Review: A Complete Guide to FHA Loans

Disclosure: The following is a sponsored review. It is not a site/product endorsement.

FHA information is a handy thing to have. Though often maligned, the FHA loan program has for decades helped many people purchase a home. With the recent sub-prime collapse, FHA loans may be seeing a surge in use, and with that comes a need for consumer related information. 

The Mortgage Loan Place offers a free 20 page guide titled, "A Complete Guide to FHA Loans" (PDF download). Anything that has "Complete" in the title will cause me to raise an eyebrow. I'm on the retentive side, and "complete" to me means COMPLETE. And really, by definition, a "guide" can hardly ever truly be deemed complete.

That said, this guide is well structured and contains a significant amount of information for the real estate consumer considering financing options, including FHA refinance loans. 

As a guide of this sort should have, it contains sections on the whats, whys and hows of FHA loans. It even delves into various types of loan products such as option ARMs, interest only loans and fixed rates. A nice addition are sections on possible changes to the FHA program, HUD owned homes and the HUD "Good Neighbor Next Door" Program. The guide is well written, at a basic level that is easily understood by non-real estate professionals — it's obvious intended target.

One thing I appreciate about the guide is that clearly it is not a platform for shameless self-promotion by the Mortgage Loan Place. There is no, "use us for your FHA loans, we're the obvious choice" type of stuff. In fact, they encourage people to speak with different lenders. Other than non-intrusive "Mortgage Loan Place" text in the page footers, there is no other mention of the author/sponsor — not even a contact number or embedded link. It's pretty darn transparent information.

I really only have two points of minor criticism: 1) the document is not dated. Perhaps that is done so it is never "out of date", but undated documents that contain timely information that can change tends to bug the old semiconductor engineer in me. The use of terms like "testified recently" and "passed by the House last year" just begs for us to know when the document was written. 2) There a frequent references to the FHA loan limits. I can understand not putting in limit table, as they vary by metro area and county and any table could swiftly be rendered out of date. But why not embed a link to HUD's FHA Limits page? A real estate professional should know where to find the limits, and yes, the average consumer is more than capable of searching for them, but why not make it simple and embed the link.

The Complete Guide to FHA Loans is a document with a lot of pertinent information. Good for the consumer, and a decent refresher for a real estate agent who hasn't had to recently deal with an FHA buyer.