[photopress:BRIO_Slogan.jpg,thumb,alignright]Last week when I took on the challenge of moving BRIO forward, Craig asked “(ARDELL)…it sounds like BRIO is simply a full service brokerage. What distinguishes BRIO from other such brokerages? Is it simply that you do “full service
Category Archives: General
FHA Secure: A Political Power Move Disguised as a Helping Hand to Those in Need
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Bush offered America some presidential words this morning to let us know he’s on top of this whole subprime meltdown, credit crunch, liquidity crisis. On his agenda: An FHA bailout in the form of a new feel good loan program: FHA Secure. Let’s pause for a moment and reflect back on how well HUD is currently doing. First of all, in order to originate an FHA loan, the stack of paperwork, hoops to jump through, policies and procedures, exceptions to the policies and procedures, and updates to the policies and procedures, are, shall we say, astronomical, and I’m just talking about qualifying the applicant, let alone underwriting and the appraisal process.
One reason (of many) why brokers pushed subprime loans was because the borrower who qualified for an FHA loan couldn’t get that loan with a broker. Why? Because it also takes an enormous amount of effort for a mortgage broker to become an FHA-approved lender. It’s the small details that really count to HUD, such as annual HUD audits, net worth requirements, submitting audited financial statements, presenting a quality control and compliance plan, and paying your loan originators as W-2 employees. Many brokers pay LOs as 1099 workers. For some small to medium sized broker firms, it was a business decision: make more money selling subprime and leave the hassle of originating FHA loans to the banks. “See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya
And now for something completely different…Seattle Neighborhood Round-up
Headlines come and go…life goes on in our Seattle Neighborhoods….
A refreshing Alki twist on an old time summer favorite. On Beach Drive Blog some resident wildlife captured in aerialist feats of fishing. Discovered at West Seattle Blog rare sightings of pink birds are anticipated to be seen in West Seattle yards soon.
Happy 500th Ballard Avenue blog! At Large in Ballard tips us on the BBQ at the BCC.
Up on Capitol Hill at CHS the moon shone a little less brightly last Tuesday and has photos to prove it.
Issaquah Undressed spots a horse of a different color and composition…scrap iron. The City of Redmond Neighborhood BLOG reports on some stormwater solutions happening in Redmond.
Over at Kirkland Weblog a dancing hot dog delights drivers…and captures children’s’ attention at the corner of 124th and 116th. Week 35 at Kirkland 52 drops the hint of fall.
More from the mortgage-junk-mail bag
The junk mail makers must be working feverishly on new angles to trick consumers. This piece we received yesterday really makes me [photopress:DSC_0037.JPG,thumb,alignright]pi$$ed!!! It claims to be from the “Loan Audit Department
Don't let your "gut check" go to waste…
No, I’m not talking about a new abdominal workout but rather advocating that landlords be on top of things when choosing who to rent to. I bring up the topic to highlight that the majority of landlords don’t do this kind of research using instead a “gut check
What is your Mortgage Exit Strategy?
Unless you have a long term fixed rate mortgage, you should develop an exit strategy. An exit strategy is a well thought plan on how you’re [photopress:airplaneexit.jpg,thumb,alignright]going to leave your current mortgage. Every time you board an airplane, the Stewardess reviews the “exit strategy”. They’re not planning on an actual emergency landing, they are simply preparing you for a worse case scenario and informing you where the exits are and what you need to do in that event.
You should have a plan if your current mortgage is:
- Any type of adjustable rate mortgage (ARMs)
- Option ARMs (negative amortization a.k.a. deferred interest)
- Any balloon mortgages (recently common with subprime mortgages such as 2/28 or 3/36)
Having a plan (being prepared) does not mean waiting until you receive a notice from your mortgage company that your mortgage payment is hiking because your fixed period on your ARM is over. You need an exit strategy because once fixed period is over and your mortgage adjusts, odds are that your new mortgage payment will not be desirable or affordable.
You need to start developing your plan well in advance. Here’s what I recommend:
- Find the Note for your mortgage (deed of trust) and determine what your new rate may be using the worse case scenario. If you have an ARM, you can figure this out by adding the first cap to your interest rate. For example, if you currently have a 5/1 ARM with a note rate of 5% and the first adjustment rate cap is 5% (5/2/5 is a common cap structure), your new rate could be 10%. If the first adjustment cap is 2% (2/2/6 is another possibility); your new rate could be 7%. If your ARM has an interest only feature and will also be converting to amortized payments (some have longer interest only terms beyond the fixed rate period), you’re in for a double whammo if you’re keeping the mortgage.
- Determine what your worse case payment may be. Your new payment will be amortized over the remaining term of the mortgage. Use an amortization schedule to see what your mortgage balance will be at 60 months (using the 5/1 ARM scenario) and figure your payment based on the maximum possible rate amortized for 300 months. This new payment does not include taxes and insurance. In fact, anyone with an adjustable rate mortgage, regardless how long the remaining fixed term is, should contact their LO to determine what their “worse case payment
Blog Classes – Everyone's Getting Into the Act
[photopress:blogging101.gif,thumb,alignright]I’ve been asked to run some blog classes over at BRIO. Apprently they’ve already set one up, and all RE professionals are invited. Everything’s happening so fast and the first one is on Thursday morning September 6, at 10:00 a.m., right after the holiday weekend.
I looked over Dustin’s format, but while Dustin is my Blogging Guru, there’s not much I can use there. It won’t include an overview of what a blog is. It will get straight to the point. Blog now! LOL. Clearly I don’t want it to be like some of the Web 2.0 classes I’ve been to, where the instructor spends most of the time talking about the days before faxes, and ends with “and now we’re at Web 2.0 thanks for coming”. It also won’t be about what blogs are. It will be a “getting started right now” seminar, much like Project Blogger that produced Kevin’s Blog. (Kev was on the news in Miami today – his blog is gangbusters).
I’ve been wanting to take Jillayne’s class, but better I don’t until after I set up my format. I don’t want to “plagerize”. So it will be my view of Blogging and Web 2.0 and strictly from an agent’s perspective. So while it may be more rudimentary than some of the other classes, I’m hoping that will be an advantage as it also won’t be over anyone’s head. I can send them to Jillanye’s and Dustin’s classes for a broader perspective. Mine will just get them up and running fast and give more tips on some of the pitfalls, like managing comments. Or maybe that will be a follow up class after they’ve set up their blogs and written 20 or more posts.
So Dustin and Russ and Jillayne and now me. RCG seems to be doing more than their fair share of hosting classes on blogging. No cost and no credit hours. Just a sharing of ideas. Most of my agents have expressed an interest in setting up or improving their blogs. Clearly this is a good time for agents to start one, as we have more time in in winter to work on it than we do from January 15th through July.
Personally I thought the Inman Podcast was too much talk about us. Maybe I’ll do a Podcast of my class and I’m planning to set it up more like a workshop. R.S.V.P. if you’re interested in the comments below or email me, so we know how many to plan for. Some have already signed up and I think we’re limiting it to 12 people. But there will be more classes, I’m sure. I’ll need to have at least 25 of them just to train my own agents.
One of the reasons I accepted BRIO’s offer is because there are Geeky Boys there who know how to Podcast. Dustin? Jillayne? Are there any podcasts of your classes available online that I can view beforehand?
Searching for ruminant with huge appetite for gorging opportunity in gully…
I love the idea of renting a goat to clear out the unofficial greenbelt area by my house. Not only does it sound effective and “green
Subprime Solutions
This is part four of a four-part series of blog articles about the subprime mortgage problems. In part one I sketched the rise and fall of subprime loan products and their relation to predatory lending practices within a capitalist system. In part two, I examined the structural relationship between a professional and his or her client. In part three, I offered a business ethics case study comparing the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster to the subprime mortgage market collapse. In today’s part four, I assert three logical solutions to the current crisis in lending.
[photopress:gift_1.jpg,thumb,alignleft]The subprime crisis is a gift. Mortgage lending can emerge from the subprime mess and transform itself. I have been co-writing about predatory lending and the ambiguous professional status of retail mortgage salespeople for over 5 years. The industry has traded consumer respect for massive profits. It does not matter where you work: banker, broker, credit union, consumer finance company. It does not matter what you call yourselves: Loan officer, loan originator, loan consultant, mortgage planner. Consumers do not understand the subtle and obvious differences. They DO know “lender
Steal This Blog Post – Friday Fun with Splog Busters!
I recently discovered my last blog post was spotted on several different splogs. On the one hand, I’m flattered that somebody thinks highly enough of my content to copy it and on the other hand, it’s still theft and it could cost you money.
It’s no secret that Mr. Swan holds splogs in same high regard that the Viacom holds YouTube & Google in right now. In fact, he has even attempted to contact splog owners in order to get them to remove the offending content. (Good luck with that Greg – your gonna love this blog post). Mr. Luther has more enlightened attitude toward the problem. He believed that if someone is stealing your content, that almost always means that you’re writing good stuff!
I used to be closer to Dustin’s feelings than Greg’s. However recent events have caused me to rethink my position on this matter. You see, I recently learned that bandwidth isn’t free. Because of all the MLS image downloading, web page serving, and image transferring my server applications and web sites did last month, my hosting company hit me with a $50 fee because I exceeded my 100 GB/month bandwidth quota. Needless to say, I wasn’t pleased to be paying more for hosting (Anybody know of any co-location companies on the Eastside besides Isomedia? If this becomes expensive, I might be going data center shopping again).
Despite this unfortunate event, I did learn that conserving bandwidth does save money and improve site performance (previously the financial aspects of bandwidth conservation never hit home). So, I’ve recently had an enlightened change of heart.
I obviously don’t value my content like Greg value’s his. I see my content as just my semi-interesting rambling that has the nice side effect of creating name recognition for myself, my company, and Rain City Guide. After all, when a splog steals a blog post, they keep the original links and images intact. And since all those links usually refer back to Rain City Guide, it probably helps our Google Rank more than hurts. And it doesn’t cost me anything, if you make a copy.
However, I value my bandwidth. If you hotlink to images on my web site or my blog, you are now costing me money. Although, there are easier ways of avoiding the issue, I decided think like a geek instead of thinking like a real estate blogger.
While you send e-mail to people that may not exist, I just break out the ye old C# compiler and the HTTP documentation and invent an ASP.net HTTP handler that returns a dynamic image and embarrasses the splog host to stop hot-linking to my images.
Anyway, if you’re interested in how easy this trick is to pull off, I’ll post the C# source code for this dynamic image on my blog this weekend, so at least Greg can fight back against sploggers and Greg’s computer genius son can learn a new web trick from an old master… (PS – Although, I’m not a native PHP speaker, I’ll help your son translate it, if he doesn’t get what I did)
If you hosted this image from a web page on your web site, like I did on my blog, you’d see a “[your website] is a splog. Visit raincityguide.com” image. And if you hosted this image on raincityguide.com, you’d get the following image.
Needless, to say, once you understand the technology involved, it opens up all sorts of fun possibilities. For example, you could…
- Create blog posts with invisible images, that turn into giant splog warning images when hosted by a splog
- Create images that display genuine content on your site, but display pornography or other objectionable content on a splogger’s site
- Create images that display genuine content on your site, but turn invisible on a splogger’s site
- Create images that display content on your site, but return HTTP 403 Forbidden codes on a splogger’s site
If you host your own blog, and aren’t quite so geeky and cheap to write code to solve problem, you can use software like Port 80 software’s LinkDeny on Microsoft’s IIS which is by far the most flexible solution to dealing with image leeching problems. If you host a WordPress blog on a LAMP platform, you can probably configure Apache Mod-Security or Mod-Rewrite to pull off similar tricks.