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Archive for the 'Mortgage info' Category

New Law Makes Mortgage Insurance Premiums deductible for 2007

Wednesday, December 20th, 2006

The legislation allows taxpayers who itemize their deductions to deduct premiums paid for mortgage insurance - which typically is required when home buyers purchase their homes with less than 20 percent down.

Mortgage insurance is necessary on loans where you are putting down less than 20%. It protects the bank from losing money if you default on the mortgage. Over the past five years it has been used less and less. Usually the way to go is with an 80% first mortgage and then take out a HELOC(home equity line of credit) or a second mortgage for the rest.

President Bush just signed a new law making mortgage insurance premiums deductible. This should change the equation a bit and possibly make it a better choice. A good mortgage loan officer or a CPA should be able to help you evaluate what’s best in your particular situation.

The new insurance premiums deduction will only apply to mortgage insurance contracts issued in 2007 and is only available to taxpayers whose adjusted gross incomes do not exceed $110,000 ($55,000 for married taxpayers filing separately).

Posted in Miscellaneous, Mortgage info | 1 Comment »

Bombarded by Mortgage Offers? Mortgage Trigger Leads Should be Illegal!

Thursday, December 7th, 2006

Have you ever applied for a mortgage and then all of a sudden you begin getting other mortgage companies calling you up, emailing you or sending you a ton of junk mail? How do they just all of a sudden know that I’m ready to buy a home or refinance? What I discovered is really shocking.

When you apply for a mortgage and allow the loan officer to pull your credit report from the 3 credit bureaus, (which the credit bureaus charge for) the credit bureaus sell this information to other mortgage companies who are looking for people just like you. They sell them all the information they have on you so they can call you up and make you an offer. They rationalize it away by saying that it will be good for you to get approached by other mortgage companies who might have better deals. That’s wonderful if I would know about that up front and maybe I would give them my permission to do that. But I don’t want to fight off all of these salespeople. And I’m annoyed that the credit bureaus are making additional money on top of what they are charging to supply me for my credit report. Do a Google search for “Mortgage Trigger Leads” and you’ll find many companies who sell these leads, some for over $100/lead. I just have a gut feeling that someone paying $100/lead is going to have to make that up some where along the line.

There is a solution but you have to be proactive and register to opt out of the system. If you don’t opt out they assume that it’s OK to do this to you.

Here’s the site www.optoutprescreen.com that you need to go to in order to opt out of this madness. It says it takes about 5 days so make sure you do it before you start looking for a mortgage.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Mortgage info | 2 Comments »

Tim Maitski
404-216-0472
Tim@HomeAtlanta.com

Tim Maitski What's happening in the Atlanta real estate market? I'll tell you my humble opinion on things going on in my small part of the world. I'll let you know details about the subdivisions that I specialize in and details about the really nice homes that come on the market.