Rarely is a movie sequel better than the original. I feared that HARP II (Home Affordable Refinance Program) would be another empty “cotton candy” promise from Washington with a lot of fluff and no substance.

A divorce mortgage is a refinance transaction that removes the departing spouse from the current debt secured by the home or other real estate. The spouse retaining the property refinances the loan that is currently in both parties name with a loan in their name alone.

When our automobile needs a tune-up, it provides us with plenty of clues: hard to start, rough running, poor gas mileage, etc. But when a mortgage needs a tune-up it gives no warning.

About half of the mortgages I will close in December are for people who have an existing FHA mortgage and thought they could not refinance because of all the misinformation floating around about the current mortgage environment.

Most of the time, the sequel to a movie is never as good as the original. Recently the federal government announced that it was reviving the Home Ownership Refinancing Program (HARP) allowing homeowners who owe more their home is worth to refinance.

The Ratchet Effect is one of the few economic theories that has any relation to reality. As President Harry Truman succinctly observed, if you laid every economist end to end, they would point in every direction, and only be able to explain things after they have happened.

Freddie Mac reported last week that the average on the 30-year fixed mortgage rose sharply from 3.94% to 4.12%, which according to the National Bureau of Economic Research was the lowest rate ever.

Is it possible to have two FHA mortgages without jumping through a lot of hoops? Maybe.

In addition to not requiring a down payment, VA mortgages are now a superior choice to FHA mortgages in most cases. The reason is simple.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a wonderful program to help purchase homes, in rural areas that are not farms, with no money down.