Searchlight Crusade

UPDATE: This article is still good for a basic understanding. However, for an article written specifically for the new form that becomes mandatory January 1, 2010, please go to the 2010 Good Faith Estimate

I had a great rant about the limitations of the Good Faith Estimate all planned out in my head when I when I was in the very first stages of planning this blog in my head. It was the first idea I had for an essay, as it is the most commonly abused item in the whole mortgage system of ours, and abuse of the GFE (as the industry calls it) sets the stage for a significant amount of everything else that goes on.

Then California pulled the rug out from under the rant. They replaced it with a new form called the California Mortgage Loan Disclosure Statement, which we are all required to use in lieu of the Federal GFE

I’ve actually had some looks at abuses of the Mortgage Loan Disclosure Statement now, and they are very similar to abuses of the Good Faith Estimate. The abuses of the Federal Good Faith Estimate and the fact that pretty much all of them were actually legal had been something that took time to soak in back when I first got into the business, although a short stint with a Company Which Shall Remain Nameless was a real education. It appears that the regulations for the Good Faith Estimate part are unchanged, which translates into English as “Excrement.” Furthermore, I’m certain that somewhere in Sacramento lobbyists are paying bribes campaign donations so that just this or that little detail can be changed “just a little in a way that doesn’t really make a difference,” and eventually the cockroaches will have even more ways to game the system.

On the other hand, the federal Good Faith Estimate is still the form in use in the other forty-nine states. On that note:

On the line above where all of this starts, there should be written a total loan amount, an interest rate, and a term (360 months for all 30 year loans, whether it is fixed for the full term or not – numbers less than 360 mean that the loan is due in full in less than 360 months. This can be one clue that they’re trying to hit you with a balloon payment loan). As I have said elsewhere on this site and will continue to stress, just because a mortgage provider puts these numbers on a Good Faith Estimate does not mean that they have any intention of actually delivering them. I think bait and switch is the official company game of many providers. The Good Faith Estimate is THE most abused loan document, bar none. It’s supposed to be a real estimate of what the loan is going to be like, based upon the loan officers best estimate. In practice, it’s become nothing more serious than the loan provider wants it to be. In many cases with many providers, it’s almost like a joke: “(giggle) and this is what we had to tell him in order to get him to sign up! (loud guffaws)” and this carries through the rest of the document as well. The relationship of the loan described on the Good Faith Estimate to the loan that is actually available and that said provider will actually deliver is completely arbitrary and up to the provider within very broad limits. Because at the end of the process, the client has very little leverage to get the provider to deliver the loan they talked about to get you to sign up.

Now, it is also important to note that with two exceptions, all of the fees below are commonly held in abeyance until the end of the loan process, and you don’t owe them if you don’t end up refinancing or purchasing with that company. They can be added to your loan balance instead of being paid out of pocket. It is the biggest red flag I know of for a loan provider to ask you for money up front beyond the credit report.

The first actual line item on the Good Faith Estimate is “801 Loan Origination fee.” This is an explicit fee charged by the loan provider who signs you up. It can be expressed in dollars, but it is more commonly expressed in terms of “points”. One point is one percent of the final loan amount. Put another way, if you have a loan for $198,000 plus one point, the way to do the computation is $198,000 times 100, divide by 99 (100 minus the total number of points), which equals $200,000. It’s probably not unethical if the loan officer uses $199,980 ($198,000 plus 1%, or $1980) on a quick calculation, just a desire to get an approximate answer quickly. It’s still not mathematically correct. Now, if as is common, the loan provider only writes down 1% here rather than converting it to dollars as well, it can appear as if that loan is much cheaper at first glance or to the uninitiated than it actually is. If you’ve got a loan that’s $200,000, leaving the estimate as one point without an explicit dollar figure is a way of making it look like the loan actually costs you about $2000 less than it will. Two points without an explicit dollar figure is twice as much (Consumers who don’t understand: “The other guy wanted $5000 to do my $300,000 loan, but this guy only wants $3000 and two of these point thingies. What a great deal!” You would be amazed and dismayed how often I have to explain even to people who know what points are that $3000 plus two points on a $300,000 loan is about $9000). Nor is this figure, whether expressed as points, dollars, or both, carved into anything more than silly putty. I worked for a short time at a Company Which Shall Remain Nameless, and one of the things that got me yelled at several times, and one of the many reasons I left, was that I violated company quoting policy by actually adding in all of the little miscellaneous adds for half a point here and a quarter point there that the customer was going to get hit with at the end of the process anyway, and telling the customer about them up front. Finally, there is no reason why this line has to be nonzero in all cases, and indeed I’ve done more loans without than with.

The next line is “802 Loan Discount”. In theory, this is supposed to be used only for actual discount points charged by the lender. In practice, it is used almost interchangeably with “Loan Origination Fee” on the line above (not without some justification in fact, which is beside the point of this essay). Once again, watch out for whether the figure in points is converted into an actual dollar value. Again, there is no reason why this line has to be nonzero, and I’ve done more loans without than with.

“803 Appraisal Fee” in California is $350 to $450 for the average home, depending upon what that particular appraiser charges for that particular job. It is legitimate and correct to mark this as PFC (prepaid finance charge) so long as the loan officer gives you an approximate figure. Unless they have a contract with a particular appraiser, it’s not under the loan officer’s control. This is another place where many providers play “hide the closing costs.” Quoting from one less than ethical example “Hey, I’m not the one charging it and if it makes my loan look better than the guy stupid enough to tell the client, that’s not my problem.” I tell people with average homes that it’s likely to be about $400. The abuse that happens here is that this is one of those things that’s called a “third party charge” – paid to a third party service provider. As such it is not included in total fees when calculating APR on the “Truth In Lending Statement”, and will almost certainly not be included in any computation of total fees by your loan provider (Other than me, I know exactly one company that includes it). The vast majority of those billboards advertising “Total fees $X” really mean “Total fees $X plus third party fees,” not to mention the fact that they’re going to give you a rate which gives them either an Earth-Shatteringly Large <a href=”http://www.searchlightcrusade.net/2007/10/mortgage_and_real_estate_red_f.html”target=”_blank”>Yield Spread or premium on the secondary market. It is not unethical for the loan provider to ask you to pay the appraiser at the time the appraisal is performed, provided the person being paid is an external appraiser .
“804 Credit Report” is usually somewhere around $20. Single Individuals buying a house on their own are cheaper than two married people, but unmarried individuals must each be run separately, and so it may be a little more than $20 if you’re buying a house with your brother, parents, or whatever. It is neither unusual nor unethical for the loan provider to ask you to pay for this up front. So long as the check is written to the credit reporting service, there’s nothing wrong. And there is a rule now in effect that we must have explicit written consent to run credit from every person, so don’t get angry with your loan provider for following it.

“805 Lender’s Inspection Fee” is charged by the lender to have one of their inspectors go out and take a look and make certain the house isn’t falling down. It is common for the lender’s fees to be ignored by a broker, and then you’ll get another Good Faith Estimate from the lender that discloses this. On the other hand, this is not necessarily charged on every loan. Many lenders will rely upon the appraiser’s work in this, and not do one of their own, particularly on refinances. Since (assuming you’re sane) you’re going to want a building inspection yourself in the case of a purchase, the lender may make it a condition that they get a copy. And, I will admit as a broker that although I do disclose a total of all lender’s fees I know about, I don’t always break them out into categories and may amalgamate them all under one category. (I can ask a lender what their fees are, and one will tell me A, B, and C adding to $750. The next one will tell me A, D, and E adding to $780. The third might tell me B, E, and F adding to $995. And so on. The brokerage I work for is approved with well over fifty lenders. I maintain that as long as I disclose the total amount, most clients don’t care whether it’s going to underwriting or document preparation or spa visits for the CEO. It’s just not important to them where it goes. It’s a fee they’ve got to pay to do business with that lender and get that loan. Whereas I will help them consider the total cost in comparison to the cost of other options, this total is not subject to negotiation).

“808 Mortgage Broker Fee” (there is no line 806 or 807 on the form). This is another fee potentially charged by a brokerage. Just because it’s not, or listed as zero, here doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not going to end up paying it. One trick I’ve seen is leaving it blank at the beginning, then at the end it’s “We charged that based on how difficult your loan was. You don’t expect us to work for free, do you?” Trust me, they’re not working for free, although I don’t think you need an astronomical level of trust for you to believe this. Nobody ever plans to do a mortgage for free.

“809 Tax Related Service Fee” I’ve never had to include it as a separate line item even if present. It’s usually amalgamated and lumped in with something else, if it’s applicable.

“810 Processing Fee” This is what they pay to the nice person who processes your loan and coordinates your transaction while the loan officer is off doing loan officer things. This varies, but I’d be very suspicious of anything less than $300. I know brokers that say to charge $600 when they pay the processor $300. My attitude towards that is that at least they’re telling you, the consumer, about it up front. Better that than being told $300 and hit for $600 at the end. The processor knows what they make. The broker knows what he pays the processor. Don’t worry if the processor gets the whole thing. It’s not your concern, and it’s not really negotiable, and whereas you have the option of going elsewhere, the elsewhere you go has the option of lying to get you to sign up.

“811 Underwriting fee” is charged by the bank to pay their underwriters. It’s also a good category for brokers who hate pointless detail to lump all of a lender’s fees together in. If it is broken out, as a direct lender should do, be suspicious of anything less than three to four hundred dollars – typical actual underwriter’s fees. But just because he’s showing $995 here where everyone else is showing $400 doesn’t mean he’s overpriced. Just to mention it, if you are doing a first and second mortgage simultaneously with the same lender, the lender’s fees will go up by about $500 to cover the second. If the second is being done with a different company, they’re probably going to charge a whole other set of lenders fees.

“812 Wire transfer fee” is charged by the escrow/title company to wire the money into your account for immediate availability. Otherwise, it’s going to be a few days before the check clears. If it isn’t something advantageous to you, don’t get it. Most of the time it probably isn’t necessary, but considering daily interest on typical amounts of real estate transactions, it may be a good investment. Last time I had this done for a client it was a little under $25. The lenders fees I’ve talked about elsewhere usually include a charge for wire transfer between them and escrow or title, but this doesn’t cover sending it on to you.

Below this are several blank lines. An ethical loan provider will use them to disclose that he’s getting a rebate from the bank (assuming he’s getting such a rebate) or tell you that the price quoted includes a rebate to you from them reducing the price, if such is the case. (Most of the loans I have done tend to have this feature. You’ll find out why in a different essay). Just because provider A is getting a bigger rebate does not mean provider B has a better loan. It happens quite often that one broker shops a better lender or works a little harder. A 5.5 % loan with $3500 in total closing costs is a better loan than the same loan type with the same terms at 6% with $5000 in total closing costs, even if the broker in the first case is getting paid $10,000 more by the lender, to pick an extreme figure. Now it’s unlikely that there’s that much of a difference in broker compensation when the one is delivering a better loan, and if there is that much of a difference I’d bet millions to milliamps that the loan terms are different. But the point is for you, the consumer, to look hard at the actual terms of the loan involved – that’s what’s important to you. There was just a study upon the effects of disclosed compensation released a few months ago about how most people would just <a href=”http://www.ftc.gov/os/2004/01/030123mortgagefullrpt.pdf”target=”_blank”>choose the loan where the broker made less money, or where a loan provider’s compensation wasn’t disclosed, rather than the loan that’s actually better for them. If we weren’t all adults here, I might need to make the point that if the loans are otherwise the same, the broker in the first case earned every penny of his extra pay by finding you a better loan on the same terms and qualifying you for it. But we are all adults here, so you know that.

There also may be other fees listed here. I’ve only done significant business in three states, but there really is no need for anything else that I’ve seen. Additional fees in this area usually amount to a “Loan Officer’s Latte Fee”, or a “This is going to make me miss my surfing!” fee. If they actually list them (most won’t), at least they’re telling you up front instead of keeping it a deep dark secret that the consumer has no way of knowing about. Every once in a while, I’ll see somebody write something like “Amalgamation of lenders fees” rather than using line 805, 811, or 1105 to cover it.

Finally, some states require a survey if none has been done for a certain period of time, usually ten years. This will cost $300 to $400 if required, possibly more. These requirements are the same in each given state no matter who the lender is. It’s rarely the case that one lender will require it where the state will not. As a disclaimer, I haven’t worked much in any of these states.

So when we look at this section, we are left with midpoint fees of $400 for the appraisal, $20 for the credit report, about $800 between line 805 and 811 and miscellaneous other lender imposed fees, and $500 for processing. Believable total, thus far, $1720, plus the amount for any points you pay, less any rebate to you. $2220 or so if you’re doing a simultaneous first and second, $2500 or more if you are getting a first and second from different lenders.

The next section is title fees. These are the fees you are charged by the title company for doing the work necessary and writing appropriate policies of title insurance upon the transaction. Title insurance is a part of every real estate transaction in California, although I am given to understand there are still states where it isn’t necessarily so. And even in California, if you’re silly enough to buy the property for cash and insist that you don’t want any kind of coverage in case it turns out later that the seller didn’t really own it, or in case what you think you see is not necessarily what you got, it is possible to do a transaction without title insurance. Otherwise, when you buy the property, the seller should, as a condition of the sale, buy you an owner’s policy of title insurance. When you get a loan on the property or refinance that loan, the lender will require you to buy them a lender’s policy of title insurance. In California, average transactions may be a little larger than many other states, so I’m going to use a property with a purchase price of $300,000 and a loan of $270,000 for examples. It’s large for many other states, but smallish for California, and here in San Diego right now it’s a decent to middling two bedroom condo of about 900 square feet where the prospective buyer actually has a 10% down payment, which is unusual. Good agents and loan officers do these in their sleep. (And I’m well aware that in the vast majority of cases, I can save my clients a lot of money by splitting these into a first and a second. Work with me here for the sake of simplification. And I’m also aware that the same thing can be over $1,000,000 in certain areas of Manhattan).

“1101 Closing or Escrow Fee” depends upon the company and type of escrow. Many loan officers will write PFC, but ethical ones should tell you what it costs. Middle of the road is $450 for a refinance, the same plus $1 per thousand dollars of purchase price, divided by two for a purchase, because it is split two ways between buyer and seller. Like the appraiser’s fee, attorneys fees, and title insurance, this is a third party fee that is excluded from the calculation of APR, and it’s not under the lender’s control unless there’s a contract. Still they should let you know how much it’s going to be, as it’s not like there’s any possibility of you not having to pay either an attorney or an escrow company, and many will pretend it doesn’t exist or try not to give you a dollar value, as $X plus unknown escrow charges sounds cheaper than $X plus 450 for refinances or $X plus $375 for a purchase

“1105 Document Preparation Fee” somewhere between $100 and $200 in most cases, this covers the cost of generating the mortgage documents. Will be covered in total lender’s fees if that’s accounted for elsewhere. Grant Deeds, etcetera usually prepared by the title company for the process will be extra, usually about $50 per document.

“1106 Notary Fees” $100 to $150 is reasonable, and about the range of what the various mobile notary services charge. Even if your loan officer agrees to act as notary, this is likely to be charged. You may or may not be able to save yourself money by taking it somewhere yourself as state laws are different, but if you do, you’re going to have to cover it out of pocket, and you’re going to have to deal with the issue of the notary’s business hours, taking time off work, everybody who’s party to the loan being there to sign, etcetera.

“1107 Attorney Fees” Some states require the use of actual attorneys to do the escrow function. Lenders should not charge you both this and escrow. On the other hand, attorneys are more expensive. I haven’t done any actual work in these states but from what I can tell $800 is about average. Disclaimer: the company I was working for at the time may have had a contract for reduced rates to which I wasn’t privy. Like appraiser fees, escrow fees and title fees, this is a third party fee excluded from APR calculation, and can be marked PFC, but the loan officer should give an known dollar value, as the company should have a contract with the attorney’s office. Once again, unethical providers will try to keep a dollar value from finding its way onto the paper because it looks cheaper that way.

“1108 Title Insurance: Like Appraisal, Escrow, and Attorney’s Fees, this is a third party charge, and as such is excludable from the calculation of APR. A dishonest loan officer will mark it PFC without telling you how much, as once again, $X plus unknown title fees sounds cheaper than actually adding the title charges from the rate book to the paper. In the case of a purchase, the seller should purchase an owner’s policy for the buyer, and the buyer’s lender will require the buyer to purchase a lender’s policy of title insurance, which should be heavily discounted because it’s the same title search under slightly different rules of relevance. In the case of a refinance, the lender will require the borrower to purchase this. I took an average of the costs to the nearest dollar between several rate books, but they companies are really pretty comparable in most cases. If the property had a policy of title insurance issued on it within five years (the vast majority of properties qualify, as only about three percent of all mortgages are older than that), the owner’s policy will cost the seller about $1004 base rate, and the concurrent lender’s policy will cost the purchaser $453 (remember, this is a $270,000 loan on a $300,000 property). In the case of a refinance, the lender’s policy would cost $823.

So adding this section up at the mid points, in the case of a refinance you have $450 or $800 (depending upon your state), plus $150 plus $125 plus $823, totaling $1548 or $1898, depending upon your state. In the case of a purchase, you’re talking about $375 or $800 (again depending upon your state) plus $200 (somebody is going to have to do a Grant Deed) plus $125 plus $453 (remember, the seller usually pays for owner’s policy of title insurance, and we’re talking about a Good Faith Estimate for a loan, which the seller doesn’t need unless he’s buying another property) totaling $1153 or $1578, depending upon your state.

I’m going to lump two sections into one here.

“1200 Recording Fees” charged by the county recorder. Should be the same for every lender. In San Diego County it’s currently $75.

“1202 City /County Tax Stamps” Some city and county governments have an intangibles tax on mortgages.

“1203 State Tax/Stamps” Some states have an intangibles tax on mortgages, computed based upon the dollar amount of the loan. Usually it’s the states without state income tax. If your state charges this (California doesn’t), it will be the same no matter your lender. If one company gives you an estimate that’s different from everybody else, that’s a matter for investigation.

“1302 Pest Inspection” On refinances, if something raises a red flag with the lender, they will require a pest inspection. There may also be areas of the country where it is required of every loan, but I’ve never heard of one. On a purchase, you’re going to want a pest inspection anyway, and around here it’s usually paid for by the seller. There is potential for abuse (somebody charges you $200 and orders a $100 inspection), but it’s relatively small potatoes, and most just won’t bother when it’s so much easier to hide big ticket scams elsewhere. Order it yourself from an approved vendor if you’re concerned.

So the section total is $75.

Below these sections is a line “Estimated Closing Costs”. This really is the total of all the closing costs associated with the loan. I keep telling you that the numbers which go onto this sheet may be fictional or incomplete, but if they are actually complete and correct then the number here on this line is the most important one on the whole sheet. This is the total of the costs you’re really paying to get your loan. Some call it the “total of non-recurring closing costs.” If you pay attention to nothing else on this sheet, (begin Groucho Marx accent) chances are that you’re being taken for a ride (end Groucho accent). But this is the most important single number. Adding the midpoint estimates from the sections we come up with $1720 if you’re getting one loan on a refinance so $1548 or $1898 (depending upon your state) plus $63 plus any charges for points. Using consistent assumptions, this makes for a total for a refinance $3331 if you live in an escrow state, $3681 if you live in a state where they require lawyers to get involved. The totals for a purchase under these assumptions is $2936 or $3361. None of these numbers account for points you’re paying or rebate you’re getting, of course.

Just to make an important point again, this sounds like a lot more than $1658 plus third party fees, doesn’t it? If offered the choice between buying one item for $3331 and buying the same item for $1658 plus third party fees, most people think the second choice sounds cheaper. However, as I’ve just demonstrated these are exactly the same given comparable assumptions. And there’s a lot of leeway in those third party fees for junk fees if your loan provider wants to make use of them to pad their own pocket, not to mention they could trivially be much higher if your loan provider doesn’t choose third party providers wisely. Insist upon actual numbers.

(continued in Part II)

Just like Mohandas Gandhi and Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were (despite their differences) all human beings, lenders (despite their differences) make money by lending money to people who want it.

That’s about the limit of the truth in that statement.

Lenders do, by and large, get their money to lend from the bond market. But not all lenders get their money from the same part of the bond market. Some get the money from low-risk tolerance folks looking for security, and willing to accept comparatively low rates. Some get the money from high risk tolerance folks looking for more return for their risk. Within each band, there are various grades and toughnesses of underwriting. A lender with tough underwriting will have a very low default rate, and practically zero losses. A lender with more relaxed underwriting will have more defaults, and higher losses, meaning they must charge higher rates of interest in order to offer the investors the same return on their money.

When I originally wrote this, I had literally just finished pricing a $600,000 loan for a client with top notch credit and oodles of income (he’s putting $800k down). Even A paper and with the yield curve essentially flat, I got variations of three eighths of a percent on where their par rate was. Every single one of them had significant differences in how steep the points/yield spread curve was (if you need these terms explained, my article on the Tradeoff between Rate and Cost is a good place). For one lender it was “offsheet pricing” below their lowest listed rate. This lender is more interested in low cost loans, and they take it for granted that folks will not be in their loans very long. This lender is appropriate for those who are likely to refinance within a few years. For another lender, it was “offsheet pricing” above their listed sheet prices. This lender specializes in low rates that cost multiple points, so they can market lower payments. For those few people who really won’t sell or refinance for fifteen years, these are superior loans.

Which do you think is really better for the average client? Well, let’s evaluate a 6.5 percent 30 year fixed rate loan that costs literally zero (I get paid out of yield spread while rebating enough to the customer to cover all their costs), with a 5.875% 30 year fixed rate loan that costs $3400 plus two points. I always seem to be computing $270,000 loans here, but since this was “jumbo” pricing and a $270,000 loan is “conforming”, which carries lower rates, I’ll run through both.

The 6.5 percent loan is zero cost to the client. Nothing out of pocket, nothing added to the loan balance. Gross Loan Amount: $270,000. The 5.875% loan cost 1.875 points in addition to $3400 in closing costs. Gross loan amount $278,625. You have added $8625 to your mortgage balance to save yourself $98.40 per month. You theoretically are ahead after 88 months (7 years, 4 months), but not really even then.

Every so often I get a question that asks why they can’t have A for the price of B. The answer is the same as the reason why you can’t have a Rolls Royce for the price of a Yugo. Another funny thing about Rolls Royces is how expensive they are to maintain. A middle class person with a Rolls better plan on living in it. The funnier thing is that in the case of loans, your friends, family and neighbors can’t even see you in it, so there is no point in a “Rolls Royce” home loan except for utility, and if it’s not paying for itself, then there is no utility (or negative utility, i.e. something you don’t want), and therefore, money wasted.

Now, let’s crank the loans through five years – longer than 95 percent plus of all borrowers keep their loans, according to federal statistics – and see which is really better for most borrowers. The 5.875% loan makes monthly payments of $1648.17. Over five years – 60 payments – they pay $98,890 and pay their balance down to $258,869. Total principal paid: $19,756. Actual progress on the loan (amount owed less than $270,000): $11,131. Interest paid: $79,134, which assuming a 30 percent combined tax rate, saves you $23,740 on your taxes.

Now let’s look at that 6.50 percent loan that didn’t add a penny to your balance. Monthly payments of $1706.58, total over five years $102,395. Looking pretty awful, so far, right? But your total amount owed is now only $252,750. Total principal paid: $17,250. But this same number is also the actual progress! Interest paid $85,145, and assuming 30 percent combined tax rate, same as above, it gives you a tax savings of $25,543.

Now let’s consider where you are after five years.

With the 5.875% loan, you saved $3505 on payments. But you also owe $6118 more, and the 6.5 percent loan saved you $1803 more on your taxes. Furthermore, if you’ve learned your lesson about high cost loans, and rates are as low when you refinance or sell (6.5 percent on your next loan), it’s going to cost you $397.67 per year from now on for that extra $6118 you owe! Net cost: $4416 plus nearly $400 more per year for as long as you have a home loan. Assuming that’s “only” 25 years, your total cost is $14,358. I never spent so much money to save a little for a little while!

Now, let’s consider that $600,000 loan in the same context. After all, the pricing really applies there (conforming rates are lower). Appraisal costs a little more, and so does title and escrow, for jumbo loans on million dollar houses. Let’s say $3700 in costs. Your new 5.875% loan would be for $615,236 (disregarding rounding). Payment $3639.35, which over 5 years goes to $218,361 in payments. Crank it through 60 payments, and you’ve paid the loan down to $571,612. Principal paid $43,388, actual progress $28,388. Total Interest paid, $174,973, which assuming a combined 40% tax rate (higher income to qualify!) gives you a tax savings of $69,989.

At 6.50 percent, the payment on a $600,000 loan is $3792.40. Times 60 payments is $227,544. Crank the loan through those 60 payments, and you’ve paid the loan down to $561,666. Principal paid and actual progress made: $38,344. Total interest paid $189,209, which at the same combined 40% rate is a tax savings of $75,684.

With the 5.875% loan, you saved $9183 in payments. Yay! However, you owe $9946 more, paid $5695 more in taxes, and on your next loan, assuming it’s at 6.5 percent, you pay $646.49 per year in additional interest. Total cost is $6458 plus $646 per year for as long as you have a home loan, which assuming that’s 25 years equates to a total of $22,620!

Which of these two loans and lenders is better for you? Well, if you’re going to stay 15 years or more and never refinance, the lender who wants to give you the 5.875% loan. That rate wasn’t even available from the 6.5 percent lender. On the other hand, if you’re like the vast majority of the population that refinances or sells within five years (for whatever reason) you really want the 6.5 percent loan whether you knew it before now or not, which also was not available from the 5.875 percent lender.

The billboards advertising rates aren’t going to tell you cost, of course. They’re trying to lure clients who don’t know any better, and often they’re playing games with the loan type as well. But when the rate spread between the rate they’re selling and APR is over 3 tenths of a percent, you know they’re building a blortload of costs into it. Keep in mind that the examples I used were almost two full points in addition to basic closing costs, and they were each only about a 0.25% spread between rate and APR. Most people are never going to recover those costs in the time before they refinance or sell. The lender who offers you 6.5 percent for zero cost is probably offering you a better loan.

Now, there were lenders targeting the markets between these two lenders, some that overlapped the whole market, and even another lender specializing in rates even lower and with higher pricing. Keep in mind that this article was limited to A paper 30 year fixed rate loans, which are limited in what they can possibly accept by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rules. Once you get out of the A paper market and especially down into sub-prime lenders (when sub-prime becomes available again, which it will), the diversity between offerings really multiplies, as the differences they are permitted in target market cover all parts of the spectrum. Some wholesalers walk into my office with the words, “Got any ugly sub-prime today?” Other sub-prime wholesalers ask me about “people that could be A paper but are willing to accept a prepayment penalty to get a lower rate” (I don’t use those much). Some want short term borrowers, and their niche is the 2/28. Some want the thirty year fixed with a prepayment penalty. The ones who asked me about negative amortization loans, I threw out of my office but they sold them somewhere. A lot of somewheres, judging from the evidence that they were 40 percent of purchase money loans locally in 2005 and 2006.

So lenders are not all the same. Indeed, every single one of them is different, and you need to shop enough different ones to find the program that’s right for you, and ask lots of questions every time. Just asking about rate is not going to make you happy, as I hope I have just demonstrated. If you walk into their office, they’re not going to tell you that you’re not the client they’re really looking for unless they just don’t have any loans at all that you qualify for (and if you’re in this category, do not blindly accept any recommendations they make. Most places, they’re sending you to the place that pays the most for the referral, not the lowest cost provider appropriate for you).

Caveat Emptor

Cold Hard Fact for today: The average Real Estate Agent or Loan Officer is not motivated to tell you that you can’t afford your property.

For the agent you are trying to talk people out of a property after they have already fallen in love with it. Let’s face it, if it’s higher in price, it should have features that lower priced properties do not, and it should have fewer things that consumers do not want. Indeed, one of the easiest and most common ways unethical real estate agents sell properties is by showing you several lower priced properties, fixers which lack those attractive extras, then show you the blinged out immaculate property while whispering sweet nothings like, “I can show you how you can afford the payments!” (which is not the same as being able to afford the property!)

All agents learn that by telling the client “no,” or anything that sounds like “no,” they are likely to lose that business. Good ones know that putting a client into something beyond their budget is a good way to have the transaction come back to haunt them. But for most, the temptation of the easy sale that made itself if too strong. They want that commission check. Nothing wrong with commission checks. If they provide real value to the client, they are a way of showing the world that you have done something valuable, same as a doctor, carpenter, or computer programmer. It’s when you use your position of trust to sabotage them that problems start – and you should experience problems. Many agents have not been around long enough to understand flat or declining markets. In truth, I wasn’t in the business the last time we had one, either. But I am old enough to remember, and careful enough by nature that I refuse to assume that a rapidly rising market will save my bacon, as many agents have become used to.And for the foreseeable future, rapidly rising markets are unlikely to save anybody’s bacon, because the market isn’t going to be rising rapidly. Inventory is high, long term rates are set to rise, and we’re just seeing the leading edge of a wave of problems caused by over-the-top practices of the last few years. I think we’re past most of the price decline locally, but conditions aren’t there for a return to the market we had most of the last decade.

Lest you be wondering, the loan officer is even more unlikely to counsel you on whether you can really afford the property. Between Stated Income, Negative Amortization Loans, and loans that are both of these, you can get anybody with an income and a not too putrid credit score into the property. In fact, I heard some real howls of outrage from certain brokers when lenders tightened their recourse on brokers this last year. Even so, the paycheck is now and certain, the risk of default vague and indefinite, and for most loan officers, there’s another concern as well.

You see, most loan officers cultivate some friends who are real estate agents, and that’s how they get their business. That agent brings them business because they have a history of getting the loan through, so that agent gets paid. Sometimes they may have their hand out for a referral fee as well, but the important thing for you to know as a consumer is that referral you get from an agent to a loan officer has nothing to do with how great their rates are, and everything to do with how creative they are in getting some sort of loan approved so that agent gets paid for the house they sold. Tell just one prospect who has made an offer on their dream house that there is an issue with being able to really afford that loan, and the word will get around the real estate community in no time. Result: For causing one agent to not get paid, Joe Loan Officer not only will not get any referrals from them in the future, if the client does find Joe Loan Officer on their own, the agents are going to do their best to talk them away from Joe, who, from their point of view, “stole their paycheck” by telling the client that they really could not afford the loan that was necessary to make the transaction work! Even if they took that transaction to some other loan officer who got it closed, Jane Realtor doesn’t want her clients to have anything to do with Joe, lest she lose another potential commission check!

So what can you, the consumer, do about this? Well, I can’t tell you all about the special cases, and I lack the programming capability to embed a spreadsheet and loan calculator. But I can give you some good general rules of comparison, and guidelines laid down by lenders as to whether or not you can actually afford that loan.

Start with your total monthly gross income. Assuming you printed this out, write that number here:

Loan Type A Paper ARM A Paper fixed sub-prime general sub-prime severe sub-prime extreme

Multiply Income by (DTI*) 0.38 0.45 0.50 0.55 0.60

Result _______ _______ _______ _______ _______

Notes A,B B

*DTI: Debt to Income Ratio

Notes:
A: use fully indexed rate for qualification purposes. This means the underlying index plus the margin after it adjusts, assuming current values.
B: If interest only, use fully amortized rate for qualification purposes.

Any four function calculator will do this much. Now this is the largest number you will qualify with. As you should be able to see, it’s more difficult to qualify for A paper, even though that is where you want to be. But we’re not done. This is total housing and debt service, the so-called “back end ratio.” So from that number, you need to subtract your monthly debt service: Car payments and other installments, and minimum credit card payments. You pay this much already. You obviously cannot afford to pay it out for housing also!

So add up your credit card, car payment, and other monthly debt obligations. Subtract it from your numbers for back end ratios, computed above. This will give you a set of five numbers that tells what you can afford for housing costs, depending upon how far you want to go. But we’re not done! This is total cost of housing; the so-called “PITI payment.” It includes not only principal and interest on the loan, but also property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, Condominium Association dues, and Mello-Roos assessment districts (or their equivalent outside of California, if applicable). So from this, you need to subtract all of the known stuff or stuff you can make a close approximation on, like Association dues and insurance and taxes, to arrive at how much of a loan you can afford. Please note that for Negative Amortization Loans, loan officers may use the minimum payment for qualification, but you are still being charged the real interest rate! Still, it should become obvious as to why Negative Amortization loans are so popular in high priced areas right now. Not only will the lenders pay between 3.5 to 4 percent commission for them, not only do they allow lower payments to be quoted, but they make it look like you qualify for a bigger loan than you can afford, which means the real estate agent gets a bigger commission from selling you a more expensive property, and the loan officer gets paid more, also, because now you have applied for a larger loan! I have heard every rationalization under the sun from loan officers and real estate agents on this score, but they are still inappropriate for the vast majority of people who have them. I can get a better interest rate on a better loan for less cost, every time, but then I have to tell the client about the full amount they are really being charged every month, and they might have to content themselves with a less expensive property, meaning that real estate agent is going to have to do some real work. Go out onto the web and look for some loan calculators (Auto loans use slightly different assumptions, so don’t use those calculators), or if you have a financial calculator, use it! Use the real interest rates that are available, and if the number you get comes out much higher than your quoted payment, they are trying to snooker you with a negative amortization loan. There is no magic about loans, and a healthy skepticism will help you prevent problems from happening in the first place.

Now add the down payment you intend to make to the loan you can afford, and that tells you whether or not you can afford the property.

Caveat Emptor

One of the things that has a lot of issues is any transaction between related people. This is not limited to purely family transactions, but applies also to transfers among partnerships and their partners, corporations and their officers.

The market theory holding that the value of a property is what is agreed to between a willing buyer and a willing seller is subject to the proviso that neither buyer nor seller has a reason to inflate or deflate what the property is worth to them. If the parties are related, there is an obvious reason to think that this may not necessarily be the case. Parents do things for their children all the time, siblings for each other, and as you’re probably aware if you work in corporate America, major stockholders, investors, and executives often manipulate corporate versus personal transactions for less than wholesome reasons. Partnerships do the darnedest things, as well.

The issue, as far as the lender goes, is that they are trying to safeguard their money. Lending is a risk based business, and the lender wants to know that they are not taking more of a risk than they intend to when they take on this loan.

Let’s say Jane Jones is CEO of SuperColossal Corporation. She wants to manipulate her compensation, so she has SuperColossal sell her property for half its real value.

This is actually okay by most lenders, if not securities regulators, IRS agents, et al. The loan is based upon the purchase price, the appraisal comes in double the purchase amount, and the lender assumes less risk than they price the loan for. Remember, the property is valued based upon LCM: Lower of Cost (purchase price) or Market value. When market value comes in high, the lender is covered. What isn’t so cool is if Jane Jones sells SuperColossal the property back at twice its value. If the corporation gets a loan for 75 percent of alleged value, that’s at least a third of the lender’s money they’re not going to get back in case of default, which becomes likely when Jane is fired and the new CEO asks why they are paying the loan when they owe half again what the property is really worth.

Needless to say, the lenders want to guard against that. Many lenders will not do related party transactions, period. For the ones that do, they will want to be very careful on the appraisal, which has now become their only guard against getting into an indefensible position. Many times, lenders may require related party transactions to go through certain appraisers, they may require in house appraisers, they may require multiple appraisals, and they may require that there be no contact between principals and appraisers. Whatever their required precautions, they need to be followed, as failing to do so will cause the loan to be rejected.

I’m going over this to make a point. Many lenders have additional requirements for related party transactions. Some may require full documentation only, others require that the loans have full recourse (they can come after you legally if they lose money). Each and every lender creates their own policy, and if your transaction is between related parties, it is probably more important to inquire about related party transfer policy and requirements than it is to get a good rate at a competitive price. Not much use having a great quote if you can’t meet the lender’s requirements. Even worse if it causes you to waste time with a lender whose requirements you cannot meet, and now your deadline for the transaction is here and you don’t have a loan, and so cannot complete the transaction.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about legalities of transferring the property. There are comparatively few additional rules about that, most of them coming from securities regulators having to do with corporations engaging in such behavior to the disadvantage of shareholders. This article is talking about the possibility of getting a loan from a regulated lender if you need one to consummate the transaction. Each of them will have rules they institute in order to protect their putative investment from being lost to fraud of one sort or another. The fact that you’re not intending anything fraudulent isn’t important – other people have, and they lose a lot more from one bad loan than they gain from several good ones.

Caveat Emptor

The most recent hot thing in mortgage circles is a mortgage accelerator program. Now I’ve heard other things, most notably biweekly payment programs, called mortgage accelerators in the past, so let me take a moment to define exactly what I’m talking about.

A mortgage accelerator is essentially a combined mortgage and checking account, where every month you deposit your entire pay, and then write checks out of it as the month goes on to pay for your living expenses, and the mortgage interest of course accrues on a daily basis. The good things about it for consumers (and it is a good thing, as far as this goes) is that the entire paycheck is applied against your mortgage balance on day one, when your pay is deposited. This means that instead of just the minimum monthly payment, your entire pay goes towards the mortgage, lessening the amount of interest you pay in any given month. The bank, for its part, gets your entire paycheck and a significantly lower incidence of default.

This isn’t a new concept. Several banks had somewhat different versions back in the late eighties. It went away. Why?

Several reasons, some administrative, some financial. First, the administrative. This bank has basically your entire financial activity. Let’s say someone gives you a better deal. Now you either have to stick with a mortgage accelerator program, or go through the hassle of coming up with enough cash to start a new checking account if you go back to having a standard mortgage. Furthermore, when you do refinance, what happens to outstanding checks? That payoff is as of a specific day at a specific time. Your escrow officer comes in and gets the payoff demand, and then more checks clear and everything has to be re-figured. The alternative to this is freezing the account as is done with Home Equity Lines of Credit. So all of a sudden while you are going through this refinance, you have to come up with the seed cash for a new checking account, get new checks rushed through, and then pay your bills with the new checks. May the Universe Help You if you normally pay by automatic debit or any of the primary variants, because you have to set that up as well.

So what else does the bank get out of it, looking at the above? Increased opportunity costs for refinancing. In short, it makes it more difficult for you to take your business elsewhere. Cha-Ching! as the bank officer’s eyes light up with dollar signs.

Now obviously, this mortgage accelerator saves you money, if you assume it’s just a matter of math, and that math shows how much interest you save as opposed to the same loan at the same interest rate, providing you keep money in your checking account, of course. But how many people do? Not that many, these days.

Furthermore, it assumes you get the same loan at the same interest rate that you normally would. I haven’t comparison shopped many of these yet, but my general impression is that the rates, and costs to get them, are higher than you might otherwise get. The assumption that it is the same rate and the same costs on the same type of loan is just that, an assumption, made for modeling purposes. I have used the metaphor of the matador in the past. The bull (consumer) wears himself out on the obvious large red cape, namely the cool service and the fact that all your pay is applied to your mortgage, and never sees the sword, which is the fact that your interest rate is half a percent higher than you might have gotten, you paid an extra point of origination as well, and you’re being dinged $10 per month administrative tracking charges for this cool new toy you just got, the accelerator mortgage. Let’s say your mortgage is $400,000. Half a percent of $400,000 is $2000 extra interest per year. An extra point of origination is $4000. And $10 per month is about what the average person might save on their mortgage interest if they weren’t paying a higher rate, which they are.

($6000 per month deposited, instead of maybe $2500, leaves $3500. You save an average of one half months interest per month on this difference. $3500 at 6% divided by 24 is $8.75. If they bill you $10 per month for the service, you are out $1.25 per month net, on top of the additional interest charges and the one time fee of several thousand dollars of origination)

So lenders with mortgage accelerators charge you more money, charge you more up front costs, and you pay higher interest charges, as well as making it more difficult for the consumer to refinance into a better deal somewhere else. The banks love this one. Only the fact that your parents figured out what a rotten deal most of these are kept them from becoming a permanent fixture of the mortgage landscape nearly twenty years ago.

Now if you can find a mortgage accelerator at the same interest rate, for the same costs, and without the monthly fees that you don’t have to pay for your other mortgage, then YES it makes a huge amount of sense to have one of these programs. But that’s not what most of the lenders are offering. They are hoping that you are so distracted by the mathematics of how much you will save if you keep your mortgage until it’s paid off, that you will never see how much extra you are really paying. Nor do most people keep any given mortgage longer than a few years. In fact, the median time living in a particular piece of real estate is only nine years – less than one third of the time until payoff. The metaphor of the matador is extremely apt. This is precisely what the matador does with the bull. Distracts them and wears them out with the cape so that they never see the sword. The banks dangle this wonderful mathematical concept of what might happen thirty years down the line for that one tenth of one percent of people who actually keep the loan that long, while hoping you are so fascinated by it that you never notice that they’re charging you more up-front fees and a higher interest rate than you would have gotten with a traditional mortgage, and often, more in monthly maintenance fees that you save by depositing all of your pay. In short, the lender is making more money off of you by pretending to do you a favor.

So shop loans by interest rate and cost, and then if they’ll let you put a mortgage accelerator on it for free, great! If not, they’re just trying to distract you from what is really important by offering you a convenience and a cool-looking trick, while charging you hefty amounts of money and tricking you into thinking you are getting something beneficial.

Caveat Emptor

This is part and parcel of the system that’s abused. Here are sample rates from one A paper lender, picked at random, that were in effect when I originally wrote this. Rates are lower now, but it’s a good example nonetheless. These were Fannie and Freddie conforming 30 year fixed rate mortgages with full documentation of the loan. The first number is the cost for a 15 day lock, the second for a 30 day lock, and the third for a 45 day lock. A positive number means it costs that number of <a href=”http://www.searchlightcrusade.net/2019/12/what_are_points_and_how_do_the_1.html”target=”_blank”>discount points to get the rate. A negative number means that the lender will pay that many discount points for a loan done on those terms. I want to make the point that these are wholesale rates, but I didn’t feel like translating them to retail. I don’t work for free any more than you do, nor does any other loan provider.

5.625% 1.50 1.75 2.00
5.750% 1.00 1.25 1.50
5.875% .375 .625 .875
6.000% 0.00 0.25 0.50
6.125%-0.50-0.25 0.00
6.250%-1.00-0.75-0.50
6.375%-1.50-1.25-1.00
6.500%-1.75-1.50-1.25
6.625%-2.25-2.00-1.75
6.750%-2.50-2.25-2.00
6.875%-2.75-2.50-2.25
7.000%-3.50-3.25-3.00

As you should notice throughout, there is a 0.25 spread in costs between locking in any particular rate for 15 days as opposed to 30, or 30 days as opposed to 45. This is because it costs them money to have the money standing around doing nothing waiting for your loan to fund. The difference in costs between a 15 day lock and a 45 day lock at the same rate is half a point. When I wrote this, the column you wanted to pay attention to was the thirty day column. Due to regulatory changes and market changes, that’s not the case any longer. In point of fact, nobody actually locks the loan with a lender any longer until they have at least every ‘prior to documents’ condition satisfied with the underwriter, meaning the lender has agreed that there appear to be nothing in the borrower’s financial condition that would result in them rejecting the loan, and are prepared to draw up a final loan contract for signature. It costs the loan officer – and their company – too much if a loan is locked but not delivered.

When I started in this business, I locked every loan as soon as the customer said they wanted it. That meant a thirty day lock if you (the loan officer) were on the ball. You can’t do that any more without losing your shirt, because if you don’t fund at least seventy percent of what you lock, the lenders are going to refuse to do business with that loan officer, and they have surcharges on the loan officer if they fail to actually fund at least eighty percent of what they lock. Given how <a href=”http://www.searchlightcrusade.net/2020/01/getting_a_loan_in_a_paranoid_l_1.html”target=”_blank”>paranoid lenders have gotten, you’re going to have a certain number of applicants who flat out cannot qualify, and in at least one case out of ten, that failure is unpredictable just because nobody is the cookie cutter picture of an ideal underwriting scenario any longer.

Given regulatory changes, a loan officer has to be on the ball to get a refinance funded in two weeks from lock. Even if everything is ready to go, the lenders want a final redisclosure 7 days before signing documents, and with the <a href=”http://www.searchlightcrusade.net/2019/10/the_three_day_right_of_resciss.html”target=”_blank”>three day right of rescission on refinances it takes another week after signing to actually fund the loan. That’s once everything else is ready to go. You want the rate locked as early as practical, or you really have no idea whether it will be available when you get to the end of the process but other changes to the business make it prohibitively expensive to lock your loan at all before you have an underwriting commitment. Many providers work on a “promise the moon and wait and hope” basis, hoping the rates will drop. They get one loan for sure, when they lure you in with a low quote they cannot currently deliver, and if they get lucky and rates drop, you think they walk on water.

Now this is a fairly broad spread rate sheet, as the company was willing to take clients through a large range. On the other hand, at a 5/8ths of an additional point hit for 1/8th percent rate below 5.875, they were telling you that they really would prefer to keep their customer’s rates locked in for 30 years above that. On the other hand, since most people dispose of their old loans about every two years, most folks shouldn’t want to pay those costs, which will take much more than two years to recoup from the lower rate. It’s much the same phenomenon as insurance companies guarding against adverse selection (only those folks who have major health problems buying health insurance, for example).

Which loan is the best for you? Don’t know without more specifics. It depends on approximate loan amount, your life plans, your proclivities, and your financial situation.

But the devil is in the details, and one of the worst and most common devils is details is a provider “forgetting” the adjustments. Adjustments generally mean that the loan will be more costly than the basic rate/cost tradeoff outlined above, so “forgetting” to post the adjustments on a <a href=”http://www.searchlightcrusade.net/2020/11/the_2010_good_faith_estimate_p_2.html”target=”_blank”>Good Faith Estimate is one of the easiest and most effective ways to lie in order to make your loan look more attractive by comparison. Since most providers don’t guarantee their estimates, they can do this with basic impunity, but make no mistake – they know what the price is really going to be. If they won’t guarantee their estimates, ask them why not. Here are the possibly applicable adjustments for this category:

Loan amount under $60,000: half a point
Loan amount $60k up to $100k: quarter of a point
cash out loan, 70-80% <a href=”http://www.searchlightcrusade.net/2020/03/loan_qualification_standards_l_3.html”target=”_blank”>LTV: half a point
cash out loan, 80-90% LTV: three quarters of a point
Investment property 50-75% LTV: one and a half points
Investment property 75-80% LTV: two points
Investment property 80-90% LTV: two and a half points
No <a href=”http://www.searchlightcrusade.net/2020/07/impound_accounts_facts_and_faq_1.html”target=”_blank”>Impounds fee: quarter point
2 units 90-95% LTV: half a point
Manufactured home: three quarters of a point (they also have an absolute maximum CLTV of 80%)
Loan distribution
80/15/5 quarter of a point
75/20/5 quarter of a point
Interest only one and one eighths points
if CLTV over 90%: additional quarter point
97 percent of purchase price financed: three quarters of a point
100 percent of purchase price financed: one and a half points
2/1 <a href=”http://www.searchlightcrusade.net/2019/11/temporary_rate_buydowns.html”target=”_blank”>Buydown two and a half points
<a href=”http://www.searchlightcrusade.net/2019/11/levels_of_mortgage_documentati.html”target=”_blank”>Stated income FICO 680-699: half a point
Stated income FICO 700+: quarter of a point
(Stated Income loans are not available from any provider I’m aware of at this update)

So let’s see. If you are doing a cash out to 75 percent loan stated income and have a credit score of 690, you add one point to the costs listed above. (half a point for stated income at 690, half a point for cash out to 75%)

If you have an investment property duplex at 90 percent LTV, you would add three points (investment property loans are relatively expensive, as you can see, and it isn’t restricted to this lender. They are riskier loans)

Doing 100% financing on a $50,000 home: Two points. (when it was available)

One hopes you get the idea. To leave these out is a tempting omission for the less ethical providers. Just because they are left out does not mean you won’t pay them. You will. Usually they will spring them on you with the final closing documents and hope you don’t notice. Surprise!

(Between this profession and being a controller for twelve years, people should not wonder why I think that’s one of the ugliest words in the language).

Indeed, during my six weeks at the Company Which Shall Remain Nameless, I had no fewer than three screaming arguments with my supervisor over telling prospective clients the truth about adjustments. They didn’t want me to. I have this thing about telling clients the truth as best I know it.

Why do they do this? At signup, you have little emotional buy-in. At final loan docs, you are signing so much stuff that even a marginally skilled person who’s trying to distract you will be successful a lot of the time. The industry statistics say that over fifty percent literally never notice, at least until much later, after the transaction is irrevocable. And somewhere around eighty five percent of those who notice do just want the process to be over so badly that they will sign anyway, not to mention the fact that in the case of a purchase, they probably don’t have any choice at that point. They need the loan to get the house, without which they lose the deposit, and there is no more time remaining in the contract with which to go out and get another loan.

Caveat Emptor