A mortgage repayment calculator is a wonderful tool that will allow you as a home owner or prospective home owner to make sound financial decisions regarding your home mortgage. With a mortgage repayment calculator you can be assured that you have all of the details you will need heading into your loan negotiations and you can also rest assured that you have all of the facts that you need if you are seeking to refinance your mortgage. You could also get all of your information together if you are interested in paying off your mortgage early and trying to decide how much extra money you should put towards your mortgage each month. This calculator is very flexible and will give you all of the options you would ever need to make solid decisions regarding your mortgage repayment.

A mortgage repayment calculator is most often found online. most major financial institutions and personal finance blogs offer some form of mortgage repayment calculator because consumers want to have access to information and that is what this calculator will do. The calculator will allow you to have options and to be creative while you think through your mortgage repayment decisions. For example, if you know that have a 30 year fixed mortgage and you want to pay the mortgage loan off in 20 years, you can simply plug that into the mortgage repayment calculator and it will tell you how much money you will need to pay extra every month to meet that goal. Conversely, if you only have a certain amount of money extra per month that you could put towards a mortgage payment, you could input those figures and the calculator would tell you how many years of repayment you would save by making that set extra monthly payment.

All mortgage repayment calculators are not created equal however. There are certain criteria you should look for when choosing one. Make sure that the website or service offering the calculator does not collect your data or require a subscription to use their service. You will want to stay away from this because there are many calculators for free. Also make sure that the calculator gives you accurate numbers. Many calculators will try and skew your numbers to make it seem like you can afford more house than you really can. This will give you a false buying impression and could lead to bad financial decisions if you are not careful.

Deutsche Bank AG and subsidiary MortgageIT “repeatedly lied” on Federal Housing Administration originations, according to a civil lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. MortgageIT “recklessly selected mortgages that violated program rules in blatant disregard of whether borrowers could make mortgage payments,” the suit alleges. Deutsche Bank said it is still reviewing the complaint.

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Seattle, WA, United States (AHN) – A recent survey on home buyers has revealed that most don’t know the basics about mortgages.

Researchers in a new Zillow Mortgage Marketplace report outline how 46 percent of survey respondents answered questions about mortgage information wrong.

As the housing market continues its struggle to rebound from the economic crisis that was fuelled by risky home loans, 44 percent of home buyers admitted they still are not confident in their knowledge of mortgages or the mortgage process.

An example of this is trend is when questioned about the specifics of adjustable rate mortgages more than half (57 percent) of prospective home buyers didn’t understand how they worked.

“Most people wouldn’t jump out of a plane if they didn’t know how to use a parachute, yet each year many buyers commit to the largest loan they will take out in their lifetimes without understanding essential information about mortgages,” said Zillow Mortgage Marketplace Director Erin Lantz. “By simply spending a few hours researching how a mortgage works, and by shopping around for the most competitive rates and fees, buyers can save a lot of money.”

Additional survey findings:

• Nearly half (45 percent) of polled prospective home buyers believe that they should always buy mortgage discount points when obtaining a mortgage.
• More than half (55 percent) of prospective home buyers in the study do not understand that mortgage rates vary throughout the day.
• More than one-third (37 percent) of prospective home buyers who were polled believe that pre-qualifying for a loan means they have secured financing.
• More than two in five (42 percent) of the polled prospective home buyers do not understand that Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans are available to all buyers.

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In its Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices , the Federal Reserve said that “moderate net fractions of banks” said that demand weakened for prime mortgages. In fact, demand for closed-end loans has declined for three consecutive quarters. But demand for commercial mortgages strengthened.

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A new trial will be sought by former employees against Quicken Loans Inc., Nichols Kaster PLLP said in March following a jury verdict in favor of Quicken. California’s Second District Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision to award a former employee substantially less than she was seeking from Fidelity Capital Mortgage Brokers. A U.S. District judge denied a request for a dismissal in a whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former Fannie Mae executive.

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Depending upon your financial position there can be both benefits and negative aspects to 40 year mortgage programs. The biggest advantage of a 40 year fixed rate mortgage is the ability to amortize the repayment of the loan’s principal and interest over a 480 month period of time rather than the 360 months that are associated with a 30 year loan. This means that one’s monthly payment will likely be lower than with any fixed rate mortgage program with a shorter amortization schedule. The biggest downside to 40 year home loans is that, due to the longer duration of the loan, consumers will end up paying considerably more in interest over the life of their loans.

While 40 year mortgages remain fairly under the radar when compared to other fixed rate products such as 30 year mortgages, 20 year mortgages, and 15 year home loans, they have attracted some interest especially in markets with higher real estate prices. In certain areas such as the Northeast and coastal California, many homebuyers find themselves in positions where they simply cannot afford the payments associated with other fixed rate mortgage programs. Thus leaving the only viable options either a 40 year mortgage or an adjustable rate product. There are plenty of people out there who have either been burned by ARM products in the past or know someone who has. This leads us to another potential reason to consider a 40 year mortgage. If people are only planning on being in their properties for a short period of time, say 3-5 years, but are concerned about taking out adjustable rate loans, then 40 year home loans might be a decent option to consider. Due to how loans are front loaded with higher portions of monthly payments being applied to interest during the first few years of a loan, there is not a huge amount of principal reduction.

With all of that being said, the flip side argument for 40 year mortgages is that consumers could essentially be overextending themselves by borrowing on a home that maybe they cannot truly afford without this type of financial instrument. And, this instrument can equate to a considerably higher amount of interest over the life of a loan while principal reduction takes longer than with a 30 year mortgage.

It may not come as a surprise that few homeowners actually take out 30 or 40 year mortgages with the intention of remaining in their homes for 30 to 40 years. Some studies have shown that the average US home homeowner sells his or her home in an average 7 to 10 years. If someone is considering taking out a 40 year mortgage, it would likely be in their best interest to do a little bit of math and analysis to see what the difference in interest payments and principal reduction is between the various programs to ensure that they are making a well education decision. Also, consumers should consult a licensed mortgage professional before electing a mortgage program.

A borrower is likely to qualify for reverse mortgage loan if he is at least 62 years of age and have a house in his name. He doesn’t have to make any monthly payments back to the lender and receives payments in the form of a one-time lump sum, a monthly distribution, a credit line or a combination of all these. In addition, he does not have to pay back the amount until he decides to leave his home and generally pays the sum back from its sale.

When a borrower understands all the pros and cons carefully before applying, he won’t encounter any unlikely events in the process. However, there are small complications when a senior homeowner who has a reverse mortgage remarries. If the borrower has jointly taken this loan in the name of his first spouse and himself, it is essential to know that there will be no equity for his second spouse. The second spouse may lose your home if you pass away before your first spouse.

There is an easy solution to this problem and it should be discussed with the lender well in advance so that you do not encounter any surprises. If you want keep your spouse in the home, you can refinance your reverse mortgage into a new one with your second spouse on the title. This is only possible if your spouse is older than 62 and you still have accumulated equity in the home.

However, you may not be able to refinance your existing loan if your home’s value has dropped. Under such cases, you must consult with an experienced lender about this situation and they will be able to provide you with the apt solution that you can take to make your home secure.

A 2-basis-point improvement over last week was reported for the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage by Freddie Mac. The 30-year was 28 BPS below the same week in 2010. Based on the 10-year Treasury yield, mortgage rates are likely to come in near the same levels next week.

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United States (ProPublica) – by Minhee Cho

ProPublica had the immense honor of winning the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for its series, “The Wall Street Money Machine.” The lead reporters, Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, take a moment to explain the series, how it all started and their reaction after reeling in ProPublica’s second Pulitzer, which was also the first ever awarded to a body of work that didn’t appear in print.

Read their series: The Wall Street Money Machine and the letter addressing the award from our editor-in-chief. You can also subscribe to all of ProPublica’s podcasts on iTunes.

TRANSCRIPT

Mike Webb: Hi, I’m Mike Webb, and welcome to the ProPublica Podcast. Each year, the Pulitzer Prize is awarded for outstanding achievement in the fields of literature, musical composition, and journalism. On Monday, April 18th, the Pulitzers announced this year’s winners, and ProPublica was once again honored to be among them. Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein won the award in the category of National Reporting for their outstanding Wall Street Money Machine series, which examined how some Wall Street bankers and hedge funds sought to enrich themselves at the expense of their clients and sometimes even their own firms through sketchy transactions that delayed and ultimately worsened the financial crisis.

On today’s podcast, we brought the two reporters in to discuss their stories, its impact, and what it’s like to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Congratulations and welcome, guys.

Jake Bernstein: Thanks. Jesse Eisinger: Thanks for having us.

Mike: All right, so listen, why don’t we recap the original three stories that you did. Jesse, why don’t you tell us how the Magnetar Trade story came together?

Jesse: Sure. So we were approached by the guys from Planet Money, Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg, in the summer of 2009. And they said. “We’ve done this great piece of radio journalism for This American Life called ‘The Giant Pool of Money,’ but we want a follow‑on piece. We want to know what happened afterwards.” And there had been an enormous amount of journalistic attention shed on the events of September 2008, when the global financial system collapsed, or was on the verge of collapsing. But there had been very little attention paid to the run‑up in late 2006 and early 2007. And we thought that was a great place to start looking for stories. And so we set out.

Jake: Alex and Adam had sort of done this soup‑to‑nuts version of the financial crisis, where they had looked at everything from housing to structured finance, and they had sort of seen the craziness of the boom. But they had felt, while they were doing their reporting, that there was another side of the story that they weren’t getting, which was that people knew that there was problems, knew that there were serious asymmetries that there were issues going on, bankers, people on Wall Street, and that they took advantage of that. And that in taking advantage of it, they may have made the crisis worse.

But they didn’t know exactly where that had happened and who was responsible, and so they sort of tasked us with trying to find that out.

Jesse: Yeah. This sort of basic, essential sort of journalistic question, “What did they know and when did they know it?”

Mike: And what was it that you found?

Jesse: We started looking at this world of CDOs, these bundles of mortgage securities called “collateralized debt obligations.” That was the nexus of the financial crisis. That seemed like a very natural place to look. And what we found was initially a lot of people in the CDO world telling us about a hedge fund out of Chicago that very few people had heard of called Magnetar.

Mike: Why Magnetar? Were they really that big of a player? They were the ones?

Jake: They were pretty big. But it was, we would talk to people, CDO managers and bankers and all kinds of people, and we’d just keep on hearing the same thing. “You really need to look at these guys.” These guys were responsible for a lot of deals, and they sort of epitomized this sense in ’06 and ’07 of folks who were really just sort of inflating the bubble bigger and bigger and bigger, even though they knew it probably wasn’t sustainable.

And what we found out after doing our reporting was that Magnetar was responsible for more than $40 billion worth of CDOs, which is a pretty big figure any way you slice it.

Jesse: Yeah, it was a huge figure. And they were by far the dominant player in going to Wall Street and asking Wall Street to make deals for them. And they would invest in the deal to make it happen, but really what they were doing was betting against the deal in a much greater proportion than they were actually investing in it. And so they had much more to gain from the collapse of the deals than their investment in the deals.

Mike: OK, and then the second story about how the banks allowed this to happen, or how the banks played a role in this.

Jake: Well, for our second story what we really wanted was to quantify this in some way. And so we managed to do some work with this wonderful data firm called Thetica, and they really crunched the numbers for us and allowed us to see sort of what was going in the CDO business. Because we increasingly were hearing that there weren’t that many investors in ’06 and ’07, that people were actually ‑ investors, real investors, real money investors ‑ were leaving the market. Because they kind of saw what was happening. And for other reasons as well.

But the volume of deals kept on growing, and really skyrocketing. So we wanted to know: who’s buying this stuff? So through our analysis of the data we began to see that, in fact, the biggest buyer for one key part of the CDO was just other CDOs.

And it was this huge sort of self‑dealing daisy chain, if you will. So that’s really what the second story was about.

Jesse: Right. And what was happening with those purchases was they were essentially being orchestrated by the banks themselves. The banks actually controlled, dictated, the purchase of parts of CDOs by other CDOs. And the banks were using that to veil, mask their own purchases of the CDOs. So essentially what they were doing was buying their own garbage, which had a wonderful effect of increasing the bonus pools for the bankers themselves that were creating these deals, but eventually led to the destruction of Merrill‑Lynch, the near‑failure of Merrill‑Lynch, the collapse of CitiGroup, UBS.

Eventually the Wall Street collapse, mainly because of CDOs, especially because they were regurgitating this kind of stuff and eating themselves.

Jake: And of course at the end of the day it was taxpayers who were on the hook for this.

Mike: Right. Now what was the broad scope of the third story.

Jake: The third story is we sort of dove deep into Merrill‑Lynch, which was the biggest producer of CDOs during this period, and really tried to figure out something that was kind of a question mark that we had. Merrill‑Lynch kind of did itself in by taking so much of their own product. They were eating their own cooking. And yet why would a bank, which is really concerned about profit and traders who are concerned about making profit because they want bonuses off of that profit, why would they take stuff that was losing money, that no one else wanted?

And so we dug deep into that and we found something that internally in Merrill was called the “subsidy.” And the way the subsidy worked was that the CDO group was not allowed within the bank to keep the stuff they couldn’t sell; they had to get rid of it.

And so what they were doing was they were essentially selling it to another division within the bank, another group of traders who were marking it at close to book value, at close to par. And then the CDO group was sharing its bonuses with that group as an incentive for them to take it.

Which was called the “subsidy,” and which explained how a bank like this could do this kind of thing.

Mike: OK, and last week the Senate issued a report that sort of talked about ‑ that I know mentioned some of your work ‑ and talked about some of the necessary reforms.

Jesse: Yeah. The Levin committee ‑‑ what is it called? It’s the…

Jake: The Permanent Sub‑Committee on Investigations.

Jesse: Yeah, the Permanent Sub‑Committee on Investigations, a well‑known bipartisan committee, came out with an enormous report on the CDO business. Largely on the CDO business, on the sort of financial collapse. And they cited ProPublica’s work numerous times.

Mike: Your work.

Jesse: Our work, which was very flattering. And I think that the central premise of our work, that CDOs were buying CDOs and propagating this machine, keeping this machine going to the benefit of individual bankers. That was a running theme in the report. And then the other running theme was that bankers knew the business was slowing down and took advantage of it. Goldman‑Sachs was the main focus of their report, Goldman and Deutsche Bank. So they’ve got an enormous amount of detail on that. We had focused on other banks: Merrill, Citi, primarily, and the Magnetar trade. But they were thematically very similar.

Jake: The Levin committee found this thread of a lack of transparency and just incredible greed and self‑interest on the part of Wall Street. And that was the same thing that we had found, so they sort of cited our work, particularly about Magnetar, to sort of demonstrate what was going on and what they were seeing with a bunch of other banks and players.

Jesse: And the essence was that there was a conflict of interest, where the banks were serving their interests or the interests of one customer, and not disclosing the genesis of these deals to other customers. So they weren’t saying, “We’re betting against this.” Or, “The hedge fund that helped create this is betting against it, it’s not betting for it.”

Mike: Right. And that was a key point in your story.

Jesse: In the Magnetar story, yeah.

Mike: Right. What other reforms came about because of your work? Or what other impact have you seen it have?

Jake: The jury’s still out, because they’re kind of writing the rules. But the Magnetar story was cited on the Senate floor by Senator Chris Dodd during the debate over what eventually became the Dodd‑Frank financial reform. So that’s sort of still in the process. The SEC has been doing some work around the stuff that we’ve written about. They’ve issued Wells Notices to some of the people who are involved in the Magnetar deals. A Wells Notice is a notice that you’re under investigation and that they might be bringing charges against you.

One of the deals that we focused on was a JP Morgan deal called Squared, and that’s the deal that they’ve looked at. They’ve also looked at some other deals that are under investigation that we wrote about first. That’s one sort of movement.

But there really hasn’t been as many prosecutions and as many consequences for what was the largest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And it surprised a lot of people.

Mike: And you wrote about that in a recent column.

Jesse: Yeah. I think that everybody from the outside is utterly shocked that there haven’t been more people charged, going to jail. From the mortgage originators like Countrywide or New Century to Washington Mutual to the investment banks, Bear Sterns, Lehman. I think that you could make very good cases that some of these banks mislead their shareholders at the least; that were misleading in testimony to the Senate. And that they lied about their books.

Mike: So your work will play a role in some of the lawsuits that end up being filed.

Jesse: I think that, yeah, we’ve already been cited in civil lawsuits. So I think that that’s one place where this is going to play out. And as Jake said, the other place this is going to play out is the SEC. But I think that to a large extent the perpetrators of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression are going scott‑free.

Mike: I want to find out how you guys responded to winning the actual award. How did you hear about it first and what was your reaction?

Jesse: We won something?

Jake: It was quite special. We all gathered around the computer here in the office, the entire staff, waiting for the three o’clock hour to strike and the committee to put up who were the winners. And then we saw our names and knew that in fact it was real. And it’s obviously one of the great honors and pleasures that a journalist can have in their career, so it’s pretty terrific.

Jesse: And I think that we can say with straight faces that we we’re not in it for prizes, but when you win one, it’s quite wonderful.

Mike: People have pointed out that business journalism doesn’t generally do well with the Pulitzers.

Jake: We were very surprised that we would get an award like this, simply because our story’s very difficult. It’s a very complicated story. It really requires some work on the part of the reader, because they have to go with us and really try to understand these things. And it was a hard story to put together. So it’s just very gratifying. And the other thing is, it appears that our series is the first series that was published online before it was in newspapers that’s won a Pulitzer. I think we’ll see a lot more of those in the years to come, but to be the first one is pretty cool.

Jesse: And we were cited especially for bringing this to a level for the lay reader. And I think we took a lot of pride in that. Our editors really worked with us. They worked and worked and worked with us, Steve Engelberg and Eric Umansky, to make our points comprehensible, jargon‑free, accessible to the average reader. And the This American Life guys helped us structure the narrative in a way that was accessible to people and drew them in and drew them along in the story. And so we’re grateful for that. And I think that was one of the great accomplishments of this story, this kind of collaboration and partnership that allowed the storytelling to really come through.

Jake: Yeah, certainly. That was our biggest challenge, is we really wanted this to be something that a general audience could appreciate. And we put a tremendous amount of work in it and we’re very pleased.

Mike: All right, guys. Congratulations. We’re really thrilled for both of you.

Jesse: Thank you.

Jake: Thank you.

Mike: That was Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger. You can see all of the elements in their series at ProPublica.org/wallstreet. And now for our Officials Say the Darndest Things Tumblr Quote of the Week. “I always thought I was gonna have like really cool phones and stuff. We can’t get our phones to work. C’mon guys, I’m the President of the United States! Where’s the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen that comes up? It doesn’t happen.”

Who said it? Well, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that 100 percent of our listeners identified the remark as coming from President Barack Obama, as he was overheard speaking to campaign donors about White House technology and other issues.

OK, that does it for this week’s show. Thanks to Minhee Cho for producing this podcast and to our former producer Brent Gardner-Smith, for his valuable input this week as well. For ProPublica, I’m Mike Webb. We’ll see you next time.

Transcription by CastingWords

– Provided by ProPublica.org

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Around 400 jobs are being eliminated at CitiMortgage Inc. The impacted jobs are in loan production. But the company also plans to hire 500 servicing employees in response to a recent settlement with banking regulators.

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