The worst of the financial crisis is over and the number of foreclosures is down sharply from only a few years ago, yet many of the mortgage firms, however, remain the same — Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase & Fannie Mae. The latest rankings,...
The Consumer Protection Financial Bureau fined the 3 leading reverse mortgage lenders in January, 2017 for using deceptive advertising to sell reverse mortgages. The fines totaled $800k and the bureau ordered the company to stop using misleading ads, some of which...
Due to shifts in global bond markets, the average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 3.49 percent on Monday, which is down from 4.2 percent a year ago. Therefore, it’s a good time to check the rate on your home mortgage because you might be able to...
Deciding whether to buy a home or rent a home is a huge financial decision. Yet, some of the factors that go into this decision are difficult to account for in dollar terms. First, for whatever reason, rental prices may skyrocket in a particular place so to avoid...
Shaffer & Gaier’s client agreed to a $30,000 cash settlement with Deutsche Bank in an action filed by the banking giant to foreclose on his New Jersey investment property. When purchased in 2006, the property was worth approximately $110,000, but at the time of...
Shaffer & Gaier’s clients owned a vacation home on the Jersey Shore since 1989, and in 2007 a mortgage broker qualified them to refinance into an “interest-only, negative amortization loan”. While our clients’ loan allowed them to make “interest-only” payments...