If you are in the unfortunate situation where you owe more on your home than your home is worth, you may be wondering what options you have to lower your mortgage payment. If this is the case with you, have you heard of a program called HARP?
HARP stands for the Home Affordable Refinance Program. Several years ago, the federal government started the HARP program to help homeowners refinance their home mortgage if they were in the position of owing more than their home was worth.
While this program is a great program for some mortgage holders if you fall into several categories you will have to look at other alternatives to refinance your mortgage. Unfortunately, if you have a VA loan and were looking ot take advantage of the streamline low VA rates program, or a FHA mortgage you will not be able to use the HARP program to refinance your home mortgage.
But if you have a conventional mortgage (a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgage) and you are updside down, you can look at the HARP as a possible answer to refinancing. Below are some of the main basic requirements of the HARP program to help you determine whether you should try to qualify for this program.
You must have been ontime with your most recent mortgage payment – or also known as you must be current with your mortgage payment.
You can’t have missed or been more than 30 days late with your mortgage payment over the last 12 months.
You must be in a better, more stable financial situation like lowering your monthly payment or converting a more risky adjustable rate mortgage or an interest only mortgage into a fixed rate mortgage.
You must have no equity in your home and not have your mortgage balance be more than 125% of the value of your home.
You must have sufficient income and proof of the financial means to repay your new mortgage payment
With these simple requirements in mind, you may or may not think that you can qualify for HARP. The best advice is the call a mortgage lender to find out. You can call your current mortgage company first and then call a few other companies to see what kind of answers you get. You ought to call several companies anyway to give you a range of offers to compare. At the very least, you’ll know where you stand with a refinance if you are upsidedown.
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