Dreaming about owning a vacation home in paradise? You don’t have look any farther than Marco Island.
Click on the video below for some things to think about before you buy. Then you can find me on my website.
http://www.JoanneSellsMarco.com
Dreaming about owning a vacation home in paradise? You don’t have look any farther than Marco Island.
Click on the video below for some things to think about before you buy. Then you can find me on my website.
http://www.JoanneSellsMarco.com
I can give you access to ALL the dreams homes of Marco Island and Naples. Complete with photos and visual tours, they are just a click away.
Call me today.
Joanne Tailele
ERA Flagship Real Estate
239-784-2637
JoanneSellsMarco@gmail.com
On Aug. 6, 2013, President Obama delivered a speech and released a fact sheet on the Administration’s proposal for housing finance reform. This was the Administration’s most significant discussion on housing finance since the release of the Treasury Department’s 2011 white paper, “Reforming America’s Housing Finance Market.”
In the speech, the President outlined key principals of comprehensive housing finance reform, many of which NAR has been advocating since 2009:
NAR will continue to work with Congress and the Administration to develop policies that ensure mortgage credit is always available at reasonable costs so that everyone who is willing and able to afford a home can do so.
When President Obama took office, our housing market was in free-fall, leaving many families feeling trapped and anxious about their mortgages. The President took immediate action to stabilize our housing market and protect the middle class. These steps helped millions of middle class families stay in their homes, save money on their mortgages, and turn their communities around.
Working together we need to build a more durable and fair system that promotes the American Dream of homeownership, while preventing the nightmare of another crisis. Today, our housing market is coming back. Home values are rising, foreclosures are at the lowest levels since 2006, home sales have increased at double digit rates, and American families are on pace to purchase over 5 million homes this year. In part because of President Obama’s tough regulations that cracked down on the most reckless practices from the housing crisis, responsible Americans can feel more confident and secure when they borrow money to purchase their own home. But the job is not done, and restoring security to homeownership is one of the President’s top economic priorities.
In today’s speech, the President laid out his ideas to help more responsible homeowners refinance, to cut red tape, to increase home values by fixing our broken immigration system, to help the hardest hit communities rebuild, and to ensure those who rent have decent and affordable options. The President also made it clear that going back to the same bubble-and-bust housing system that caused the financial crisis is not acceptable. We need a rock-solid foundation for financing homeownership with a bigger role for the private sector, where taxpayers aren’t on the hook for the irresponsible behavior or bad decisions of financial institutions and we finally put an end to an era where Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could expect a bailout for risky behavior in pursuit of profits. These bipartisan solutions will help build on the progress we’ve made over the last four years, and together we can make owning a home a symbol of responsibility and a source of security for generations to come.
A Better Bargain for the Middle Class: Housing
A Better Bargain for Responsible, Middle Class Homeowners:
Core Principles for Durable, Fair Housing Finance (GSE) Reform:
Making Families’ Most Important Financial Decision Safe and Simple:
Confirming Mel Watt Will Provide Certainty and Leadership During This Key Phase:
A Better Bargain for Responsible, Middle Class Homeowners
There are several additional steps – including legislative proposals – that could immediately work to further strengthen the housing market and ensure that the middle class can secure affordable mortgages, refinance their loans at today’s low rates, and build housing wealth while ensuring that no communities or homeowners are left behind by the housing recovery.
These steps could help a typical family save $3,000 or more per year.
Core Principles for Durable, Fair Housing Finance (GSE) Reform
B. Intermediate Steps to Transition to a New Housing Finance System: While bi-partisan legislation will be critical to creating a new housing finance system, non-legislative steps can be taken now to facilitate a gradual transition to the new system and to facilitate the wind down of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including:
Making Families’ Most Important Financial Decision Safe and Simple
For most middle class families, buying a home is the most important financial decision they will ever make. Unfortunately, in the lead-up to the foreclosure crisis, too many borrowers were steered into predatory or unsafe mortgages that they could not afford or understand – often a result of confusing mortgage forms, conflicts of interest in the lending process, hidden fees, and complex products. This is why President Obama took unprecedented steps to strengthen consumer protection and to ensure that mortgages are safe, sustainable and simple to understand.
The President fought for and signed into law the strongest consumer protections in history with the Dodd-Frank Act. The Dodd-Frank Act created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and tasked it with one job: to protect families when making financial decisions. The first-ever independent consumer watchdog, the CFPB protects middle class families by making it safer and simpler to apply for a mortgage and know that it is sustainable. To this end, the CFPB has done the following:
While these unprecedented consumer protections are making a big difference, more can be done to protect middle class families. That is why the President supports the CFPB in finalizing its simplified mortgage disclosure forms, is calling for improved rules that encourage lenders to care more about borrower success, and made clear that any future housing finance system must ensure a level playing field for community-based banks and financial institutions so borrowers can work with the lender that is right for them.
Confirming Mel Watt will Provide Certainty and Leadership during This Key Phase
The President’s Policies Helped Stabilize a Housing Market in Free Fall
When President Obama took office, our housing market was in free-fall. The President immediately took unprecedented steps to stabilize our housing market and protect the middle class, and later, when there was a log jam in Congress, the President took a number of significant administrative and enforcement actions that helped heal the housing market. While more work remains, the important actions by the President helped millions of families stay in their homes, save money on their mortgages, and turn their communities around.
Most people wade into homeownership for the first time in their 20s and early 30s, when they still have the bulk of their working years ahead of them and a long runway to build equity – a key asset for eventually moving up to a bigger home.
But what if you’ve reached midlife and still envision buying a home one day? Tackling that first home purchase after 40 can be easier in some ways than when you’re just staring out in your career, but it also brings its own set of financial factors.
“It’s important to consider the financial work you have left,” says Eleanor Blayney, consumer advocate for the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards based in Washington D.C. “The financial hurdles you still have over the rest of your life and how homeownership and debt in particular are going to impact that.”
A National Association of Realtors survey of people who bought a home between July 2011 and June 2012 showed that nearly 80 percent of first-time homebuyers were 32 years old or younger.
In the next age bracket, those age 33-47, 36 percent were first-time buyers; between the ages of 48 to 57, only 19 percent were first-time buyers. The rates of first-time homeownership generally declined as buyers got older, according to the survey, which featured 8,500 respondents.
Even so, the last decade’s economic downturn and housing crash has forced many to put off that first home purchase.
Here are some things to consider if you’re over 40 and eyeing homeownership:
Lending rules don’t change for older buyers
Good news: Being closer to retirement age than someone in their 20s and 30s can’t legally be held against you by a lender when they consider you for a home loan, regardless of the loan period.
“So if somebody was to walk in today, and they’re 114 years old, and they ask for a 30-year mortgage and qualify for it, we have to give it to them,” says Tom Jarboe, regional manager at lender Primary Residential Mortgage Inc.
The decision on whether one qualifies for a loan hinges on the borrower’s income, assets, credit history and other factors.
Banks generally look back two years to establish a borrower’s income history and also look to evaluate the likelihood that the borrower will continue to make the same level of income for at least another three years.
If you’re in your late 50s or early 60s and disclose that you’re planning to retire within three years, a lender will evaluate your projected earnings from Social Security, retirement accounts, dividends on investments and other sources.
Consider benefits of paying off loan
Most banks operate under the assumption that even a 30-year fixed mortgage will be swapped out for another loan within eight years, if not sooner. That’s because many homebuyers often end up refinancing, or moving for work or due to family considerations.
But paying off a home and owning it free and clear by the time one retires is a smart play, particularly as the cost of housing is a significant expense for a person relying on a fixed income.
That can be tougher for someone who puts off that first home purchase two decades into their prime working years, assuming they haven’t saved up money to make a hefty downpayment – think at least 30 percent.
But it’s doable.
Blayney recommends that even older borrowers who take on a 30-year mortgage take steps to pay off the loan or lower the monthly payment significantly by the time they retire.
That could mean making extra payments during the early years of the loan, or putting up more than the minimum downpayment so the borrower is financing a smaller amount. A 15-year mortgage, which typically translates into lower interest, but higher monthly payments, is another route to a quicker loan payoff.
Look into first-time buyer assistance
One of the biggest obstacles to homeownership is coming up with a downpayment to qualify for a loan.
Federal and state housing agencies offer assistance for first-time homebuyers, including in many cases former homeowners who haven’t owned a home for at least three years. You can find a list of some programs by state at http://www.hud.gov.
Remember though, while some loan programs allow homebuyers to make a downpayment of as little as 3.5 percent of the purchase price, experts say you’ll need to save enough for at least a 20 percent downpayment in order to get the lowest interest rate and avoid having to pay private mortgage insurance, or PMI.
And they can come with hefty fees and restrictions.
Ask yourself if this is the right time to buy?
You may want to own a home, but are you financially ready to take on the financial commitment that comes with a home loan?
Experts recommend borrowers consider the implications of buying a home in their later years, as well as taking on a large loan.
“This isn’t the situation where if you happen to time your purchase incorrectly when you’re 25 and you buy at the top of the market, you still have most of your life left to recover financially,” says Rick Sharga, executive vice president at home auction site Auction.com.
Consult with a financial planner
Buying a home in midlife or beyond has direct implications on retirement.
Homeownership can bring stability to one’s monthly housing costs, versus rental housing, as well as tax benefits, but it also carries with it a trove of costs, including property taxes, insurance and maintenance.
A good way to evaluate all the ways to buy a home, whether in cash or through financing, will affect one’s retirement finances is to enlist a financial planner to go over one’s retirement goals.
“You have to sharpen your pencil, sit down and do all the math,” Blayney says. “There’s no one answer.”
Copyright © 2013 The Associated Press, Alex Veiga, AP business writer.