I was at a party Saturday night, and everyone kept telling that it’s a great time to buy. I’ve been showing all weekend, so, who knows?, maybe it’s true. In any case, I’m short on minutes, so we’ll do this week’s awards on horseback.
The Minnesota Association of Realtors has a peculiar talent for inviting scorn and ridicule. This year’s fun-fest, the winner of our People’s Choice Award, was kicked off by Teresa Boardman, with Has MAR forgotten who pays the bills?
I would love it if half of the agents in the twin cities quit. That would mean more money and more business for me. It just doesn’t work that way and it never will. When it gets easy everyone wants to do it, and they do. When the going gets rough they quit.
Glen, your letter is just another example of how an industry in turmoil has started eating it’s young to protect old business models instead of innovating to better serve the consumer. Real estate is a self eliminating market driven profession. It works on the principals of supply and demand, as does the housing market. When agents can’t make ends meet they will seek employment outside the industry and maybe they will sell a few homes too. We call our economic system capitalism and I just love the almost endless opportunities the system brings. Anyone can start their own business, how cool is that?
You don’t get to decide who will stay and who will go based on earnings and years in the business. Each of us will make that decision on our own.
The Black Pearl Award this week goes to Morgan Brown’s Taking advantage of convertible home equity lines of credit, which teaches us how to encumber a Jumbo-priced property without a Jumbo loan:
Instead of taking the whole loan balance as a 1st position HELOC, take a conforming 1st mortgage up to $417,000 and then take the remaining as a convertible HELOC. Once you sign the loan documents you can convert the HELOC to a fixed rate and achieve a blended interest rate (the effective interest rate of your 1st and 2nd mortgage combined) that can also be up to a point lower than the going jumbo loan rate.
And not to belabor the issue of mortgage lending too much, but it is in the news. Jillayne Schlicke takes this week’s Odysseus Medal with a thoroughgoing discussion of the president’s sub-prime bail-out plan, FHA Secure: A Political Power Move Disguised as a Helping Hand to Those in Need:
When I pay my federal income tax next spring, perhaps there will be a box I can check to elect whether or not I’d like to give my taxes over to the corporate welfare plan cleverly disguised as more FHA loan programs and subsidizing pre-foreclosure loan modifications. Government was never intended to bail out corporations. Let the invisible hand of the free market take its toll. Let the corporations that screwed up go down, let those employees re-enter the workforce elsewhere, let the homebuyers who fell for pay option, interest only, negative am ARMs re-enter the home market as renters. The housing and mortgage market will be far better off for it.
If you didn’t vote for The People’s Choice Award, don’t miss out on this week’s short list of nominees. The quality of the entries is off-the-charts excellent, so be sure to give them a look.
Congratulations to the winners — and to everyone who participated. Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon PDT/MST. You can nominate yourself or any post you admire here or, more easily, here.
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