Topic:  Newsletter Articles

In effort to banish identity theft, many consumers are now "freezing" their credit reports, which blocks any access to their report until they personally unlock the files by contacting the credit bureaus and providing PIN codes.   Read more...

Many of our readers are still using free web-based e-mail like Hotmail or Yahoo! mail, or America Online (AOL) as their primary e-mailer. Soon, Google™ will offer something called GMail which will be free but will scan your e-mail for keywords and append relevant text advertisements to your messages. So, for example, if you mention an "appraisal" of "real estate" in "[your area]" in a message, the recipient may receive a text ad for real estate appraisal services in your area appended to your message - and unless you're paying Google™ to do this on your behalf, it's unlikely to be an ad for your company.   Read more...

We've learned from recent items we've run in our e-Newsletter and in our new monthly print digest edition, as if we didn't already know, that client pressure is the topic of most concern to the greatest number of our readers. We decided to try and quantify the problem with your help. Please take less than two minutes of your time and complete our online survey about client pressure and its consequences. There are only six, "yes" or "no" questions involved, and you will be helping us tell the appraiser's side of the story to the broader media. We'll let you know the results in this space, too.   Read more...

Cynics over the last few years - more likely, decades - have found little to separate the two major parties when it comes to federal elections. You certainly have to dig deep to find out what the two major candidates for President, George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry, would do differently from one another on housing finance.   Read more...

You built the website, now how do you get the leads to come?   Read more...

There used to be a stigma attached to older adults - once they hit 55 they automatically bought mammoth trailers and spent their retirement years traveling the U.S. with no more mortgage worries or lawns to mow.   Read more...

Value IT, the appraisal arm of a joint venture between origination giant Wells Fargo and First American, is changing its name as part of a corporate rebranding that will more closely identify Value IT's appraisal services with the title, credit and settlement services its sister organizations provide.   Read more...

Many mortgage brokers know that they will have to work harder to keep the record volume of business they've enjoyed over the past few years now that interest rates seemed to be on their way up. In fact, according to a forecast from the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, the volume of mortgage lending is expected to drop 35 percent to $2.5 trillion this year, as refinances slow to about 42 percent of all loans, down from 66 percent in 2003. That's due to mortgage rates that have continued to move up after hitting a 41-year low of 5.23 percent in June 2003. The result? Finding customers with top-quality credit eager to refinance may not be so easy anymore and mortgage brokers may need to look to different markets than they're used to. Mexican-American market The Mexican-American market is now the nation's fastest-growing market – and many are in the market for a new home. An estimated 2.2 million Hispanic households, most of them of Mexican descent, could become homeowners by the end of the decade if real estate and lending professionals reach out to them, according to new research by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California. The study of 1,400 renters and recent first-time buyers in the Los Angeles, Houston and Atlanta areas highlighted the obstacles that stand in the way for Latino home buyers and the opportunities for real estate professionals who venture into this market. For example, although the majority of those surveyed have lived continuously in the United States for more than a decade, many are confused about the legal requirements for establishing credit and obtaining financing, and believe they must be either naturalized citizens or legal and permanent residents to buy a house. Another barrier for Mexican-Americans is a lack of information. "For immigrants who speak little English, it is a daunting task to acquire information and to understand the complexity of the home buying process," the study said. "We found that prospective home buyers either have no information, or even worse, misinformation." The participants indicated they considered real estate professionals such as mortgage brokers, lenders and real estate agents trustworthy advisors in the homebuying process, opening the door for mortgage brokers to implement outreach programs for potential buyers. To foster ownership among Latinos, the study calls on real estate professionals to serve as trusted intermediaries by becoming part of the Latino community's support system. To help educate the large and growing Latino market, it recommends the creation of bi-lingual home buying and financial literacy programs and innovative mortgage products that ensure equal access to financing and protect unknowing borrowers from abusive lending practices.   Read more...

At its 2004 Annual Convention last week, the California Association of Mortgage Brokers introduced the first definition for predatory lending that could become the model for the rest of the U.S. CAMB has defined predatory lending as "intentionally placing consumers in loan products with significantly worse terms and/or higher costs than loans offered to similarly qualified consumers in the region for the primary purpose of enriching the originator and with little or no regard for the costs to the consumer." A clear, universal definition of the practice may be the right conduit for stronger regulation and stricter penalties for predatory lending practices across the nation. Previous attempts to codify anti-predatory lending laws at the state level have been sporadic. In Georgia, mortgage lenders left the state in droves rather than face arcane penalties until the state legislature changed the law last year. However, Massachusetts was able to enact its Predatory Home Loan Practices Act (House Bill 4880) on Aug. 9. On the national level, five federal anti-predatory lending bills have meandered through Congress over the past two years and none of them have made it to the President's desk. Even the Office of the Comptroller of Currency has attempted to preempt state laws to prevent a patchwork of differing standards among banks. Whether or not the rest of the U.S. adopts the definition, CAMB seems to be taking a street-level approach to solving the problem that has plagued the mortgage industry for years and recently wiggled its way into the 2004 presidential campaign with both camps vowing to fight "unscrupulous real estate practices."   Read more...

According to Asset Securitization Report, 15 percent of manufactured homes shipped in 2003, or 21,000 units, are in repossession inventory. Citing Standard & Poor's analysts, the report said two thirds of Asset Backed Securities (ABS) downgrades over the last 18 months are attributable to the manufactured housing sector; and 80 percent of ABS defaults during that time were on manufactured housing bonds.   Read more...