Remember the 80-10-10 mortgage? A great invention created to borrow more money or to avoid paying private mortgage insurance. Well, the first and second mortgage combos have almost disappeared from the mortgage world completely. There are a few lenders that do offer the combo loan to buy houses or refinance existing ones, but with great limitations. This week, they have been limited further in high risk markets (New York is one) across the country. Many areas will only allow the combine loan to value loans up to 65% or 70%.   Additional criteria are as follows:

• Minimum credit score of 660
• No bankruptcy or foreclosure for past 7 years
• No cooperative homes allowed
• No homes listed for sale in the past 6 months will be allowed
• Maximum debt to income ratio is 45% to qualify

Check with your lender for specific guidelines that might apply to you or your geographic area On a good note, interest rates are headed back down, slowly.  For those of you in the process of getting a mortgage or thinking about buying a home, the media coverage is all about the increasing mortgage rates. Yes, the rates did go up last week and the week before. However, today alone, they rates dropped twice with most of the national lenders. So this is a good thing.  Dale Siegel

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