Found 14 blog entries tagged as Unexpected Costs.

One way lenders increase their profits on your Santa Cruz real estate mortgage is by charging settlement fees. While many fees are standard and required, others may be negotiated.

Shop Around For Better Closing Fees

The Good Faith Estimate (GFE), as required by RESPA, is presented to you after you apply for a loan to purchase your Santa Cruz real estate. It gives you a heads up as to what fees you should expect at closing.

If you don't like the numbers you're seeing on the GFE, shop around with other lenders. If you were approved for one loan, you can likely be approved for another.  Collect comparable GFEs and see how the interest rate, monthly payments, points, and closing fees stack up. Your best bet is to tell your lenders that you're…

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If you get a mortgage for more than 80% of your Santa Cruz real estate’s fair market value, your lender will require that you pay Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI). PMI payments are expensive at about 0.5% to 1% of the entire loan amount on an annual basis.

Obviously, it would be a good thing if you didn’t have to pay PMI. To help you achieve that goal, here are several tips to avoid paying PMI on your Santa Cruz real estate:

• Save for a big down payment: The easiest way to avoid PMI is to have a down payment of at least 20% of the value of the home you want to purchase.

• Borrow to get 20% down: Check with friends and family for down payment assistance. You can offer repayment with interest and still never pay as much as you would have to for…

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As the need for home loan modifications has increased, so has the number of home loan modification scams.  Like all scams, they aren’t always easy to detect.  To help you identify loan modification scammers, here are five things to watch out for:

1. Asking for payment up front. This can be masked as a house payment, insurance payment or a deposit. No matter what they tell you it’s for, do not give it to them in advance of work being performed and contracts being signed.  If you do give payment up front, at best, you’ll pay for work that could have been done for free through other non-profit organizations or loan modification assistance programs. At worst, no work will be done, you’ll never see your money again, and you’ll no longer have time to save…

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You’ve reviewed your finances and have decided you can afford to and want to help your child buy Santa Cruz real estate.  Is lending the money to your offspring your best option?  Here are some questions to consider when making this decision. 

1. Will you need the money later?
If there’s a chance that you might need the money to live on at some point, lending the money to your child is a better option than giving it to them.  You can always forgive part of the loan later on, if you find you don’t need the money to live on.

2. How much should you lend? 
Depending on your financial situation, you can lend part or all of the down payment or part or all of the purchase price of the Santa Cruz real estate.

If you have enough money to lend the entire…

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