By Rosie Rains

In The Little Black Book of Mortgage Secrets, mortgage

Rosie Rains - Author, The Little Black Book of Mortgage Secrets

professional Rosie Rains details ways the common home loan can actually be a positive element in personal finances. Inspired as a mortgage broker by her clients’ appetite for straight-forward knowledge in the recent tumultuous credit market, Rosie has written a practical guide which is destined to become the bible for obtaining a solid mortgage for years to come.  In lively, highly readable prose, Mortgage Secrets clearly lays out the answers to some of the most difficult and confusing questions borrowers face when obtaining a mortgage. Her passion is to help her readers to build wealth with real estate. Rosie devotes the core of her book to “real stuff” advice that will help consumers keep money in their pockets instead of someone else’s. It’s simply a must have.

Chapter 1: Are You Sure You Don’t Have a Problem?

I could tell that Zachary Horne was headed for a crash. A no-longer-young Hollywood hotshot who worked in talent management, Zak came to me because he had heard that I was the go-to girl for mortgages—especially problem mortgages. And because problem mortgages have become a biblical plague out there, I’ve been real busy. But I fit Zak in.

At a peak in the real estate market in California, Zak Horne had bought a three-bedroom Hollywood Hills home. He couldn’t quite afford one with a view of the sparkling lights of downtown Los Angeles, or, for that matter, the Valley. His was on the back side of the Hills, above Hollywood Reservoir.

If you cocked your head just right and peered through the living room bay window—and Zak always insisted that his guests do this—you could see Madonna’s old mansion, the one that used to have the garish burgundy  stripes on the turret, the one she unloaded when she decided that merry old London was the place for her.

Since he purchased the home, Zak had refinanced.  Twice. The talent management business is something of a roller coaster, and Zak had a tendency to run his finances as though he was always at the very top—the place on the roller coaster just before the screams begin.

“Rosie, you’ve got to help me,” he said, spilling out the contents of a legal folder (marked, I noticed, with a series of “jackpot” dollar signs). The folder contained his latest refinance paperwork. 

He chattered about his star clients while I assessed his situation. He had a nervous amphetamine edge, and a goatee that he dyed jet black. My first piece of advice to him: lose the goatee.

Well, no. I didn’t really tell him that. But a quick look at the contents of his folder made me realize that he should draw wings on those jackpot dollar signs of his, since the terms of his mortgage meant that his wealth was flying out the window.

His lender had set him up with what it called a “personally tailored mortgage.”Yeah, right. This tailor had left a lot of loose threads. The program gave Zak Horne the power to vary his monthly payment amount. He could make a minimum payment, an interest-only payment, or a larger payment that would amortize the loan on a 30-year or 15-year schedule.

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Reprinted with permission from McGraw-Hill

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