Home, Garden & More!
THE Mortgage Coach~Have you had a Foreclosure or Short Sale? by Barry O'Meara ~ Comments & ?'s welcome •
barryo@stearns.com
SANTA ROSA, CA. ~ Sonoma County has bounced back
and home
values are stable and are increasing. This is great news! Consumer
con-
fidence is up and homes have risen above their “under- water”
status.
Some homeowners may still feel a lit- tle damp around the edges but can see a future with their home. This has been a long and treacherous battle to save the housing market. Many home- owners came out battered and bruised. Their credit tarnished with a foreclosure, bankrupt- cy or a short sale.
Lenders
became gun shy to lend, tight- ening their guidelines so tight few could qualify. The looser guidelines under the HARP were just too limiting and only offered to certain loans. Many that got ill-advised by their loan servicer ended up losing their homes to a dysfunctional banking system. For those who have fallen to our troubled economy and have
The World of Tea
... continued from page 18 good options.
There are many more tra- ditional approaches to coping with the symptoms of a cold. Send your favorite methods to me (info@sonomachocolatiers. com) and we’ll share them on Facebook at
facebook.com/ infusionsteahouse. But if you’re really serious about getting through your sta- tistically-expected 3 colds this year (your kids can expect 12), get a friend to bring you some chicken soup. While you wait, curl up with a blanket and a cup of green or herbal tea, and get ready to share stories of feeling yucky.
The tea will help you
feel a bit better, and the chicken soup and your friend’s empathy may actually help that cold be shorter and lighter.
Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold. ~Edmund Spenser UPBEAT TIMES • November 2013 • 23
had a foreclosure, short sale or bankruptcy, I have good news! You’re not alone.
In
response to this, HUD has changed its guide- line
to affected. help those The pro-
gram is called “Back to Work- Extenuating Circumstances”. These new guide- lines were announced in HUD’s Mortgage Letter 2013-26.
there were extenuation cir- cumstances that lead to a drop in income.
This may require
some letters of explanation and w-2’s or taxes. This is a new guideline and could take some time for lenders to iron out the details.
It is now a full
documentation world, so be prepared.
In order to qualify under The
effective dates are August 15, 2013 through September 30, 2016. The big change is the time required to pass before a lender can issue credit to a borrower that already has experienced a short sale, bankruptcy or
foreclo-
sure. The previous guidelines had a 3 year waiting period. These
new guidelines only
required a 12 months waiting period. There are two parts to this. “Back to Work” means they will
be documenting
your income. Make sure you understand how an underwriter will determine your income. The other half is “Extenuating Circumstances”.
This means you will need to document that
these new guidelines you need to document at loss of income of at least 20% prior to the events that lead to your fore- closure, bankruptcy or short sale. You will also be required to take a one hour homebuyer course and provide a certificate of completion. The certificate needs to be at least 30 day prior to your loan application and no more than 6 months from date of application.
There is no
charge for getting certified and the course can be taken over the phone.
This may seem like a small
step but it is a step in the right direction. Some day we could be looking at similar guide- lines used in Conventional Underwriting. For now, any- one with a tarnished credit his- tory, FHA is your only option.
UPBEAT TIMES • November 2013 • 23 Giving Campaign
goal, exemplifying the dedica- tion our staff and Officials to our communities.”
The Credit Union offered
several unique incentives to encourage employees to con- tribute: prize raffles, casual days, smoothie parties and more. RCU’s campaign efforts support both United Way of the Wine Country, and United Way of the Bay Area.
In addition to supporting with monetary contributions, RCU employees recently vol- unteered in 4 counties for the United Way’s Day/Week of Caring. In Sonoma County, volunteers helped to clean up Children’s Village, which pro- vides nurturing for children in foster care; in Marin, they helped garden at Homeward Bound, a support center for the homeless; in Mendocino, they refinished picnic tables and planted flowers for the Boys & Girls Club; and in Napa, RCU helped restore native grasslands at Archer Taylor Farm. For more information, please call 1 (800) 479-7928 or visit
www.redwoodcu.org.
Weird Facts & Trivia -7
There are 18 people in the U.S. listed on whitepages. com with the last name 'Turkey'
Most turkeys are raised on a veg- etarian diet and without hormones and antibiotics.
The world record turkey was a tom that weighed in at 86 pounds.
Many people report drowsiness after eating Thanksgiving din- ner. While turkey often receives the blame, studies suggest that carbohydrate-rich meals may cause sleepiness by increasing the number of tryptophans in the brain. It is the unusually large, multi- coursed, carbohydrate-rich meal most people eat on Thanksgiving that is more likely the cause of the drowsiness. So just eat the turkey and the vegetables and you may not feel drowsy. What, no stuffing, potatoes, rolls, or pie?
The costume that "Big Bird" wore on "Sesame Street" is rumored to be made of turkey feathers.
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