COVID-19 Mortgage Relief Programs - YouTube

Coronavirus mortgage relief programs, you've heard a lot about them, but will

they actually help you if your experiencing financial hardship during

the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm Linda Mumma, a member of the

communications team with the Stanislaus County Office of Emergency Services.

You've been asking a lot of questions about this, so we checked in with the

local expert to weigh in. Hi my name is Sondra Yates and I'm a loan officer with

Scenic Oaks Funding. Some common questions are, we have clients that are

maybe in the middle of purchasing a home right now and they're not sure if their

loan is still going close or they're concerned about their employment or

guidelines changing or things like that. So I would encourage you that if

you're in a contract right now and in the middle of purchasing a property that

you maintain contact with your finance company make sure they status of

your employment. There are some provisions that allow even if you are

impacted by COVID but returning to work you know once the stay at home orders

are lifted, that doesn't necessarily inhibit you from buying the home; it may

just put it on pause temporarily. So for the most part the best idea if you're in

the middle of trying to purchase a home right now is to just make sure that you

stay informed with your lender on rules and guidelines and keep them updated on

any changes that might have occurred from when you first applied to maybe

your status now but everyone's goal is to obviously move forward as quickly

through all of this as we can within what we can control. I know a lot of

people are hearing a great deal of information about the stimulus package

that was passed and clients get excited when they hear the thought of missing a

mortgage payment and so the first thing is to 100% get in contact with their

servicing company before you miss a mortgage payment. There's not an

automatic rule; there's not a requirement of how the bank is supposed to handle

that delayed payment and so a few things to consider are if you do need the

forbearance that's what it's there for. If your job has been impacted if perhaps

you've gotten sick yourself or family members or even if you're at home having

to care for your kids because schools closed daycares closed so there's all

kinds of allowances in there and certainly encourage you to contact your

servicer. The flipside is we have to remember that these

not essentially free mortgage payments. There's a few different ways that

lenders can handle it some of the ways are for example let's

just say that you need to miss your main mortgage payment and your lender gives

you a 90-day reprieve; they're not an automatic at the end of 90 days those

were free payments it essentially means maybe the lender in month number four,

once that three months plus that current month due, maybe that lender will take

that total amount of missed payments and divided over 12 months in order to

recoup those payments and keep your loan current. Some companies will allow it to

be added to the back end of your loan.So there's no automatic rule as far as the

lender has to do this in terms of giving you the opportunity to miss the payment

if you're eligible but there's a lot of different ways that it can be factored

in. So I would encourage you to call a servicing company make sure you

understand what's being offered to you and then if needed then seek the counsel

of another trusted advisor to make sure you understand the paperwork.

Because what we wouldn't want you to do is perhaps do a forbearance, maybe you

could have lowered your payment by a refinance or another method that could

lower your payment long-term, because remember none of it is free money so at

some point the money's got to be due. The order that you do things will be very

important and if you do call your servicing company and maybe you do

qualify for a refinance now, a rate savings could be more of a savings

long-term for you so when you do go back to work you're not having to like

replenish your checking and savings accounts and then also have an increased

payment. So I would definitely say especially with lower rates have been

and it's a great time to just do a mortgage checkup. I know a lot of us are

we evaluating a lot of different things what kind of life we've had before we

went in, are we too busy, do we have our priorities straight,

are we budget conscious. You know sometimes we don't really take a look at

those things until we have to and I would say there's no real excuse now

because we all have plenty of time right that now would be a fantastic time to

make sure you know all of your options. For the most part there's some

protection in there for renters as there are for homeowners. Again meant to be

helpful to those that are really pacted economically by this virus right

So if you are renting I would also suggest that you get in contact with

your landlord, whether it's a management company or an individual, and that you

let them know your situation. I know our goal ultimately is for all of us to just

kind of unite as a community and do what we can, but realizing that sometimes our

inability to pay may then impact our landlords ability to pay their mortgage

for example. So if you do go to your landlord then your landlord then can go

to their servicing company of their mortgage and address that they haven't

been able to make a payment perhaps or don't have rental income coming in and

see what their options are at that point. So I think that just as a whole if we

all can just communicate what our situations are so then that gives the

next person that may be impacted the ability to handle it on their end as

well, as we just you know can get through this all together. To reiterate

before you make any moves make sure to do your research and to also

double-check any information your mortgage provider or lender tells you.