Last week, I wrote an FHA loan requirement guide to help folks looking to find more information about the Federal Housing Administration’s loan insurance program. In that post and in emails, many readers told me that I should take a look at the FDA and VA programs because it may be more appropriate for someone looking to purchase or refinance their existing home.

This article will cover the loan guaranty service offered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, also known as the VA home Loan program.

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Representative Kurt Schrader, Democrat from Oregon, and Representative Steve Driehaus, Democrat from Ohio, have co-sponsored a bill, H.R. 3842, that would amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend the first time homebuyer tax credit.

The current first time homebuyer credit is set to expire on December 1st, 2009. Schrader’s bill would do two crucial things:

• The program would be extended to October 1st, 2010,
• Homes purchased “after 2008,” rather than “in 2009″ would be elivible.

There is also one other change, you could treat the purchase of a home after December 31st, 2009 and before October 1st, 2010 as occurring on December 31st, 2009 for tax purposes. In other words, if you bought the house in 2010, you could take the credit on your 2009 tax return.

Don’t get too excited just yet, the bill was introduced on the 15th and was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means. Several bills just like this one have been introduced over the last few months and died in the Committee on Ways and Means (HR 1993, HR 2606, HR 2655, HR 2905… the list keeps going).

Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted 416 to 0 to pass the Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009 which extends the current $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credit for another 12 months for members of the military, Foreign Service, and intelligence corp who served at least three months of qualified overseas duty in 2009. The program is set to expire on November 30th, 2009 for everyone else and the justification for the extension makes sense. If you’ve been serving abroad for our country, it makes it very difficult for you to look for a house and take advantage of the program. Extending it another year certainly makes sense.

At the moment the bill has passed only the House of Representatives, it or a similar bill needs to pass the Senate, then reconciled, then signed by the President before it is law.

“If you are in a conflict zone, you don’t have time to get together with your spouse and family to go house shopping,” says Rep. Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat. Rep. Dave Camp, a Republican from Michigan, expressed similar concerns. “A lot of service members get called overseas at a moment’s notice,” Camp says. “And because of the time limit on the legislation now, they can’t always take advantage of it, not because of anything that they did or didn’t do but because of the unique nature of serving in our armed forces.”

It’s estimated that this will result in an additional 10,000 home sales, likely clustered around military facilities, at no extra cost. It’s revenue neutral because there are other revenue generating provisions included in the bill. The Senate received the bill yesterday and is set to vote on it fairly quickly.

As for the original credit set to expire on November 30th, there are discussions about extending the credit an additional six months.

House Votes to Extend First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit for Service Members [U.S. News & World Report]

When I was reading Dale Siegel’s The New Rules of Mortgages, was struck by the sheer number of available mortgage options available to Americans. I knew about your standard vanilla varieties (30 year fixed, 15 year fixed), even the trickier ones (ARMs, Option ARMs), but I knew very little about the various government sponsored programs designed to help low to moderate income or first time hombuyer families get a piece of homeownership.

One of these programs is the FHA, or Federal Housing Administration, mortgage insurance program. It’s part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the FHA provides mortgage insurance on loans made by FHA-approved lenders. The logic behind the program is that low and moderate income families and first time homebuyers, especially in these economic times, may need a little extra help in the homeownership process. This help comes by way of an insurance program, that the borrowers will pay for at least five years of the loan, offered by the government.

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When I was first approached to do a review of The New Rules for Mortgages by Dale Robyn Siegel, I was eager to get my hands on the book because of all the stories I had heard about how getting a mortgage today was much harder than it was a few years ago. Three years ago, you could get a loan based on thin air because the mortgage company could sell it to an even bigger sucker down the road. That’s part of the reason why we are in the economic funk we’re in today.

However, I feel for the people who, through no fault of their own, now have to deal with the after effects today and thought a review of this book might be helpful. So, let’s dive into the book!

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The beginning of July marked a new chapter in the ongoing Iraq war, as the U.S. withdrew combat troops from the war-torn nation’s cities. The withdrawal is part of a multi-step drawdown of U.S. forces that is expected to culminate in 2011 with the exodus of all American soldiers from Iraq.

In the months ahead, scores of U.S. soldiers will prepare to return home and reestablish their lives. For many returning veterans, adjusting to the financial and social rigors of everyday life can prove a significant challenge. A study released last spring by the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department chronicled the hardships that can confront veterans, from unemployment to low wages.

Soldiers are returning home to an economy in flux, including a severely hardened credit market. Checking credit scores and building a path toward maintaining good credit will likely rank among the chief responsibilities for many. Military agencies and communities across the country offer free financial counseling for active duty servicemen and women and veterans.

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With mortgages once again at historic lows, I’ve once again considered refinancing our mortgage. A few months ago we weren’t sure how long we’d be living in our current home and so we put off refinancing, despite rates being as low as 4.75% APR. Fortune has smiled on us and rates have once again come close to those lows and I’m taking another look.

Mortgage refinancing, much like buying a home, can sometimes be a scary process because it involves what usually is the largest asset you have. That’s the case for us, our home is our more valuable physical financial asset by far, and so any decision involve something of that magnitude can be a little scary.

Fortunately, mortgages aren’t quite that complicated and there is a wealth of resources available to help you compare different offers.

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Debt.

Some see it as a tool to be used to help them improve their financial situation. Some see it as a temptation to get more than you should be allowed to. And some see it was an insidious monster lurking around the corner, waiting for you to slip and make a mistake. Some see it as something the never want to touch.

Today we’re not going to talk about any of that stuff. Today I want to share with you some “fun facts” about debt that you might find useful at your next trivia night!

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I’ve been hearing a lot about the government’s Making Home Affordable mortgage refinance program. Having looked at refinancing our mortgage a few months ago, but not pulling the trigger, I was interested to see if we could benefit from this program (we can’t, but that’s not a bad thing). It’s designed to help people get more favorable loan terms in scenarios where their home has lost value. A lot of lenders won’t refinance a loan if the value of your home is less than the loan amount, it’s simply a matter of math; this program looks to help alleviate some of that.

This program, introduced by the Obama Administration as part of the Financial Stability Plan, is estimated to help 7 to 9 million people. They estimate the Home Affordable Refinance Program will help 4 to 5 million and the Home Affordable Modification Program will help 3 – 4 million. What this means is that you should act quickly if you want your application processed quickly. The longer you wait to apply, the larger the backlog will grow, so let’s get to the program!

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When I bought my house three years ago, I used LendingTree to get some financing offers to get a better feel for what rates for someone like me. Within an hour or two of when I submitted the request, I had someone from LendingTree call me to tell me they were coordinating the lending offers. Within an hour of that I had a response from LendingTree that included several rate quotes from multiple lenders, I was genuinely impressed with how quickly that process was.

Today was a totally different story. I submitted my request in the morning and it wasn’t until 5 PM that I saw some “quotes” roll in. I put that in quotes because it was one lender with three quotes depending on what loan I wanted. By then I had talked to a local lender and a loan officer from BB&T, where my current mortgage is. The loan offer was from a lender in Kentucky and it was far inferior to the one offered by BB&T (the local lender will get back to me tomorrow). Maybe it’s because we’re so close to the holidays, maybe it’s because we’re in a sagging housing market, or maybe because I’m a weak borrower, but it’s overall a pretty lackluster response.

Here are the offers so far on the table (obviously pending credit checks and whatnot):

• BB&T Mortgage said that I could get a 20 or 30 fixed year mortgage at 4.875% or a 15 year mortgage at 4.75%, with no points. The closing costs, which would include all the document fees, escrow setup, and title insurance BS would run about $3,100 to $3,200.
• SurePoint Lending had three offers – $4.875% on a 30 year fixed with one point, 5% on a FHA 15 year fixed with no points, and 5.25% on a 30 year fixed with no points.

Assuming the closing costs are going to be similar, the SurePoint offer doesn’t come close to the MM&T Mortgage and I’m inclined to stick with the bank I’m already with. I didn’t set up my loan with BB&T, they bought it, but I haven’t had any problems and they’re offering a much cheaper option.

Perhaps tomorrow will bring more quotes but I’m not holding my breath, it looks like the number to beat is 4.875% with no points.