This class is held by appointment at our offices in Lincoln Center, near Washington Square in Portland, OR. It consists of the following:
•1. A one on one credit evaluation including a free credit report.
•2. An hour of training on credit scoring and what makes up a credit score. This includes a complimentary copy of our invaluable credit pamphlet, "Raise your credit score 100 points in 45 days".
•4. Special evaluation on Credit Xpert's "What-if Simulator".
•5. A 3-year enrollment in "Score Guardian"; our proprietary credit monitoring system.
Best of all, the course is free for customers that might someday want to utilize Academy Mortgage for financing a home purchase or refinance an existing home loan. Please contact Art Marine at (503)764-4005 or email to art.marine@academymortgage.com for an appointment.
I am a firm believer that you can thrive in tough times with the right attitude and the right approach. Abigail Dougherty, a business coach and author of "The Straight Edge News" writes the following:
That conversation reminded me of two lessons many business owners and managers forget. "What we do speaks louder than what we say". The corollary lesson is "There is always someone watching". Here are some suggestions for guiding your business through this current economic unrest. #1 - Foster Open Communications with Your Employees As the owner/manager it is far better to communicate clearly with your employees on the state of the business. Even if the news isn't positive, letting your staff know the situation keeps them from making up their own stories and taking action based on incorrect assumptions. A client recently lost two of his best employees, who believed the business was in trouble. They sought other employment. The owner was worried about his wife's health, not the state of his business. He didn't think he needed to share what was bothering him, since it wasn't business related. The worry wasn't business related, but it had a profound impact on his business. #2 - Protect Yourself From Burnout Burnout from physical exhaustion and emotional strain is rampant in business today. Burnout costs the US economy $350 billion a year. When you, as the owner are working 12 hours days, 7 days a week, it's very likely that your employees are doing similar hours, especially if they are salaried rather than hourly staff. Protecting the physical and emotional health of yourself and your staff has an immediate ROI in reducing medical costs, absenteeism, and worker's compensation claims. It also helps you keep good employees when they can maintain both a personal life and a job. Make it company policy to restrict work communications to reasonable work hours and be the role model for honoring that policy. #3 - Maintain Your Perspective It's very easy to fall in with "the sky is falling" chorus that we are fed by the media. Make the effort to get a different view of the situation. Even a devout optimist has to admit that the economy is certainly not where we would like it, and uncertainty is causing people to delay and defer spending for anything not deemed essential goods and services. Charlie Rose recently offered an interesting program, worthy of your time.
#4 - Take Exquisite Care of Customers Long-term customers and new customers making commitments in this climate both are to be honored. It's a great time to offer a special rewards and incentives for their patronage. My favorite car wash re-introduced their loyalty card system - buy 10 and get 12 washes. They are a little more expensive than their competitors and I like their results better. With the loyalty card, they are the same cost. They have my business for the next several months; and an influx of cash today. Thank you post cards will also payback far more than they cost in continued business.
#5 - Recognize the Gift Wrapped in this Economic Challenge "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a rule most of us operate by. When a business is successful it's very difficult to stand back and really look at what is working and what needs to be modified or dumped from our business practices. Now is an ideal time to reassess your business, your customers, your staff and your processes. Streamline what you can, delete what you can and make every part of your business scalable. When the economy turns around there will be a pent-up demand for every product and service. The companies ready to fill that demand efficiently and quickly will have more work than they can handle. Take the steps now to ensure you are one of those companies.
This morning I was listening to CNBC and herd a pundit say that he expects the US economy to go into a recession for the 4th quarter...After I picked myself off the floor from laughing so hard, I started thinking about the ramifications of the denial of Wall Street to the facts of our times. Clearly to average people, the American economy has been in recession for a long time and heading toward depression. So how does this impact me and my business?
First, the amount of competition has decreased dramatically. In the past I have often lost good clients because their brother, cousin, or neighbor was a Mortgage Broker. I often thought that they were not going to be served as well as I, a 25 year professional mortgage banker, would have served them. But I understand loyalty and family obligation. Sometimes these misguided clients would come back with their tail between there legs, asking me to bail them out of the mess that cousin Alvin or their neighbor Doris had created. I always welcomed these opportunities to be the hero, but I have to admit, it would have been much easier if I had just started the transaction from the beginning. My point to all of this is that cousin Alvin and neighbor Doris are now out of the Mortgage business. It is now seldom that I have competition from referred clients and when I do, the competition is now usually competent. Not a statement I could have made a year ago. I was told that nearly 2/3rds of all registered mortgage originators in my state have left the business. Looking around that seems about right. I never feared competition but it sure makes my job easier when I don't have to make up for the sins of incompetent, unethical, or downright crooked competition.
Another change to our market place, for better or for worse, is the elimination of product options. This certainly levels the playing field. When all lenders are offering the same basic product mix, opportunity comes from hard work and good service, not who has the latest hot product. Rates have always been competitive but we are now leaving an era of niche lending that gave distinct advantage to certain lenders with unusual or innovative products. In this environment we all offer the same products...it's back to deuce.
Truth be told this market is very very soft. There are not a lot of customers to be had. Despite these facts my business is doing fine and I am going to thrive. I have reason to believe that 09 will be a great year!
After the most painful year of my 24 year mortgage banking career, I can now report that I am officially an employee of the Federal Government. As everyone knows, last Friday the Office of Thrif Supervision put Indymac Bank into receivership and tranfered most of the assets to a new company, Indymac Federal Bank, operating under a conservatorship directed by the FDIC. Monday came around and all of a sudden we were closing loans! over $10 million closed on Monday over $14 million closed on Tuesday. The FDIC was able to unwind the mess that Indymac had created in the funding pipeline in one weekend.
I never had any intention of working for the Feds and my tenure with them will be short as the retail lending group has been sold to Prospect Mortgage. But for my customers and my sanity, this is a godsend. I only wish this action would have taken place sooner. I feel terrible about those depositors that have over the insured limit with Indymac...they will likely loose that money. But for the thousands of loan customers and the hundreds of employees of the residential lending group (indy retail), this is the best thing that could happen. The only thing worse, in my opinion, than the bank failing would be a slow death with day upon day of unfullfilled promises and week upon week of disfunctional operation.
As you might expect in times like this, my phone has not stopped ringing with inquires from customers, referal partners, recruiters, and friends. Often I hear comments similiar to this, "That senator from New York is to blame for this whole mess. His letter leaking the information about Indymac brought the bank down". When I hear these comments I have to respectully disagree. In fact I salute Senator Schumer for being honest in a time when honesty in government is so rare. The administration and the regulators have been sweeping our problems under the rug for way too long. If the Senator's letter allowed some uninsured deposits to be withdrawn before they were lost than I say not only was it reasonable to make the information pubulic, it was his responsibility. I want to publically thank the Senator for accelarating what was going to be the inevitable death of Indymac. Thank you Senator Schumer for helping the customers and employees of Indymac Bank avoid a painful and protracted slow death.
Art Marine
Sales Manager
Retail Lending Group West
Indymac Bank
10220 SW Greenburg Road, Suite 245
Portland, OR 97223
(503)764-4005
(866)451-4365 fax
(503)853-3959 cell
Arthur.Marine@imb.com
www.amarine.imbhomelending.com
This weekend I took a roadtrip from Portland to Northern Idaho as a chaparone a choral competition for my daughters school. As I drove for hour upon hour through the Columbia Gorge and Palouse hills of Washington, it occurred to me that there were probabally millions of acres of land that had very little purpose other than as a sanctuary to the wildlife and eco-system the mother nature put there.
I have been a real estate lender for nearly 24 years and not one bank or mortgage company I have ever worked for would be willing to lend on about 95% of the land I passed on my trip. That begs the question, where does rural America go for a home loan? Is this an income opportunity I am missing or is the need so small that it isn't worth exploring?
I don't know the answer yet, but stay tuned because I intend to find out. Your professional input is definately welcome!
I just got a call from a Loan Officer in another state asking for help. He was looking for the answer to the age old question; How do I become a top producing Mortgage Loan Originator. I don't think he liked the answer I gave because it wasn't a recipe but a philosophy. Here are the five steps I believe it takes any sales person to be successful. It doesn't matter how good or bad the market is, it is your attitude that determines your results:
Network, network, and network some more. Join every committee, every club, every leads group and every organization you can find. Once you have joined a group, be active. Volunteer for committee assignments and take a high profile. The more people you know and the better you know them, the more success you will have in network marketing. I even went so far as to become the first male president in the history of our elementary school PTA.
Always provide value in your service or with your product. If your service is overpriced and there is no value, you won't get continued referals. Customers must leave their experience with you under the opinion they received value. Perception is more important than reality...if they believe they got value, they did.
Always ask past clients for a referal! In the mortgage industry, ther are multiple parties involved in every transaction. Every buy has and agent, every transaction has a listing agent, every borrower has professional advisors. Reach out and offer the value of your service to everyone involved. You will never get their business if you don't ask.
Spend time each day marketing. Set asisde a specific time each day and dedicate it to outgoing sales calls. This is the time to call your leads or in the absence of leads make cold calls. If you spend 1 hour every day doing proactive marketing, you will have more business than you can handle within a year. Don't cheat yourself or your prospective clients; share your time with them every day.
Remember the "Law of Attraction". Be thankful for what you have and cognicent of what you want. Put your desires on paper every day and you will attaract what you seek. If you leave your random thoughts loose, you will attract the things that do not help you attain your goals. Write it down...you won't be sorry!
This is the question circling the mortgage lending community lately. No question they are in serious trouble. With the secondary market for mortgage loans in total dysfunction, Countrywide finds itself in a dilemma. If they stop making loans, they could slow the rate of loss from defaults but where do they generate cash flow for operations. If They pick up production, they can feed the giant corporate structure they have built and hang on a while longer, but the losses are mounting fast and there is no sign that a secondary market for mortgage loans is going to reemerge soon enough for CW to sell their assets and maintain operations. In the long run, there is no safe answer for this behemoth lender.
Unfortunately, the problem is deeper than just CW retail and wholesale lending. There are plenty of competitors to fill the void if those channels disappear. These are just the tip of the iceberg; the real danger lies with elimination of the giant Countrywide Financial correspondent division. There are over 2100 banks, credit unions, and mortgage bankers that rely on the Countrywide system to fund their mortgage operations. These are institutions that fund loans using their own money or a warehouse line of credit then sell the loan post closing to Countrywide. With an already dysfunctional secondary market, many of these lenders will find themselves unable to sell loans and consequently out of the mortgage business. Last year, CW funded $178,000,000,000 through their correspondent channel, imagine if that much money was pulled from the market! The famed implode-o-meter website (www.ml-implode.com) would suddenly find a flurry of activity. The implode-o-meter currently stands at 212 imploded lenders; if Countrywide goes down, that number could easily balloon by a factor of 10.
As a retail branch manager for Indymac Bank, I do not like Countrywide. I don't like them because they are a significant competitor and I like to win every time. I am also watching their financial troubles the same way I would a horrific train wreck...I don't need or want to watch, but I cannot help myself. That being said, I really hope that a white knight comes to the rescue for them. Our industry has felt enough pain and the disruption caused by the financial failure of Countrywide would be catastrophic for the real estate industry!
A good friend of mine moved to Iowa about 9 months ago. He still owns a mortgage company in Oregon so we speak often. But for some reason which is still a mystery to me, he picked up his family and moved from the great pacific northwest to a small town in Iowa.
Joe and I are polar opposites of the political spectrum, but I listened with great interest as he described in detail his first experience in an Iowa caucus. He attended the caucus with the contractor that had been working on his house...this gentlemen had lived in Iowa his entire life and never attended a caucus. His contractor buddy said that his favorite part was seeing which of the neighbors were republicans. Knowing my friend, I am sure his motives were considerably more political. Joe described the election of a secretary and a chairman, his chance to speak to the group, and the process of counting the vote. He said that his 13 year old daughter had learned about the system in social studies class and the experience was exactly as she described it to him. A great chance to meet friends and neighbors and steer the direction of the political process nationally.
I have got to say that I envy the people of Iowa a little bit. They have the chance to set the direction for every presidential election. With that honor comes the opportunity to get up close and personal with the candidates. A much better look than the rest of us get. I have heard that the campaigns spent nearly $500 per voter in Iowa...an incredible number. It clearly demonstrates the strategic importance of this small little Midwestern state in guiding our political process.
With great power comes great responsibility. From my perspective, Iowans have handled their responsibility well this election season.
I have a simple technique that will help anyone attract those things they desire and avoid attraction of those they don't. Simply write down 10 things you are grateful for and 10 things you want to attract each day. Let the "Law of Attraction" do the rest. Sounds simple and it is but the positive visulization and reiforcement will do wonders. Give it a try...you won't be sorry!
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
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