By: Alan Aptheker

One of the functions of the Federal Housing Administration, or FHA, is to insure home loans so you’re able to pay less money down, plus, have some more wiggle room if your debt-to-income ratio is a bit higher than the bank’s typical threshold to approve a loan.  If you’ve gone through a foreclosure, it is widely known that at least a three year “cooling off” period is required before you can obtain another FHA loan. Not always the case.  There are exceptions, and not many folks know about them.

Here’s one.  The lender may be willing to grant you an exception to the “three-year” rule if your foreclosure was the result of an “extenuating circumstance,” that is, beyond your control. Example: a serious illness or death of a main bread

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An interesting idea comes to the surface from the “Mandelman Matters” blog, in a posting by Attorney John Deal: Make more mortgages assumable

Deal suggests that this freeing up of existing mortgages to be assumed so new buyers can enter the market could open up the floodgates and add possibly trillions of dollars of liquidity to the housing market almost immediately. Essentially, it’s recycling for mortgages. One legislative change that would have to take place is to amend an old piece of legislation called the Garn-St. Germain Act, which would result in the suspension of enforcement of due-on-sale clauses in residential mortgages.

Deal suggests that relaxing this enforcement of due-on-sale clauses apply not only where buyers are buying homes they

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By: Alan Aptheker   It’s been a while since the Federal Reserve unveiled its mortgage refinancing website, “A Consumer’s Guide to Mortgage Refinancing.”  It hasn’t advertised it lately.  Not pointing fingers here, but there’s probably no great clamor from the banks (i.e., the FDIC’s customers) to remind borrowers just how much lower the rates have fallen since 2008. It’s a great resource that has answers to frequently asked questions about the refinancing process. You can determine when refinancing makes sense, what a refinancing will cost, and whether to switch into a different type of mortgage: federalreserve.gov/pubs/refinancings/default.htm