iau president and managing partner of holland mortgage advisors their main office is located in the greentree area and dana you've been in the business for nearly twenty years you've seen your share of ups and downs in the lending industry and congrats because this is the third year running you've had to have attained the honor of being voted a five star mer mortgage professional that will be published in the pittsburgh issue the june issue in the pittsburgh magazine and from my understanding only this is the today and as well as being a lending partner of yours for a preferred lending partner for fifteen years of eighteen years now fifteen years i know good i'll take dana let's start by telling the viewing audience what types of loans and services you provide sure sure i have i provide conventional loans f h a v a u s d a new construction even do investment properties ok that's wonderful so it's pretty much one stop shopping until she can just call you and you can do almost everything that's right it's right what about refinancing you do that as well i do as well i do refinancing as well as purchases and there is a number of different refinancing programs i'm able to provide borrowers ok that's great because i know a lot of people today with the low interest rates which we will get into you later are refinancing yes so it's good to know whether you're buying something existing building something new or refinancing your home that you live in they can just call hall and mortgage absolutely  dana what is the difference between your company and a bank or a credit union so why would a borrower come to you as compared to say p n senior citizens bank for their mortgage well you know i'm glad you're throwing me to the wolves right off the bat jeannie but one of the big differences is the fact that credit unions and banks have one specific program in other words they don't have the variety of programs that i have i deal with twenty different lenders national and local and each one of those lenders have possibly five to twenty different programs so when somebody calls me they're getting essentially potentially over one hundred different programs that i'm able to provide for the ok so it's a little more customized very customized it's a better word for  great thank you also what sort of money down will borrowers need for loans today that's a huge question i know a lot of my customers ask how much money do they need down to even get a loan well you know  twenty percent is generally what the lenders like to call skin in the game so they would prefer twenty percent down as a general rule but we have loans was zero percent down like v a and u s d a we also have  loans with just three and a half percent down and conventionally we can do five ten fifteen percent down even though there's mortgage insurance which i know you and i will talk about later and say well you know ok so basically anywhere from zero percent i mean you can actually get a mortgage and put zero percent out of turn fall if i twenty percent preferred or anywhere in between find some program for them and of course you can put more than twenty per absolutely yes pretty much anything you want to absolutely you can finance a small amount for it yes and so we have the down money but there's also closing costs that's something totally separate we'll talk about that later that's correct that's correct yes big question we always have is what is the difference the main difference between conventional and f h a loans well in f h a loan is a government backed program so the government basically guarantees that one throughout the life of the loan conventional loan is more for i hate to say it but it is kind of a private citizen loan if you will appraisals are different on a house that's going a little stricter perhaps so if the house is in bad shape or needs some work done you may not even be able to go f h a yes yes that's true date yeah yeah in fact i don't even know they're like government and blown it is a government backed loan but it is hundred percent financing and you can even finance on top of that hundred percent to bring in about four percent of closing costs my so maybe it's a really are active in the military or even if you're a veteran well it's really if you have that's right served and that's exactly right there ok that's right there are caviar it's mine i add though that if you've only been in the service you know one or two years you don't have the tenure in order to get what's so much about salary assist and i explain it to my customers all the time what how can you explain salary assist to us how does that play into a borrower's hands to reduce the amount of money they'll need at the closing because we already talked about down money we know we need some money down maybe nine but up to twenty percent passed in addition to that there are closing costs or how does the seller system help out with that well so or sister is the only legal way that we are allowed to help for the closing costs so we're going to use one hundred thousand dollars loan as an example if you have a hundred thousand dollar loan and again as an example well so you have ten thousand dollars in closing costs well if instead of you needing that ten thousand dollars if you do let's say an f h a loan that allows up to six percent so or assist you would make the sale price one zero six so now the sale price is one hundred six thousand eight and your closing cost instead of being ten thousand or only for now if ourselves so that's by loan to buy the house so this helps me explaining to sellers and buyers this really doesn't come out of anybody's pocket when you say going to help you with your closing costs or i'm going to borrow you know for closing costs it's just a paper that's right transaction  debit at the closing nobody's hannon each other money it's just shows up on the hot on the settlements yeah that's exactly right there's another way to look at it to the bar would be financing their closing costs that's another way of doing it because the loan is then now predicated on that hundred six thousand athletes so you're basically financing it but you're doing it in an indirect roundabout way and it's really the only way we can do it legally so six percent maximum well good question six percent is the maximum with f h down to get that six percent seller conventionally ok and that you can help people out as we as we go oh certainly dana let's talk a minute about pre qualifying ok a lot of people considering buying a home are even parents thinking of helping their kids out and for a while the pre qualifying process was a little and intimidating people didn't think that they'd but to get the loan or it would be hard to know how easy is it to get pre approved well i think all the viewers know how they've heard everything on t v how do you know it's so hard to get a loan nowadays and and what not in there is some modicum of truth to that but actually in my perspective i think it's much easier now because they have basically put everybody into our little box so if your income and your credit and your down payment and your job works within that confines of that little box i can do it ok so it has kind of made it in some way cob way it's made it actually easier even though it's harder so so somebody can call you can do this over the phone that's right five ten minute have to come into the office and really don't take five to ten minutes max and this will allow the borrower to have a pre approval to  over the phone that's that's great that's it that's right can you also give us a name a few and requisites lenders look at to get pre approved i mean i know that you've already talked about it that the debt of the credit credit the history of your meant but what about if you or you've only been in your job for two years and we know you have to be employed is there any leniency you know that i've always heard two years well you're right about that and in you know can you imagine the the goal of these lenders wanting you to oid of all things i can't imagine you know they want you to pay the loan back i know but but i'll tell you there is another caviar out with that and that is if you're just out of school and let's say you have a degree in accounting and you immediately get a job or within a certain parameter of time generally within six to eight months of getting out of school and you get a job in that same field that you went to school with i can do that while a week later i was about that yeah that's right ok that's good  right for a lot of the college kids and younger people here that's right that's right hey dana this is a good time for us to take a break ok and we will be right back excellent thank you you thank  what have you done for your marriage today i gave my wife this morning i love her i hope i cook my husband's favorite breakfast that my husband loves e mail what have i done for my marriage just mentioned credit scores let's talk about that for a minute please what is a good credit score and what is the lowest credit score that you can work with today good question and it really you know credit scores and appraisals are basically the no you know the thing that i don't like about credit scores is there are so many times i pull a credit score will somebody is credit and i see that actually their credit pretty good but their credit score is a little bit lower conversely i pull them where they've got some problem credit but yet they have scores high and unfortunately the lenders don't differentiate between that they go with score play so the score is really really important and to answer your question seven forty is the benchmark if you will for good credit seven forty anything over that you could have eight fifty credit it really doesn't matter because seven forty is there a benchmark of that you're not getting rewarded for anything better than your i don't already it's ok that's right that's right seven forty also seven ok and as far as having credit pulled i know some of my buyers worry about that you know if we have our credit pulled it's going to affect our score and explain the process of exactly what is a credit report and you know why is it so important and how the lenders look at that report well you know i could i could unfortunately talk for the half hour just talking about this subject it is a court now and it's on everyone's mind is it is the one thing i can give all the viewers some semblance of peace of mind is the fact that when you're shopping for a car you're shopping for a home the computer realizes that you're getting credit polled from various lenders or various auto dealers and whatever you have that that that credit report polled you can go generally two or three times without it affecting your score and ok you get above that and you start going crazy or you do it online unfortunately some of these some of our customers have gone online and they put  do that well what happens is they sell that information to twenty different lenders they wake up one day they have twenty pools wow twenty different people that pull their credit and that can definitely a foe number big time that could really affect you ok so that's been a problem ok so why don't they they go to you to obtain a mortgage and they've been on the border like on the fence from and it's the way that the scores are looked at i mean you you gave me an example of a sears loan at one point i did i did when you get your credit polled it's an instantaneous scoring process and even though it's proprietary i know a little bit enough about it to say that what they look for is they look for high credit limit so when you have using sears is that example if you have a two thousand dollars sears card available credit with sears but you only own fifty dollars that's excellent that's good at that i just x ray ok that really that's a good factor that that computer modeling system looks at conversely two thousand dollars available credit at sears but your own nine hundred ninety nine problem market at all ok and if you have enough of those that does deteriorate your credit rating so and again i know you've helped a few of my customer service not only if someone has some issues you know maybe they have a lot of loans out there you can recommend programs to help them either get more credit or you can recommend to pay down debts things that you can get them to that beautiful seven forty ultimately the out rate that's exactly right and in fact i have an outside source for that i can generally help them if it's minor i can say do this do that we've been able to do that in fact i have something that not many lenders out there i don't think do or have available it's called and i'm not a big fan of the name but it's called a what if simulator so all i do is i plug in certain parameters i look at that person's credit and i just plug in certain parameters and i hit the little what if simulator and if they pay sears down to fifty zero zero i think if they do this card and what will it do for them and then you can given the wonderful if that doesn't work if that what if simulator doesn't work for them then a given to my specialist ok so ok great so let's say i have a borrower who is out of college they don't have two years on the job i believe you covered dana do you remember the client of recently we had they were worried about their monthly payment you know they should buy a home and it turned out that their home mortgage was actually less than what they were paying and rats let's talk about that how can that be i see it every day i see it every day rates right now or such historic lows even now i mean the yeah there were a little bit lower and they moved kind of like the stock market but you know when you look at what the rental property values are for decent places now and then you look at what i can do with with one hundred fifty thousand dollar loan many times in fact probably more than fifty percent of the time it's cheaper own the house really and you know as you know a lot of the new marcellus shale activity in this area rental properties are really hot right now these guys and they're hard to come by hard to come by absolute sometimes people are going to have to look at a purchase option yes and because there simply aren't a rental there's no rentals out there and there's a lot of you know times where people are selling their homes because our market is really hot right now it is their homes are selling faster than expected we're getting multiple offers on homes around here us for a long time awesome and they don't even have a house picked out a ready for them interim rent is very difficult we know that very difficult very difficult i know we can come up with some solutions for those type and we certainly long term or short term housing that's right that's right well so we have for you today let's take another break and we'll be right back after this some things you simply cannot control and so i'm really important things you can like keeping your family healthily managing finances preparing for retirement it's all here in this booklet from the american diabetes association because we want everyone to be healthy and happy and border your free copy of planning for a healthy life to help manage the things you can't control mark i'm someone who cares about smiles i'm an orthodox a specialist who corrects teeth and jaws i received two to three years of specialized education beyond dental school i'm the maker of healthy smile can we talk about some of the things our viewers may be curious about particularly with the refinances well like credit i could go on here but i know we have a limited time the problem that i've seen with  in the refinance market is is one of value and it's always one of value but if you happen to have the biggest house on the block with the big addition and all that other good stuff it's hard to get what lenders look for which are comps comparable sales when you get an appraisal the the lender looks for three similar comps that sold within one year and are within one mile end of similar you know similar to other words i hear you can have a outside our hands the other thing about appraisals that i want to i think it's very important for the for the viewers to know is the fact that i or even the lender we cannot pick x y z appraisal company that we know they've been around for one hundred years and they're really good right because with this new it's called a g c c which is an acronym for home valuation code of conduct and when that law was passed a few years ago it kind of took that out of our hands and it was a safeguard for people  so that's rights and i'm glad that we have more of a handle on this and the guidelines are stricter because really for a buyer it means that they are not going to be able to overpay for a house to biggest concern good point and really if they're getting a loan they they can over pay good money if you don't find three cause you're not going be able to get that's exactly right that's exactly right and thank you dana i'm curious though what sort of rates forecasting a lot of what are you experts calling for because i know they're awesome right now they are they are have been for a while so what what are we going to have in the next couple months we'll jeannie i get it tell you i mean not to make any joke of it but if i knew that i'd be sitting here with donald trump instead of jeannie mcdade we now crystal ball no ryssdal ball but i will tell you that all the pundits and all the experts and all the publications i get and weekly blogs that i read they're all saying that probably within the next year or so you're going to see some upward movement it depends on what happens internationally right there's there's so much going on domestically and internationally so there's a lot of very fact that i might do a play with that you know we don't say that they're going to buy no it's go be able to guide people but it's still it's our best time is now it is it really is it's almost like such a salesman thing but anything but it is so it's like a sale it is it's right there and our market is great the south hills peters township especially where we're very lucky to are here really blessed here in peter's township and i've got to say one thing i would challenge any viewers out there and yourself included what commodity what what item can you buy today which is less than it was in  there is nothing now interest rates that's it that's set interest rates are lower now than they are near fifty buried here is just no other commodity out there this is a it's a fire sale and and you know although our values are starting to increase locally yes particularly