Brett Sampson's (bsampson) Blog

Did you realize that when buying a house from an immediate family member – the buyer doesn’t have to come out of pocket for a down payment with an FHA loan? (As long as it’s a owner occupied residence for seller and buyer.) …this is because the guidelines allow the seller to “gift” equity to the...

Of all the posts on my web site the one for how to get a mortgage when you owe the IRS is the most clicked on. So, for those who this might apply to… I happily repost it here… Many people don’t think it’s possible to get a mortgage if you owe the IRS back taxes. I’m happy to tell you that it is ...

I get asked sometimes if a borrower can be removed from a loan on a non-credit qualifying FHA Streamline Refinance. There are only two ways to do this… Death or divorce. If neither of these apply to you and you still want to remove a borrower from your FHA loan you can do it, but it would have t...

USDA’s new property eligibility maps become effective on February 2nd, 2015. Here is a link to the new map:http://eligibility.sc.egov.usda.gov/eligibility/welcomeAction.do Remember, USDA is a 100% financing program. If you want more info on it download my Select RD report on my home page. That’s...

In spite of what you may have heard – it is possible to close a loan quickly. I had a borrower contact me recently. She said that she was purchasing a house – and she wanted to close quickly. She signed her loan package on a Tuesday. …and, she got me everything I had asked her for from the check...

It’s not unusual at all for an underwriter to request that disputes be removed from a disputed account. In the past we have used a simple letter from the consumer to have these disputes removed. I wanted to let you know that as of January 19th, 2015 Experian will now require a letter from the re...

I’ve written about this before, but I think it’s a good idea to touch on it again… If you need financing to purchase a home in the country I would use either USDA, FHA, or VA. The reason I didn’t mention conventional is that a conventional loan generally will have more restrictions on the compar...

I wanted to follow up on the FHA news about lowering their monthly mortgage insurance… The recent history of FHA MI rates on 30 yr mortgages are as follows… In April of 2011 FHA’s MI rate went from .55% to 1.15%. In April of 2012 the MI rate went from 1.15% to 1.25%. In April of 2013 the MI rate...

I mentioned this might happen earlier, and now it’s going to happen on the 26th of January 2015. FHA is reducing their monthly mortgage insurance premium on a 30 year mortgage from 1.35bps to .85bps. The result of this is that it puts it back squarely in competition with Conventional Mortgages. ...

There is a push in congress to lower FHA MI rates. A group of 18 U.S. Senators and the Mortgage Bankers Association both sent letters to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, stating that the time has come for the Federal Housing Administration to lower its mortgage insurance pre...