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What Do You Mean Back To Basics?
For a period of several months when the market started imploding, I got mass messages from basically every lender I do business with, saying it's time to "get back to basics". My favorite A paper lender became the last to...
Manufactured, Modular, and Site-Built Homes: How Lending Practices Drive the Sales Market
Many people are unaware how profoundly lending policies influence the market for residential property and the various kinds of housing and methods of construction. So I am going to go over the various gradations in available loans for various types...
How to Avoid A Repeat of the Housing Market Mess
Scapegoating mortgage brokers or anyone else is not the answer, nor is prohibiting yield spread. We've been here before (in the early 1990s), congress did something remarkably similar except a little bit more sane. It didn't work then. Why would...
Low Equity (or Worse!) Relocations in a Buyer's Market
Hi, Dan! I just came across your website and you strike me as the type of guy who has answers for our situation: My husband and I built our home 2.5 years ago. We took out a second mortgage...
Realtor and Loan Officer Responsibility: Can the Client Afford The Property?
Every so often, I write about professional responsibility. Every month I get a couple of magazines because I'm a Realtor. There was a letter from someone who was proud of the fact that he had never asked someone if they...
Should Lenders Be Permitted to Sell Real Estate?
My answer is yes. National Association of Realtors is very proud of their sponsorship of legislation to keep lenders out of the business of real estate. They quote the legislation keeping banks out of the real estate business as being...
Shopping For The Best Loan In The Changed Lending Environment
It shouldn't be any surprise to anyone with the headlines of the last few years that shopping for a mortgage loan has radically changed. Indeed, a lot of the regulatory changes seem directly aimed at what were the best...
The Good Faith Deposit for Real Estate
A search I just noticed asked the question "Who gets the deposit if escrow falls through?" The theory of the deposit is that here is an amount of cash that the buyer is putting up as evidence of their ability...
The Home Valuation Code of Conduct (Appraisal Standards)
Since May 1, 2009, we've been having problems with appraisals like never before. It's an interesting case study how the attorney general of one state used threats to blackmail a nationwide industry, installed personal controls and opportunities for graft into...
There's No Real Way to Take The Complexity Out of Real Estate
Every so often I get e-mail asking why real estate transactions are so complex. Matter of fact, I have this discussion with most clients at some point. The answer is, "Because real estate transactions for a lot of money, and...
An Apparent Red Flag that Isn't
For all of the rants I post about bad business practices, there are a lot of things the mortgage industry gets right. One of these looks like a red flag not to do business with them, and may seem like...
Cash to Close - A Basic Primer
Cash to close has always been an underwriting standard, but more people are running into it as a reason why they cannot buy that property, why their buyers cannot perform, and why they can't get that refinance approved. With...
Advertising a Sold Property As Available on MLS
This really ticks me off. I just got done going around about this with a clueless Realtor. According to them, it's not available. It's simply pending contract signatures. But it's showing as "Active" in MLS. This is not a minor...
Using the Real Estate and Mortgage Information Found Here
The inspiration for this article came when I checked my referral logs and found an article where somebody was essentially saying "If you want to be depressed, go read this site and then go rent somewhere for the rest of...
The Escrow Process and Reasons for Falling Out
There are all sorts of reasons why escrow falls through, but they fall into three main categories. They can best be described as failures of qualification, failures of the property itself, and failures of execution. Before I get into the...
What Do Loan Qualification Standards Accomplish?
If you don't know the answer to this, don't be embarrassed. Lots of alleged professionals forgot the answers to these questions for several years, if indeed, they ever knew. It seems like quite a few still don't know the answer...
Don't Allow Yourself To Become A Victim of Bad Real Estate Practice
This woman made herself a victim stayed in a hotel for 7 weeks looking for my "Dream Home." And, when I found it, even though it wasn't in my price range, I knew I would do anything I could to...
For Sale By Owner - Working Directly With a Loan Officer
Just got a search on "state of california fsbo questions to work directly with loan officers without a agent" This isn't a problem. Whereas it is the same basic license, it is two entirely separate job functions and the government...
The History of Suburban Housing
For at least the last thirty years, I've been hearing "affordable housing" advocates yammer about the high cost of housing, and how working families can no longer afford "decent" housing, which they apparently consider to be the three or...
Unsustainable Loans You Should Not Use to Purchase a Property
You've probably heard the horror stories, and I've mentioned the possibility more than once. Some unsuspecting person is looking at properties beyond their price range, and it therefore has all kinds of attractive features that properties which are in their...
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