My New Blog

Being a native and having been back in Denver after the Navy for well over 10 years now, its hard to believe how much the Denver skyline has changed since I was younger. I remember coming downtown when I was in elementary school for field trips to the museums, the mint, and the zoo to name a few. Every time I was on the bus ride across 6th Avenue I would look wide-eyed as I saw the sky scrapers that seemed to fill the downtown skyline. My favorite was always the cash register building.

After leaving home for the Navy and traveling the world to the likes of Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, and local cities like L.A and of course N.Y.C I started to realize Denver left a lot to the imagination with regards to the skyline of our growing city. But now in just a few short years the skyline has started to transform into more of one that belongs to a metropolitan city. Denver is now an urban bustling hip city. Full of nightlife, theatre, great restaurants, and recently the beginning of great architecture. With Libeskind's fingerprint now firmly in place with his beautifully designed Art Museum and Residences, Denver is well on it's way.

If you have seen the Riverfront Park progress by East-West Partners on any drive to Coors Field or in your daily adventures downtown, you know that they are making a beautiful transformation on the downtown skyline. The most recent addition to downtown's skyline was the Glasshouse development. The plans of East West will transform all of the area between Union Station to Riverfront Park. With construction set to begin in 2008, only time will tell before Denver looks like a completely different and much more vibrant city.

Other planned high rises will change the appearance of our great city. Those are mainly planned along the 14th Street corridor that will change over the next few years. The likes of 1401 Lawrence, The Four Seasons Private Residences, and The Spire are all planned and or under way. Developer Randy Nichols hit a speed bump with The Spire when a German lender yanked the $160 million in financing because of uncertainty in the international market.

Though things aren't roses and peaches, as some question if there will be enough interested buyers in the downtown high rise living, or if the later projects will find it hard to sell out and fill. Not too mention with the price points of many of these homes going beyond the mark of a conforming loan currently at $417,000 there may be cause for concern about the ability of the builders to find and secure attractive long term financing for their buyers. This off the heels that even those with great credit, incomes, and assets paying for the credit crunch of those sub-prime lenders gone bad.

My brother and I go back and forth with discussions on the positive impact this will make on Denver. Where he sees Denver losing its appeal, I see an urban city in blossom!

What do you think? Email me with your story or questions about financing on any of these projects rwilliams@summit-mortgage.com

~Ray

 Hot off the presses! I thought you might enjoy this reading. If it in fact turns out that the bill is signed into effect by the President we will see an impact with regards to lower down payment requirements for FHA, higher loan limits for FHA and conforming loan balances. What this means to you as a homeowner is if you have a current loan at $600,000 it is considered jumbo. With the mortgage liquidity problems rates on home loans that are considered jumbo are extremely high because they currently aren't within FNMA loan limits. If they increase the loan limits for both FHA, VA and Conventional loans it would allow you to refinance your home from its potential high jumbo rate into alignment with FHA rates from anywhere at 6% -6.5% depending on how you structure your refinance. This could be a great help to those who earn higher incomes and have been paying higher rates for borrowing money based off of their needs~

If you want to be kept up to speed make sure to email me or call (303)779-0591 ~ Ray

Read Below

"House approves bill helping mortgage borrowers

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Reaching out to hard-hit borrowers in the subprime-mortgage market, the House on Tuesday passed a bill that lowers down payments for borrowers, raises loan limits and boosts funds for housing counseling.

Passed by a vote of 348 to 72, the bill reforms the Federal Housing Administration and is the latest lifeline thrown to borrowers from Washington as the fallout in the mortgage market continues.

About two million loans are expected to reset to higher rates in the next two years, with defaults expected to follow. Congress and the White House have floated various proposals to stem the damage.

The bill directs up to $300 million a year into an affordable housing fund. A motion offered by Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, to kill the fund was rejected.

'We do not have a general program for helping build affordable family housing, and that's what this bill would do.'

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass

"We do not have a general program for helping build affordable family housing, and that's what this bill would do," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Lawmakers also passed an amendment to the bill offered by Frank that would raise the agency's loan limit from its current $417,000 to as much as $729,750.

"Such an increase would ensure that FHA is a viable option for borrowers who have payment option and interest-only adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs), which will be resetting in the next few years," said Stanford Group Company analyst Jaret Seiberg.

However, the Bush administration has registered opposition to that and other key parts of the House bill.

"The program should remain targeted to traditionally underserved homebuyers, such as low- and moderate-income families," the White House said in a statement on Monday.

The National Association of Mortgage Brokers supported the amendment raising the loan limit.

"Because FHA has been driven from those parts of the country where consumers are most in need of affordable financing, such as California, millions of borrowers have been forced to turn to high-cost financing and other non-traditional loan products," wrote NAMB President George Hanzimanolis, in a letter to lawmakers.

The bill eliminates down payment requirements on FHA loans. The requirement is currently 3%.

Some Republicans opposed the housing fund. "A better approach is to dedicate the FHA surplus to shoring up the financial solvency" of an agency program, said Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala. Frank, however, said that no money would go to the trust fund until FHA solvency was certified.

The Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to debate its own FHA bill on Wednesday. President Bush would need to sign a final version for the bill to become law.

In separate action on Tuesday, the House Financial Services Committee approved a bill granting new authority to the FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to write rules against deceptive lending practices. Traditionally only the Federal Reserve has had such powers. The bill would need to be approved by the House and the Senate to become law.

Tuesday's House vote came as the Fed unanimously voted to cut its overnight interest rate target by a half percentage point to 4.75%, citing turmoil in financial markets as a threat to economic growth. See full story.

"The tightening of credit conditions has the potential to intensify the housing correction and to restrain economic growth more generally," the central bank said in its statement Tuesday."

Hello all,

At this point it is a foregone conclusion that the Fed is expected to get in the mix tomorrow at their much anticipated meeting by lowering the Fed Funds Rate by either .25 or .50 from its current levels. Whispers on wall street backed by the early signs of traders would expect to see something along the lines of .25 of a cut from its current levels, versus the .5% cut that many politicians would like to see.

What exactly this means to all of us consumers can be confusing. First, if you understand the Fed Funds rate you know it is what is tied into Prime Rate (which is the rate banks charge their best customers for short-term lending). This means if you currently have a Home Equity Line of Credit at say Prime + .5% then you will see on your next billing cycle that your rate should be 8.5% (Prime dropping to 8% and adding that to your margin of .5%) from there many people will ask me, "Ray, I am going to wait to refinance because Bernanke is lowering rates". The confusion comes from hearing that they are lowering rates and thinking it means mortgage rates. What they are in fact lowering is the Fed Funds Rate. Historically this has had an inverse (opposite) impact on long-term mortgage rates over time. Which means we could expect to see mortgage rates rise off the heels of this news.

More recently, the driving force of the mortgage backed securities (mortgage rates) has been the Fed's viewpoint on where Inflation is in regards to all of this news. If you saw Greenspan's interview on 60 minutes on Sunday night you would have heard him talk about inflation as the thing to be concerned about over time for our economy , not the current housing market/ mortgage issues. 

The easy way to understand this is to think about what a bond is. A bond is simply a note payable. So if you were the owner of a bond at a specific rate you would receive a certain return on your investment. So, knowing that mortgages are in fact BONDS you can understand that if in fact there was a concern of inflation, there may be a concern that in the future your bond wouldn't be worth as much money if inflation caused the future value of your money to be less. So you can see why then if there is a cause of inflation then the value of bonds deteriorates, thus the result is when there is inflationary concerns from the Fed that mortgage rates suffer and go up.

Keep your fingers crossed tomorrow. I think it is needed to see rates decrease on short-term money, but I am cautiously advising my clients right now to lock their rates if they are closing in the next 2 weeks. After all, you have more to lose if your rate goes up on the news tomorrow. If you are comfortable with your current rate and payment my advice is to lock your rate and take the safe bet on your next mortgage.

If you have questions on the meeting tomorrow or about the loan you are trying to get shoot me an email at rwilliams@summit-mortgage.com so we can talk about your mortgage.~ Ray

Good day to you! I wanted to pass along some exciting news that has become available to us since our joining the Summit Mortgage Team. We now have access to a special bond program that is available through the state for first time home buyers. Now don't get distraught if you are not a first time buyer. If you buy in a target area you can qualify also. Read below for more information or visit www.denvergov.com to read more through their homeowner programs. After reading, give me a call if you would like to get pre-approved for this program.~ Ray

The following is from www.denvergov.com

"Have you dreamed of owning a home but didn't think you could qualify for a mortgage? The City and County of Denver and the Metro Mayors Caucus announce the Metro Mortgage Assistance program! The City and County of Denver, along with over 20 other front-range cities, is offering a special mortgage assistance program for first-time home buyers with qualifying incomes. The first-time homebuyer requirement is waived if homes purchased are in Target Areas.

Homes may be purchased in the following cities:
Arvada
Aurora
Bennett
Brighton
Broomfield
Centennial
Dacono
Denver
Edgewater
Erie
Federal Heights
Frederick
Golden
Greenwood Village
Lafayette
Littleton
Lone Tree
Longmont
Louisville
Northglenn
Sheridan
Superior
Westminster

Program Details & Eligibility
First-time homebuyers cannot have owned a home in the past three years (except in "Target Areas"). The first-time homebuyer requirement is waived for qualified veterans.

Maximum Household Income
For homes purchased in non-target areas:
Families of 2 or fewer — $71,700
Families of 3 or more — $82,455

For homes purchased in Target Areas:
Families of 2 or fewer — $86,040
Families of 3 or more — $100,380

Maximum Home Cost
Non-target areas — $365,175
Target areas — $446,325

Interest Rate
30-year-fixed rate at 6.59%

Down Payment Assistance
4% of the home loan amount is offered as a non-repayable grant for down payment and closing-cost assistance. All qualifying borrowers under the program will receive the 4.00% assistance.

(For eligible homebuyers, additional down payment assistance might be available outside of the Metro Mortgage Assistance Program. Homebuyers with household incomes at or below 80% of the area median income for the metropolitan Denver area may be eligible for additional down payment and closing costs up to 6% of the purchase price or $10,000, whichever is higher. Call Ray at 303-779-0591 to see if you qualify.)

Cost to Buyer
At mortgage loan closing, the lender will collect only a 1.00% origination fee and no discount points from the borrower or seller. 

Target Areas
To lookup whether a property is located within a Target Area, DenverMaps offers a Real Property report. Simply enter the address, and check "Metro Mortgage Areas" under "Optional Map Layers.""

If you are interested in learning moer about how to qualify for this loan fill out a loan application on the site here or call me at 303-779-0591~

Enjoy your weekend!

Ray