Isabel Lacambra, Gibraltar Private Bank & Trust

ISABEL LACAMBRA

Senior Vice President and Mortgage Production Manager

Gibraltar Private Bank & Trust

What new products are available this year?
We have a professional program that gives the ability for CPAs, attorneys and doctors. It allows for their owner-occupied properties to finance up to 89.49 percent loan-to-value. It goes up to $2.5 million in the loan amount on their owner-occupied property. That is a very aggressive loan-to-value, considering there is no mortgage insurance required.
Are any existing products still popular, or gained more popularity this year?
With the low rates, I think that the majority of homeowners that have higher rates have been taking advantage to refinance and many of them have gone from adjustable to fixed rates. Many of them have gone to shorter amortization terms, taking advantage of the low rates. Obviously, the last couple of months, rates have been increasing, so we have seen a lot less recently in the last 60 days.

What are some of the most popular loans? And what loans are most homebuyers qualifying for?
Overall, the 30-year fixed on the conforming side continues to be the most popular loan for a while. At Gibralter, we have a very unique lending track, because we have our portfolio product, which is geared toward more jumbo and super jumbo. We’re very well known in the community for high-end, luxury home lending.

Although we have a fixed rate up to 20 years term, our most popular product continues to be the 5/1 ARM. It advertises on a 30-year term and after the fifth year, it adjusts on a yearly basis. It’s an adjustable rate mortgage, but it’s fixed to what we call the hybrid ARM, for five years. That seems to be the most popular product. It’s also because of the very aggressive pricing that we offer.

Have FHA loans changed at all in the past year? How? Are very many buildings still FHA-approved, or are FHA loans phasing out?

We are not aggressive with FHA. It’s not our expertise or client profile. We’ve done very, very few, so I could not give you a good amount of information on that subject. It’s not one of our lead products. Although we offer it, it is minimum.
From what I understand, based on the information from business partners and Realtors, there’s still FHA financing. I think that what has happened is that many of the buildings in downtown, and in Miami overall, no longer have the investor concentration that they had. They don’t have the delinquency for the HOA. So, it’s more healthy that it was at the worst part of the market. You can actually finance and not need to go FHA.

What are some of the biggest trends you are seeing?

The biggest trends I’ve seen in the market are multiple offers for properties, bidding wars and lack of inventory, especially in that range between $500 to $1 million. Properties sell very quickly. One of our top Realtors sold 35 homes in 35 weeks, so that’s one sale per week. She’s from the high-end market in Coral Gables. We’re seeing a very different high-demand market with very little inventory. People who were thinking of purchasing but undecided, once the rates started increasing, they realized that they needed to go out and buy or they’d be missing opportunities. We see appraisals coming in over the sales price, so we no longer have the biggest issue we had in 2008, 2009 and 2010, when the transactions would fall through because when the appraisal came in, it was under the price. That’s not the case anymore. We see appraisals coming in even higher than what the sales price has been agreed to.

We have also had the same jumbo loans successfully for 2012 and 2013 has been a very good year. We had a record month of funding for the bank last month and last quarter. The market today is very, very different from what it was in 2009. Miami has a real estate market that is amazing, because we have lots of foreign nationals that are coming in. The majority of the sales in the high-end are paying cash, there’s no financing. We have a high percentage of cash transactions in the high end. But we still capture a huge amount of the jumbo lending in the market.

I think that we are in a very regulated environment where we have to document absolutely every single transaction, source of fund. We have to question the paper trail. We have very qualified borrowers in today’s environment because the diligence and the regulations and the requirements are so, so strict that you have buyers that qualify for the payment of the homes that they’re buying. I think it’s a huge improvement. There is also a lot more information in today’s environment than there was in the past. The mortgage industry has changed. Everything is documented, confirmed, verified, and we have very solid, qualified borrowers.