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March 23, 2010

Originator Compensation Overhaul to Cost Consumers

by

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

Author website

I said new legislation would benefit mortgage brokers to the detriment of direct lenders.  In the comments, I feared something insidious might happen (responding to Wayne Long):

WAYNE: “It is interesting that the new rules benefit the broker vs. the direct lender”

BRIAN: It wasn’t by design (which is why I expect legislation that “forbids” my expert opinion on whether a borrower can be approved)

The government-banking complex doesn’t want negotiated rates for any consumer loans.  The government wants to “set” the rates, according to its whim.  That’s price fixing . 

Don’t believe me?  Look at the prestidigitation that just happened in the health care bill.  While you were arguing about the hijack of the health care industry, the Federal government quietly nationalized the student loan industry.

“Good.  Lenders are all thieves anyway!” you snort. 

Think again.  San Diego had a thriving student loan industry until last year.  Thousands of jobs were eliminated with this bill.  Moreover, Grandma can’t buy securities now, collateralized by those student loans, in order to juice up the yield on a portion of her portfolio.  The student loan industry nationalization is just one more way to buy party loyalty from young voters; the base of this Adminstration’s voters.  Loan “grants” will be the “new moniker”, designed to portray the Federal Government as the “kinder, gentler” nanny.

Shall I continue?  When rates fall again (sometime way in the future), the hordes of private companies, wanted to offer graduates a chance to save money, by refinancing or restructuring their student loan debt, won’t be there.  Graduates will be stuck paying above market interest rates, to retire debt.  Forget that the federally-guaranteed student loans inflated college tuitions, this provision raises the overall cost of a college education (the value of which is debatable anyway)

But I digress.

As quickly as you could say “expansion of the size and scope of Government“, did the left hand start new projects, to get you to stop thinking about the right hand’s health care hijack.  Immigration reform is the larger scaled sleight-of-hand but, hidden in the bowels of the Fannie/Freddie takeover, is the anti-consumer price fixing that is being proposed.  Read this:

Geithner called for aligning incentives Read more

March 22, 2010

Libertarian Politics, Facebook Videos & Much Much More

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

It’s going to take a decade, at least.  Probably longer.   But, we’ll reclaim this country in word and deed…without being corrupted or corruptible.   I have hope….because I know what side I’m on.

It starts and ends with education: overcoming the crap that’s poured into our heads about the nature of the world, overcoming the “pseudoeconomics” .  It starts with me continuing to educate myself, pointing out ideas to others.

I’m in with both feet.  What I did before prepared me for this.  3 weeks ago, Jeremiah Arn and I were talking.  How fast could we get quality stuff done?  How cheap.  He was shocked, as NetBoots quoted him $2500+ for baseline functionality.  I can do what they can do cheaper–partly because WP has a bigger community than Drupal, partly because we’ve done this for a while, and partly because Flat Rate Web Jobs has built ton of sites and has a decent system in place for at least that portion of the experience.  Cloning that and focusing on speedy delivery is key.

So, now, I make libertarian campaign websites for a living.  We’ll deliver five this week. First one off the line was last week  We were faster than their people were ready with copy.  That never happens.   For you Austinites that never read BHB, please vote for liberty minded Glen Mayes for school board starting April 26th.

Campaigns need speed–period.  That’s what they have to have to win, you recruit a candidate, you get them ready for primaries, then you have 50-60 days, tops to do everything.  Each day is a big portion of the total time, and waiting a week for a website is a killer.  When I worked on my campaign vendor delays were the #1 source of stress.

And there’s no excuse for that: with SQL every frollicking thing we do is a database entry.  See?  WP/Thesis/all of it.  It boils down to one database that we can re-use, re-deploy and set all the variables for with one form.  Call me a vendorslut already.  Whatever. We make it fast and we make it better with every iteration.  You know, a loop.

We Read more

March 22, 2010

Supplanting the Rotarian Socialists

by

Realtor, Media Mogul

Author website

In one of Greg Swann’s posts on finding splendor for yourself he came to the conclusion that we don’t have to get there, we are already here!  Here’s what Greg said towards the end of that post:

Good news: We’re already here. You’re already a sane, normal person, and you already live among your neighbors in peace and prosperity. Yes, the state preys upon you like a vast, hideous vampire, reeking of death, impetuously random in its predations. But it matters less and less to civilized people with every passing day.

I don’t ever favor trying to defeat or take over evil institutions. It is sufficient to supplant them. And this sane and civilized people are already doing, just by living their sane and civilized lives. Consider eBay. Consider PayPal. Now think of a clearinghouse like PayPal unknown to anyone except its depositors. Does anything like this already exist? How would you know if it does? How hard would it be to create, now that you know it could exist?

I love the idea of supplanting systems that have lost their utility.  I read that and wondered.  Does anything like this already exist?  Is there a world, in reality or in cyberspace where civilized people are able to engage in commerce freely?  The answer is of course there is!

In previous career choices I used to do business with entrepreneurs and business people from Europe and Asia.  They were from some of the highest taxed economies in the world.  To me, it appeared they spent considerable time and effort structuring their businesses to keep assets in various places worldwide so they did not have to realize the taxes on them in their home countries.  It seemed like a bunch of trouble compared to just living somewhere where tax rates were acceptable, like the United States in those days.

Since then, we’ve had the internet revolution.  The tax climate in the United States is changing.  So, I wondered how those folks might function today.  What I found is that their goal of earning and keeping assets in various places and countries has become much easier.  There are Read more

March 22, 2010

Don’t Believe Everything You Hear On The Radio

by

Associate Broker

Author website

Even Those Financial Gurus You Know And Trust Can Be Wrong

This weekend, I caught part of a nationally syndicated financial talk show on the radio. While I appreciate and agree with much of what the host usually has to say – this was one of those times that I found myself yelling at the radio.

A home buyer called into the program with an issue where she felt that she was going to lose her earnest money because her 21-day financing contingency had expired – and she was unable to get a mortgage.

The host thought the 21-day financing contingency was too short… and told the caller that she should have had an attorney negotiate the terms of the contract – and at this point in time, she should renegotiate the terms of the financing contingency.

Well I’ve got some news for you, sunshine.

Unless your attorney is offering to pay top dollar for one of my listings – you won’t see a financing contingency from my clients that exceeds 21 days… and it will be highly unlikely that you will see my clients sign away their liquidated damages by extending that contingency.

Years ago, it was common to see financing contingencies that continued right up until the closing date… but that was then – and this is now. Back then, if the buyer could fog a mirror – they could get bought. Not so these days.

As a consultant to my home selling clients, I find it my duty to protect their interests to the best of my ability… and that includes negotiating the financing contingency in such a way as to provide liquidated damages of having a property removed from the market by a buyer who can not complete the transaction.

Just because you hire an attorney to negotiate on your behalf doesn’t mean that the other team is going to lay down and let you run them over.

March 21, 2010

You’re going to have to jail me, President Obama: I might be a sucker, but I will not be a blood-sucker

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Kicked back to the top from last Ocotober. –GSS

 
I don’t go to the doctor very often. I don’t get sick much, and, even when I do, I’m not always willing to make time to do anything about it. I work very hard, and all I want to do is work, and I don’t want to have to take time to slow down even when my body really needs to slow down.

In consequence, I am the perfect stooge for the ObamaCare scheme that Americans seem hell-bent on ramming down each other’s throats. Welfare scams only work when there are people willing to produce wealth long after it has become obvious that working hard is for suckers — when all the clued-in people have already jumped on the gravy train.

In the case of socialized medicine, the clued-in people will discover more and more things wrong with their health. Why not? It will be people like me — who don’t get sick and who refuse to let illness keep us from working — who will be footing the bill.

And that’s just the way things are in the welfare-state we have made of this once-free country. Working women defer motherhood so welfare moms can pop out kid after kid, each one endowed at birth with a tax-funded sinecure. Conscientious parents pay twice for their children’s education, once in taxes to pay for useless public schools and once again in tuition for the private schools their children actually attend. If you refuse to live on the dole, you have to save for two retirements: One that you won’t take and one that you will have to guard, night and day, so it won’t be taken from you.

That’s what we are, by now. Suckers on one side of the room, proud but tight-lipped. And blood-suckers on the other side, belligerent and bellicose, constantly demanding more and more largesse from the stoical, stolid suckers.

Fine. It is what it is, and nothing is going to change any time soon — except for the worse. But as much as I might be in this mess, as much as I might Read more

March 21, 2010

SplendorQuest: Redemption is egoism in action: Even if other people are criminal, I am not — but I will not cause them to become good by becoming a criminal myself.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I wrote this a dozen years ago, and I’ve posted it here before. It’s apposite today, because, to all indications, we are all about to be involuntarily inducted into a cannibal cult. My question for you: Will you choose to be devoured by your neighbors, or will you elect to devour them instead? –GSS

 
What I want to discuss is Socrates’ question about whether it is better to inflict an injury or to have an injury inflicted upon you. It’s a favorite of sophists and sophomores, I know, but I think it strikes at the very core of justice. The justice I seek and seek to defend is not “out there”, apart from myself. Justice (or injustice) is not what others do to me, it’s what I do to myself and to others. Where I find myself availing myself of the fallacies tu quoque or two wrongs make a right, I am rationalizing injustice, and the worst havoc I am wreaking is upon my own ego.

The Nazarene’s answer to Socrates was this: It is better to have an injury inflicted upon you, because redemption is still possible to one who has not inflicted injury upon another. I don’t believe in an afterlife and I don’t believe redemption hinges upon any one event. But I do believe that a “justice” that is itself unjust is vain at best and evil at worst.

We can make a joke by saying, “Political philosophy is the means by which ethical systems betray themselves.” There are actually a host of reasons for this, and all of them are amusing to me. For one, a political system has a meta-goal apart from the ethical system in which it is rooted: It must function in the real world.

Moreover, the political system itself has a meta-ethical or even extra-ethical goal in that its proponents will tend to imbue it with what they view are essential survival characteristics even if these betray the ethical system in which the political philosophy is putatively based. Any form of argument that the polity can or should or must do what it would be immoral or Read more

March 20, 2010

So there’s this huge interent scandal at the NAR, except there are no details about why it’s a scandal, and the “researchers” behind the claims are keeping their names secret. Want to know more? All you have to do is cough up twenty bucks a month.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Do you want potent evidence that the #RTB movement has nothing to do with actually raising standards of service and care among Realtors? The organizers of the so-called Raising The Bar push did not try to enlist our support here, even though BloodhoundBlog is by far the loudest voice on the net on the subject of real estate professionals bringing better value to consumers.

In the same respect, I am deeply suspicious of putative anti-NAR movements that do not contact us. This is the philosophical home of the idea of supplanting the NAR. Doing anything to undermine the real estate vampire cartel without us is a non-starter.

So I didn’t know, at first, what to make of NARScandal.com, a web site that spammed me this afternoon. I tried reading the articles, but they’re all implication with no actual details. The word “scandal” is thrown about liberally, but I saw no evidence of anything even remotely like a scandal on the site.

As an example, the implication is that RPR is some kind of evil scheme concocted by arch-villains like Dale Stinton — who goes about cleverly camouflaged as a fat old dotard to confound his enemies. I’m a beta tester for RPR, and I can tell you with confidence that RPR is reasonably interesting as yet another Realty.bot and extremely boring as the lynchpin of a conspiracy plot. Do not ever expect me to say anything good about the NAR, but RPR, for what I’ve seen of it, is tapioca in technicolor, no threat to anyone, not even to Zillow or Trulia.

So where’s the scandal? Moreover, who is the scandal-monger? I dug all through the site — and its whois record — and could not find anyone willing to stand up on his hind legs and claim to be the creator of the site or the author of all the going-nowhere “exposés.” One could argue that Stinton and other NAR poohbahs have a libel claim, except that nothing potentially libelous — or even interesting — is published at the site.

So I kept digging and finally came to this:

Of course…

The NAR is a criminal conspiracy Read more

March 19, 2010

Noble savages not so noble? “There are all these aspects to our lives that just seem to work, because we are not actually baboons.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We have been cursed, as a civilization, because so much of the social sciences side of the university quadrangle has for so long been in the thrall of Marxism. It has been difficult for intellectuals to see the world for what it is, so avidly have they sought to portray it as the product of their preconceptions. Nothing changes quickly, but it is nice to see academics actually testing their theories in reality, rather than just blathering on out of prejudice.

Why am I in such a celebratory mood? Anthropologists in Canada have discovered that the so-called “noble savage” is quite a bit less than noble, while the much maligned greedy capitalists of the West are in fact kinder, gentler, more trusting people. This is the sort of thing that should be obvious to anyone with eyes, but it takes an effort, apparently, to get a social scientist to take note of the territory instead of insisting on the sacred validity of the truth presented by the map.

From Canada’s National Post:

Free-enterprising, impersonal markets may seem cutthroat and mean-spirited, but a provocative new study says markets have been a force for good over the last 10,000 years, helping to drive the evolution of more trusting and co-operative societies.

“We live in a much kinder, gentler world than most humans have lived in,” says anthropologist Joe Henrich of the University of British Columbia, lead author of the study that helps topple long-held stereotypes.

The finding, reported in the journal Science, suggests people trust and play fair with strangers because markets and religion — not some deep psychological instinct inherited from our dim tribal past — have helped shape our neural circuitry over the eons.

More:

The study found that the likelihood that people “played fair” with strangers increased with the degree people were integrated into markets and participated in a world religion. Participants in the larger-scale societies were also more likely to punish players who did not play fair.

The hunter-gatherer and tribal societies studied are known for sharing among family and close acquaintances. But the researchers found fair play in monetary transactions with strangers was almost an alien Read more

March 17, 2010

No tilt; no fall real estate signs

by

Realtor, Guerilla Technologist

Author website

This blog post is an informative blog post for people who purchase their own real estate signs; other’s need not read any further.  For years, Worthington Realty, Manitowoc have put up with under engineered, cheaply made real estate signs.  Looking high and low, nothing was on the market which needed to meet the following requirements.

1)      Guaranteed not to lean, tilt, or fall over

2)      Built to last

3)      Fashionable looking

4)      Easy to install

5)      Light in weight

6)      Reasonable cost

Fast forward two years and dozens of experiments, Worthington Realty has got it!  The first real estate sign guaranteed to stand straight up tall just like the day you put in the ground.   Worthington Realty consulted with visionary fabrication guru’s to create the ultimate in real estate sign technology.  We’ve perfected the anchor which attaches the post to the ground.  The anchor weighs approximately 20lbs which is extremely light compared to what was originally engineered.

Worthington Realty is looking for the industry public opinion.  Is there a demand for a real estate sign guaranteed to stand tall like the day you put it in the ground?  What would you pay for an item like this?  Can you imagine putting a sign in the ground and knowing you’ll come back to it standing tall?  What are your thoughts?  Worthington Realty would greatly appreciate your input.  In our office we are not perfectionist or genius by any means, however we shoot for the stars making every single day count.  Thank you in advance for you input and advice.

March 17, 2010

Will Pre-Approval Letters Be Banished?

by

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

Author website

Score one more screw up for the Government-Banking Complex…and watch mortgage brokers thrive because of it.

Andrew Duncan of Keller Williams in Tampa, FL reprinted a Mortgage News Daily story:

As part of the changes to the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, borrowers can no longer shop for a home with a firm loan commitment in hand. While that might not be a big deal in today’s buyer’s market — it could give cash-rich buyers an advantage when sellers are back in the driver’s seat.

Under the new RESPA rule, a lender cannot perform income, asset and credit verifications until the prospective borrower has received a Good Faith Estimate, Patton Boggs LLP Partner Rich Andreano told MortgageDaily.com in a telephone interview. Andreano is a RESPA expert with nearly 25 years’ experience who advises mortgage bankers, mortgage brokers and other providers of mortgage-related services about regulatory compliance and transactional issues.

What this means is that mortgage lenders will be forbidden from performing normal income and asset verifications, or seek permission to perform those tasks, without issuing a binding Good-Faith-Estimate of loan fees.  Pragmatically, this means that most large, direct lenders will not want to commit to the fees until they know the exact loan amount and purchase price.

One more reason to do business with a mortgage broker. Mortgage brokers don’t fund loans, they arrange them.  What mortgage brokers do have in their arsenal is all the pre-approval tools needed to secure an automated underwriting approval.  The new good faith estimate favors brokers because it allows them to fully-disclose the fee they earn for arranging that loan, while putting a time limit on the rate.

Andreano explained that HUD’s position is that verifications cannot be performed until the borrower has been provided with a GFE. But if a loan commitment is issued and the property costs vary significantly — the lender cannot revise the GFE.

“What you can’t do before the consumer gets a GFE in their hands is you can’t ask them to give you any verifying documents, nor can you ask them to give you authority to verify,” he stated. “The lender would be stuck with the cost Read more

March 16, 2010

SplendorQuest: Xavier’s destiny

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“Madre de dios…!”

Mrs. Marquez said that, and it seemed a fair estimate to me. Everywhere we looked in the overlit room we saw things of wonder and beauty and uncontested menace. Despite the din, I heard myself groan, and I wasn’t utterly sure I’d done the right thing. Walking through the valley of the shadow of death in a grade school cafeteria is one thing. Pushing an underfed eight-year-old boychild ahead of you is another.

The road I walk is the path that separates the straights from the crooks, the pencil-fine line that splits the people we call “decent” from the sneaks, the freaks and the side-show geeks. I have a scruple or two, painted and waxed, so I don’t quite fit in among the bungled and the botched. And yet I do have an itinerary, and I don’t have much of an agenda, so the quality folk are never dismayed to see the back of me. Neither fish nor fowl, always on the prowl, quick to resign from any community that would even consider having me as a member. This is the life I’ve chosen for myself, after all, and I’d be daft to beef about it.

Still, there are Other Matters to consider. Among them: I’ve been nineteen-years-old forever, but I’ve been nineteen for a lot of years. I’m making a buck or two more than I ever have before, and staying in one spot a day or two — or a week or two, or a month or two — is not only more desirable than it ever was before, it’s suddenly financially possible where it never was before. Plus which, I don’t love the cold and I do love the sweet smell of orange blossoms. And to make a belabored excuse slightly less laborious, I’ll just come out with it: I hung out in a half-big town halfway from nowhere for so long that I got myself well and truly hooked in a scheme straight out of the handbook of the straights.

I was renting week-to-week at the Orangeview Estates, and my next-door neighbors in the Read more

March 16, 2010

I hate my theme…

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

In some ways, my stengths – I love to tinker with eletronics, am Internet savvy, know a little about marketing – are my weaknesses: I like to do things myself, or at least like to fully understand exactly what someone working for me is doing so that I could take it over if need be.

Witness my web performance. I’m doing pretty well right now, with top rankings on Google etc. I’ve done that largely because the competition is so miserable. But what I really want to do is lay waste to the competition: to succeed in ways that don’t depend on them being incompetent.

I also want to convert every single visitor into a client. I want to build all the important relationships as well as can be done on the web, and close the deal on the phone.

I feel the press of time for two reasons. I’m in my mid-30s, and have certain financial and personal goals that require me to figure this all out… soon! and then keep moving on and figuring other things out!

Second, I think the legal profession is going to be awash in smart, hungry lawyers who had planned to take a firm job, but now find that firms are imploding around them. These people are going to eat my lunch if I don’t catch it first.

Anyhow, onto the mundane. I sort of like the overall look of my Raleigh criminal lawyer website. But I suspect that just cause it looks slick, doesn’t mean it’s getting the selling job done.

With my Raleigh bankruptcy practice, I’m sort of am heading in a Thesis/Headway direction, with a more robust, less graphically designed theme, that, by all accounts, better for SEO and flexibility reasons.

In addition, I suspect that that flexibility will allow me to do a better job of pulling in visitors, 77 percent of them bounce on the first page.

Thoughts?

March 16, 2010

Storytelling through Real Estate Video. Take two.

by

Realtor, Urban Jedi

Author website

It was 4 whole years ago that I was sitting in the back row at my first ever RE/Tech hoo-ha conference when I first heard that Video was the next big thing. This sentiment has been repeated ever since and as far as home tours are considered, I can’t say that I have seen anything as impressive as this.

Select HD on the onscreen menu for best viewing. Full screen is not too bad either.

Casa Estrella from Quentin Bacon media|creative on Vimeo.

The video is just a part of an entire media storytelling package called “The Living Property Brochure”. For more on the creative background on the director’s process, take a look at Quentin’s blog. It’s quite impressive, if not mind blowing to see boundaries pushed this far.

Tip of the hat to theFrontSteps

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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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