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Category: Lending (page 49 of 56)

April 2, 2008

Zillow.com takes advertising demographics to never-before-seen places

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The other bit of news to come out of Zillow.com is this: The real estate start-up is collecting, deploying and reselling advertising demographics in unique and interesting ways.

The vast quantities of demographic information — income, property values, credit scores — that will be collected in the new Mortgage Marketplace software will be stored in browser “cookies” on the user’s own computer. In other words, Zillow will not be storing this information in its own databases, but will retain control over it by means of software that will be able to access the cookies in future sessions on Zillow.com.

What this means is that Zillow will be able to deliver highly-targeted advertising to its users, zeroing in on products and services that would be most appealing to that user’s sex, age, income and other demographic characteristics.

This by itself will make Zillow extremely profitable to advertisers, who seek assurance that their promotional efforts are aimed at the right prospects.

But Zillow is also making these cookies available to other advertising vendors, such as Google’s Adwords system. By this means, other advertisers will be able to deploy the demographic information Zillow is collecting to target their own ads.

Obviously, the reselling of this demographic information is also a profit-center for Zillow.com — reports of whose financial demise may turn out to have been premature.

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April 2, 2008

Zillow.com’s long-awaited mortgage lending service offers anonymous customized loan quotes to consumers, affording loan originators the opportunity to compete transparently for free mortgage leads

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Seattle-based real estate start-up Zillow.com tonight releases its long-anticipated mortgage lending product. We’ve known for nearly a month that Zillow’s offering would include working loan originators in some fashion. What becomes clear tonight is that Zillow will basically be acting as a hands-off intermediary between mortgage-seeking clients and loan originators.

Consumers using Zillow’s new Mortgage Marketplace will be able to anonymously solicit bids for loans from participating lenders. The consumer will fill out a detailed form disclosing all pertinent financial details.

The form will be submitted anonymously to participating lenders, who will, in their turn, produce quasi-pro-forma loan quotes, submitting them, through Zillow, to the consumer. The consumer will then have the choice to make direct contact with particular lenders to decide whom to do business with.

To a very large degree, the information asymmetry between lender and borrower is done away with, since the loan quote will detail every fee associated with the loan. Moreover, Zillow will be implementing a reputation-management system whereby borrowers will be able to rate their lenders on their performance.

In return, the lenders will receive Zillow’s mortgage leads at no cost.

The new service is expected to come on-line at 9 pm PST tonight. I made screenshots in the product demo teleconference I attended today, but my expectation is that these will be obviated very shortly.

 
Elsewhere: Todd Carpenter, Rich Barton, John Cook, Drew Meyers, TechCrunch, Rhonda Porter, Spencer Rascoff, Joel Burslem, Kevin Boer, Jay Thompson, Rhonda Porter (again), Pat Kitano, Morgan Brown, Trace Richardson.

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April 2, 2008

I am not a blogger

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

This is an article I wrote on Active Rain, about a month ago.  I’ve since deleted it because it was behind the “Members’ Only” wall and the rules there state you can’t “out” a private post because of the comments:

I am not a blogger.

I’m a marketer, a social media marketer. There’s a difference between the two. Blogging is often portrayed as an “art form”. I am no artist. If you’ve ever seen my drawings, or heard my singing, you’ll quickly verify that.

Why do I blog? It’s part of my overall branding strategy within my social media marketing plan. I want to be a ubiquitous presence, in plain sight of consumers, giving them what they want. If I give consumers what they want, they’ll give me what I want; a chance to fund their mortgage loan. It’s simple economics if you think about it. Consumers demand; we supply that demand.

Consumers want to see houses and mortgage rates. How do I know this? I write on Long Beach Real Estate Home, Laurie Manny’s blog. Laurie has had tremendous success with blogged listings. Her readers (and subsequent buyers) want to see homes for sale. Her readers started calling me when I wrote the Long Beach Mortgage Rates report…AND put my contact information on the post! Readers want to see homes for sale and mortgage rates available.

Todd Carpenter takes it one step further:

I bet most of you didn’t realize that I had a second mortgage blog. That’s okay because it flies under the radar. When I talked to Brian Brady about it a couple weeks ago, he called it a Trojan Horse. I like that definition. The secret is, my other mortgage blog is cleverly disguised as a blog about Modern Homes in Denver. Yep, it’s a mortgage blog that never bothers to mention mortgages

Todd jokingly recalls the expression “Real Estate Porn”. The most successful real estate blog, Curbed.com, is laden with real estate porn. Consumers LOVE it. Alas, Todd reports that blogging theoreticians don’t:

Blog experts like Dustin Read more

March 26, 2008

Did you miss out on the super-low Guerrilla-only price for BloodhoundBlog Unchained? The price is still low, but you need to act fast — Brian Brady wants to raise it again soon

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s a valuable question for the Web 2.0 world: Can people really appreciate a bargain? Everybody loves “free” — but do they love it at full value? My thinking is that LinkedIn would be a much more valuable place to network if it charged members $350 a year, but would anyone pay a buck a day for Facebook?

This is a question that has been bugging Brian Brady — gnawing at him as only a good marketing problem can. We priced BloodhoundBlog Unchained at $149 and sold a bunch of tickets. We bumped the price to $199 and sold a bunch more. We’re getting to the point where we’re going to have to make seating distribution choices — and Brian wants to raise the price to our estimated retail — dollarized — value: $350.

We know that amount is low. The next time we do this, the early-bird price will be more than that, and the last-minute price will be more than double that amount. We’re going to give you a year’s worth of ideas to deploy, so, even at $350, we’re still only a buck a day. If you do just one extra deal as a result of something you learn at Unchained, the ROI could be 20-1 or more.

Looked at that way, Brian is right: It’s plausible that, by charging too little, we’re encouraging people to set their expectations too low. I find that amazing, considering how much value we deliver here at BloodhoundBlog every day. But I was stunned to discover that people didn’t know that Unchained will not be the typical buy-me! buy-me! vendor show. I would have thought that my own graduated hostility to vendors would have made that plain.

In the other corner, there is me, slugging it out for the starving grunts in the trenches. No one is really starving — I hope! — but our lean months have become our lean years, and there ain’t too many of us getting fat off the fat of the land just now. I would rather keep the price as low as we can for as long as we can, Read more

March 24, 2008

The Real Estate Bailout Act of 2008

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

When successful financiers achieve a certain level of success, they up the ante and practice social engineering. Robert Rubin, Jon Corzine, and Hank Paulson  advanced to government service after piling up the pesos at Goldman Sachs (in financial circles, we say those two words with hushed reverence). After decades of whipping and driving the markets, the titans answer the call of noblesee oblige and decide to play with EVERYBODY’s money. While I haven’t risen to the austere positions Messrs Corzine, Rubin, and Paulson have, my friend Nick and I

have a little idea about how to save the American real estate market.

Let’s start with the premise that lenders are taking 20-30% hits on short sales. Then, let’s have the US Treasury loan 30% of the balance, of the aggregate debt, to homeowners whom request it, in order to pay down the first mortgage (or second mortgage). If I have $200,000, in aggregate liens against the property, the US Treasury will lend me $60,000, to pay down those aggregate liens, to $140,000. This reduces the lenders exposure.

What type of loan will the Treasury make to homeowners?

The term can be for the lesser of:

1- the remaining term of the first mortgage

2- 65 less the age of the primary borrower.

The interest rate can be the corresponding term treasury rate, plus .5% (for administrative costs). Maybe we can use some of that “yield spread” to coerce a few mortgage brokers to “originate” this government debt (okay, that was completely self-serving). For a 42 year old, with a 27 year term on his first mortgage, the term of this new government loan (in second position) would be 23 years (65-42=23). If a 23 year treasury bond yields 4.1%, than the note rate for the new loan will be 4.6%.

The borrowers never have to make a payment on this debt; it accrues like a negative amortization loan. In the aforementioned example, the balance would grow to about $168,000, after 23 years. With a first mortgage paid down to $140,000, we’re banking on Read more

March 23, 2008

JP Morgan Ups Bid For Bear Stearns

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Have we reached the bottom of the credit crisis? Not likely but we are definitely going through, what Barry Johnson calls, price discovery.

From The New York Times via Yahoo News:

JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) is in talks to increase its offer for Bear Stearns CosBear Stearns, (BSC.N) to $10 per share in an effort to pacify angry shareholders of Bear Stearns, the New York Times reported in its online edition.

“The Fed, which must approve any new deal, was balking at the new offer price on Sunday night after several days of frantic, secret negotiations,” the newspaper reported, citing people involved in the negotiations.

I said, earlier this week, that this deal may very well QUANTIFY the bottom:

Here’s the part we’re all forgetting. 30% of the Bear Stearns stock is owned by the employees and Joe Lewis own another 10%. Both these “stakeholders” are a tad more than pissed at the weekend looting that happened when the power went out at Bear. Thursday, the stated book value was some $80. The value of their headquarters’ building is eight bucks a share. Manhattan real estate was supposed to be holding up pretty well in this real estate decline. I “get” lowball offers but 20 cents on the dollar for the building and firm that comes with it?

I reported that this was an asset play for JP Morgan, last night; they certainly assume some risk with Bear’s mortgage-laden portfolio. I thought the offer was scary, not derisory when I saw it. A pit formed, in my stomach, when I thought that valuations were THAT low. If Bear Stearns, a respected securities form could be devalued THAT much by mortgages, what would happen to the economy?

Hunker down, folks! Hunker down for a heavyweight fight between Joe Lewis and Jamie Dimon. The currency trader versus the bean counter. The cowboy versus the storekeeper. If we’re fighting about WHERE the bottom is , today, the bottom might be just around the corner.

In my annual market report, I said:

Today, we can feel the bottom amidst the Read more

March 18, 2008

Will the Fed Buy Mortgage Backed Securities In the Open Market?

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

I never post my Mortgage Rates Reports here.  They’re boring unless you are thinking about buying a home or refinancing your mortgage.  Today, it seems plausible that the Fed is shifting its open market activities from buying treasuries, to buying mortgage-backed securities, in order to bolster liquidity in the mortgage industry.

Here’s what I said:

We call this phenomenon stagflation and it’s REALLY  bad for the economy.  The Fed has been aggressively cutting interest rates and the declining housing market is closing down mortgage companies, investment banking firms, and real estate brokerages.  What more can the Fed do to help?

The Fed can (and will) buy mortgage-backed securities. 

Rather than to buy treasury notes in the open market, the Fed will be buying mortgage-backed securities.  They will want to get those assets off investment banking firms’ balance sheets and provide stability to the MBS market.  Remember when I said that only the uneducated pay attention to the treasury note to determine the direction of mortgage rates?  Today is proof.

The spread between treasury notes and mortgage-backed securities has been widening these past six weeks. Why?  America was considered to be a sub-prime nation;  everybody was expected to default on their home loans.  Expect the Fed to prop up the MBS market in the next 4-6 weeks.  That will be bad for treasury notes and good for MBS.

Remember when I compared this to the junk bond crisis of the early 90’s and advised you not to panic?   Now is the time to take action.  There will be some great opportunities to lock into a low mortgage rates during the rest of this month.  If you’re closing a loan in less than 14 days, lock your rate.  Otherwise, float and see mortgage rates decline a bit.

Thoughts?  I don’t care if it’s good or bad policy, I care if its a realistic move on the Fed’s part.  I think they’re doing it now and will increase that activity in the near-term.  If I’m right, we’ll see lower mortgage rates and the Treasury/MBS spread will narrow.

March 18, 2008

Your rental home in Phoenix will generate positive cash flow — but will it appreciate significantly in the coming years?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link):

 
Your rental home in Phoenix will generate positive cash flow — but will it appreciate significantly in the coming years?

It’s still a buyer’s market out there, but is it an investor’s market? The answer to that turns on three other issues: Vacancies, values and cash flows.

Lenders get all the blame for the downturn in home values, but that’s not entirely fair. Another big share of the blame goes to the builders, who built new homes far beyond any reasonable estimate of demand. So, even though folks who might have gotten home loans two or three years ago are stuck renting for a while longer, is there enough tenant demand to keep a rental home profitably occupied?

Even if there is, will the prices of Valley homes continue their decline? This seems likely, at least in the near term. There is still a tremendous amount of inventory in the MLS system. The best bargains, though, are houses that are in the foreclosure process. These can be hard to wrest away from lenders, but they may be a leading indicator of the bottom of the market.

More significantly, will a rental purchased at a bargain price throw off positive cash flow? Unequivocally: Yes. To qualify for an investor loan, you will need to have great credit and a 20% down payment. But interest rates are still very low, and rents have held up just fine through the downturn.

So the big bet boils down to this one question: If you buy a rental home in the Phoenix market now, will you be able to sell it at a significant profit eight or ten years from now?

Alas, no one can predict the future. If you pick the right rental home — good house, good location, good orientation, easy access to schools, playgrounds, shopping, freeways and jobs — it should rent well now and resell well later. If you get the right loan and don’t refinance, your income property will actually produce income — which means it will pay for itself and still throw off a Read more

March 17, 2008

Stealing Bear Stearns: Joe Lewis Ain’t Pulling Punches

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Joe Lewis taught us all what the word “derisory” meant today when he described the Bear Stearns sale to JP Morgan Chase. Lewis doubts the shareholders will approve the sale to Jamie Dimon’s financial services powerhouse.

Joe Lewis invested some 9 figures in the cash-strapped investment bank, last year. Bear Stearns cried poor on Friday, cut a deal with Jamie, over the weekend, and announced the sale Sunday night. The Fed lent JP Morgan the money to buy Bear Stearns. President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson endorsed the deal by 10AM PST today.

Fortune rewards the swift, no? Of course, I can’t forward lock a loan with Chase because I can’t get a wholesale lending rep to stop by my office and get me codes for their website. I’m guessing if I offered the $300,000 loan for ten grand, I might get a better response from Chase.

Here’s the part we’re all forgetting. 30% of the Bear Stearns stock is owned by the employees and Joe Lewis own another 10%. Both these “stakeholders” are a tad more than pissed at the weekend looting that happened when the power went out at Bear. Thursday, the stated book value was some $80. The value of their headquarters’ building is eight bucks a share. Manhattan real estate was supposed to be holding up pretty well in this real estate decline. I “get” lowball offers but 20 cents on the dollar for the building and firm that comes with it?

I reported that this was an asset play for JP Morgan, last night; they certainly assume some risk with Bear’s mortgage-laden portfolio. I thought the offer was scary, not derisory when I saw it. A pit formed, in my stomach, when I thought that valuations were THAT low. If Bear Stearns, a respected securities form could be devalued THAT much by mortgages, what would happen to the economy?

Hunker down, folks! Hunker down for a heavyweight fight between Joe Lewis and Jamie Dimon. The currency trader versus the bean counter. Read more

March 16, 2008

Bear Stearns Employees Wake Up To Tenuous Employment Prospects

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Bear Stearns employees will wake up on St. Patrick’s Day and wonder about their future. JP Morgan Chase bought Bear Stearns, a venerable Wall Street institution, for about 2.5% of the firm’s stated book value. The sales price was just 20% of the value of the Manhattan headquarters alone.

How safe are the jobs at Bear Stearns?

Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan’s CEO, cut his teeth in the brokerage and banking business under Wall Street legend Sandy Weill. He rose with Sandy as Weill made his comeback move after being ousted as American Express’ Chairman. Weill took control of Primerica and leveraged it through acquisitions of Shearson Lehman (bought from his nemesis, American Express), Travelers Insurance and ultimately Citigroup. Weill, and protege Dimon, were able to build the empire through cost-cutting in the name of economies of scale.

That doesn’t bode well for Bear Stearns’ employees.

Like the Countrywide/ B of A merger, we have a culture clash ahead. Bear Stearns vertically integrated into the mortgage industry, eventually owning its own wholesale lending channel. Bear violated the “Chinese Wall” securities brokerage firms try to respect; they bought their customers. JP Morgan owns Chase bank, a VERY conservative bank that owns a mortgage operation. The bean counters just bought the cowboys and in this era of “fiscal responsibility”, the cowboys will be kicked off the range.

Jamie Dimon doesn’t own a ten gallon hat.

JP Morgan bought Bear for its brokerage operations not its mortgage banking business. The $82 discount to stated book value suggests that JP Morgan will keep the prime performing mortgages, for its Chase Manhattan Mortgage portfolio, and most likely rid itself of all other mortgage assets. They can afford a helluva lot of losses on those mortgage assets with the discount they got.

What’s that mean to the mortgage market?

Less liquidity. While Bear Stearns Mortgage was reinventing itself to be a conservative lender, they were aggressively pricing their loans. Less liquidity and elimination of the price leader means higher costs, long-term.

Like their Countrywide cousins, Bear Stearns Mortgage employees Read more

March 14, 2008

What could be dumber than sticking a Flash widget on your real estate weblog? How about sicking two Flash gadgets there instead?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I don’t know what to do. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “It is not my function to be a fly swatter.” And yet every time I turn around I find myself reading abject nonsense from technology vendors who have never in their lives sold real estate — who have never sold much of anything but hot air.

Should I just wince and move on to the next article in my feed reader? Or do I have a duty to point out obvious, bone-headed errors, so that y’all don’t repeat them, not knowing they are errors?

I sat on this one earlier today, but it just keeps bugging me. If you think I’m being mean for calling the author out, all I can think of to say is, “Dang!” I myself never, ever forget the ninety-and-nine. If I can spare just one person one dumb mistake, I’ll call that a win and ignore everything else.

So: Joel Burslem’s advice to build single-property widgets is truly bad counsel. The future of real estate weblogging is not widgets, and widgets are not valuable replacements for single-property websites.

First: Off-site resources are bad, m’kaaaay? If you watch where your pages drag when they are loading, you will see that your problems are almost always the result of calls you are making to other servers. In this context, it doesn’t matter if you are calling Flash, Javascript, PHP, PERL or plain vanilla HTML. What matters most is that the other servers you are calling often will not work as quickly as your server. Even if those servers are very sprightly, there are still going to be delays from hand-shaking. Flash and Javascript can madly exacerbate these problems, since they require processing power in the client computer also. As cool as the free stuff you can get from vendors can seem to you, much of it is white noise, at best, of absolutely no benefit to advancing your marketing message. And if those widgets, gizmos and gadgets are slowing down your pages, they are acting against your marketing objectives — by coming between you and your clients.

Second: Flash and Javascript do not search. Read more

March 12, 2008

Appraisers – The Latest Target In The Circular Firing Squad

by

Associate Broker

Author website

The Blame Game – Go Find A Scapegoat And Pin The Tail On Their Donkey

Pundits pontificate about the reasons that the real estate market is in a shamble, and the latest target in their crosshairs is appraisers.

“Those crooked appraisers jacked up the values of the properties!” they scream.

Last night, Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers and Consultants, was on the Glenn Beck show. Miller agreed that there are fundamental problems regarding how some banks award appraisals to appraisers… and that roughly 80% of appraisers are “in the tank” for the banks.

While I have the greatest respect for Mr. Miller, I don’t believe that the problem with appraisers is so wide-spread. Perhaps in Manhattan – where Mr. Miller specializes – but I don’t believe that 80% of the appraisers nationwide have been corrupted. I do, however, agree that the process could use reform.

Let’s look at the role of the appraiser. S/he is in the business of providing an opinion of value… not a guarantee of value. Their services are NOT required by real estate law – but rather as a requisite of most lenders. Their job is to safeguard the lender from fraud by assuring the lender that the collateral for the loan is sufficient.

In a rising market, an appraiser takes recent sales into consideration… but must also allow for a free market causing the values to rise. After all, what is a better indicator of market value than a willing, ready and able buyer who places an offer on the table? Is that not the true definition of market value?

I have seen many transactions that are questionable, but the vast majority of them have been well within the acceptable range of value, IMHO.

While there have been – and still are – instances of fraud involving appraisers, these instances have been the exception and not the rule… and certainly not the reason for an over-exuberant run-up in real estate prices.

In reality – there is no single factor that you can attribute to this mess.

No, ladies and gentlemen, the fault does not lie with the appraiser. In Read more

March 9, 2008

Principal Reduction : 2008 Buzzword?

by

Mortgage Planner

Author website

FirstBusinessX story on mandated Principal Reduction

Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said banks should consider writing-down principal on outstanding home loans to help slow foreclosures. The media is calling it “principal reduction”.

Every party has something to gain and lose with principal reduction.  This is one reason why it may be a phrase forever remembered to 2008, much like “dot bomb” to 2001.

In some interviews, I am pretty interesting.  In others, I am fairly dull.  Put this one with the latter.

March 7, 2008

Mortgage Complaint? Welcome to The World Of Consumer-Policing at Zillow Mortgage

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

How can Zillow Mortgage become the online edition of the Better Business Bureau for mortgage lending?

It just did.

The future of consumer complaints is in transparency; breaking down the walls of the “smoke filled rooms” where industry insiders shear sheep and protect their own. This mortgage crisis has seen government response, spun as “consumer protection” but clearly designed to protect the mortgage industry. It sucks.

It sucks because the mortgage industry was a drunken frat party, from 2002-2006. Hustlers invaded our business and gang raped the borrower. First we slipped you a mickey by confusing the mortgage product offerings. Next, we practiced prestidigitation by getting you to focus on payments while reaping in enormous profits through secondary market transactions. Finally, when you couldn’t handle the intense pressure of your “new” loan, the government rallied around us like a college administration protects a red-shirted football star.

You (the consumer) are culpable, as well. You stuck your head in the sand and defined a long-term financial plan as the length of a mortgage prepayment penalty. You eschewed due diligence for the immediate gratification of an SUV or ATV, paid for by your withdrawn home equity.

Done. It’s time to heal.

You (consumers) need to start getting educated. You need a forum where you can get transparent answers to hard questions. You need to know that you’re talking to a mortgage professional who knows the difference between principles and principal.

We (the mortgage originators) need to know that we’re competing for your business against legitimate competitors, not some lead.bot service that parses your volunteered information and sells it to six of us.

You ( the consumer) need a public forum to air complaints about our service offering; real complaints. We’ll take forever to return phone calls, forget to disclose a loan condition, and change up loan terms as loan programs are canceled by lenders. That’s an unfortunate reality of the world I live in today. Demand for mortgage money is high while supply is low.

You can complain against me on the wide-open platform Zillow Mortgage provides.

…and I can Read more

March 7, 2008

Zillow Mortgage: Zoriginators’ Delight or Bane?

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Greg Swann covered the big Zillow Mortgage announcement so I won’t regurgitate the details here.  I will weigh in my opinion and speculate about the consumer offering.

I share Greg’s enthusiasm for an independent originator database.  The industry can’t get it together and the Federal government may be violating the Constitution if they remove the licensing authority from the states.  While the National Association of Mortgage Brokers contemplates, private industry acts; and act they did.  Here’s the other cool part; both banker-employed and broker-employed originators are required to register with Zillow and have their employment verified.  Zillow accomplished what the government couldn’t.

What Greg may have missed is that lead aggregators, like Lending Tree, really don’t offer much of a background check.  If the credit card is good, they’ll sell leads. What Zillow has done is to disintermediate the lead aggregators and that, is a good thing.  The unlimited access to consumers will be a great offering for originators because it will allow them to focus their efforts on delivering good customer service to Zillow readers.  Originators who are not good marketers or who desperately want a consumer-direct channel may find joy in the Zillow offering.

I’m not one of those originators because I focus my efforts on referral relationships with Realtors, accountants,  and financial planners.  I’m not one of those originators but I want to play.  Why?  The offer is just too damned interesting to pass up.  Competition will be key as Zoriginators try to compete for business.

Now, here’s my opportunity to be critical of the Zillow mortgage offering; they may attract the very least talented originators. We’ll see when the consumer offering comes out.  The traditional “order takers” of the mortgage industry ,with time to engage in anonymous repartee with consumers, are not the most talented of our industry.  In fact, they may lack the courage (and financial reward) to properly educate consumers about the appropriate loan product for their financial situation.  Let’s face it; if you create a model that encourages the commoditization of a financial product, you leave little incentive to attract the heavy lifters who educate and Read more

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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