Recent Articles

Your Mental Health as a Mortgage Shopper: Crucial Facts Your Mortgage Broker Forgot to Mention About Paying Points

written by John Crenshaw

In shopping for the best rate and lowest closing costs on a mortgage, the idea of low to no-cost loans capture the attention of even the most skeptical of borrowers. Advertisements abound with promises of no points and there is a lot of advice out there encouraging people to pay as little as possible toward [...]

Common Mortgage Terms Explained

written by John Crenshaw

This is a glossary of some of the more common, and most important mortgage terms. This list will help to familiarize you with some of the terms you should know to find the best mortgage program for your needs.
PITI - Principal, interest, taxes, insurance. The total monthly payment if fully amortized. PITI also used to [...]

DTI - Debt-to-Income Ratio and How it Affects You

written by John Crenshaw

I speak with a lot of clients who aren’t familiar with common mortgage terms; no problem, as I explained in my article about the Commoditization of the Mortgage Industry, there’s quite a bit of misinformation out there. So let’s clear the air.
DTI is an acronym for Debt-to-Income Ratio and represents the ratio between a person’s [...]

What Exactly Does “Subprime” Mean?

written by John Crenshaw

The “Subprime Mortgage Meltdown” and similar catch phrases have been all over the news lately and I’m sure there are more than a couple of you out there thinking, what in the world does subprime mean exactly?
Well, that’s a tough question to give a simple answer to, but I’ll do my best.
Borrowers are generally classified [...]