mortgages: An update on Northwest Indiana - 06/24/09 11:21 PM
A few years back I was a lot more active here on Active Rain, working with some great real estate professionals and learning every step of the way.  Thanks to all of you who have been true friends.  I am spending most of my time on mortgage lending these days, although still building a home once in a while.  Here is a list of links to my mortgage sites, most still in fledling stage but I'd like to do your loan.  Northwest Indiana Mortgages   For those looking for our website, please check it out First Financial Trust Mortgage. For home … (2 comments)

mortgages: The Panic of 2007 - Subprime Mortgages and Information - 10/07/08 06:45 AM
For lunch, and perhaps a few more minutes, I am reading today a paper entitled "The Panic of 2007" by Gary Gorton from the Yale School of Management and delivered in August to a Federal Reserve Bank meeting in Jackson Hole. 
Yes, it's 91 pages and chocked full of detailed sketches of the sub-prime problem
Yes, it's a bit dry, but well worth the read to any serious student of mortgage securitization or the political impact of last week's bailout bill.
 
I'll leave a few comments here, and then post others from my twitter profile this afternoon.  
 
Right off … (2 comments)

mortgages: New haircut - New Challenges - 09/15/08 04:11 AM
I used to have a funny running joke with a friend that when we got a haircut, we changed up our attitudes too. Well today is just one of those kind of turning (or tipping) point days.
 
For the last year I spent the bulk of my time shutting down our home building company.  The emotional toll was heavy and frankly I really loved building homes for first time buyers.    But, that market was so beat up by the hurricane like winds of media attacks, sub-prime fallout, commercial bank vision failures and then job losses ... that I really … (1 comments)

mortgages: Housing Recovery - Fannie and Freddie Reorganization - 09/08/08 03:16 AM
I know that many of the posts today in the major media and blogosphere will focus on the negative, that must sell more ads for everyone.  Not me, I think this was the right final step to be taken by the federal government to provide calm to banks and securities markets ... and propel a major housing recovery.
First the negative types:
"This weekend Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced that mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will be placed in a government conservatorship that closely resembles a bankruptcy reorganization. The move puts U.S. taxpayers on the hook for $5.4 trillion … (2 comments)

mortgages: John McCain on the mortgage market - 03/27/08 03:01 AM
Many of you know that I am an avid John McCain backer, even hosting and authoring two Pro-McCain blogs
Porter County Politics, which endorsed him in July of 2007
And, Hoosiers for McCain
Yesterday I posted the full text to John McCain's speech on the mortgage markets and his ideas on the government's level of intervention. 
That full text can be accesssed here:  John McCain on the mortgage crisis.  Please read
Now, you may agree or disagree, and I highly encourage the debates from our profession, but you should at least know what our potential President thinks and is thinking about our tattered industry.  … (11 comments)

mortgages: New Mortgage Product, at least it's new to me - 02/23/07 07:42 AM
My friends over at First Federal Trust Mortgage introduced a new mortgage product to me. I guess it goes like this. It's so new I guess they don't even have it on their website yet.You buy a home, let's use round numbers, and it costs $250,000. You put your normal down paymennt and closing costs on the table and purchase the house.Now, you set up your paycheck to go as a direct deposit into a paydown of your mortgage balance. Following? This pays down your mortgage perhaps twice a month quite a bit. Then you write checks to pay all your … (8 comments)