Eleanor's RTP Blog

We are talking to folks every week who lost a job in the last several years, lost medical insurance – or had some other tragedy that made it necessary for them to take steps they never thought they would have to.  The reality is that in today’s economic conditions, unfortunately, bankruptcy has b...

I've been in the Mortgage Business since I was 15 - working with my dad during the summers at a PMI Company putting together MBS Packages for sale.That's more than 40 years of experience watching the Industry "find" fax machines, computers, pagers, and now putting a toe in the water with social m...

USDA has long seen the benefit of a College Degree – and in fact USDA Home Loan Underwriters will use Higher Education as a “compensating factor” when a family is close on the debt ratios!  Unlike FHA and VA home loan underwriting, though, the no money down home loan programs offered through USDA...

We’ve had a ton of questions from folks, looking for information about their Student Loans, and how the payments on the deferred student loans, and IBR Student Loan payments will be looked at when they are applying for a mortgage.  Unfortunately, these questions are pretty difficult to answer in ...

If I wasn’t in the mortgage business, I would think you could just paint somebody’s house on the weekend, and take that cash to put down on a house. Well, it’s not as easy as that when it comes to what the folks approving the loan are looking for. Bank Underwriters want “sourced” deposits, and te...

On March 26th, I woke up in a different body... literally.  I had a stroke, and there are some pretty important lessons I've learned in the past month, that could change your life too.   The  first thing I think everyone should know is that not all strokes leave you with the inability to talk, or...

We get questions quite often on this site, and we try to answer them as quickly as possible.  Some of them really need a “whole page” for us to answer, and this is one we’ve seen quite often.  Married Couples who want to buy a house, but… they want to buy but one has bad credit.  They want to bu...

The USDA Home Loan Program in NC adopted the HUD Handbook for Property Evaluations in 2009.  With that adoption of the FHA minimum Property standards – the USDA Appraisers no longer need to calculate the additional insulation requirements USDA Loans traditionally required. The USDA Loan Private R...

  Many of the New Home Communities popping up around North Carolina do not fall within the USDA RD Home Loan program footprint. This means that potential Home Buyers can not take advantage of the USDA Home Loan NC program that requires no down payment. The NC Affordable Housing Agency in Raleigh...

Washington NC is one of those places I’d always heard of, but never visited. In fact, my family always called it “Little Washington” and I literally thought that was the name until we went through there last weekend!  We started looking at homes in this area (because that’s what we do) and were p...