mortgage: Loan Lessons From My 3-Month Old Daughter
- 08/11/09 02:29 AM
If mortgage truth can be found in the sprawling vastness of Internet and tucked away in the blurbs of the Bradenton Herald, then surely it can be discovered in the life of my little daughter, Chloe Sky. I suppose the "experts" would tell you that you need to be intimately acquainted with mortgage backed security trading to know which way rates are going to go, you must study the new MDIA and HVCC guidelines to predict turn times, and you have to be familiar with your 19 different lenders to understand whether or not you can write a loan on a … (8 comments)
mortgage: Garage Salonomics
- 07/15/09 06:50 AM
Our neighborhood held their annual "no-holds-barred" bargainmania called the GreyHawk Rummage Sale. You know the drill. Find your junk. Tag your junk. Sell your junk. Get up at stupid-o-clock, start the IV drip of coffee, and hit the up button on your garage door to find a half dozen cars lurking curbside waiting for you to display your wares. And then the negotiating that would put a hostile corporate takeover begins. Will you take 10 cents for this 25 cent item? Throw retail out the window; this is the land of resale and everything must go. As a seller, you hold on … (0 comments)
mortgage: Are We Headed Toward 7% Mortgage Rates?
- 06/11/09 02:07 PM
Seriously, I'm holding out until rates goes to 4%. The newspaper and media experts all told me it would happen. Heck, even the US Treasury Department talked about it. But here we are at 5.75% (in a matter of a few weeks, after being closer to 4.875% for months) and there's a pretty good chance we are headed toward 7%. Many blogs ago, I predicted we'd hit 5% (rates were about 6.25% at the time) and just this evening a fellow brother in the mortgage industry, KEVIN HANCOCK, commented on my lucky prognosticating and asked where I thought we were heading. Back to … (5 comments)
mortgage: The Quest for the Holy Sale
- 03/18/09 05:18 AM
Imagine this. You've toiled and traveled months, years even, and you feel as if you have come to the end of your rope. You look to the heavens in outright desperation, and then the clouds part, and it appears. The Holy Sale. Angels sing. It seems like that is the tale of every mortgage consultant these days. We are working so hard to get things done. Transactions aren't just a stroll through the countryside, they are brutal journeys through the most treacherous landscape known to man. Underwriting. We are now in the world of appraisal reviews, guideline changes, rising credit score … (0 comments)
mortgage: Will Rates Go to 5%? They Just Fannie Mae.
- 09/15/08 03:58 AM
OK. Time to get out the crystal ball. We've been hovering in the low 6% range with the 30-yr. fixed interest rates (despite what all of the pop-up ads on Internet proclaim) and a few bits of news lead me to believe we may hit 5% by the end of the year. 1. I see, I see. I see wheelbarrows full of money being rolled into the farmhouse of Mortgage-Back Securities (MBS). With the FED stepping in and bailing out, I mean, backing, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, our mortgages have become attractive again and investors are lining up to buy. … (6 comments)
mortgage: Type Nay Personality
- 08/06/08 07:27 AM
I am ashamed. It has been weeks since last posting and it's amazing how quickly good habits can be obliterated. A diet can be crushed in one sitting when placed in front of a package of Oreo DoubleStuff cookies. A hasty trip through a school zone whilst running late for an appointment can mangle a perfect driving record. A day of flossing missed and suddenly you're in for a couple of root canals. So here I type in a bed of my own remorse, covered with a blanket of guilt, back propped up against a pillow of missed opportunity. How do … (2 comments)
mortgage: Cleaning Out the Lint Trap
- 05/12/08 04:14 AM
Face it. Lint is one of the last things we think about on a daily basis. You may shove your hand in your jeans pocket and pull out a mysterious wad of mangled paper and fuzz, maybe even wonder if it was an important note that went through the wash, but whether you sock it back in your pocket or toss it, lint just doesn't matter. It's annoying on black pants or in your navel, but it doesn't hamper your quality of life. Until the dryer doesn't shut off. I thought it rather odd that my clothes had been drying for … (4 comments)
mortgage: Divorcing Your House
- 04/15/08 06:46 AM
It's over. The love is gone. We've drifted apart. Sure, there was a time when everything seemed wonderful. How crazy were we having our first lien right away? Remember when we'd spend the weekends together, you, me, a paintbrush, some power tools? You gave me worth and value and it felt so good. I was so giving in the past, in fact, I gave until it hurt. Our beautiful second lien came along a few years later. I took you on that amazing 7-day cruise through the Eastern Caribbean. I put your kids through boarding school. We put in that pool you always wanted. I even helped buy the … (11 comments)
mortgage: Is Foreclosure A Fad?
- 04/12/08 03:56 AM
It's getting interesting out there. The foreclosure rate is increasing exponentially and the media is eating it up like a Chinese buffet. You can't turn on the tube without a well-polished reporter spewing forth another factoid about the topic, and rue the day that an evening news broadcast doesn't mention the floundering housing market. But is this compounding the problem? Foreclosure was the dirty word of the lending world just a few years ago. You had to be on the brink of financial ruin or the victim of a traumatic life change to walk away from your home. It's getting easier now. … (10 comments)
mortgage: Are They Leads or Bleeds?
- 04/03/08 02:02 AM
I just hired a new loan officer that has been successfully working Internet leads for the past few years and he has requested that I look into purchasing a batch of these things. I've never bought a lead and it feels kind of weird to me. All of my business is referral-based and that's the way I like it; I enjoy relationships with my clients and if I treat them well, they come back. Leads seem very cold. Some potential customer fills out a bunch of Internet quote forms one night and these companies running the websites harvest the information and divvy the leads … (19 comments)
mortgage: Running a 10K Only Took Me 6 Weeks!
- 02/08/08 09:15 AM
10,007. Every point, every blog, every step has been worth it. A huge thank you to the AR community for your help in reaching my first 10,000 points. Yeah, it's about more than that, but as we all know, we are in a goal-oriented industry. We are measured by our performance. Closed loans. Closed homes. Sales. How do we know if we are achieving what we have set out to do unless we write out our goals and then set deadlines in which to meet them? I have made a lot of friends and developed some fantastic daily disciplines during my first … (2 comments)
mortgage: Don't Forget to Flush!
- 02/07/08 01:56 PM
No, this isn't a Texas Hold 'Em advice column. I pretty much stink at cards because as soon as I get a good hand, my ears turn red and I start laughing. Needless to say, I've lost a lot of $20 bills in friendly games with a group of guys gathered in a garage around a bowl of cheese puffs and piles of brightly-colored chips. But not last night. Last night, I won the entire tournament. OK, it wasn't really a tournament, but it was a local networking event called a poker run. You show up, get a card, and then you … (2 comments)
mortgage: The Leaning Tower of Me-za
- 02/06/08 03:17 PM
About a month ago Kate Bourland bestowed upon me the wonderful honor of a Me-Me nomination. In true loan officer fashion, I closed this transaction in 30 days. Here we go folks. A Handful of Things You May or May Not Want to Know About Me: 1. A life supply of red pens. Before the mortgage biz, I actually taught high school English for 12 years. Loved almost every second of it and I miss it every day. It's tough for me to read the blatant improper use of the word pairings there/their and your/you're from Active Rain members, but I'm learning to let … (6 comments)
If mortgage truth can be found in the sprawling vastness of Internet and tucked away in the blurbs of the Bradenton Herald, then surely it can be discovered in the life of my little daughter, Chloe Sky. I suppose the "experts" would tell you that you need to be intimately acquainted with mortgage backed security trading to know which way rates are going to go, you must study the new MDIA and HVCC guidelines to predict turn times, and you have to be familiar with your 19 different lenders to understand whether or not you can write a loan on a … (8 comments)
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