Archive for the 'Real Estate News' Category
Zillow Lands a Big Listing Fish Too
February 5th, 2008 Categories: Homes and Land, Real Estate News, Real Estate Technology, third party destination sites, widget the web, zillow
Drew reports of Zillows newest splash into the property listing pool by hooking up with Homes and Land.
The push toward an advertised to available property listing tipping point continues…It’s a horse race folks.
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Mortgage and Real Estate Tips For The Week 2/04/08
February 4th, 2008 Categories: Mortgage News, Real Estate News, Real Estate and Mortgage Advice
Mortgage and Real Estate tips for the week 2/4/08.
-If you need to, obtain new (re)financing soon. Rates (more specifically, the indices ‘mortgage rates’ are a part of) are akin to a flock of lead balloons, look for them to bottom out over the next 30-45 days then move sideways for awhile. They have already plunged to 2005 (and prior ‘meltdown’) levels. The 6 Month LIBOR dropped 1.5% in the past month alone! Check out the Money Cafe to reference many of the popular mortgage indices in easy to read chart like fashion.
It bears stating that if your interest rate is about to adjust, take (or have an honest mortgage professional- lol…sorry) a look at what the rate will adjust to. People forget that ARM’s can adjust up and down. So, without executing a costly refinance into a new amortized loan, your rate may actually adjust down if the index attached to your mortgage is lower (or very close to the same) today than it was when you originally acquired the loan.
-Avoid refinancing into an amortized loan, unless you have no will power and cannot pay more than the interest only payment. If you don’t, just admit it, and pay the tax till death. Interest Only loans have taken quite a beating over the past 18 month, but if used correctly, they are a far less risky and costly
-Choose a mortgage professional that understands finance and (ideally) Wall Street.
As the infrastructure of this industry quickly matures from the days of Sales Dogging and Boiler Room wannabe’s to Regulated Professionals, it will be the ‘Mortgage Planner’, short for: Mortgage Pro who understands finance and Wall St, that flesh out at the top of the food chain.
Instead of a diatribe on what to look for in a practicing mortgage professional, a true Mortgage Planner, read Dan Green, Brian Brady and Robert Ashby..they are the litmus test for what a mortgage pro should offer you in the way of advice.
Current Mortgage Professionals: The act of acquiring a mortgage will become sooo transaction automated, if you’re not up to date in fields of study relative to your job, you have diminishing value.
-If you’re in the market to buy real estate, it is a great time to purchase…with rates falling and property owners begging away their no longer affordable housing, great deals are to be had for the bears in this market. Prepare to put at least 5% down on an owner occupied home, more if the property will be used as a 2nd Home or an investment property.
-Many people ask WTF is the credit crunch? Apart from the ‘duh’ answer that credit isn’t extended as freely as it has been, below are a few general real world casualties of The Crunch:
100% Financing. You best have a few dollars to put down (see also, No Money in the Bank) or solid equity in the property. 95% is the new 100% on primary residences, and 80% is the new 90% on 2nd homes/investment properties
Cash-Out above 90% of the Loan to Value of the property. If the property isn’t your primary residence, chop that down to <80%.
N.I.N.J.A. (No Income, No Job or Asset loans…tip of the hat to Galen Ward for the cool acronym).
Stated Income loans, unless you have solid documentation to prove self-employment…i.e. real, filed tax returns (in some states, Stated Income loans will be ‘going away’ permanently). For the stated programs still standing, the income that is stated had better be damn rational compared to the industry you’re in. Also, gone are the days where a note on ‘letterhead from a CPA’ stating that you are self-employed would stand as proof of self-employment. It’s amazing how many CPA’s worked inside of mortgage brokerages and mass generated such letters in the past ;-0.
Stated ‘Wage Earner’ loans. WTF is a ’stated wage earner?’ In theory it was a loan for someone who had a part-time W-2 job and a part time job as a contractor of some sort, who ‘wrote off’ more expenses than they received in income. Actually, this latter aspect is the basis for Stated Income loans period. In reality it was a way for lenders to extend financing to borrowers who had a job, didn’t make enough income to qualify, but had a high enough credit score to ‘mitigate’ that risk. Needless to say, this type of loan is now defunct.
No Money in the Bank loans. You will need real money in a checking, savings, 401(k), IRA, stock/equity account. Real estate ‘Phantequity’ doesn’t count, sorry. Proving that you have enough liquid assets (cash-money) to make the loan payment for at least 2 mos on a primary residence, closer to 6-10 mos worth for a 2nd home and/or an investment property, will be/is mandatory in todays marketplace. In addition, any down payment you plan to use must come from one of these accounts and have been ‘in there’ for at least 60 days (this is called seasoning…as in the money has been marinating in the account for 2 months). Why seasoning? So you don’t borrow the required funds from grandma for a week, just to qualify, then pay grandma back after the lender verifies funds. The act of borrowing money and representing it as an ‘asset’ is mortgage fraud. In any case, lenders will request a 60 day average account balance from the repository, so don’t try and fake it.
Credit score <640 loans. They exist, but the rates are very cost prohibitive and the documentation of income and assets had best be letter T Perfecto.
More tips next week…X-Out.
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Demanding Greater Transparency from the Mortgage Industry
January 8th, 2008 Categories: Mortgage News, Real Estate News, Real Estate Technology
In case anyone missed this over at Inman TV…and never being one to miss an opportunity to self-promote 
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Happy New Year!
December 31st, 2007 Categories: Mortgage News, Random, Real Estate News, Real Estate Technology, Social Networking
Happy New Year to all who take the time to read my (bitchy, thx Todd) rantings.
One of my resolutions is to reconfigure TheXBroker.com into a place that tears into the laws of unconventionality, enlightening, provoking, teaching, providing for and preparing real estate and mortgage professionals for business in 2008 and beyond…I’ve taken the Holidaze to ponder some ideas and formulate a grand plan, it should be interesting to say the least.
Look for a face lift in the coming weeks…
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The XBrokers Rehash of Real Estate, Mortgage and Technology Predictions for 2007
December 30th, 2007 Categories: Mortgage News, Real Estate News, Real Estate Technology, Social Networking
New Years is upon us already, my how time flies, so a reflection on 2007 seems an appropriate final post of the year.
Last January I made some predictions for 2007, so let’s review what I saw in the crystal ball…
Active Rain and other community based ‘Blogsites’ are going to be Big.
- AR more than doubled their membership.
- Zillow and Trulia, both born with ‘3rd party destination sitetis’, add social features tit for tat (you say Voices, I say Discussions) trying everything to foster consumer AND agent engagement. It wont be long before both look like Yahoo!’s home page…busy busy busy.
- Community based BloodHound Blog (The Premier RE.net community blog) has like 50 contributers, Swann becomes a recognized influencer by coining th term RE.net.
- The Network (or Uber) blog is born.
- Blogging has become recognized as a requirement rather than a novelty for a properly ‘Web 2.0′d real estate professionals business plan.
- FaceBook went from zero to $15,000,000,000.00 in, like, less than 5 seconds.
‘Social Networking’ is the new Buzz of the Net…supplanting Web 2.0 as the most overused term…*Yak*
Web 2.0 technologies, specifically the Mash-up, will accelerate the paradigm shift influencing the way real estate is bought sold and financed.
This was a pretty broad and safe statement, a no brainer. A blog-site is a ‘web 2.0′ technology, and a mapping UI is the mash-up of existence for Redfin, Zillow, Truila and Estately. What I should have said is that ‘Open Source’ info-shareable (and share inducing information) technologies will acclerate the paradigm shift.
Transparency in the mortgage industry will cause a substantial financial shift in how (much) service providers make money.
Well, this was to be a self-serving prophecy, but I digress for now. Anywhoo, the word Transparency is/was used ad Nauseum in 2007, and it’s definition is too subjective down to the user, IMHO. Translucency seems a better word to describe most professionals definition of being open and honest about their business and all related information. ‘100% transparent’ is almost an idealogical philosophy rather than a reality in realty.
As far as the mortgage industry is concerned, while overall consumer education as to how the mortgage industry colludes against the consumer has dramatically improved, translucency still dominates the terrain. Only after terms like ‘credit crunch’, ‘mortgage meltdown’, ‘Sub-Prime implosion’, etc etc etc and a bill proposed by legislators and lobbyists became fixtures on the stupid box (TV) did the proverbial light bulb flicker on.
One thing I’ll never forget are the legions of mortgage professionals who argued (some still do) their ignorance in the public arena, telling anyone who listened that ‘it’s no one’s business how I make my money’ and that ‘YSP is how I make my money, butt out!’. WTF..?
Trying to control and confine information in The Information Age is a futile business strategy. Repeat this to yourself real estate and mortgage professionals…you’ve seen the landscape change dramatically over the past 12 mos, imagine the next 12…
Open source Listings will supplant the ‘proprietary nature’ in which they are traditionally held. Someone will create a National Listing Service that is accepted by those inside and heavily utilized by those outside of the industry.
This looks to be going a couple of ways…
1) NAR announces plan to launch a ‘Gateway’ to property listings
2) A perpetual iteration down to a ‘1-2 degree of separation’ between a consumer and ultimate free listing data. Properly using social networks like Active Rain, LinkedIn, and Spock on large levels to find Network Blogs on local levels, dialing down to individual blog-sites could pretty quickly and simply spell the end to centralized data aggregators like MLS’ are. Googles Open Social platform should catalyze this dynamic once the geeks wrap their collective heads around how to do this.
Buyers Agents who refuse to negotiate their Fee will find themselves relegated to the ‘laggard’ 50+ consumer niche.
This pedictionis manifesting itself in a quicker fashion than any real estate professional may want to admit, again attributed to increased consumer education and similar awareness…thx to the bloggers
Video Listings will quickly become the next standard for effectively marketing a property, especially the high-end inventory.
I was wrong here. Dead wrong. I’m not knocking video (when it’s done well) but there are multiple ways to effectively and remarkably advertise property using multi-media. Bill Leider makes this point far more eloquently than I (read the comment thread that follows Bill’s post too)…
Incidences of foreclosures, predatory lending, fraud, and other negative factors will sharply increase as $1,000,000,000,000 in Adjustable Rate Mortgages are due for adjustment.
This statement looks so “Duh!?!” today, yet on 1/15/07, many many many people were still high on the ether, ignoring what became the biggest story in real estate for 2007.
The NAR will spend a record amount of money 1) Continuing to trash alternative models as evil 2) Fighting their anti-trust suit against the DOJ 3) Increasing the potency of their Kool-Aid…
Some things never change, although the NAR’s Gateway project (see above) seems to indicate a serious acquiescence by the large yet antiquated fraternity/sorority, alas there is sure to be mountains of red-tape to cut through (see the continued scary language like: For Realtors, by Realtors). In the end, they’ll probably screw it up.
My Link Roll will contain some of 2007’s biggest success stories in real estate and mortgage.
I see alot of successful stories in my blogroll…and wish everyone continued luck and good fortune
Next…My 2008 predictions.
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