Some of our clients are interested in just which wholesale lenders we work with; our list of wholesale lenders changes frequently, but here is a snapshot of some of our current residential wholesale lenders, as of May 05, 2011:

• Allied Capital
• American Financial Resources
• American Partners Bank
• Bismark Mortgage
• Caliber Funding
• Cardinal Financial
• Century Lending
• Chase Rural Housing
• Citimortgage
• Classic Home Financial
• CMG Mortgage
• Crestline Funding
• Direct Mortgage
• Eastern Savings Bank
• Everbank Wholesale Lending
• Fifth Third Mortgage
• First Community Mortgage
• First Federal
• First Guaranty Mortgage Corp (FGMC)
• Flagstar
• Franklin American Mortgage
• FPF Wholesale
• Freedom Mortgage
• Gateway Mortgage Group
• GMAC
• Guaranty Trust
• HCI Mortgage
• Home Savings OF America
• Icon Residential
• ING Mortgage
• JMAC Lending
• Just Mortgage
• Luxury Mortgage Corp.
• Maverick Funding
• M&I Home Lending Solutions
• M&T Bank
• MET Life Home Loans
• MFG Banking
• MID Island
• MNET
• Mortgage Services (MSI)
• Myers Park Funding
• Nationstar Mortgage
• Normandy
• NYCB (formerly Amtrust)
• Ocean Bank
• Pacific Union Finance
• Peoples Home Equity
• Plaza Home Mortgage
• Polaris
• Provident Funding
• Real Estate Mortgage Network, Inc.
• SC State Housing Finance
• Sidus Financial
• Sierra Pacific Mortgage
• Stearns Lending
• Sterling Lending Group
• Suntrust Mortgage, Inc.
• Trust One
• United Wholesale
• University Lending Group
• US Bank
• US Bank Consumer Finance Division
• US Mortgage Finance Corp.
• Walker Jackson
• Wells Fargo Home Mortgage

This list is automatically generated, so it may not include all of the residential wholesale lenders with whom we work; it also does not include any of the commercial or agricultural lenders in our portfolio.

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Rapid resales of the same property, for increased prices at each sale, are often one of the techniques used by criminals to defraud mortgage companies; similarly, those sorts of rapid resales or “flips” can often be used by con artists who make superficial (and shoddy) improvements to a property and quickly resell it to an unsuspecting consumer. As a result, many lenders will not provide mortgages on properties that were sold within the last 6 months, or will put restrictions on such mortgages (often including a cap on the new purchase price of 120% of the last sales price); in fact, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development actively limits most FHA financing that meet those criteria.

While we at Ethical Homes fully support efforts to reduce fraud and protect consumers, we also recognize that there are sometimes legitimate circumstances where a property can be resold in a relatively short period of time at a profit, and that allowing those sales to go through by providing financing can actually help communities that are reeling from foreclosures to recover more quickly. For example, it’s not uncommon for foreclosed properties to be in such bad shape that they might need tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of rehab work before they would be fully habitable; if an investor purchased such a property for, say, $200k, and in one month put $50k of work into the property to make it comparable with other $350k properties in the same neigborhood, it wouldn’t be reasonable to limit that investor to only being able to resell that property for 120% of their original price, or $240k, which would be less than their original purchase price plus the cash they had put into the property! Most lenders, however, wouldn’t be able to lend on that property at a price of $350k for another 5 months, meaning that everyone in that neighborhood would have their property values pulled down by that one formerly-dilapidated property.

As a result, we’ve found wholesale lenders to fund our loans who will use common sense when underwriting mortgages on flipped houses, and independent appraisers to confirm that any increase in sales price between rapid sales is justified, so that when it does make sense, we can provide financing for resales immediately after the previous sale, and for whatever increase in price is justified by the market (and any improvements made to the property).

Interested in purchasing a property that was recently sold (or interested in purchasing a fixer-upper and want to make sure that you’ll be able to re-sell it to a buyer who can get financing)? Contact us and we’d be glad to go over your options with you.

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The entire point of using a house as collateral on a mortgage is that if the lending bank is forced to foreclose on the property, they can turn around and sell the property to recoup their loss; as a result, many lenders are leery of accepting as collateral a property that was recently listed for sale but that didn’t actually get sold, since that might imply that they would in turn have trouble selling the property after a foreclosure.

As a result, most lenders require 90 or more days of “seasoning” after a property has been listed for sale before they will consider allowing a refinance of the property; for example, the popular reference site eHow claims that many lenders require a minimum of six months seasoning after listing before a property can be refinanced. At Ethical Homes, however, we have a wide variety of wholesale lenders that we work with who will fund refinance loans on properties originated as soon as one day after the property was officially taken off the market (often referred to as “one day off MLS”).

If you’ve got a property that is currently on the market but that you’re having trouble selling, contact us and we’d be glad to help you evaluate your options and figure out whether refinancing into a lower rate might be a reasonable fallback solution for you.

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Back in 2009, Fannie Mae raised their limit on the number of financed properties that an investor could have before becoming ineligible for new financing from 4 to 10. Most lenders, however, kept their own limit on maximum number of financed properties at 4.

At the Ethical Homes team, however, we broker our loans through dozens of wholesale lenders, which means that we have multiple sources of funding for investors who do already have a number of financed properties and are looking to purchase their next property, be it their fifth or their tenth.

In addition, we have portfolio lending partners who can often assist established investors who already have a high number of financed properties, by allowing them to refinance loans on up to 10 properties into a single “blanket loan” that will not be reported to credit agencies or count towards the investor’s limit on number of financed properties with Fannie Mae; after refinancing into a blanket mortgage of that sort, these high-volume investors will be under the Fannie Mae limit and can then obtain conventional financing to acquire new properties at great current rates.

Interested in exploring your options for financing investment properties when you already have 4 or more properties in your portfolio? Contact us and we’d be glad to help you out.

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If you want to be a little greener and/or avoid the hassle of printing documents out and then scanning/faxing them again, there are a few services available online that might help you out (albeit at a cost). These services let you fax documents electronically, but also allow you to add the image of a signature to the documents before sending them. If you already have the documents in electronic format, then, you can just import those documents into those services, “sign” them, and then use that service to fax the “signed” documents to us, without ever having to print them out; if you already have software on your computer that can edit PDF files, of course, you can also do this on your own computer and just upload the “signed” files to us.

Here’s a quick overview of the vendors that we’re aware of that are providing this sort of service:

• HelloFax

  RECOMMENDED

  HelloFax has two large advantages at the moment–first, they allow you to upload and sign documents in your web browser, without requiring you to download and install any third-party software; and second, they don’t charge any setup fee or require you to sign up for a subscription, so you can just create an account and edit/send faxes on an as-needed/pay-as-you-go basis. HelloFax currently costs $0.10/page when not using a subscription; a typical loan transaction usually requires sending us 20-40 pages of signed copies of documents that we are already sending to the borrower in electronic format, so that translates to under $5 for a typical borrower over the course of their transaction.

• eFax

  eFax allows you to stamp documents with your signature prior to sending them, via their eFax Messenger software (theoretically supported on both Windows and MacOS, but not actually running on any Macintoshes using Intel processors, which includes all Macintoshes sold after 2006). In addition, they currently charge a $10-20 setup fee and require subscriptions ranging in price from $15-$20/mo, so we don’t recommend using this solution unless you already have an eFax account for another reason.

As noted above, if you already have software that allows you to draw on PDFs, you can do the same thing and then use your Secure Loan Center to upload the “signed” documents to us. Examples of software that you might be able to use to “sign” copies of documents in this way include the full version of Adobe’s Acrobat software, as well as our preferred solution on the Mac, PDFpen; a list of free alternative software that might be useful in this way is also available here.

Please only use this solution for signing documents that we have tagged as “Submit Copy“; for signed documents that are tagged as “Submit Original“, you will still need to print the documents out, sign them with an actual pen, and send us the “wet-ink” original.

Finally, please note that we cannot provide any technical support for any software or service that you might want to use to implement this sort of solution.

(Interested in using a true “e-Signature” rather than just overlaying an image of your signature on each document? Unfortunately, even though the federal E-SIGN Act has made certain types of verified online e-signatures legally equivalent to written “wet-ink” signatures since the year 2000, and commercial vendors such as EchoSign make using those signatures relatively easy, lenders are still allowed to have their own guidelines that are more stringent than what might legally be required. As a result, almost all of the wholesale lenders that we deal with do require that documents signed during the loan application process not use e-signatures, even if (as is the case with some of those lenders) they do allow e-signatures for the final loan documents that you sign at settlement.)

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For any document that we request from you, first check to see if we have “tagged” it (e.g. in the email in which we requested it) according to how you should submit it to us:

• Submit Copy

• Submit Original

• Submit Original & Copy

• Do Not Submit

If we do not tag a particular document, assume that the tag is “Submit Copy”.

NOTE: some of our clients find it easier to simply submit the originals of all of the documents rather than identifying which ones need to have copies vs. originals submitted; if you would prefer to do so, please use the “How To Mail Documents” instructions below to send your entire signed document packet to us. If you do mail your entire packet to us, you do NOT have to also fax/upload copies of the documents, but please be aware that processing of your loan will be delayed as we wait for the mailed packet to arrive: if you fax/upload copies to us before mailing your documents, we can start processing your loan immediately.

Explanations for each of the submission tags is below, as well as instructions for uploading, faxing, and mailing documents to us.

Meanings of Submission Tags

• Submit Copy

  This tag means that you need to EITHER:

  1. Fax a copy of this document to us using the instructions below, OR

  2. Upload a copy of this document to us using the instructions below.

  Please do NOT email copies of documents to us unless explicitly asked to do so; the security of emailed documents cannot be guaranteed, and emailed documents will often be delayed in processing as they will usually not go directly to the appropriate person on our staff the way faxed or uploaded documents will.

  If you’re sending us documents that we’ve sent to you in PDF format that just need your signature, and you want to save some paper and/or avoid the hassle of printing out the documents, signing them, and then scanning or faxing them, there are online services that will let you “sign” the PDFs electronically and then fax them to us without first having to print them out.

• Submit Original

  This tag means that you need to mail the original, fully-signed, version of this document to us using the instructions below.

• Submit Original & Copy

  This tag means that you need to submit this document to us TWICE.

  First, you need to EITHER:

  1. Fax a copy of this document to us using the instructions below, OR

  2. Upload a copy of this document to us using the instructions below.

  Then, you must ALSO mail the original, fully-signed, version of this document to us using the instructions below.

  Please do NOT email copies of documents to us unless explicitly asked to do so; the security of emailed documents cannot be guaranteed, and emailed documents will often be delayed in processing as they will usually not go directly to the appropriate person on our staff the way faxed or uploaded documents will.

• Do Not Submit

  This tag means that you do not need to submit this document to us at all; it is provided purely for your reference and review.

How To Fax Documents To Us

On your Secure Loan Website, you can download a special barcoded fax coversheet that you will need to use as the cover sheet when submitting any documents to your loan file via fax. That special fax coversheet will also be included as the first page of any file that you download from your Secure Loan Website.

It is essential that you use that coversheet as the very first page of each fax transmission when faxing us documents; failure to do so means that your document will NOT be processed and will NOT appear in your loan file.

FAQs About Faxing Documents To Us

• Q: What phone number should I use when submitting documents by fax?

  The number to which you should send the fax will be included on your special barcoded coversheet. When submitting documents by fax, please ONLY send faxes to the number on your particular barcoded coversheet, unless explicitly instructed by us to do otherwise.

  In particular, the Secure Loan Website may include alternate fax numbers in the header or footer information on the web page from which you download documents; do NOT submit documents to those alternate fax numbers, which include the main corporate fax for HomeFirst Mortgage Corp. Faxes sent to that main fax number are not guaranteed to be routed to us in a timely manner.

• Q: Can multiple documents be faxed in at once using a single coversheet?

  A: Multiple documents can be faxed in at once using a single coversheet.

• Q: Do I need to download a separate fax coversheet for each document that I submit?

  A: Each barcoded fax coversheet is tied to your loan file rather than to any specific document, so you can use the same coversheet to submit to your loan file any document that we request.

• Q: How can I confirm that my faxes were properly received?

  A: Once you submit a document by fax, our team will receive an email confirmation that the document was received and indicating how many pages were in the submission. We will forward that confirmation to you to confirm receipt and to make sure that all of the pages came through, and then our processors will later review the document in detail and follow up if there are questions.

How To Upload Documents To Us

In order to upload documents to us, you must first be able to obtain a digital version of those documents as a PDF file (preferred) or as a JPG image file. The most common way to do so is by using a scanner; note, however, that we CANNOT provide technical support to our clients for use of their scanner.

Once you have obtained a digital version of your document, go to your Secure Loan Website using the computer where that digital version is stored, and follow these steps:

1. On your Secure Loan Website, towards the bottom of each page will be a section labelled “Upload File”. In that section, for each digital document that you wish to upload, select a File Type for the document in question (e.g. Bank Statement, Current Paystubs); if a File Type corresponding to your document is not listed, select “Other” and then enter in a description of the document.

2. Then click the “Browse” button, and browse your computer to find the document file.

3. Click the button labelled “Upload File”.

4. Once the web page has finished processing, you should see a status message appear at the bottom of the Upload File section of the page. If that message does not indicate that your file was successfully uploaded, please try to re-upload your document.

Once you submit a document by uploading, our team will receive an email confirmation that the file was received; we will forward that confirmation to you to confirm receipt, and then our processors will later review the document in detail and follow up if there are questions.

How To Mail Documents To Us

Please deliver any documents for which we need signed originals to the following address by US Postal Mail, FedEx/UPS, or courier:

HomeFirst Mortgage Corp

Attn: Audit Department (LO: Sweth Chandramouli)

207 S. Alfred St

Alexandria VA 22314

After sending documents to us by mail, please also email us to let us know that you have done so, so that we can make sure to watch for your incoming documents.

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Some of the options that we can currently offer to borrowers who for whatever reason have lower credit scores, and that other lenders may not be able to offer, include:

• FHA Loans to borrowers with FICO scores as low as 530.

• FHA Loans to borrowers with a non-traditional credit history or insufficient credit (i.e. no FICO score at all) with no hit to maximum LTV.

• Manual underwriting of FHA loans (using common sense rather than just algorithms) for borrowers with low FICO scores but a compelling argument for why they would be able to make their payments consistently and on time in the future.

• FHA 203(k) Streamline rehab/construction loans for borrowers with a FICO score of at least 580, allowing borrowers (both purchase and refi) to take out up to $35k extra to put towards improving the property.

• Loans for new construction manufactured homes and mobile homes for borrowers with FICO scores as low as 580, and for existing manufactured homes and mobile homes for borrowers with FICO scores as low as 620.

• One-time-close construction loans (aka Construction-to-Permanent/CTP loans) for manufactured homes, mobile homes, and modular homes (including acquisition of land) for borrowers with FICO scores as low as 580.

• High-balance FHA loans and Jumbo VA loans (in both cases, loan amount > $417,000) for borrowers with FICO scores as low as 620, with no reduction in maximum loan amount or maximum LTV.

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Because we broker through so many wholesale lenders, so we can often offer products that most other lenders can’t–and the fact that we can shop loans among so many wholesale lenders, and are often among their most productive originators, means that we get extremely good rates and pricing from them, often better than the pricing they give their own in-house retail originators. The end result? We can often help buyer agents to prequalify more buyers and close more purchases.

Some examples of the products that we can offer that other lenders might not have in their portfolio include:

• Extended Rate Lock (up to 360 days) mortgages.

• Jumbo financing up to $3 million

• 85% LTV financing on purchases up to $940k

• 95% LTV conventional financing up to $417k, even in “declining market” areas (we are a Radian Platinum lender and have access to MI programs that most other lenders do not have)

• A wide variety of MI options, including:

  • Monthly (aka “traditional”) MI (best for borrowers with lower available cash)

  • Upfront MI (often a better deal for borrowers w/ good credit and either available upfront cash or a seller who is willing to cover some of their costs)

  • Hybrid MI (a combination of a relatively small upfront payment and a drastically reduced monthly MI payment)

  • Lender-Paid MI or True Portfolio No-MI (the extra lender risk is baked into the rate, often resulting in a lower monthly payment than the corresponding Monthly MI option)

• Purchase/Rehab mortgages (especially useful for damaged/foreclosed properties)

• Purchase/Construction mortgages (i.e. empty lot or tear-down + construction of new property from ground up)

• Green mortgages (with incentives for energy-efficient properties)

• Extended condo approval options, including 1-week turnaround on getting condo developments FHA approved, as well as portfolio loans up to 95% that do not require FHA or Fannie Mae approval of the condo developments.

• VA veteran-to-veteran purchases (if a veteran is purchasing a property from another veteran whose current mortgage is a VA loan, we can arrange for the purchase to be handled as a refinance, saving the new owner significant costs and reducing documentation)

• Low-FICO mortgages (down to 530 FICO)

• Low-FICO High-Balance/Jumbo FHA and VA mortgages (down to 580 FICO)

• Alternative-Credit FHA mortgages (for borrowers w/o credit histories–cannot be used as replacement for exsting bad credit histories)

• Post-Short-Sale mortgages (we can qualify buyers who have a short sale on their credit history, in some cases immediately after the short sale rather than after the 4-5 year waiting period that most lenders require)

• Loans for non-citizens (including holders of non-traditional visas)

• Interest-Only mortgages (which do actually still have a valid use for certain buyers)

• “Fast Track” underwriting (underwriting in as little as 8 hours in some cases; Federal regulations (MDIA and HVCC) can add 9-21 days before closing, but thorough preapprovals to get the clock started early can reduce the contract-to-close period to as little as 2-4 business days if necessary)

• “Guaranteed Financing” Pre-approvals (not a single buyer that we have preapproved for financing has not been able to obtain the specified financing–EVER)

• Buyer Incubation (if you have buyers who are months or years away from being ready to purchase, we can help them make sure they are on the right track financially, and then stay in touch with them for you to make sure that they come back to you when they are ready to move forward–we’ve helped agents incubate potential clients for years if necessary)

If you have any questions about any of those programs and how your buyers might be able to make use of them, please feel free to contact us and we’d be glad to show you how we can help you get more buyers to closing faster than ever before.

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HomePath mortgages are available in most of the “normal” flavors available for other conventional mortgages (e.g. 15-, 20-, and 30-yr fixed rate, and 3/1, 5/1, 7/1, and 10/1 adjustable rate); they allow up to 97% LTVs (i.e. only 3% down) for buyers intended to occupy the property as their primary residence, or up to 90% LTV for second-home or investor buyers. Among the advantages of HomePath mortgages are:

• They don’t require an appraisal; the negotiated sales price is used as the property value. Since appraisals are one of the biggest unknowns in the underwriting of most modern purchase loans and the piece of the process whose timeline is least predictable, not having one makes the mortgage financing process both more certain and faster.

• They have lower upfront costs. As noted above, the buyer does not have to pay for an appraisal, and most HomePath lenders also have lower overall fees on HomePath loans versus conventional mortgages.

• They do not require mortgage insurance, which usually lowers the effective rate of HomePath loans. HomePath loans do have slightly higher base rates than conventional mortgages, but for LTVs up to 95%, the effective rates when looking at total monthly payment as compared to FHA loans or conventional loans with MI are usually much lower to HomePath.

• They do not require mortgage insurance. which smooths the underwriting process. Conventional loans that require mortgage insurance usually must go through two rounds of underwriting–once by the lender, and again by the mortgage insurer; HomePath mortgages can skip that second round of underwriting, which can often be more stringent than regular mortgage underwriting.

• They allow LTVs up to 97%, which is slightly higher than FHA. Due to recent changes, FHA loans normally have a maximum LTV of 96.5%; thus, while FHA often has a better rate for borrowers with LTVs of 95% or higher, for borrowers for whom that extra 0.5% down payment to bring the LTV from 97% down to 96.5% would be a deal breaker, HomePath can often save a purchase that would otherwise fall apart.

• They have slightly looser underwriting guidelines for condo developments. Issues with budgets, delinquent association fees, and/or high investor ratios at condo developments are one of the biggest reasons that purchase loans in the DC area don’t get approved these days, and HomePath’s condo guidelines are slightly less stringent than those for other conventional mortgages.

For all of these reasons, HomePath mortgages can be a great tool for borrowers interested in FNMA-owned REOs. How can you tell if a property is eligible for HomePath financing? Most agents listing FNMA-owned REOs will advertise that they are HomePath-eligible, but you can also always double-check (or search for FNMA-owned REOs in your area) at Fannie Mae’s HomePath.com website.

Once you’ve found a HomePath-eligible property, feel free to contact us about getting HomePath financing; our wholesale lending sources are among the strongest in the country, and we are thus on the select list of mortgage brokers who can provide HomePath mortgages.

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The Ethical Homes team offers construction/A&D loans for terms of up to 2 years, on loan amounts of between $500k and $500 million. Interest rates for these loans generally run between 1-9 percentage points higher than conventional residential mortgage rates (depending on the specifics of the scenario). Borrowers generally need to contribute at least 20% of the initial acquisition costs (30% preferred), and the eventual stabilized post-construction value of the property should provide a final LTV of no more than 75% (65% preferred).

If you have acquisition & development funding needs, please do not hesitate to contact us and we would be glad to review your scenario for you.

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