Ask Liz Weston

Get smart with your money

Real Estate

Q&A: Home equity loans, mortgages and retirement

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Dear Liz: I wish to add a little more information for the retired individual who had trouble getting approved for a home equity loan because he had no regular income (although he had plenty of assets). I’d suggest consulting a mortgage broker, not a bank. An independent broker is not captive to one set of policies. My broker suggested that I set up automatic withdrawals from my IRA to show that I had income in addition to Social Security. Once this was done and I met all the other credit requirements, I closed on a refinance in less than 30 days at a very good interest rate. Then, I discontinued my automatic withdrawals and went back to taking my funds as needed. I learned to use a qualified mortgage broker many years ago after a divorce and not having a job. I could not get a mortgage on my own, but my mortgage broker did and at very good terms. Each time I’ve used a broker, the process went smoothly and was stress free.

Answer: Many people don’t realize that lender policies differ quite a bit. In this case, mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have clarified that mortgage lenders can calculate a retiree’s income based on his or her assets, but not all lenders are willing to do the extra work these loans require.

People who are W-2 employees with solid income histories and great credit scores probably don’t need help finding a loan, because plenty of lenders will want to compete for their business. When your situation is outside the norm, however, a mortgage broker may be able to track down a lender when others balk. The National Assn. of Mortgage Brokers at http://www.namb.org offers referrals.

Q&A: Helping retired parents refinance

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Dear Liz: I am trying to help my retired parents refinance their home. Currently they are paying over 8% interest. (This loan should be illegal.) The problem is their credit score, which is around 536. They had a tax lien in 2004 (it has been paid off for over four years) and some minor credit card issues. The total card debt is less than $1,000. I see several bad footnotes on these cards. Some of the cards have a balance of less than $100. What is the best and fastest way to help them get the mortgage they deserve?

Answer: Your parents don’t have a single credit score. They each have their own scores. Mortgage lenders typically get FICO scores for each borrower from all three credit bureaus, for a total of six scores. Lenders look at the middle score for each person and typically base rates and terms on the lower of those two middle scores.

If that number is indeed 536, your parents have serious, recent credit problems. You may not think an unpaid credit card is a big deal, but it is to credit scoring formulas, which are designed to help lenders gauge a borrower’s risk of default. People with unpaid bills are far more likely to default on a new loan than people who pay their bills on time, and their respective credit scores reflect that reality. What people “deserve” isn’t a factor. How they handle their credit accounts is.

What you’re calling “bad footnotes” are likely records of late payments and perhaps charge-offs and collections activity. Those typically can’t be erased, but your parents can stop the ongoing damage to their credit by paying their bills on time and paying off any overdue bills to their credit card companies.

If the accounts have been sold to collectors, the process gets trickier. Paying off collections typically won’t help credit scores, but lenders usually want these accounts paid off before they will make a new loan. Your parents can try negotiating to have the collection accounts deleted in return for payment, but they won’t be able to erase the late payments and other negative marks reported by the original creditor.

Once they start handling their credit accounts responsibly, their credit scores will start to improve. The improvements will happen slowly, though, and they may well miss the opportunity to refinance at today’s low levels.

Triggering the Gift Tax

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Dear Liz: In 2007, my parents signed over their house deed to my name. Does this trigger the gift tax? They never filled out a gift tax form. Is it too late? Dad has passed on but Mom is still with us. She has Alzheimer’s disease, and I have her power of attorney. Are there no taxes due because of the lifetime exclusion?

Answer: Yes, a gift tax return should have been filed, but no, the gift tax itself almost certainly wasn’t triggered. In 2007, each of your parents would have had to give away more than $1 million in their lifetimes before gift tax would be owed. The gift tax exemption limit has since been raised to more than $5 million.

A tax professional can help you file the overdue return. Then you should consult an attorney about what to do next.

If your parents’ intent was to avoid taxes by transferring the home to you, they probably made a mistake. By giving the house to you, they also gave their tax basis. That means that when you sell the house, you would have to pay capital gains taxes on the difference between the sale price and what they paid for it, perhaps many years ago. The capital gains would be decreased by any improvements made in the subsequent years and by selling costs, but you still could face a substantial tax bill.

If you’d inherited the home after their deaths, on the other hand, you would get a new tax basis that essentially makes those gains tax-free.
You could undo the gift by transferring the deed back to your mother and filing another gift tax return. (Again, no tax probably would be owed.) But that’s probably not something you’d want to do if your mother will qualify for Medicaid, the government program that pays nursing home expenses for the poor, said Howard Krooks, an attorney with Elder Law Associates in Boca Raton, Fla., and president of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys.

Medicaid looks back at the previous five years to see if the family transferred assets for less than fair-market value and delays eligibility if such transfers are found. Since you’re outside the five-year mark, you may want to leave things the way they are if Medicaid is in your mom’s future, Krooks said.

An elder law attorney can help you sort through the options. You can get referrals from the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys at http://www.naela.org.

Lack of savings makes becoming a landlord risky

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Dear Liz: My husband and I, both 44, own and live in one side of a duplex. The owners of the other side are moving next year and have offered to sell it to us. We don’t have enough in savings to cover a 20% down payment for a traditional mortgage, but our neighbors offered to do owner financing. Rentals are hot commodities in our area, and we’ve been told by real estate agents that they could get the place rented within a week for more than we’d make in mortgage payments. This would be an amazing opportunity for us, but if for some reason the property went vacant we couldn’t cover the payment unless we make some major changes to our budget, such as selling our RV ($325 a month) or temporarily suspending contributions to our 457 deferred compensation plans (we contribute $300 a month and both our jobs come with pensions that will replace 60% of our salaries). We currently also make a truck payment ($350 a month) and have $2,300 in credit card debt, but we only have $1,000 in accessible savings.

Answer: You’re not in a great position to be landlords. You have too little savings to cover the inevitable repairs and vacancies you’ll face. Plus, your credit card and vehicle debts indicate you’ve been living beyond your means.

Still, this may be a promising opportunity. A rental that is cash-flow positive — in which the rent collected exceeds the cost of the mortgage, property taxes and insurance — can be a decent long-term investment. If you’re willing to commit to improving your finances and taking this risk, it could work out.

Talk to some other landlords first to see what challenges they face and what typical vacancy rates they experience. You’ll want to locate a lawyer who understands your state’s landlord-tenant laws to draw up any paperwork you’ll need.

If you decide to proceed, sell the RV and use whatever’s left after paying off the loan to pay down your credit card debt. Then redirect the RV payment to paying off the rest of the cards and building up your savings. (A note for the future: RVs are fun, but they’re luxuries, and luxuries should be paid for in cash.)

Don’t compromise your retirement savings. Your generous pension could get whittled down in the future, or you might lose those jobs. Having a decent retirement kitty of your own is simply prudent.

Reverse mortgage: what to consider

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Dear Liz: All my friends have said I should get a reverse mortgage to be able to live more comfortably and still stay in my house. I would think our greedy banking system would give you only 50% of value and have a high interest rate that would chew up the remaining value. What is your advice on the merits of this option?

Answer: A reverse mortgage program that lets you tap too much of your home equity wouldn’t be in business very long.

Reverse mortgages allow people 62 and older to borrow against the value of their homes without having to make payments on the debt. Instead, the amount they owe typically increases over time because interest is charged on the loan, and that adds up. Lenders get paid back when the owner moves out, sells the house or dies. If the house is worth less than the debt, the lender (or more often the insurer) suffers a loss.

Too-generous lending standards have already caused trouble for previous iterations of the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage, the federally insured option most often used by borrowers. Too many borrowers grabbed big lump sums up front, straining the program’s reserves and leaving the borrowers with few options if they ran into hard times later. Defaults rose as borrowers failed to pay their property taxes and insurance premiums as required.

The Federal Housing Administration, which insures HECMs, has tightened the rules so that borrowers can access less of their equity upfront. Fees also have increased.

How much you can borrow using a HECM depends on your age, the home’s value and current interest rates. Interest rates for lump-sum withdrawals are fixed, while those for lines of credit you can tap over time are variable.

You’ll certainly get a better (or at least less expensive) deal if you borrow 60% or less of your home’s value. The mortgage insurance premium for loans below that level is 0.5% of the home’s appraised worth under the new federal government rules that go into effect Monday. Those borrowing more than 60% face a premium equal to 2.5% of the home’s value. That’s in addition to a 1.25% annual mortgage insurance premium.

There’s no getting around the fact that these are expensive and complex loans. They’re usually not a great choice for people who have other assets to tap. They also can prove a land mine for people who drain their home equity too early and wind up with no resources later in life. On the other hand, they can provide a more comfortable retirement for those who would otherwise be strapped for cash, particularly if the borrowers opt for a steady stream of monthly payments rather than the upfront lump sum.

If you are considering a reverse mortgage, you should talk to a fee-only financial planner who is familiar with the program and who can review your other alternatives.

Forgotten credit card trashes scores

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Dear Liz: My husband and I are in the process of refinancing our mortgage. I just received my credit report in the mail, and my score was 724. The report indicated that a delinquency resulted in my less-than-stellar score. When I went to the credit bureau site to see where the problem was, I saw that I had a $34 charge on a Visa last year. I rarely use that card, so I did not realize that I had a balance. As a result, I had a delinquent balance for five months last year. I am sick about this, as I always pay my bills on time. To think that my credit score was affected by something so insignificant is really bumming me out. Is there anything I can do to fix this?

Answer: You can try, but creditors are often reluctant to delete true negative information from your credit files. That’s why it’s so important to monitor all of your credit accounts, and to consider signing up for automatic payments so that this doesn’t happen again.

You should know that your mortgage lender won’t look at just one credit score when evaluating your application. Typically, mortgage lenders would request FICO credit scores from each of the three bureaus for both you and your husband, then use the lower of the two middle scores to determine your rate. Even if 724 did turn out to be the lowest of the six scores, you should still get a decent rate, since that’s considered a good score.