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FOR ALL MORTGAGE AND LENDING NEWS VISIT LANSNER ON REAL ESTATE!

People in the market for local real estate can get some help in their search for housing with a new free iPhone app for real estate listings from The Orange County Register. The app provides comprehensive listings and customizable information for homes for rent or sale in Orange County. It also contains 100,000 listings throughout Southern California.

“There has always been a strong appetite for information on buying, renting and selling real estate in Orange County, whether you’re actively looking or just curious about home values in your neighborhood,” said Tom Kelly, senior vice president of advertising and marketing at Orange County Register Communications. “The real estate app is a natural extension of our growing mobile app portfolio, particularly as more people are using their phones to access and search for homes while on the go.”

The app, which can be downloaded free from iTunes, can be customized for a variety of parameters including city, price, property type and number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

A “My Portfolio” tab allows users to add private notes or personal photos for homes that are of interest and set up alerts to be notified of open houses, new listings or price reductions. Listings can be shared by text or email.

Users also will be able to see photo galleries and community data like neighborhood demographics, school information, real estate tax, occupancy rates and a crime index.

The Register partnered with New York-based Gabriels Technology Solutions, which powers the ocregister.com/real estate and ocregister.com/cars portals and development of its real estate app. Gabriels also works with the New York Times, Hearst Newspapers and Scripps Newspapers.

To get the app, CLICK HERE or go to iTunes and search for OCRegister.

Chris Diaz is the founder of Charis Financial, Inc. He has over 14 years experience in helping homeowners with their mortgages and has closed hundreds of short sales over the last 3 years. His website is www.charisfinancialinc.com. Send questions to moneymatters@ocregister.com; reference “short-sales” in the subject line.

Q. I was wondering, how does it happen that some people can stop paying and stay in their homes? Doesn’t the lender send the sheriff or someone to evict?

A. Great question!  There are many different factors that can result in huge differences in what homeowners experience when they stop making their mortgage payments.  This kind of an approach isn’t one that I recommend. The most important thing to realize is that your situation is unique to you and it’s not your neighbor, family member, or friend’s.

What is happening with distressed properties right now is very similar to what was happening with mortgages back before all the trouble with our economy started.  Everybody knew somebody that got a 30-year fixed rate for 2 percent (I’m exaggerating, a little) and wanted that for themselves, of course.  We would call several loan officers, some telling the truth about where rates were and some selling us on what we wanted to hear.  Based on how many people are in trouble with their mortgages adjusting or recasting, I think there were a lot of us who ended up going with the latter loan officer instead of the former.  In hindsight, I hope we can all agree, that the super low rates we were demanding weren’t exactly what we thought they were and actually put us in a worse position than we bargained for.

The issue today is that we’ve all heard about someone who has been able to live in their home, hasn’t made a payment in years, and the bank seems to be ok with it.  The problem is that doing this hurts our economy’s recovery because we’re trading the long term for the short term, just like we did with mortgages several years ago.  Not making payments on mortgages, property taxes, and homeowner associations causes banks to tighten lending, underfunded county budgets, and increased dues for homeowners which leaves everyone worse off.  There are a lot of people upset about how our government is sacrificing the long term for the short term in our economy but this is no different.

So, how does that happen?  Why do the banks allow it?  The answer is that it all depends.  There is no set formula for who gets to stay without paying and who doesn’t.  I’ve seen Bank of America let a client go four years without making a payment and have also seen them foreclose on a house, in a nearby neighborhood, without granting one foreclosure postponement.  There were no noticeable differences in either property for which I could point to a reason why.

However, a bank’s decision to foreclose usually comes down to its investor agreements, time since last payment, and bank policy.  The most important factor is who your investor is.  Your investor is who actually owns your note.  Investors like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Deutsche Bank, etc. have hired banks like BofA and Wells Fargo to service the payment and collection activity for your loan.  Before a servicer can foreclose, they must get investor approval to do so.  There are thousands of investors or investor groups out there and each one can vary how they want to treat the loans that they own.  This is one of the main reasons why everyone’s situation is unique.  Two people can have a loan with Chase and have completely different experiences because of the different investor policies.

There is no safe, ethical way in which people can remain in their homes for an open ended amount of time without making payments but it does happen.

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