Fred's Mortgage Blog

For those that think loan officers and bankers are just hard hearted meanies that just want your money, take a look at this video about a bank loan officer in Spokane Washington helping a whole family find safety in an unsafe world.

Eugene Loan Guy, my outside blog, has a new heading and I have decided to make all of my outside blogs, Eugene Loan Guy,  FHA Loans Oregon and No Money Down OR/WA/CA, similar in appearance with the same heading. For those of you familiar with Oregon, you might recognize the picture in the heading below as being the Three Sisters, located between Bend and Eugene.

I think that having this new heading that is so specific to my area is a great addition to my web presence. I have to thank my webmaster(s), Danny Thornton and Rich Dansereau of RandDArt, took this wonderful picture and transformed it into the heading. I will continue to use the fantastic heading that Marti designed for me here on A/R, but I wanted to make sure that my branding was consistent.

I will eventually use the same blog heading for my posting on Positive Real Estate Professionals. That will give me brand recognition wherever I am posting. I have to also comment on the great things that Danny did with my blogs as far as blog rating. The changes and adjustments for SEO and blog rating has really made a huge difference in the number of visits and business coming from my websites.

It is amazing what can happen when you know the details that bring more searches to you blogsite. Since Eugene Loan Guy has only be in existence for about six months and the other two for just over 3 months, Alexa ratings of under a million are unheard of and mine was just over 200,000 last month for Eugene Loan Guy. Admittedly, it is worse this month (345,969), but that has to do with not making my consistent postings. Please note, Alexa ratings are better low than high.

The biggest problem that most first time home buyers have is coming up with the down payment. I have posted several times in the past various ways to get the down payment together, but it has still been out of the reach of some people. Now, that could change. The First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit is going to be available for the down payment on FHA loans in the near future, according the the Secretary of HUD.

Shaun Donovan, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said that the Federal Housing Administration is going to permit its lenders to allow homeowners to use the $8,000 tax credit as a down payment. According to Secretary Donovan, the FHA's approved lenders will be permitted to “monetize” the tax credit through short-term bridge loans. For the first time, eligible home buyers will be able to access the funds immediately at the closing table.

Needless to say, there are no procedures in place at this moment to take care of the “bridge” loan, but this should be done in a fairly short fashion since HUD wants this to be the new way of doing things. My suggestion is that those that qualify for the First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit on an FHA loan start looking for a home now. The procedures should be in effect by the time the purchase is ready to close…..at least I hope that is the case. This should be a boon to the Real Estate purchase market and start using up some of the excess inventory. That may also mean rising home prices in a short period of time.