Mortgages: March 2012 Archives

"I am married but want to refinance my house only in my name. What do I have to do?"

Most lenders policies require the property to be titled in a compatible manner to the loan. Some few do allow the spouse to be on title and not a party to the loan, in which case they will be required to sign the Trust Deed, although not the Note. Most lenders, however, will require that if you are the only one on the loan, the property be titled in your name exclusively. So your spouse will be required to sign a quitclaim to "Jenny Jones, a married woman as her sole and separate property" (Or "John Jones, a married man as his sole and separate property). If you don't like the title being this way, that's fine and don't sweat it. You can quitclaim it back to "John and Jenny Jones, husband and wife as joint tenants with rights of survivorship" as soon as the loan records. What matters is that the people agreeing to the loan, as of the moment the Trust Deed comes into effect, is reflected in the official title of the property.

For those intelligent individuals whose property is in living trusts, this is also a common feature of getting a loan on the property. The lender will usually require it be quit-claimed from "John and Jenny Jones, trustees of the Jones Family Living Trust" to either the sole individual who qualified for the loan, as in the previous paragraph, or to "John and Jenny Jones, husband and wife as joint tenants with rights of survivorship."

All of that is the easy part. Now comes the hard part. If one spouse wants to be the only one on the loan, then they must qualify on their own. Only their income may be used. However, since most debts in a marriage are in the names of both partners, typically they are going to going to be charged for most debts on their qualification sheets. This really is no big deal if that particular spouse is earning all of the money anyway, but in most cases these days, both spouses are working, and they want to buy the biggest home they can, so it can be difficult to qualify them for that home based upon the income of only one spouse. Here's a typical scenario: He makes $5600 per month, she makes $5000. They have two $400 per month car payments and $120 per month in credit card minimum payments. But he has rotten credit, so they are hoping to secure a loan on better terms. By A paper full documentation guidelines, she only qualifies for a PITI payment of $1330 ($5000 times 45%, minus $920), which might get a one bedroom condo in a not so hot area of town. So then they have to go stated income in order to qualify for the loan on the home they really want - and stated income loans are dead, at least for now. As a couple they qualify for payments of $3850 ($10,600 times 45%, minus $920), which will get a decent single family residence in an okay area of town. You, the readers, can guess which of the two properties the average couple in this situation is going to shop for. Unfortunately, if they can't use his income, they don't qualify for the property they want. This is a real issue, especially if they went and got a prequalification from someone who figured both of their incomes in the equation, so here they are with a purchase agreement and they can't qualify like they thought they could. This is one reason I've learned never to trust someone else's prequalification of a buyer, because in this situation, the only way to make it happen is to put John, with his rotten credit, on the loan. Because he makes more money than Jenny, he will be the primary borrower, and so the loan will be based upon John's bad credit history, not Jenny's above average FICO. There used to be ways to potentially get around this, but the lenders have closed pretty much all those loopholes (and then some...) and so John and Jenny often don't qualify for the loan amount they need for the property they shopped for. Better to get John's credit score up where he will qualify for a good loan beforehand, of course, but usually these folks want a loan now so they can get this home they've already signed a purchase contract on. The ability to improve credit scores in a short period of time is limited, and it's even more limited if John and Jenny are short on cash, which is usually the case.

These can all be issues with the spouse who makes less money, also. Reverse the incomes, so that John, with his bad credit, makes $5000 per month and Jenny, with her good credit, makes $5600. So at least Jenny is primary on the loan now but that doesn't help a whole lot in the A paper loan market, where both borrowers have to meet the same standards.

Now, in point of fact many borrowers these days are ones that have settled upon a property before they even considered a loan, and are determined to get that property no matter what they have to do. Alternatively, they may have talked to someone about loans who gave them a budget which was in fact accurate, but they liked this property so much that they are utterly ignoring that budget. Such people are going to end up with bad loans or, more likely today, no property and a forfeited deposit. They want more house than they can really afford, and they want it now. When first I wrote this, I could get the loan for them, any competent loan officer could have gotten the loan for them, but there would be consequences down the road, because there are still those pesky payments they have to make (or negative amortization that builds up. Or both). A loan you cannot afford is a course for disaster, and the longer you're on it, the worse the disaster gets. And the lending standards now are much more paranoid on the lenders part. The Era of Make Believe Loans is over.

Another thing that bites a fair number of people is divorce, where one ex-spouse figures that because he (or she) qualified all by themselves so they should be able to make the payments all by themselves. But the loan officer back when they originally bought used stated income without telling them, and once that other income is gone, it turns out that they can't make the payments. Not only can they not make the payments, they cannot qualify to refinance now, even as a couple. Typically, most people live in denial about this for way too long, ruining their credit to where they can no longer qualify for the loan on the lesser property they would have been able to get if they had done the smart thing and sold as soon as they figured it out in the first place.

One spouse qualifying for a loan on their own has some real issues to be aware of, and that will turn and bite you if you're not careful enough.

Caveat Emptor

Original here

It's very simple really, and this is something I have never covered in the perhaps mistaken belief that it was too simple and everybody knew this.

The Note is the loan contract that sets the terms of the loan, repayment, etcetera. This contract is the document that controls, in conjunction with state law, your loan. Term of loan, interest rate, prepayment penalty, penalties for late payments, it's all there.

The Trust Deed is the security instrument. Without the Deed of Trust, the Note still creates the indebtedness, it's just not secured by anything specific. You still owe the money, but without the Deed of Trust the lender cannot force the sale of the residence (or take possession themselves) in satisfaction of that Note. Actually, I should say that they can't do so without recourse to the courts, and they would have to stand in line with all of the other unsecured creditors. The Deed of Trust creates that security interest, and makes the debt secured by a specific asset - the land given in the Deed of Trust. The Deed of Trust, unlike the Note, is recorded with the County Recorder with an official document number, and indexed in public records to as being associated with a particular piece of land, hence the ability to find it pretty easily.

You hear talk about a Note secured by a Deed of Trust. They're talking about a Note, and telling you that it is a note secured by Deed of Trust on a particular asset. Both real estate and automobile loans are routinely secured by a Deed of Trust against that particular property or vehicle, which is how the various holders of those loans have the ability to take back the secured property administratively, without recourse to the courts, provided certain conditions are met. If these loans were not secured by the pledge of a specific asset, these creditors would have to go through the courts, and stand in line along with credit card companies, etcetera. If they did not have a greater security interest, there would be no incentive to give real estate and automobile loans better rates than credit card holders get. So think about that before you advocate making it harder for lenders to foreclose. Every little bit you restrict a lender from its valid security interest means higher rates for everybody else as well. This is basic economics.

There's a great brouhaha right now about "produce the Note." People who are in over their heads are telling lenders to "produce the Note" in order to proceed with a foreclosure. They're hoping for a jackpot, and a few years ago, in the case of perhaps one to two percent of all borrowers, usually with a loan that had been sold multiple times, the lender was unable to produce the note and the person ended up with a free house instead of losing it. I shouldn't have to tell you who ends up paying for those houses and the loans associated with them, should I? Here's a hint: It's not the lender or their stockholders. If you're completely clueless, It's customers of that bank and future borrowers who end up paying. If it gets bad enough, its the US taxpayers and depositors with over the insured amount in that institution. These days, however, "produce the Note" is a delaying tactic - figure the lender is going to find it in all but a very small number of cases - on the order of winning the lottery odds. It may take them a while, but it's a safe enough bet that they will find it. It may buy you a month or two delay, that's all - perhaps only a day or less. If you can solve the problem presented by the default in that period of time, all well and good. If you can't, all you've done is delay the inevitable and perhaps make it worse (The Trust Deed is part of the public record, and trivial to find and produce - the title companies can all do it within thirty seconds).

The two legal documents (or instruments) can be combined, but generally aren't, and I don't know why. However, this can be a problem for lenders who buy the loans from other lenders. It doesn't happen much any more, but it does still happen that lenders cannot produce the Note, and it usually is something that takes a while. Without the Note, there is evidence of debt and therefore no loan to satisfy, and so you can have your lawyer insist that the Trust Deed be reconveyed. to clear the cloud it creates upon your title. Essentially, free money. Without the Reconveyance, however, it's difficult to sell the property and this can give the lender leverage to require repayment if you're trying to sell the property right now. Any unreconveyed Deed of Trust creates a cloud on title, and you need to clear that title in order to be able to sell, quitclaim, or even conceivably, will the property to an heir or even have it pass by action of law. If court action is required to clear a title, it's called a quiet title proceeding.

I'm not a lawyer in any state, so if a lawyer tells you something different than this, take their word for it, not mine. Even if I'm right in every other state, the lawyer is going to know that yours is the exception. This is simply the understanding of a layman who has had things explained to him by lawyers, and is attempting to pass on general knowledge of the differences and relationship between two loan related legal documents.

Caveat Emptor

Original article here