Mortgages and Covid-19
/Dan Hubrich of Mountain View Mortgage is back today to talk about how the pandemic is affecting mortgage loans.
This month I’d like to update everyone on how mortgages are being affected by Covid-19. First of all, the silver lining to Covid is that interest rates are at record lows! Generally when there is bad news in the world, rates get better because it helps to stimulate the economy. There are a couple of important things you need to know though. Because a lot of people are being laid off and/or are being cut back on hours at work, that is affecting mortgage qualifying. If your hours have been cut back to part time or if you are on reduced pay, we have to use the new lower income to qualify you for a mortgage. If you have been laid off and are on unemployment, you’d have to wait until you are back to work full time to qualify. And if neither of these are your situation, lenders are still requiring double verifications of everything on the day the documents are released. Lenders used to just call to make sure you still had a job on the day of funding but now they are requiring a 2nd written verification of employment to make sure your pay and hours are the same as when you applied. Last thing to know…IF you happened to do a loan forbearance, as I predicted…lenders ARE INDEED reporting that on your credit report. It doesn’t show up as a mortgage late but it shows that you put it into forbearance. If you try to refinance or get a new loan with that in place, you first have to bring all of the missed payments current and then you have to take the loan out of forbearance before you can proceed. Call me anytime for more details on any of this. Thanks!!