Athena Paquette's (apaquette) Blog

I love when I can save people $1000s with some good coaching. Of course they have to follow my advice.Last year, Mr. “R” came in for a refi. He had a 4.99% 30 year fixed and had paid in for 1 year. Now he wanted to refi because rates were low. But when I pulled his credit, I learned he had built ...

Since it’s tax season I am getting a lot of questions about taxes. If you have a tax return that shows $0 income or even a NEGATIVE income, does this mean you cannot buy property?NO.Many of us have tax write-offs that are not used as a negative in analyzing income for qualification purposes.There...

My client who was referred by his accountant came in to see about a refi. He showed me his payment coupon and it said he had 3.625%.I asked him if was wanting cash out; he said no. So I asked him why he wanted to refinance when he has a good rate. He said that 4 years ago when he refi’d, the bank...

No credit, no loan. FALSE!I had a client who was referred by their Realtor, whom I have never met and works in the valley. The client told me that they had been turned down because they have no credit score.The banks claimed that because there was no credit score, they could not sell the loan bec...

Last year Mike was turned down for a loan because he wrote off too many expenses on his tax return. He also had had 3 months off because of an injury, and as a union worker did not get paid for that time off.He could have lowered the interest rate from 4.99% to 3.99 at the time. Unfortunately bet...

FALSE!At times Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s automated underwriting system (DU and LP) will calculate that a borrower has good enough credit or enough equity or enough cash reserves where they find this borrower is low risk and therefore only needs to present 1 tax return.This is very helpful espe...

FHA loans are bad because they have PMI.FALSE. There are no good or bad loans; it depends on what’s right for you. I have client who recently called to refi. Their interest-only loan was about to become principal and interest with DOUBLE the payment they currently pay ($980 to $1900). They also h...

You probably remember the interest only loans from years ago. Those loans were most popular in 2005, 2006, and 2007. Most of them had a 10 year interest only period after which the loan started to amortize (include principal).Here we are 10 years later and people are starting to get the announcem...

Investing out of state is risky. YES and NO. So many investors ask me now where to find good returns on their real estate investment in Southern California. The honest truth is that it’s tough. I have found good investment properties in the central valley and in the IE, and many people followed m...

After waiting 3 months for a loan, a local woman puts a message out on Facebook about finding a good lender. My assistant is friends with her and responded right away that she works for the “smartest lender ever in her 35 year in the business.” Ah, shucks. …This client is a CPA, but has partial o...