Assuming an Existing Mortgage

[Brent Hasse]

With rates at the current rate and assuming majority of landlords/homeowners refinanced in the 2-4% range over the last 10 years, I just started doing research on assuming a mortgage.   After reading some older forum posts here and it sounds like a lot of people try to "sneak" it by the mortgage company and actually opens up the seller to risk.  So the right thing to do is to talk through it with their current mortgage note holder and go through the underwriting process.  To me this doesn't seem like such a big deal.  

2 Questions:

Why would a mortgage company say no if you qualify for the loan amount?

Would the mortgage company allow the current owner to HELOC for the difference of the new purchase price and balance of the original mortgage?