Entries from Searchlight Crusade tagged with 'prevention'
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...
The Lender's Rule of Mortgage Payments
Every so often, someone who thinks they're a wit sends me a copy of The Rules For Relationships According To Women. Unlike those rules, which might have been funny around the time Nefertiti was a debutante, there are very few...
The Loan Shopping Koan
It's very easy for loan providers to talk about a much better loan when you're shopping than they have any intention of delivering. Then you give them thirty to sixty days after you sign up, and you're put into a...
How To Keep Listing Agents From Filtering Out Offers
This is a real, major and pervasive problem in the industry. For a while, it mostly went away as listing agents were desperate for any offer, but it has come back. At least two properties my buyer clients have...
Real Estate and "Priced for Perfection"
The stock market has a phenomenon where a company's stock is "Priced for perfection." It may sound nice, but "priced for perfection" is emphatically not a good thing. It's where the stock price of a company has been bid...
The Tollbooth Model of Real Estate Agency
Over the last couple of decades, there's been a rising movement, mostly on the part of those who want a piece of real estate agents business, to sell agents as a toll booth. Tollbooths sit there, guarding the entry to...
There Is No Fairy Godmother for Loans
Really. I know that most people who read that title are replying "no kidding" but you would be amazed at how many people act like there is such a fairy godmother. I got an email yesterday that said, basically, "Help...
"I'm Working With Someone Else, But Could You Just Help Me With..."
I recently got an email from a reader that was coming into a property as I left. I dropped my card and we did the lockbox shuffle thing, then there was an email when I got back to the...
The Sperm Donor Theory of Buyer's Agents
Some fathers, sad to say, are not involved in their children's life beyond conception. Maybe it was just a one night stand and they have no idea they even have a child, maybe they were involved with the mother on...
Don't Rely On Reputation - There Are No Silver Bullets
On a regular basis, I get emails that ask me what I think of a particular company. When I check out public forums, I see questions about particular companies every time. "What do you think of X Realty, or Y...
I'm Competing Against Multiple Offers. How Do I Proceed?
The first thing to consider is that maybe you shouldn't. You never want to get involved in a bidding war. There's a classic riddle I ask every single one of my buyer clients at least once. "How often does...
The "We'll Keep You In Your Property" Scam
This is a pure scam throughout, but it's legal as far as I know. I'm not going to go into more details than I can avoid. The universe knows there's enough people pulling this right now, but the bad guys...
Student Loans and Real Estate Loans: Default, Repayment vs. Nonpayment and Consolidation
This is one of those things that trips up people to buy a house or refinance it: student loans. First off, Form 1003, the Federal Uniform Residential Loan Application has the following relevant questions on page 4, among the...
Buying Real Estate Isn't Simple
And I don't know why people expect it to be. Cancel that. I do know why. Popular media. It's not all that common in popular media, but on those occasions I see someone buying a house in the movies...
You Want an Agent That Can Pay ENOUGH Attention to YOU
A lot of advice gets given to choose a "top producing" agent. These highly corporate offices may have the name of an individual agent attached to them, but they are in fact transaction mills. They have done pretty well for...
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...
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...
Financing Tricks and Calculating What You Can Really Afford in a Home Loan
(Note: the available loan options have shrunk since this was first written, and the rates are significantly lower right now, but the main point is calculating what you can and cannot really afford) Hi Dan, I am a first time...
Top Twelve Things That Help You Buy Property At A Bargain Price
Quite a while ago, I wrote Top Ten Reasons You Bought The Wrong House and Top Ten Reasons Your Home Isn't Selling. In that vein, I'm going to write a list of the most important things when you're shopping for...
The Difference Between a Reliable and Unreliable Prequalification or Preapproval Letter
If you don't know, chances are your agent doesn't either. Even if you know, chances are that your agent is as clueless as a newborn about loans. I and my clients get asked for all kinds of nonsense (to put...
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