When shopping for a lender, 61 percent of recent borrowers asked their friends family members, their REALTOR® or other personal acquaintances for recommendations on choosing a mortgage company, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2005 Primary Mortgage Origination Study. Additionally, more than 40 percent of borrowers indicate they utilize the Internet as a resource for gathering information during their lender shopping process.   Read more...

XSite Order Manager/Mercury Desktop users who have installed Aurora form filling software have been using the Tracking PowerView to see and update everything about the status of an assignment and a report. In the coming weeks, the Tracking PowerView will be merged into a new Files PowerView.   Read more...

Our second annual Winter Convention in Las Vegas January 16-18 was an incredible success. Click here for a roundup. We want to thank all attendees, all the exhibitors, VIPs like former HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, 2005 National Association of REALTORS® President Al Mansell, "visiting professors" like Henry Harrison, who taught an acclaimed seminar on the new Fannie Mae forms, and Jeff Jones, whose network security classes are favorites, the staff of the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, and everyone else who made the event so great.   Read more...

Tim Vining, the Washington state appraiser who won a $50,000 settlement from a client for copyright infringement, was cheered when introduced as the first appraiser to successfully defend his intellectual property rights at a panel discussion of appraisal advocacy issues at our second annual Winter Convention. His story riveted the hundreds gathered at lunch to hear about issues like copyrighting, false advertising of appraisal alternatives, AVMs and lender pressure.   Read more...

LAS VEGAS, NEV. -- The Appraisal Advocacy Coalition (www.appraisaladvocacy.org), a non-profit, Washington, DC-based organization dedicated to protecting real estate appraisers from unfair competition, unjust perceptions and uncompensated misuse of their intellectual property, was formally introduced at a la mode's Winter Convention here. With 1,700 attendees registered, the Winter Convention is the appraisal industry's largest. Hundreds of attendees joined a panel of industry experts and participants January 17 to learn about and discuss the new organization. Dave Biggers, founder and Chairman of a la mode, is donating significant money and manpower to jump start the new effort. a la mode and the Appraisal Advocacy Coalition, a non-profit organization, will be entirely separate entities.   Read more...

LAS VEGAS, NEV. -- a la mode, inc., the Oklahoma City-based real estate technology company whose WinTOTAL form filling software is used by more than half the nation's real estate appraisers, welcomed some 1,700 appraisers to the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas today for the opening sessions of its second annual Winter Convention. Attendees, more than double the 700 who attended last year's winter gathering, looked forward to three days of hands on and seminar size classes with instruction provided by a la mode developers, support techs and managers. The focus of the convention and classes will be the Aurora generation of WinTOTAL, which debuted last summer. "Aurora is the most significant development in appraisal workflow in at least five years," said Chris Low, a la mode's EVP of Products, who will open the convention Monday morning with a question and answer session. "This event gives us a chance to teach, answer questions, field suggestions an evangelize about Aurora." Low's session will be followed by a keynote address by former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo. The event will feature a cocktail welcome reception, an evening of dinner and dancing and a working lunch featuring a panel discussion of advocacy efforts on behalf of appraisers. "We aimed higher in this convention in terms of the number of attendees," said Ellana Walker, a la mode's Chief Marketing Officer, noting that the convention sold out weeks ago. "That meant more classes, more networking opportunities, more everything. By far, this is the largest convention of its kind in the appraisal industry," she said. "Our first Winter Convention and our Technology Convention in Orlando last summer were unqualified successes, and we wanted to make sure to give as many of our customers as possible the opportunity to attend this year," Walker continued. She said a la mode has more than 75 of its more than 250 employees in Las Vegas to support the event.   Read more...

Generation X - those born roughly between 1965 and 1979 - have become the most prominent home buyer group today. In fact, National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) research on consumer preferences indicates that 37 percent of Gen-Xers and 27 percent of echo boomers (those born after 1979) intend to buy homes in the next two years, compared to just 13 percent of baby boomers and 6 percent of seniors.   Read more...

If you're like many website owners, you're constantly making changes and updating the pages of your site so search engines index them - thereby allowing you to generate more traffic. The problem is most search engines keep methods of indexing web pages a secret, so you don't always know how or when anyone will find them or the changes you've made.   Read more...

A recent survey of consumer "pet peeves" about commercial websites by web hosting company Hostway Corp. found that 83 percent of consumers get annoyed with websites with registration log-on pages that block access to online content. But for many you, those registration required pages - or "doorway forms" as we call them here at a la mode - are an effective way to get quality leads from your XSite.   Read more...

A bill that would pay displaced Louisiana homeowners 60 percent of their equity to help them stave off foreclosure in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was approved by a House committee last week.   Read more...