Loans

Current Housing Market Status:

In the last 3 or 4 years, a large number of homeowners have been trying to complete a “loan workout” with their current mortgage lender to lower the interest rate and improve the terms of their loan. Many lenders have chosen not to accept any new terms, rather, let the property go into foreclosure.

Because lenders have an overwhelming number of properties in foreclosure, they are starting to accept loan modifications via their loss mitigation departments. The time is ripe for consumers (who own homes) to take action and request that their loans be modified towards better terms and a lower interest rate they can afford, if they have high interest rate sub-prime loans or are at risk for foreclosure.

Since, the rate of foreclosures is increasing, everyday, the federal government, congress and the president have approved and signed a new bill which will allow homeowners to take advantage of a new “FHA – Hope for Homeowners Program” designed to save more than 400,000 homeowners from foreclosure. This program will go “live” on October 1st, 2008.

The new FHA loan program will assist homeowners who are currently in foreclosure, close to foreclosure or those who have high interest rate mortgage loans like those called sub-prime loans. The program is different than a loan modification in several ways.

The following is a bulleted layout of the deference’s between completing a loan modification and getting approved to do a FHA -Hope for Homeowners program.

Loan Modification:

1. You can recast your current loan into different terms, with the hope to benefit from a lower interest rate, which is fixed rather than an adjustable interest rate.

2. The costs of the loan modification are rolled on the “back-end” of the loan, which will increase the amount of money you owe.

3. The loss mitigation department may choose to keep the amount (that you own on your loan) higher than your current home value. Or they may choose to lower that amount, some, but not as much as it could be to make your new payment comfortable in the long term. This could mean that you may be in financial jeopardy, in the future.

4. It’s a fact, what cause your current lender to be interested in keeping your loan on their books are the servicing rights. They make money servicing your loan over the term of the amortization schedule. The problem is that many lenders have filed for bankruptcy or just got out of the business (due to poor credits markets) and the servicing rights have been sold to other investors. This often causes a strain, since; the servicer does not actually have your loan documents at their facility, so they rely on others to get your original loan information to them for review. This process can cause the loan modification workout to be slow, in many cases. Timing is very important, since, homeowners are not knowledgeable in the process and they often wait to late to get the loan modification process started. It is important to communicate with your current lender and get the loan modification process stated, months before your home goes to foreclosure sale.

5. If your request for a loan modification is rejected, you may want to try it again in a few months, since; some lenders don’t document the loan modification attempt you made. They are often motivated by changes in the housing market and their intent changes as more and more loans go into default. It does not hurt to try again. It is smart to work with a loan modification specialist, a seasoned loan officer or an attorney who specializes in real estate, mortgage lending and loan modifications. They understand how to speak to loss mitigation department, personnel and can get a general idea of the mood and trends of your lenders loss mitigation department.

6. Many loan modification specialist work together with attorney firms to get the loss mitigation departments to act in a timely manner. Those same attorney firms work with the loan modification specialist to make sure the original loan documents are not fraud ridden. This is a good approach, yet it can cost the homeowner additional money, since both the loan modification specialist and the attorney need to be paid for their services.

7. Homeowners are required to pay the loan modification specialists and attorneys for the services, provided. Many homeowners think that the cost will be included in the new loan amount, but this is not the case. Logically, lenders are already losing money when they agree to modify the loan terms and conditions for the homeowner, so, you can bet that they will not agree to “package” the costs of doing the loan modification into the new loan. That cost is paid by the homeowner, directly to the loan modification specialist and/or the attorney. The cost can range between $995.00 and $, 5000.00; as an average. Many loan modification specialist, senior loan officers and attorney firms can work out a payment plan, yet, many require at least 1/2 upfront before they start the loan workout. Understand, there is no guarantee that your loan modification or loan workout will be accepted. You will still have to pay your representation your agreed amount. A large percentage of loan modifications and workouts are accepted. So, it’s a good bet, since, most people do not want to loose their homes to foreclosure.

8. Loss mitigation representatives, (most often) do not require you to pay for a new appraisal. Instead, they have your representative provide census track data, a BPO (broker price opinion) or a print out of valuation from title company market sales data. 9. If you are in foreclosure and costs have been incurred from posting your foreclosure sales data, attorney fees, title costs or other costs; you could be liable for those costs, if our current lender requires it (as a requirement to the loan modification).

10. Loss mitigation departments may choose to approve you for a new loan which is (another adjustable or tiered -fixed loan). Be careful. Do your homework or “talk-it-over” with your representation.

FHA- Hope for Homeowners Program:

1. The federal housing administration (FHA) has required that all homeowners who become approved for this program accept a 30 year fixed rate program. No other loan types will be accepted. You can only qualify for this program.

2. FHA will loan up to 90% of the current value of your property. This means that if you purchased your property for a higher purchase price and currently have a loan amount higher than what the value of the property is presently, you can become approved to do a loan amount at 90% of what your current house is worth.

3. If you have more than a 1st trust deed lien (subordinate liens) on your property and your property value has severely, diminished; your current lenders may take the loss when you get approved under the “Hope for Homeowners Program”. Usually, the subordinate lenders loose, unless they purchase the primary lien. Most do not purchase the 1st trust deed lien. So, the subordinate lender takes a loose on their investment.

4. FHA’s goal is to keep as many homeowners in their homes. They understand that it would be better to do a loan for a homeowner rather than have that property go into foreclosure, be place into the retail real estate marketplace, causing a further degrading of the housing market.

5. The FHA underwriting guidelines are currently more liberal than any other loan guidelines in the current market. FHA is more forgiving in their approach to mortgage lending.

6. The FHA underwriting guidelines have not been disclosed. As October, 1st, 2008 approaches, lenders, processors and underwriters will have a more clear idea as to what is required to get a loan approval.

7. Homeowners will (probably) be required to pay for a new FHA appraisal, as a condition for loan approval and closing. Underwriting guidelines will determine if this is true. The average costs for an FHA appraisal is ranges, $300 – $450.

8. Income to debt ratios will be determined and posted in the underwriting guidelines. Consult your loan modification specialist or loan officer.

9. The loan servicing companies that service, sub-prime loans will (probably) be more inclined to accept a loan modification, since they will want to transfer the lien to FHA, rather than keep it on their books. They have taken huge losses and have an overwhelming desire to get rid if their current problems. Have patience with these lenders, since, they do not keep your actual loan documents at their facilities. They will have to request them. Many loss mitigation personnel are stressed and will want to make a determination as to your file, fast. This is an advantage to you! Work closely with your loan officer to get the items needed for loan submission.

10. If you live in a heavily populated area like Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Miami, etc., you will more than likely have a higher percentage of success with a loss mitigation department. This is because there are more homes in foreclosure in concentrated housing areas.

11. Even though we have not seen the FHA underwriter guidelines, (since they have not been delivered to the underwriters) they will be available on or before October, 1st, 2008. We can expect that the guidelines will probably focus on a person ability to make the new housing payment and not the persons credit score. We call this “ability to pay”!

12. If you’re, FHA -”Hope for Homeowners Program” loan application is accepted by FHA; your current lender will still have to accept the condition which FHA places on the loan. This means that your current lender may to take a loss in equity by accepting the FHA loan buyout, offered.

13. The good news is that your current lender (already) understands that they will take a loss in equity, if the property goes into foreclosure. If they don’t accept the FHA buyout, they may have to place your foreclosed property into the retail sales marketplace. This means that they may have to pay a Realtor up to 6% commission, wait for the property to be purchased, incur additional holding cost, pay a gardener, electricity and water bills. All the while, they realize that the property will probably be reduced in value even more as additional foreclosure properties come on to the marketplace. This is not a rosy situation for them, so, most will realize that it would be better to sell the loan to FHA and take less of a financial loss.

14. The main benefit to your current lender in accepting the terms of a FHA buyout is that under the FHA guidelines, they can benefit from a portion of any equity gain in the property for up to 5 years, at the time FHA buys the loan. If the homeowner chooses to sell the home within the 5 year period after the close of the new FHA loan; the lender can participate in a percentage of any equity gain. This single condition will cause many lenders to accept the FHA loan buyout. Ask your loan officer for information regarding lender participation in an equity gains.

15. Many lenders are fully; “FHA approved lenders” and will require that your loan be recast within the FHA loan department of your current lender. Therefore, ask your loan officer if your current lender (note holder) is FHA licensed. This will save you time and headaches, since; many loan officers will try to do the loan on your behalf without determining if your current lender wants the new FHA loan on their own books. This may be a condition for an FHA loan approval, by your current lender. If our current lender is already an approved lender, they might as well sell the loan to FHA, direct, correct?

16. Third party cost like, attorney fees, loss mitigation fees, foreclosure posting fees, etc., will be absorbed by your current lender under the FHA – Hope for Homeowners Program. You will not incur these fees under the program. The lender will take this loss, too.

17. As part of the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, 1st time homebuyers are encouraged to purchase homes between April, 2008 and July 2009. They can receive up to $7500 dollars in tax credits from the federal government. This program has been established to speed up the housing recovery by getting people to purchase homes. Additionally, it will cause home sellers to purchase homes, as well, since they are often “move up” buyers. This program is part of the overall attempt to correct the bad housing market.

18. Credit Score vs. Your Ability to Make the Payment: These two factors will be outlined in the underwriting guidelines. I would expect that the ability to pay will override the credit score issue, since, most people having problems making their housing payments, already, have degraded credit scores. Consult your loan officer for details.

Summary:

Loan Modification:

Consumers, now have several options to preserve home ownership. If one option does not work try the other. Remember, time is of the essence, so act promptly to give your self time to use one or both options.

1. Loan modification is a good option for many, if your have proper representation and get a favorable deal. 2. You will have to pay the costs for this type of loan modification. 3. You will not have to pay for an appraisal, in most cases.

Your commercial real estate transaction does not close unless the loan is approved. You can also improve the cash flow if the interest rate for the loan is low. So the more you know about commercial loans, the better decision you can make about your commercial real estate investment.

Loan Qualification: Most of you have applied for a residential loan and are familiar with the process. You provide to the lender with:

W2′s and/or tax returns so it can verify your income,
Bank and/or brokerage statements so it can verify your liquid assets and down payment.
In general the more personal income you make the higher loan amount you qualify. You could even borrow 95% of the purchase price for 1-unit principal residence with sufficient income.

For commercial loan, the loan amount a lender will approve is based primarily on the net operating income (NOI) of the property, not your personal income. This is the fundamental difference between residential and commercial loan qualification. Therefore, if you buy a vacant commercial building, you will have difficult time getting the loan approved since the property has no rental income. However, if you

Occupy at least 51% of the space for your business; you can apply for SBA loan.
Have sufficient income from another commercial property used as cross collateral; there are lenders out there that want your business.
Loan to Value: Commercial lenders tend to be more conservative about the loan to value (LTV). Lenders will only loan you the amount such that the ratio of NOI to mortgage payment for the loan, called Debt Coverage Ratio (DCR) or Debt Service Ratio (DSR) must be at least 1.25 or higher. This means the NOI has to be at least 25% more than the mortgage payment. In other words, the loan amount is such that you will have positive cash flow equal to at least 25% of the mortgage payment. So, if you purchase a property with low cap rate, you will need a higher down payment to meet lender’s DCR. For example, properties in California with 5% cap often require 50% or more down payment. To make the matter more complicated, some lenders advertise 1.25% DCR but underwrite the loan with interest rate 2%-3% higher than the note rate! Since the financial meltdown of 2007, most commercial lenders prefer keeping the LTV at 70% or less. Higher LTV is possible for high-quality properties with strong national tenants, e.g. Walgreens or in the areas that the lenders are very familiar and comfortable with. However, you will rarely see higher than 75% LTV. Commercial real estate is intended for the elite group of investors so there is no such thing as 100% financing.

Interest Rate: The interest for commercial is dependent on various factors below:

Loan term: The rate is lower for the shorter 5 years fixed rate than the 10 years fixed rate. It’s very hard to get a loan with fixed rate longer than 10 years unless the property has a long term lease with a credit tenant, e.g. Walgreens. Most lenders offer 20-25 years amortization. Some credit unions use 30 years amortization. For single-tenant properties, lenders may use 10-15 years amortization.
Tenant credit rating: The interest rate for a drugstore occupied by Walgreens is much lower than one with HyVee Drugstore since Walgreens has much stronger S&P rating.
Property type: The interest rate for a single tenant night club building will be higher than multi-tenant retail strip because the risk is higher. When the night club building is foreclosed, it’s much harder to sell or rent it compared to the multi-tenant retail strip. The rate for apartment is lower than shopping strip. To the lenders, everyone needs a roof over their head no matter what, so the rate is lower for apartments.
Age of the property: Loan for newer property will have lower rate than dilapidated one. To the lender the risk factor for older properties is higher, so the rate is higher.
Area: If the property is located in a growing area like Dallas suburbs, the rate would be lower than a similar property located in the rural declining area of Arkansas. This is another reason you should study demographic data of the area before you buy the property.
Your credit history: Similarly to residential loan, if you have good credit history, your rate is lower.
Loan amount: In residential mortgage, if you borrow less money, i.e. a conforming loan, your interest rate will be the lowest. When you borrow more money, i.e. a jumbo or super jumbo loan, your rate will be higher. In commercial mortgage, the reverse is true! If you borrow $200K loan your rate could be 8%. But if you borrow $3M, your rate could be only 4.5%! In a sense, it’s like getting a lower price when you buy an item in large volume at Costco.
The lenders you apply the loan with. Each lender has its own rates. There could be a significant difference in the interest rates. Hard money lenders often have highest interest rates. So you should work with someone specialized on commercial loans to shop for the lowest rates.
Prepayment flexibility: If you want to have the flexibility to prepay the loan then you will have to pay a higher rate. If you agree to keep the loan for the term of the loan, then the rate is lower.
Commercial loans are exempt from various consumers’ laws intended for residential loans. Some lenders use “360/365″ rule in computing mortgage interest. With this rule, the interest rate is based on 360 days a year. However, the interest payment is based on 365 days in a year. In other words, you have to pay an extra 5 days (6 days on leap year) of interest per year. As a result, your actual interest payment is higher than the rate stated in the loan documents because the effective interest rate is higher.

Prepayment Penalty: In residential loan, prepayment penalty is often an option. If you don’t want it, you pay higher rate. Most commercial loans have prepayment penalty. The prepayment penalty amount is reduced or stepped down every year. For example on a 5 year fixed rate loan, the prepayment penalty for the first year is 5% of the balance. It’s reduced to 4% and then 3%, 2%, 1% for 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th year respectively. For conduit loans, the prepayment amount is huge as you have to pay for the interest between the note rate and the equivalent US Treasure rate for the whole loan balance for the remaining term of the loan. This prepayment penalty is called defeasance or yield maintenance.

Loan Fees: In residential mortgage, lenders may offer you a “no points, no costs” option if you pay a higher rate. Such an option is not available in commercial mortgage. You will have to pay between ½ to 1 point loan fee, appraisal cost, environment assessment report fee, and processing/underwriting fee. A lender normally issues to the borrower a Letter of Interest (LOI) if it is interested in lending you the money. The LOI states the loan amount, interest rate, loan term and fees. Once the borrower pays about $5000 for loan application fees for third party reports (appraisal, phase I, survey), the lender starts underwriting the loan. It orders its own appraisal using its own pre-approved MAI (Member of Appraisal Institute) appraisers. If the lender approves the loan and you do not accept it, then the lender keeps all the fees.

Loan Types: While there are various commercial loan types, most investors often encounter 3 main types of commercial loans:

1. Small Business Administration or SBA loan. This is a government guaranteed loan intended for owner-occupied properties. When you occupy 51% or more of the space in the building (gas station or hotel is considered an owner-occupied property), you are qualified for this program. The key benefit is you can borrow up to 90% of purchased price.

2. Portfolio loan. This is the type of commercial loans in which the lenders use their own money and keep on its balance sheet until maturity. Lenders are often more flexible because it’s their money. For example East West Bank, US Bank and some life insurance companies are portfolio lenders. These lenders require the borrowers to provide a personal guaranty for the payment of the loans. And thus these loans are recourse loans.

3. Conduit loan or CMBS (Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities) loan. This was a very popular commercial loan program prior to the 2007 recession where its market size was over $225 Billion in 2007. It was down to just a few Billion in 2009 and is making a comeback with issuance of almost $100 Billion in 2015. Many individual loans of different sizes, at different locations are pooled together, rated from Triple-A (Investment grade) to B (Junk) and then sold to investors over the world as bonds. Therefore it’s not possible to prepay the loan because it’s already part of a bond. These are the characteristics of conduit loans:

The rate is often lower. It is often around 1.2% over the 5 or 10 year US Treasury rates compared to 1.85-3% over the 5 or 10 year US Treasury rates for portfolio loan. Some CMBS loans have interest only payments. Since the rate is lower and borrowers are required to pay interest only, the LTV can be over 75%. Low rates and high LTV are the key advantage of conduit loan.

Conduit lenders only consider big loan amount, e.g. at least $2M.

Lenders require borrower to form a single-asset entity, e.g. Limited Liability Company (LLC) to take title to the property. This is intended to shield the property from other the borrower’s liabilities.

The loans are non-recourse which means the property is the only collateral for the loan and the borrowers do not have to sign personal guaranty. And so these loans are popular among investment firms, REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust), TIC (Tenants in Common) companies that invest in commercial real estate using funds pooled from various investors.

If the borrower later wants to sell the property before the loan matures, the new buyer must assume the loan as the seller cannot pay off the loan. This makes it harder to sell the property because the buyer needs to come up with a significant amount of cash for the difference between the purchase price and loan balance. Furthermore, the lender/loan servicer could reject the loan assumption application for various reasons as there are no strong incentives for it to do so. The loan servicer can also impose new conditions to loan assumption approval, e.g. increase reserve amount by several hundred thousand dollars. If you are a 1031-exchange buyer, you may want to think twice about buying a property with loan assumptions. Should the lender reject your loan assumption application, you may end up not qualifying for the 1031 exchange and be liable for paying capital gain. This is the hidden cost of conduit loan.

Even when you are allowed to prepay the loan, it costs an arm and a leg if you want to prepay the loan. The prepayment penalty is often called Defeasance or Yield Maintenance. Basically you have to pay the difference in interest between the note rate of your loan and the applicable US Treasury rate for the remaining years of the loan! This amount is often so high that the seller normally requires the buyer to assume the loan. You can compute the defeasance from www.defeasewithease.com website. Besides the defeasance, you also have to pay 1% loan assumption fee. This is another hidden cost of conduit loan.
Conduit loan may be the loan for you if you intend to keep the loan for the life of the loan that you agree to at the beginning. Otherwise it could be very costly due to its payoff inflexibility.

Lenders Coverage Area: Commercial lenders would do business in areas they are familiar with or have local offices. For example East West Bank will only consider properties in California. Many commercial lenders don’t lend to out-of-state investors.

Lenders Coverage Property Types: Most commercial lenders would only consider certain types of properties they are familiar with. For example Chase would do apartments and owner-occupied office buildings but not retail properties or gas stations. Westford Financial specializes on church financing. Comerica concentrates on owner-occupied properties.

Lenders Escrow Accounts: Most lenders require borrowers to pay 1/12 of property taxes each month. Some lenders require borrowers to have repairs and/or TI (Tenants Improvement) reserve account to make sure the borrowers have sufficient funds to cover major repairs or leasing expenses should existing tenants not renew the leases.

Conclusion: Commercial loans are a lot more complex and difficult to obtain with loan approvals more unpredictable than residential loans. As an investor, it is in your best interest to employ a professional commercial loan broker to