Fournier Law Blog

United Wholesale Mortgage, the nation’s second-largest wholesale mortgage lender, is expected to bring back interest-only mortgages as early as next month. The loan, which all but disappeared after the housing crisis, will offer initial interest rates that are slightly higher than a five-year ARM. After five years, the rate will adjust as much as two percent annually and five percent overall with borrowers required to pay down the loan after 10 years. These tricky loans caused many borrowers to go into foreclosure during the housing crisis because lenders qualified them based on their ability to pay the initial payments not the future payments. United Wholesale Mortgage says they will only make these loans to qualified borrowers who can pay 20 percent down, have a 720 credit score and whose future payments would not exceed 42 percent of their current income.
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Zillow Group took steps this week to make it easier for buyers, sellers and real estate professionals to conduct an entire real estate transaction online from listing to closing. The online real estate powerhouse announced this week it will acquire DotLoop, an e-signing service that allows users to digitally share, edit, sign and save everything from a listing agreement to actual closing documents. Zillow’s CEO Spencer Rascoff released a statement about the deal saying, “Now we will be able to make their technology more readily available to Zillow Group’s 10,000 broker partners and the agents they represent, as well as our approximately 100,000 real estate agent advertisers, resulting in a smoother and more efficient transaction process for everyone.”’ (more…)