14 percent. This was from 5.12 [...]

Home mortgage refinancing has become a popular option for a lot of homeowners who need to redistribute their income to their everyday needs. With unemployment continuing to injure the country, more and more families have to adjust according to their means. Refinancing is one way for homeowners to free up some cash for other expenses. [...]

Existing houses are now at its highest in terms of sales, beating records from the last ten years. This comes after home mortgage delinquencies swept across the country, brought about by the economic crisis that has now injured the real estate market badly. Last month, existing houses sales rose by 7.2 percent, a very significant [...]

There are a lot of lending companies that advertise no-cost home mortgage refinancing. However, this may have a different meaning from what you think. Make sure that before you apply for a home mortgage refinancing plan, you understand all the details that go with this mortgage refinancing plan. There are basically two ways to avoid [...]