Many banks that made high-interest loans to “risky” borrowers now are suffering, but consumers who’ve established good credit scores now are eligible for some of the lowest rates in history.

Q: Thank you for your recent column about how all the bankruptcies in the “subprime” lending business could affect the entire U.S. housing market. A bank in our area is running radio ads saying that the bankruptcies actually could help borrowers with good credit ratings. Is this true?

A: Yes. Perhaps the only “silver lining” in the whole subprime lending mess is that borrowers who’ve worked hard to establish and maintain an excellent credit score through the years could get even sweeter loan deals to purchase a home or refinance an existing mortgage in the months ahead.

Subprime banks specialize in issuing home mortgages – usually with adjustable interest rates – to borrowers whose spotty credit record or other factors prevent them from getting a fixed-rate mortgage with better repayment terms. Most subprime lenders notched record profits in the first half of this decade as home prices soared, but many have since fallen on hard times because their customers can no longer meet the rising monthly payments required under the terms of their adjustable-rate mortgage contracts, and foreclosures continue to mount.

The sharp rise in foreclosures has fueled a glut of for-sale properties across many parts of the nation, which in turn has forced sellers to lower their offering prices and accept bids that they wouldn’t have considered when their market was strong.

But in an interesting twist to the subprime fiasco, borrowers with above-average credit scores now are being offered some of the best mortgage rates and other loan terms in history – regardless of whether they’re buying a different home or simply refinancing their existing mortgage. That’s because banks once again are competing against each other to get business from applicants whose high credit scores show that they have handled their debt responsibly in the past several years, instead of issuing higher-rate loans to “riskier” low-score borrowers who have a greater chance of defaulting on their payments.

Q.: I own a small house that I have rented to a female tenant for the past two years. A male friend of hers moved in at the start of this year without my permission, so I refused to put the man on the lease. The female tenant moved out about 60 days ago, and her friend stayed but has not paid me any rent. I want the deadbeat guy out of the house NOW! What can I do? Should I give him eviction papers?

A.: Believe it or not, serving him with eviction papers might not be your best (or most expedient) option to get him to leave the house. That’s because, depending on where the property is located, starting the eviction process could suggest that you’ve accepted the fact that he’s your “tenant” – thereby giving him additional rights that may allow him several more weeks or months to remain in the home rent-free.

Because you have no lease or other rental arrangement with the man, a better choice may be to send him a letter via certified mail to inform him that he’s trespassing on your property and must move out immediately. If he doesn’t respond, call the local police or sheriff’s department and ask that he be arrested on trespass charges.

There’s a slight chance that law-enforcement authorities will refuse to get involved, saying that the matter instead must be resolved in court. But if that’s the case, you’ll probably have to hire a real estate attorney. Trying a do-it-yourself eviction likely would be a waste of time: The man already is living there illegally and isn’t paying any rent, so there’s little reason to believe that he’d pay any attention to the eviction papers you give him unless there’s a lawyer and possible court charges involved.

Q.: My wife and I live in the city, but we would like to purchase a retirement home in a rural area. Several of the rural properties that are advertised online state that the homes have “airable” land, but we don’t understand what the term means. Can you help?

A.: Sure. For starters, the proper spelling is “arable” (no “i”), which would explain why you couldn’t find a definition of the word if you tried to find it in a dictionary.

Arable land is property that is suitable for cultivating or farming. There’s probably no reason to pay “extra” for a home that includes a lot of arable land unless you want to spend your retirement years farming the property yourself, renting the land to another farmer or simply leaving the land alone so you can enjoy its natural beauty.