Jack Guttentag
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Refinance answers are available using online calculatorsNov 24, 2018 6:00 am - Q. Should I refinance? A. This question was posed to me recently through Quora, the question and answer website. I did not answer it there because an adequate answer in...
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Are rare seashells a good retirement investment?Nov 17, 2018 5:00 am - Are rare seashells a good retirement investment? I had to smile when this question was posed because seashells have long been a passion of mine, and I still receive grea...
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Why Not Use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to Reduce Mortgage Costs?Nov 10, 2018 5:00 am - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have now been in federal governmental conservatorship for 10 years, with no end in sight and no plan for their future. While the prevailing po...
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Debt consolidation during a period of rising interest ratesOct 27, 2018 6:00 am - Debt consolidation is the conversion of high-rate debt into lower-rate debt in order to reduce total interest costs. Homeowners with large amounts of credit card debt wh...
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Escrow taxes and insurance or pay them yourself?Oct 13, 2018 6:00 am - Mortgage lenders generally require borrowers to include taxes and insurance premiums in their monthly mortgage payments. The additional payments are placed in escrow unt...
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Introducing the quick mortgage shopperSep 08, 2018 6:00 am - Over the years, the topic that has attracted the largest number of readers on my site is mortgage shopping. I just counted 70 articles on the subject, going back to the ...
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Distinguishing mortgage shopping sites from 'gotcha' sitesAug 20, 2018 6:47 am - A mortgage-shopping site is designed to allow a potential borrower to select the best offer from a competing group of lenders before contacting one, avoiding the sales p...
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Daily interest: A festering sore in consumer loan marketsAug 11, 2018 6:00 am - Question: What do home mortgage loans (including second mortgage loans), retail installment loans, automobile loans, home improvement loans and mobile home loans have in...
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More thoughts on curbing HUD losses on reverse mortgagesAug 04, 2018 6:00 am - My article last week stated that large losses on HECM reverse mortgages could be attributed to adverse selection. The program was attracting too many of those in despera...
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Curbing HUD losses on HECM reverse mortgagesJul 28, 2018 7:00 am - The HECM reverse mortgage program has been bleeding red ink. Losses on transactions in which the loan balance at termination exceeds the net recoverable property value h...