Need a mortgage but worried about the market? In Mortgages For Dummies, 3rd Edition, bestselling authors Eric Tyson and Ray Brown give you proven solutions for obtaining a mortgage, whether you want to buy your first home, refinance, or tap into your equity. You get the latest on sub-prime and adjustable-rate mortgages, finding the best lender, avoiding fiscal pitfalls and foreclosure, and much, much, more! This easy-to-understand, objective, and jargon-free guide helps you fine-tune your finances, figure out what you can afford, and improve your credit score before you go mortgage shopping. You’ll get familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages, 15- and 30-year loans, and conforming and jumbo packages. You also get help finding and working with reputable professionals, comparing programs, and securing terms you can live with. Discover how to: Match your mortgage to your financial goals Qualify for a mortgage even when money is tight Find the right loan for you Choose the best lender/broker Negotiate the best terms Calculate your costs and payments Understand and complete all paperwork Refinance an existing mortgage Understand and consider special situation loans Explore reverse mortgages and other options Decipher amortization tables and comparison worksheets Use the Internet wisely when mortgage shopping Now, more than ever, you need clear, reliable information that helps you get the mortgage you need at a price you can afford. You need Mortgages For Dummies, 3rd Edition!

Buying a home is exciting and, let's face it, complicated. This booklet is a toolkit that can help you make better choices along your path to owning a home.

Provides an overview of the subprime mortgage securitization process and the seven key informational frictions that arise. Discusses the ways that market participants work to minimize these frictions and speculate on how this process broke down. Continues with a complete picture of the subprime borrower and the subprime loan, discussing both predatory borrowing and predatory lending. Presents the key structural features of a typical subprime securitization, documents how rating agencies assign credit ratings to mortgage-backed securities, and outlines how these agencies monitor the performance of mortgage pools over time. The authors draw upon the example of a mortgage pool securitized by New Century Financial during 2006. Illustrations.

Warnings of the threat of an impending financial crisis are not new, but do we really know what constitutes an actual episode of crisis and how, once begun, it can be prevented from escalating into a full-blown economic collapse? Using both historical and contemporary episodes of breakdowns in financial trade, contributors to this volume draw insights from theory and empirical data, from the experience of closed and open economies worldwide, and from detailed case studies. They explore the susceptibility of American corporations to economic downturns; the origins of banking panics; and the behavior of financial markets during periods of crisis. Sever papers specifically address the current thrift crisis—including a detailed analysis of the over 500 FSLIC-insured thrifts in the southeast—and seriously challenge the value of recent measures aimed at preventing future collapse in that industry. Government economists and policy makers, scholars of industry and banking, and many in the business community will find these timely papers an invaluable reference.

The authors develop an equilibrium valuation model that incorporates optimal default to show how mortgage yields and lender recovery rates on defaulted mortgages depend on initial loan-to-value (LTV) ratios. The analysis treats both the frictionless case and the case in which borrowers and lenders incur deadweight costs upon default. The model is calibrated using data on California mortgages. Given reasonable parameter values, the model does a surprisingly good job fitting the risk premium in the data for high LTV mortgages. Thus, from an ex ante perspective, the authors do not find strong evidence of systematic underpricing of default risk in the run-up to the housing market crisis. Charts and tables.

Written by a practicing emergency physician, The White Coat Investor is a high-yield manual that specifically deals with the financial issues facing medical students, residents, physicians, dentists, and similar high-income professionals. Doctors are highly-educated and extensively trained at making difficult diagnoses and performing life saving procedures. However, they receive little to no training in business, personal finance, investing, insurance, taxes, estate planning, and asset protection. This book fills in the gaps and will teach you to use your high income to escape from your student loans, provide for your family, build wealth, and stop getting ripped off by unscrupulous financial professionals. Straight talk and clear explanations allow the book to be easily digested by a novice to the subject matter yet the book also contains advanced concepts specific to physicians you won't find in other financial books. This book will teach you how to: Graduate from medical school with as little debt as possible Escape from student loans within two to five years of residency graduation Purchase the right types and amounts of insurance Decide when to buy a house and how much to spend on it Learn to invest in a sensible, low-cost and effective manner with or without the assistance of an advisor Avoid investments which are designed to be sold, not bought Select advisors who give great service and advice at a fair price Become a millionaire within five to ten years of residency graduation Use a "Backdoor Roth IRA" and "Stealth IRA" to boost your retirement funds and decrease your taxes Protect your hard-won assets from professional and personal lawsuits Avoid estate taxes, avoid probate, and ensure your children and your money go where you want when you die Minimize your tax burden, keeping more of your hard-earned money Decide between an employee job and an independent contractor job Choose between sole proprietorship, Limited Liability Company, S Corporation, and C Corporation Take a look at the first pages of the book by clicking on the Look Inside feature Praise For The White Coat Investor "Much of my financial planning practice is helping doctors to correct mistakes that reading this book would have avoided in the first place." - Allan S. Roth, MBA, CPA, CFP(R), Author of How a Second Grader Beats Wall Street "Jim Dahle has done a lot of thinking about the peculiar financial problems facing physicians, and you, lucky reader, are about to reap the bounty of both his experience and his research." - William J. Bernstein, MD, Author of The Investor's Manifesto and seven other investing books "This book should be in every career counselor's office and delivered with every medical degree." - Rick Van Ness, Author of Common Sense Investing "The White Coat Investor provides an expert consult for your finances. I now feel confident I can be a millionaire at 40 without feeling like a jerk." - Joe Jones, DO "Jim Dahle has done for physician financial illiteracy what penicillin did for neurosyphilis." - Dennis Bethel, MD "An excellent practical personal finance guide for physicians in training and in practice from a non biased source we can actually trust." - Greg E Wilde, M.D Scroll up, click the buy button, and get started today!