Product Description
Carolyn Warren better get a bodyguard. Her new tell-all on the mortgage industry exposes so many of the lending industry’s favorite frauds, every loan officer from Seattle to Miami is going to be gunning for her! Mortgage Rip-Offs and Money Savers is like a map that guides you around the carefully camouflaged landmines laid by lenders. And it gives you simple, step-by-step directions for saving tens of thousands of dollars. If you’re looking for ways to save a kin… More >>
Tags: Explains, Industry, Insider, Money, Mortgage, Refinance, Ripoffs, Save, Savers, Thousands
YSP or Yield Spread Premium is compensation that a lender pays to a broker. Oftentimes, YSP is used to assist a borrower in reducing closing costs. Otherwise, a borrower may not have sufficient assets to close a loan. As an example, a ‘par’ rate might be 7%. A broker fee paid by the borrower might be 2% of the loan amount. On a loan size of $150,000, the broker fee would be $3,000. If the borrower was not able to pay all closing costs, YSP could be used to pay the broker fee. The rate with 2% YSP in this example would probably be 8.2%. The borrower is paying the broker fee within the confines of the higher rate, but saves $3,000 at closing. Some transactions might not occur without the use of YSP. Do some lenders or brokers not disclose this? By law they have to disclose it. Please be aware that everyone claiming to be an expert is not always an expert.
Rating: 1 / 5
Best mortgage book I have ever read. Carolyn Warren shed an entirely new light on how the brokers and banks are out to get you.
Rating: 5 / 5
An interesting book with some some amusing anecdotes. But generally, more hype than substance. She could have summarized the book in about 10 pages. Good for entertainment though.
Rating: 3 / 5
Very helpful book on mortgages. Very well put together and an easy read. Great job Carolyn and thanks for the tips!
Rating: 5 / 5
I’ve read most of this book as I prepare to buy a home. It gives some good points such as Yield spread premiums and a couple of others. It also points out the astounding fact that banks have paid off congress to allow them to not disclose certain fees they stick to you (YSPs). But it’s poorly written and the Good Faith Estimates they show you are poorly done– hard to read and do not fit in with what the text is saying. I think if the author updated it with some help it could be valuable. It needs to be reorganized –it’s as if some high school kid wrote it in an afternoon –just chaotic, even in the important sections of yield spread premiums and par rates. It needs to talk about banks more –not just mortgage brokers and discuss the differences between them. Knowing how par rates come about should be detailed. You need to know where to find par rates for the day and week and this book does not tell you and you have to have some better and more recent figures for average closing costs and lender fees. Someone could make a fortune if they wrote a book that would cover all these points in detail. All the stuff about the process of buying a house is nonsense; the key points are the mortgage and what it costs you in the long run.
Aside from the couple of good points I picked up, it is a very frustrating book to read.
See my review of the NOLO book on “Buying your first home” for a suggestion of where to get some good info.
Rating: 2 / 5