theFrontSteps – San Francisco

Interesting tidbit about interest rates should you be considering purchasing a home. Could they get any lower? For more details you can click here. You’ll be taken to a newsletter from my go-to mortgage broker, Tm Wood. He’s good, the market is good, rates are good, the snow is (getting) good, it’s all good.

In this season of giving and being thankful, I’d have to say that San Francisco Bay Area residents should be pretty thankful that our market is nowhere near that of the national average. If you’re a seller you can be thanking your lucky stars that buyers are out there in droves, and if you’re a [...]

From a reader: Dear theFrontSteps, After TWO YEARS of intensive search and questioning and hunting ….we closed yesterday on our refinancing! We got a $600,000 loan at 4.5%. (no point, no refinancing costs, except for appraisal and recording fees). By the way, the appraisal came back at $1,200,000, which made us laugh a good time. [...]

Intercepted from inter-office emails: Great News, We are now offering Fannie’s new HomePath loan program! Let your clients know these improved loan terms to generate new business. Essentially, the program has the clients using Fannie loans to buy foreclosed properties owned by Fannie, therefore Fannie gives improved loan terms to the buyer. PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS: -97% [...]

*-at some banks

We get a lot of questions about FHA loans these days, particularly if we know what buildings will qualify for FHA loans in San Francisco. There is a simple answer to that question, “No, we don’t know.” But other people do, and those people are loan experts…mortgage bankers/brokers… and luckily they feed us information to [...]

Where readers ask, and we (the community) try to answer: I appreciate all the general information I get from this terrific blog. This is my first question about my own situation. I’ve been negotiating with the major bank (WellsFargo) that holds my first ($498K) and second ($14K) for a refinance from a 5.5% ARM to [...]

As our regular readers know, we get every type of question under the sun, most of which we post directly to the site and let the community answer. Sometimes answers aren’t so cut and dry and there are certainly differing opinions. One very common question these days is “How much money do I need to [...]

Where the readers ask and we (the community) try to answer: Hi, just come across your site, very informative. I’m trying to find TIC Fractional Lenders for a 3 unit + 1 unwarranted [unit] building in SF. We purchased it last October, have completed our renovations, 2 units will be owner occupied. We’re planning to [...]

“San Francisco’s number one closer”: While you’re at it: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video Once you are at the link, look for the “7 On Your Side” tab in the Video Library part of the webpage and click it. You’ll see a picture with the heading “Marketing Ploy Disguised as Government Offer” and a HUGE Mike or Darius. That’s [...]