Posted on Sunday, October 06, 2013

This from Kelly Rebimbas at Sunbelt Lending-
We are still taking applications, locking rates, processing our little hearts out, and trying to close. Our principal problem: in the post-Bubble spasm authorities decided that ALL borrowers should produce two years’ tax returns (not just the few self-employed, or owners of rental property, or those needing investment income to qualify). And authorities decided that neither the borrowers nor their CPAs could be trusted to give us true copies, so we must pull transcripts from the IRS (the dreaded 4506T). There will be serious delays in getting these back , The IRS is shut. When it re-opens it will have to process a backlog growing by the hour. Are the authorities helping by waiving the transcript, or granting good faith safe harbor? NooOOOooo. Many lenders — to their great credit — seem willing to defer the risk to post-closing. However, home sales and closings will suffer soon, if only by expired rate locks.
Depending on the data that we are not receiving, the Fed may suspend the QE taper well into next year, and rates have room to drop. Or not….