SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- From the floor of the 91st annual Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) Conference & Expo, a la mode announced that its vision of interactive collaboration of lenders, appraisers, real estate agents and other participants in the mortgage process online is becoming reality with the deployment of the new XSites Network.   Read more...

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK -- Pittsburgh-based General American Corp. (GAC), one of the nation's largest mortgage vendor management companies, recently completed a custom plugin for a la mode's XSite Order Manager (formerly Mercury Desktop) product for its nationwide roster of real estate appraisers.   Read more...

More and more people are recognizing REALTORS'® expertise in the real estate market and are choosing them for help in buying and selling their homes, according to a National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) survey that measured the effectiveness of the seventh season of the group's public awareness campaign.   Read more...

…Or would be if Alan Dalton, the President of the company that owns and operates REALTOR.com®, had it his way.   Read more...

While mortgage rates may play a part in the real estate market, the Internet has made consumers the real drivers of the market and today's home buyer is perhaps the most powerful customer in the marketplace, according to the white paper titled, "Real Estate Confronts Customer Acquisition," from RealSure.com, a real estate consulting firm for agents and brokers.   Read more...

Your website needs to say who you are and what you can do for your customers in an instant. When prospective customers browse the Web, they need to be reeled in by a visual, interactive experience. Your website needs to tell them that you take technology seriously, and that the "face" you put on the Internet reflects you as a mortgage professional: sophisticated and knowledgeable.   Read more...

We've never made any bones about being on your side - certainly not in the pages of our e-Newsletter. Once a week we try to give you the good news about your profession, where most real estate and broader media focus on the bad. We do this truthfully, diligently, and have our facts straight. We're not new to the appraisal industry - we know how it works. We know what hasn't worked. AVMs haven't worked. Pay-for-play VANs haven't worked. And we say so.   Read more...

Marketing and advertising isn't something that comes naturally to most appraisers. This isn't an overgeneralization. If someone wants to enter a real estate profession and is inclined toward salesmanship and self-promotion, normally they end up as real estate agents or mortgage brokers - people who sell things. Appraisers are the engineers and auditors of the mortgage value chain. Your services and the value you add are often misunderstood even by the clients who give you the most work. We understand that at a la mode and that's why we've developed a new suite of services called XSellerate that makes promoting your services as easy, and effective, as can be. It's marketing so easy, we've put in the overwhelming majority of the effort required when you get XSellerate "off the shelf."   Read more...

With home prices soaring across the U.S., more and more lenders are allowing homebuyers to take an extra 10 years to pay off their home loan. For the past few years, low interest rates have made the traditional 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage appealing for many home buyers. But some lenders have found a growing niche of buyers who want a 40-year mortgage, especially in the Western U.S. where home sale prices are setting records.   Read more...

Occasionally, especially these days when appraisal software companies are buddying up to AVMs - see here for a description of how ACI's Forms Server integrates with AVMs, and here to see how Bradford Technologies is teaming up with Veros Software's VeroVALUE AVM - we are questioned about (or accused of, depending on your point of view) WinTOTAL reports being mined for data by AVM providers.   Read more...