Is the United States Worth Defending?

The question of where anyone’s priorities are begs the question of “Where do your loyalties lie?”

I am loyal first to the long term good of humanity. I want as many people as possible to live the best lives possible. I realize that this makes me sound like some sort of socialist or communist. Nothing could be further from the facts. As I’ve said before:

Except for killing tens of millions of people, sending large portions of the world economy backwards, causing billions to live in crushing poverty, setting the cause of personal liberty and human rights back decades, enriching and rewarding tyrants who oppress the people worse than any capitalist ever thought about doing, causing multi-decade famines in areas that once were breadbaskets, failing to feed its people for decades at a time, expanding the system of gulags worldwide, causing deadly and widespread environmental damage, literally destroying the means of production it inherited from its capitalist predecessors so nobody (except the rulers) got anything, stymieing the contributions billions of people could have made to the world,and doing its best to cover all of this up, including habitual executions of innocent people who simply stumbled on the wrong piece of evidence, I guess communism wasn’t so bad.

At least the nobles in feudalistic societies A) didn’t know any better, and B) Come the war, had an obligation/reason to stand in the front lines…

Each and every time it’s been tried, communism has ended up in the exact same place. It’s time to stop pretending this is a freak occurrence.

What’s the definition of insanity again?


and socialism is like communism lite. Oh it’s got high ideals and everything, but the facts are that it invariably ends up in stagnation and stratification of society, slow economic growth (if any), and little opportunity for people to advance themselves, leading to all sorts of problems. There is a thing called the socio-economic pyramid. It’s triangular in shape, with the point at the top. There are a few people at the very top, more a little lower down, more still the farther down you go, until at the bottom you get the largest number of people living in crushing poverty with no power to improve their position. Historically, this triangle has been the shape of every human society until the last couple of hundred years, and the majority of human societies even today.

Today in the United States and similar places with a market economy and a more or less free society, we can see indications that the triangle has become shaped more like a pear, or even a diamond if you’re an optimist. It is very plausible that within our lifetimes it may become apple-shaped. We still have a few people at the very top, then progressively more people until you get to a certain point, then you start seeing fewer again, and fewer still as you lower into the lower economic strata. What this means is a lower proportion of people who are poor by current standards.

This is a very good thing. It means we are making more effective use of our human capital than any society ever before in the annals of history. It means there are fewer members of the lowest economic strata (poverty level and below) than there are middle class people. It means more opportunity for those at the lower levels to climb into higher economic strata. As a percentage of the population, participation in the investment markets is higher than any other society any time in the history of the world. This means that we have spare wealth to invest in our own economic betterment. This means there is more wealth for investment to grow the economy, and more sources of more wealth if you have an idea that you can persuade people might Make Them Money. Furthermore, this means further developments that benefit us all, of whatever nature, are going to continue to come more and more quickly. I want my children to be able to explore the solar system, and their children to be able to explore the galaxy, and deal with whatever they meet on the best terms possible. It’s a matter of belief with me that other sentient species are out there, and that we are going to meet them eventually. It would be much better for our children’s children to meet them ten thousand light years away in ships that can do everything you hear talked about in science fiction, than in low earth orbit with present capabilities. Such is the case even if they’re so advanced that they are like magnanimous gods in their conduct towards us. If they are something less advanced and more predatory and our descendants are scrabbling over who has more subsistence level manual labor farms because we’ve exhausted earth’s resources, that could be deadly embarrassing. Not to mention that we’re all living better lives in the meantime.

I’m open to other systems of course. But those that have been tried repeatedly with the result of retaining, or returning to the old pyramid model, I’m not going to consider. It’s all very well and good to hold yourself out, as most socialists and communists do, as noble and promulgating the common good, but if the predictable effects of trying your socio-economic model are a return to the pyramid with yourself as one of the nobles, then we all know what is paved with good intentions and I hope you travel it soon.

One lesson that is consistent across history is that government is a horrible allocator of resources. Sometimes it may be the necessary allocator of resources, but that does not mean we shouldn’t look for alternatives. Government can be, and usually is, unduly influenced by those with current political power to keep them in their current position or improve it. Lest anyone think I’m talking purely about the wealthy, I’m not. Agricultural subsidies were not begun in the era of corporate farms, and they have created quite a few wealthy farmers. Indeed, the largest pieces of our government budgets are allocated for those who are powerful because of their large aggregate number of votes. Politicians aren’t afraid of offending the wealthy, they preach class warfare to the detriment of all of us quite often. They are afraid of offending large groups of voters, particularly organized voters. NAACP. NOW. AARP. Those are the names that cause politicans hearts to tremble in fear, not Rockefeller, Kennedy, and Ford, or even Gates or Buffett.

Nor is government efficient. Indeed, the primary goal of government officers seems, predictably, to be improving their own position. More money, larger budgets, supervise more employees, more highly paid – it’s time you got a raise! and a promotion! Never mind that the job could be done by a fraction of the personnel and at a fraction of the cost. Government is not set up to reward this. Until it’s spending its own money instead of taking it from the people, this will continue. Since government’s only source of significant revenue is taxation, that will be roughly never. Until government officers are spending their own money, they will endeavor to increase their budgets regardless of need. There are things government must do, but they should be as few as practical.

If it sounds like I’m talking economics rather than politics, the reason is that economics, usually bad economics, with bad history, is behind a large part of politics. A lot of people who do not understand it well denigrate capitalism because a few get very wealthy while many do not. Well, until recently, being wealthy was a very human capital intensive thing. This has changed, and is changing further, and capitalism and the free market economy have brought about the conditions for change. Everybody knows and has heard that democracy is the worst form of government except for everything else that’s been tried. Similarly, free market capitalism is the worst system – except for everything else that has ever been tried. Yes, it allows people to fail, sometimes spectacularly, but it is this freedom to fail together with rewarding those who succeed that causes the system to succeed. People respond to a system of rewards and punishments, particularly when they are incremental and fairly immediate. When they can succeed greatly, and be rewarded commensurately, they are more likely to take the kind of risks that benefit us all. The difference between 2 percent growth – like Europe is seeing – and 3.5 to 4 percent growth like the United States is not 1.5 to 2 percent. It is 75 percent plus. It’s the difference between 50 percent growth in a generation and hundred percent growth. Over a working lifetime of forty years, it’s the difference between doubling the economy and quadrupling it.

This has implications in the lowest economic strata as well as the highest. Poverty level in the United States is extremely well off in most of the rest of the world. It may take some time, but a rising economic tide really does lift all boats. Not only do people make more money here, but the necessities of life are cheaper. This further raises the effective standard of living. Poverty stricken people in the United States live as well as the middle class in most of europe. Why? Because our model is more free market than theirs. Because we try more things than they do. Because we are free to fail. A certain number of ideas are always going to be failures, but we try them because we have reason to believe that they will succeed. We aren’t required to prove to professional skeptics that it will succeed. And more of them do succeed than most people realize. Everybody quotes the old saw about only one business in five making it. But it isn’t true. Indeed, the fastest growing segment of our economy is those individuals who make a living selling their own expertise, and the reason they eventually go out of business is that someone in corporate america makes them a job offer too good to refuse.

I am also loyal to the United States. Yes, I want to improve it. But I also think the place where all of these reforms first came to be practiced, and where they are most assiduously practiced today, is worth defending. Especially as our main rivals practice governmental or economic systems that have been shown to be less advantageous or even a step back into the dark ages. Those we are at war with would take us back to a tribal society of city-states, where the priesthood has the real final say in all matters of justice, or societal norm, of what is and is not to be tolerated. Those at the top of their hierarchy may be civilized cosmopolitan men of the world, but those at the base are little different from medieval peasantry in their attitudes. We are forward looking, always trying to find a better way to do something. They would force us – all of us – into a cultural straightjacket that hardened in the eighth century. Those few at the top that we see, by virtue of their power and wealth, can get away with challenging their culture. For the vast majority of their culture, those in the lower economic strata of their pyramid, it is a straightjacket of thought, of behavior, and of any chance of advancement. This includes not only women, but all minorities, and all members of any other religions, or those who have none. They may grudgingly tolerate the presence of Christians because Mohammed told them to, but you are also distinctly second class citizens who had better keep to your place. Atheists and agnostics are not “peoples of the book” and their place in Islamic society is dependent upon being perceived to be members of the christian community.

So what we have achieved here in the United States is worth defending. The more so because cultures are subject not only to something akin to entropy, but also because despite the fact that the United States is the most powerful nation in the globe, we are not nearly as powerful as the rest of the world together. The high point of American power was right after World War II – had we wished to, we could have made a much stronger attempt at militarily conquering the world than Germany and Japan did. We would have failed, but that we didn’t try, and instead came home and had it handed to us because most of the rest of the world wants to be Americans. If they didn’t find our culture attractive, all of the Madison Avenue Marketing Gurus and all of the television shows and all of the movies in creation could not make them want it. Every salesman knows that you can’t sell people something that they don’t want. People want better stuff, and they want more individual, as opposed to governmental, control over their own lives. That they do want it is illustrated by how much American culture they have bought. I’m not certain there is any place in the world where you can’t find something American. Certainly nowhere I’ve ever been, or any of the people I’ve talked to about their travels. From Coca Cola to Hollywood to McDonalds, American stuff is everywhere, and american ideals with them. Indeed, it’s so ubiquitous worldwide that most places are now making American style stuff of their own, and living increasingly American lifestyles. There are even signs that a certain number of less developed countries are imitating the United States so far as to changing the economic pyramid into something pear-shaped.

That they have copied our model is one reason why they have kept up with us, indeed, nearly caught up with us in the case of several Asian countries. They did this – their entrenched powers allowed it or encouraged it – because they could see that they would be overwhelmed if they did not. They saw a more successful, more competitive model, and imitated as much of it as they could make themselves comfortable with. But certain of our ideals, specifically contempt or questioning of authority, the idea that everyone should have the same opportunities, the idea that anyone can come up with worthy ideas, and especially the idea that no one is below being rewarded or above being punished, are very dangerous to those elites, whether wealthy, educated, or religious. They know that these ideas spell doom for their class, and have insulated their societies from them to the extent practical. The more socialist model prevailing in most of europe holds itself out to be superior, but clearly is not competing as well, and their elites can only retaliate by despising us.

One important feature of competitive evolutionary models is that the introduction of one example that competes better forces all of the other members of the system to become more effective, more competitive – or face evolutionary disadvantage. And evolutionary disadvantage, in the long term, is a fancy way of saying extinction. Societies must adapt to changing conditions or they die. The elites ruling in Asia made the choice that they were going to compete on the same level. The elites of Europe, perhaps because they are our parental society, are in denial that their current rules have a lot in common with those made by feudal lords “protecting” their peasants from liberation.

But if we remove the United States, the motivation to compete with us vanishes, along with the american style reforms. In only a few places is it rooted deeply enough that it would survive without us competing with them. Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Australia. Eastern Europe and India if they get another generation. Maybe one or two other places. Except for maybe India, all of these are more subject to being overwhelmed from without than we are. The older systems are still strong, and they are practiced in a much larger number of places.

So is the United States worth defending? Yes. Is it worth defending the cause of global freedoms, and global innovation? Absolutely. Is our society worth defending? You bet. Is defending the United States in the War on Terror a good thing for all of the above? There can be no other answer but yes.

Having your Credit Run

As of July 1, 2005, mortgage providers have to have explicit written authorization to run credit.

I am not certain of the political forces that made this bill, and it is still not clear to me whether this extends to non-mortgage credit providers. If it does, this is probably one of the niftiest consumer protection things to come down the pike in a long time. On the other hand, if it’s limited to mortgage providers, then it’s probably a stab at making life difficult for Internet brokerages, which may do business at a remove of thousands of miles.

An Internet broker employee is talking on the phone with a client, not physically in the client’s presence. They can be some of the cheapest and best loan providers out there, if they are so minded (as I keep saying, a far more important concern is how low a provider is willing to go, not how low they can go. Internet brokerages can also be consummate ripoff artists). It becomes a real hardship on their business if they can’t run credit without explicit written permission, whereas it’s not a major issue with a more traditional brokerage or direct lender. A loan quote isn’t real unless you can lock it right now. Your loan can’t be locked without running credit. And I can’t run your credit until I get a signed form that says you give me permission. No big deal if I’m sitting right there. A real pain if I’m in California and the client is in Florida. I’m not even certain facsimile permission (no original signature) is acceptable, as it’s not something that enters into my current business. This means a delay potentially of days while the form gets back to the lender. So life for an ethical Internet broker suddenly gets a lot more difficult, while life for the crooks becomes no harder.

On the other hand, if the requirement for written permission extends to all providers of credit, then it becomes worth the game. Mind you, an adult should be aware of what’s going to happen if they give a social security number to a car dealer, furniture store, or anyone else. I’ve never heard of anyone using it just for liar’s poker (“Oooh, this is a good one – four 8s!”). If you give a merchant your social, then they are going to run your credit. Treat it as a mathematical certainty, because it might as well be.

Each time somebody runs credit, it’s an inquiry – a ding on your credit. Inquiry dings are progressively damaging. They cause your score to go down, each and every time you have an inquiry, and the more inquiries you have, the more each new inquiry drives it down. There used to be a game among mortgage providers until the new rules a couple years ago – see if they could be the last ones to run your credit before it went under a threshold score, and some would run it multiple times if they could. Anybody running after that would be at a disadvantage.

With the new rules that every consumer should get down on their knees and give thanks to the National Association of Mortgage Brokers for getting through, consumers are now actually permitted to shop around for mortgage rates without getting dinged every time their credit is run – provided they run credit under a business code that say’s “inquiry for mortgage.” (So if you are mortgage shopping at a bank or credit union, be sure they run your credit under their mortgage inquiry code, and not a general inquiry code). All of the times it is run within fourteen days by mortgage providers count as exactly one inquiry. This gives consumers the ability to shop as much or more for a mortgage as they would for, say, a toaster oven, without being penalized.

But if the new rules apply to non-mortgage credit grantors also, this is a good thing. Here’s why: Every time I start a loan, I have a set spiel that I go through. “Don’t change anything, credit-wise, even if you think it will help. Don’t buy anything. Don’t charge anything on your credit cards. Make your normal payments – no more, no less, unless you ask me first. And don’t allow anybody to run your credit for any reason. Don’t even let them have your social. Because they will run your credit, I guarantee it.”

On every home loan, one of the last things that will happen before your loan is recorded in official records at the county will be that the lender will run your credit again to make certain nothing has changed. And if anything has changed, you will very likely lose the loan (and the house if it’s a purchase). Even if the escrow company has the money or it’s actually been disbursed, the lender will pull it back. So there is a real need for prospective borrowers to understand that until the final documents are recorded with the county, they shouldn’t so much as breathe differently.

For a certain personality type, being told she can’t shop for curtains and furniture and paint for her new house is nothing short of torture, and so I’ve learned to be very explicit. “It’s okay to look, to talk to the nice salesfolk, and to get an idea of what you want. But don’t actually buy anything. Tell the nice salesman who says he just ‘wants to get a head start on your order’ that your mortgage loan officer said that you’re right on the line, and anybody else runs your credit and drives you under the line the first consequence to the furniture or paint or drapery salesperson will be no order, because they’re likely to cost you the loan.

So while you have a home loan pending, tell the nice salespersons that you’re really protecting them by not giving him your social, because if they run your credit and cost you the loan you’ll have to tell your uncle Bruno, who’s best friends with Tony Soprano, about it. And we all know what happens then.

Back in the real world, things are not usually quite that bleak. But it’s surprising how often people end up with higher rates and higher payments and worse loans because they didn’t understand this one point. Suppose your monthly payment is $50 higher than you thought it would be, in addition to what you spent on the new stuff that caused money to go into that salesman’s pocket. Doesn’t that make you feel all Warm And Tingly towards that salesman? Didn’t think so. And a certain percentage of the time, this new monthly payment you now have because you Bought Something means you Do Not Qualify for the loan. So: No loan. No house (if it’s a purchase). No lower payment (if it’s a refinance). No cash out of your equity (if that’s what you were trying to do). And so now you’ve got this stuff, and no house to put it in. Now you’ve got to tap the vacation or retirement account to pay for it because you’re not getting a refinance on reasonable terms. Not to mention all the times these people run credit and hurt people’s credit scores without real permission when there’s no mortgage loan in the offing. So I can put up with one segment of my industry have a slightly higher bar to jump over if that’s the carrot.

Caveat Emptor

Games Lenders Play (Part IV)

I was approached by these folks a few weeks ago via email.

I attempted to get them to write up the experience themselves (and I would still like you to if you’re reading this), but I wanted to write something about this before I completely forgot about it. This whole exchange is indicative of games loan providers play in order to make money.

I’m going to sketch this out chronological to the extent possible. What happened was Mr. and Ms. A got a postcard in the mail quoting low payments for their loan amount. They thought it looked great, and called the loan provider. The loan provider talked about these great payments on a loan that looked faily real, and quoted an APR of 6.18. He told them that this was a great loan, and compared it to a 5/1 ARM in such a way that that was what they thought they were getting. No worries, because they were going to be transferred by his company in two to three years.

They asked my opinion about another item having to do with the loan, and something about what they said sounded funky to me.

Well, i believe what I’m getting is called a 5/1 ARM. Each month i have the 4 options of minimum payment, interest only payment, 30 yr payment, or 15 yr payment. (payments respectively would be either $A, $B, $C, or $D)

The minimum payment stays the same for every 12 months, then increases by about $90 each subsequent yr. I know minimum is not ideal, but i live in an area with high appreciation, and because of the ridiculous value of property in the area, & the school system in this county, it continues to appreciate regardless of trends elsewhere.

I’m told the loan comes standard with 3 yr prepay. I can pay the points I mentioned to make it a 1 yr, but it doesn’t affect my interest rate coming down. That’s at about 6.18%

Well, the part about property appreciating regardless of trends elsewhere is just plain wishful thinking. There is nowhere that is insulated from economic conditions. Nonetheless, it’s not what we’re talking about here. Does this loan sound like somethink I keep writing about?

Here’s what I sent back:

That particular loan is actually a Negative amortization loan. I explain those here (same link as last paragraph – ed).

They are not wholly without redeeming qualities, but they are something to be done with a trembling hand and much looking over your shoulder. At the current rate, expect $725 to get added to your balance the first month – and rates are rising, so this is likely to accelerate, and your underlying rate is completely variable on a month to month basis. Even if they don’t rise and you make the minimum payments, you will owe approximately $X after two years – an increase of $18,620 in your balance! Will it be an issue if you owe $18,600 more when you go to sell it? I think it likely that the answer is yes, but it’s your call.

A 5/1 is something entirely different. It is a “A Paper” Thirty year loan with the interest rate fixed for the first five years, then adjusting once per year based upon either LIBOR or US Treasury rates, not COFI or MTA. As A paper, there is not an embedded pre-payment penalty. Right now, in California, I have them at about 6.25 no cost no points no prepay, or 6.5 interest only, and truly fixed for five years.

Furthermore, there was another issue with the loan quote:

If I do the math, the first payment gives a principal balance of $X+2000, the second payment gives a principal balance of $X, The third gets $X+500 and the fourth $X+1300. If these are the numbers your loan provider gave you, which of these numbers is correct? Any of them? Unless you’re paying the 1.5 points out of pocket, your loan provider should give you a quote which adds them to the amount you are borrowing. Did they do this, or did they pretend it was going away by magic?

They responded:

oooh. sounding scary. So i left them a mssg asking which it was, a negative amortization loan, or a 5/1 ARM. I also asked for more info as I was sent spreadsheet which is missing some info. I am fwding the spreadsheet if you don’t mind the attachment.

Well the loan provider had named the spreadsheet “2005_Pay_Option_Work_Sheet.xls” Pay Option is one of those “friendly sounding” names for a negative amortization loan. Well, I knew before what kind of scum bucket this loan provider was before I opened it, but doing so was confirmation, good enough to convict in court except that what he did isn’t illegal, only immoral and unethical. Yep, it had all of the characteristics of a negative amortization loan as prepared by the worst kind of financial predator. Three or four payment options, including minimum, interest only, and 30 year amortized? Check. Prepayment penalty if you made any other payments (The so-called “one extra dollar” prepayment penalty I talk about here, which is not necessarily characteristic of negative amortization loans but certainly seems to occur there more than anywhere else). Check. Yearly minimum payment increases of about 7.5 of base minimum payment%? Check. Complete lack of disclosure that if you make the minimum payment your balance increases by hundreds of dollars per month? Check. About a 5 percentage point absolute spread between nominal rate and APR? Check. Complete failure to disclose payment based upon a “nominal” (in name only) rate of 1%? Check. Failure to disclose that the real rate was month to month variable from day one? Check. Failure to disclose that the index it was based on had risen in recent months and that unless said index went back down, the real rate would be rising? Check. Failure to include real and known closing costs in your loan quote? Check. That last is kind of minor as compared to everything else, but I’d be upset in a major way if it was the only thing wrong he did.

I sent Ms. A an email which said, in part:

“Option ARM” is a common, friendly sounding name for what is still a negative amortization loan. Everything about this loan, from the fact that it has a “payment cap” which is unrelated to a rate cap, screams negative amortization loan.

The 5/1 is a different loan provided for comparison, as the sheet tells you, and is a better loan for almost all purposes, as the second column of the comparison tells you. A 3/1 might have a slightly lower rate, or it might not. Ditto any of the 2 or three year subprime variants.

Intro period is telling you the period it is fixed rate for.

MTA loans are based upon a moving average of the treasury rate over the last twelve months. Since they’ve been going up, your real rate is likely to increase as some older and lower rates drop out of the computation in upcoming months.

Pay attention to the two footnotes on the payment options. “deferred interest” is characteristic of negative amortization.

(Name redacted for publication). They are not the only such company, but the translation into real english of their name must be “watch out for our piranha”

These loans are very commonly pushed because most people “buy” loans based upon payment, making them very easy loans to sell because unless you understand the drawbacks, you will think this is the greatest loan since sliced bread. These are up to forty percent of all new loans in the last year in some areas (including here), and are likely to contribute to a crash in housing values soon.

There are sharks and wolves out there, as this illustrates. Why people who would never buy a toaster oven without checking at least two vendors will sign up for a mortgage without shopping around is beyond me, but people do it. This is a trap that can be very hard to avoid unless you know what’s going on, but if you talk to a few loan officers, and and go back and forth, chances become much better that you’ll be saved by one of Jaws’ competitors telling you what’s really going on. Other, competing loan providers deal with this stuff every day. After a very short time, we get to the point where we can recognize it in our sleep. But we can’t alert you to these kind of issues if you don’t give us the chance.

Luckily, these folks gave me the chance.

They were in another state, and so I didn’t get any business out of my good deed, but that’s okay. I got this article. And now, you folks can read about it, and be forewarned.

Caveat Emptor

Debunking The Fallacy of Index Funds

It seems I can’t hardly turn around in the investment world without a paean to Jack Bogle, who preaches the advantage of the index fund.

Mr. Bogle’s reasoning goes something like this: Looking at the world of mutual funds, relatively few funds beat the S&P 500 Index, so why not just buy the whole S&P Index?

This is nothing short of the most successful sales pitch based upon a straw man argument in history.

Index funds are huge. Mr. Bogle’s own original fund is the largest mutual fund, and both of the two largest mutual fund families base their pitches (in large part) upon their large number of Index Funds based upon various indices. That’s how successful the pitch has been.

What Mr. Bogle doesn’t tell you is that Index funds aren’t the Index either.

There’s a bit of Red Herring in the argument also. Index Funds aren’t some ideal investment package that doesn’t have expenses. They may be low (21 basis points per share for the biggest the last time I looked), but they are there. So in an ideal universe, they lose to the index by this amount. Plus they do have the same need managed funds have to hold some cash. Since the market goes up about 72 percent of the time (over the course of historical years), and they lose an amount of gain or loss proportional to their cash holdings, over time they lose more than they gain on this. By comparison, the measurement made of managed funds is after all such inefficiencies.

In other words, the Index Fund sales pitch reduces to “Most of these other finds don’t beat this measurement. Come to us where you’re guaranteed to fall short!” The thrust of their sales pitch is holding themselves out to a a perfect idealization, which in fact they are not.

There are other reasons to avoid Index Funds. The most famous, best known and largest are all built upon the S&P 500 Index. This is a market capitalization based Index. The Fund buys into these companies based upon market capitalization. It should be no surprise to anyone that this means that whatever the largest company in S&P is, it will be several times the size of number 500, so the funds investment in them will be correspondingly weighted, while having zero investment in number 501. This means (because Index funds are such a large portion of the overall market) that Index Funds cause demand for those companies which are a member of this universe to have larger demand than they otherwise would, therefore artificially inflating the share price of those companies somewhat.

Now, one of the reasons people gravitate towards mutual funds is instant diversification of investment. You put in your $1000, and because it’s is in turn invested as a part of a much larger investment pool, you have much more diversification than you would otherwise be able to purchase with that same investment were you to purchase stocks directly. One of the reasons I worked almost exclusively with mutual funds (and mutual fund-like) when I was in the business is that if you want to build a diversified direct stock portfolio in an efficient manner (buying whole, as opposed to odd share lots), it takes about $100,000. This is more than most folks are willing or able to invest in a single shot.

But one of the open secrets of the mutual fund industry is that many, if not most, funds are over-diversified. Their holdings are so diluted that when they pick a winner, their shareholders see comparatively little benefit because they’ve made too many bets. When you bet 100% of your money and the stock doubles, you get 100%. When you bet 1/500th of your money and the stock doubles, you get 0.2%. This dilution effect is directly proportionate to the number of investments (bets) they have made, while the benefits of diversification are only proportionate to the square root of the number of investment holdings they have. In other words, the fund with 400 holdings is sixteen times more dilute than the fund with 25, but only four times as protected by diversification. One of my favorite fund families, in which I myself continue to invest for other reasons which outweigh this, had 432 holdings in its growth fund the last time I got a report. That is way too many. Mathematical models have determined that the optimal number of holdings for a fund is in the range of twenty to thirty, getting good protection of diversification while not suffering from over-dilution of good investments. I am becoming, more and more, a fan of “focus” model funds, where the investment managers are forced to be choosy by limiting the overall number of investments to a certain number of securities.

Index funds typically have way too many funds to qualify for this. Of all the major indices, only the Dow Jones ones have a small enough base to be considered as having a near optimal number of components. I just don’t hear about people wanting to invest in those. 20 Transportation? 15 Utilities? They’re derided as sector investments, and not good ones. 30 Industrials still seems to have some cachet, but by comparison with S&P 500 or even the Russell Indices (1000, 2000, and 3000), the amount invested in Dow Industrials is microscopic. Perhaps because it’s not a “true” index, but is selected by the publishers of the Wall Street Journal, theoretically for the components representation of the entire market.

Index funds are not without their benefits, of which their mindless vanilla nature is probably the greatest. If you want an investment you can just make and not watch and not worry about unless the entire asset class tanks, Index funds are fine (S&P is large cap blend). For market-timers, index funds are unmatched, particularly since their cost of putting the investment in and taking it out tends to be low. But I am not a mindless vanilla investor, and for one step up the mental chain, index funds can be beaten by periodic investment class reallocation. Furthermore, I am an investor, not a market-timer. So any time somebody’s recommendations for investing include index funds, I’ll pass them by.

Caveat Emptor.

Buying off a Prepayment Penalty

Been reading some of your informative tips. I am looking at refinancing and getting a $378000 mortgage. Now in the case of having a 3 yr prepay penalty, vs paying 1.5% in points to make it a 1 yr prepay, am i right in assuming it’s wiser for me to pay the points than accept a three yr prepay when i know I will sell/move within 2 yrs? Any info you can provide would be great. I’m wondering if I’m missing something here.

I think they points would cost me around $5800.


I compute 1.5 points on $378,000 as being approximately $5756.

Here in California, the maximum pre-payment penalty is six months interest, and that is the industry standard nationwide for when there is a pre-payment penalty. A few lenders will pro-rate it, but for the vast majority, they will charge the same penalty on the day before it expires as on day one. This is pure profit, and they’re generally not going to turn down pure profit any more than most people will turn down a bonus. So if your interest rate is 6 percent, you’re going to pay a 3 percent pre-payment penalty if you sell or refinance before the pre-payment penalty expires. For Negative Amortization loans, the pre-payment penalty is based on the real rate, not one percent, of course.

On some loans, the pre-payment penalty is triggered by paying any extra money. One extra dollar and GOTCHA! But probably eighty percent or so give you the option of paying it down a certain amount extra each year, usually 20 percent, without triggering the pre-payment penalty.

Assuming that it is a case of you won’t move in less than one year, this is equivalent to the prepayment penalty on a loan with interest rate of between 3.05% (100 percent prepayment penalty) and 3.81% (80% prepayment penalty). Since even the 1 month LIBOR is a little over 3.8 percent right now, this seems like a cut and dried case of pay the point and a half.

Of course, if there is a possibility that you will need to move in less than one year, paying these 1.5 points could well be a costly exercise in futility. I can’t begin to gauge that risk without more information. But if you’re in any number of professional situations ranging from the military to corporate executive, this is common.

Given that you’re talking about pre-payment penalties, you’re likely in a subprime situation. Subprime has a fairly uniform rate of 1.5 points of cost equals 3/4 of a point on the interest rate. I’m going to assume you’re getting about a 6.25% rate. If you decided to buy it off via rate, you’d be looking at a 7% rate.

Let’s punch in the two loans. $383,750 (balance with 1.5 points) at 6.25% gives you a payment of $2362.81. Running it out 24 months gives you a balance of $374,467. You have spent $56,708 on payments.

378,000 at 7% gives you a payment of $2514.84. Running it out 24 months gives you a balance of $370,043.00, and you’ve spent $60,356 on payments, while paying your balance down $7957.

Now, assume you sell the home for $X at the end of this period. The first loan saves you $3648 in interest. The second loan gives you $4424 more in your pocket in two years. The second loan, with the higher interest rate and higher payment, as opposed to the higher balance, nonetheless saves you $776 as opposed to the loan with the lower interest rate, and also leaves you more money with which to buy your next home, which means lower cost of interest on your next home loan, as well. Of course, this is subject to some pretty significantly naked assumptions as I don’t know anything more about your situation. Furthermore, it assumes that your income is not marginal, and that you would qualify for both loans. It is perfectly possible that you would qualify for the lower payment, and hence the lower rate would be approved, but not be able to qualify for the higher payment associated with the higher rate (The reverse is not the case). Finally, I assumed that because you know you’re going to have to move in two years, you are looking at a two or three year ARM in the first place, as opposed to a longer fixed term.

I hope this helps you. If you have any further questions, please let me know.

Caveat Emptor

Biweekly Mortgage Spam

Sometimes spam makes writing an article all too easy.

Here is a piece of spam I got today because my email at work contains “realestate.com”, with identifying information taken out. This goes to show that the financial ignorance of most mortgage providers is astounding.

Thank you for your interest in the X Broker Program. Our program is designed to help you provide more value added service for your clients, increase your fee income and help you generate more loans. By simply providing a one page custom amortization and a completed one page enrollment form in your loan packages you will achieve a high enrollment ratio. By illustrating the three key benefits of the Bi-Weekly Payment Program for your clients, they will clearly see that your goal is to help them accomplish their financial goals sooner by saving thousands of dollars in interest, paying off their mortgages 5-10 years early and achieving a low effective interest rate. Please find enclosed an example of a custom calculator and our simple one page enrollment form.


Or the client can just make 13/12 of the regular payment, or make an extra payment once per year, and achieve the same result without any cost. This option without cost lets the customer choose to pay however much extra they can afford that month, or pay nothing extra if they’re on a tight budget. As I computed in this article, the fact that you’re making payments more often saves you almost nothing. It’s the fact that you’re making an extra mortgage payment per year that’s saving you all that money.

Getting started is easy. All you have to do is pay a one time setup fee of $99. You will be provided with custom online tools and resources as well as training upon request. To sign up, just go to our online broker enrollment form and complete the required fields, shortly after you will receive an email with your broker code user name and password. Please be sure to save this email. Once you have these instructions you will be able to go to X.com and access your custom calculator and other online resources.


So I (the provider) pay a sign up fee of $99 for an internet driven startup. Cha-ching!

The X program is a great value at $395.00. You earn 300.00 on each enrollment, X retains only 95.00. We also charge a $3.75 per debit fee (emphasis mine). Our customers truly appreciate our one-time only enrollment fee, if the client moves, refinances or the loan gets sold, X will simply take them off the system and put them back on with the new loan information. Most customers prefer to pay the enrollment fee and choose the 3 debit option, where we will take an additional 135.00, 130.00 and 130.00 over the first three debits to comprise our one-time fee. We pay commissions on the 15th of the month for all enrollments on the system the month prior. Once you receive your approved broker email you’ll be able to start signing up clients immediately.

Now we get to the real meat of what’s going on. For me doing the work of signing someone up on the internet, they get $95 to start with, while dangling out a $300 stroke to mortgage providers to betray their clients by getting them to pay for something they could do themselves, with more flexibility, for free.

Then, once this is started, they make $3.75 per transaction, every two weeks, for an automated process that costs them somewhere between $0.25 and $0.50. Great work if you can get it. Three guesses who gets stuck with all the problems if they screw up.



This is one more reason why you want to shop your mortgage around and get multiple opinions. Anybody wants you to pay anything for a biweekly payment program, that is a red flag not to do business with them.



Caveat Emptor

Not Becoming 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 get it. I was vulnerable, emotional and became a victim.

Actually, that is not quite accurate – I made myself a victim.


First mistake: shopping outside your price range. Assuming that you get it, the bottom line is that you are going to have to make the payments, every month, from here on out. I can get you the loan, any competent loan officer can get you the loan, but I would not even look at any home not in my price range. First, it’s a useless exercise. Second, the reason it’s outside your price range is because it has something extra. So it’s going to be more attractive to the average buyer than the ones you are looking at. Many agents will capitalize on this by showing you such a property, knowing that a large percentage will fall in love with the property right there, and bingo, they’ve got a higher commission for an easy sale. Despite their highly touted “code of ethics” the proportion of Realtors® who do this is every bit as high as regular agents. “Well, it’s just a little bit. I can handle the extra.” Demand to know the asking price before you agree to view the property, and if it is outside your range, refuse to go. Fire any agent who suggests this to you more than once. I’d fire them the first time, myself.

Being self-employed, (actually at the time, I was on disability from hand surgery), the only loan I could qualify for was a Stated Income Loan. That’s where you just tell them what you make, and it is not verified except through two years od tax records and your FICO score

This is not correct. You do sign a 4506 form, but the whole idea behind a stated income loan is that the bank agrees not to verify your income. They verify only that you have a source of income, and the amount you claim you make must be reasonable for someone in your profession. If you can show income via two years of tax returns, that is a full documentation loan, and you get better rates (See this for information on documenting income). However, documenting income via tax returns is tougher because whereas the bank loves doing it, the number they will accept is the number that is after all the write-offs, often a significantly lower number. This is the reason for the stated income loan in the first place. Many business people, particularly small business people, are earning a heck of a good living but they find legal ways to pay for most of it with before tax dollars that they then are actually able to deduct. So they’re living as if they make $10,000 per month, which they do, but the tax return only shows $3000 per month. Stated Income is intended to serve this niche, not the niche of people on weekly paychecks who don’t really make enough money to justify this loan.

six months later, when the interest rate changed, my payment went up. But I still had some disability money, so I didn’t think about it – I just knew work would come.

What she is saying here is that she had to accept a short-term adjustable rate mortgage in order to get a rate low enough to qualify. Or that she was sold one on the basis of “low payment” and she didn’t bother to check the fine print.

There are loan officers and real estate agents and realtors out there who make one heck of a living off the fact that people buy loans (and homes) on the basis of payment. They have “interest only” and even negative amortization loans out there. I’m not going to say you should never buy a home with a negative amortization loan, but it’s a good way to get yourself in serious trouble. Let’s just say that of all the home loans I’ve done (and I’ve done a lot of loans) I’ve never seen a situation where I would recommend it.

Look for terms that are going to be stable for at least a couple of years, particularly if this is your first time in a home or the payments are going to be near the upper edge of what you’re comfortable with.

I:

* Did not shop lenders (I felt I wasn’t in a position to).

* Did not tell the truth about my income.

* Took the first loan they offered me.

* Didn’t read the fine print.

* Did not fix a budget and stick to it.

* Bought way too much house.

Fact: If anybody tells you not to shop lenders, what they are really telling you is that their loans are not competitive and that they are afraid of the competition. The National Association of Mortgage Brokers got a law through congress a couple of years ago that all the mortgage inquiries within a thirty day period count as one inquiry, so it no longer hurts your credit score to shop around. I tell everybody who comes to this site to apply for a back-up loan if they can find somebody willing to do it.

There are issues out there with loan providers who will tell you with a Good Faith Estimate or, in California, Mortgage Loan Disclosure Statement, that they can do the loan on a given set of terms when they have no intention of and no ability to actually deliver those terms. Certainly the HUD 1 form at the end of the loan process is nothing like the earlier form. Furthermore, many loan providers cannot or will not deliver within a stated time frame, which is critical when you’re buying, and still important when you are refinancing. So look for someone who’s going to stand behind their quote with something that says they mean it.

(It’s hard for anyone you’ll actually be able to talk to to use the word “guarantee” with regards to a loan. It’s not just loan providers who pull unethical tricks. People attempt fraud regularly. Furthermore, there are “nobody’s fault” impediments that happen regularly, and they always change the transaction. That property doesn’t appraise for enough value is probably the most common. Only an underwriter can give a loan commitment, you as a loan applicant will never talk to your underwriter, and until you’ve got that commitment, there is no guarantee it can be done at all. So the real guarantees are always conditional).

Here is a List of Red Flags, real estate and loan practices that should have you running away, and here is a list of Questions to You Should Ask Prospective Loan Providers. Those who are doing business honestly should be happy to answer these sorts of questions – it gives us assurance that we’re not going to be competing with somebody blowing sunshine and wet sloppy kisses at you. Because the fact that you’re asking the questions means you’re not going to do business with those who give you unsatisfactory answers. Finally, here is an article on What to look for at Closing, to make certain all of your due diligence paid off and determine if you should go with your backup loan provider.

Caveat Emptor

Virtues of the Housing and Mortgage Market in the US

The scope of the problems that exist in the United States Mortgage market are huge. Enormously, mind-bogglingly, “How Big Is Space?” type huge. Yet, the problems are almost entirely on a retail level, when one provider works with one consumer. The system works, and it works extremely well. Consider:

Most consumers in Europe or any other country in the world would trade their loans for yours in a heartbeat. Rates there are typically around nine percent or so. Here, that’s a ratty sub-prime rate. Mexican rates start at about fourteen percent. Hard money lenders here can sometimes do better than that.

No matter where you are in the United States, you have ready access to home loan capital. It’s considered almost a one of our inalienable rights. Due to our secondary markets, as long as you can meet some pretty basic guidelines, you can find somebody eager to lend to you. You can find very long mortgage terms and very short terms. You can find loans without prepayment penalties, and you can choose to get a lower rate by taking a prepayment penalty. You may end up with something that’s not as good as someone else if their situation is better, and the lender wants more money to compensate them for the risk of your loan, but even so, the rates here are better than almost anywhere else in the world.

Consumer protections are also better here than almost anywhere else in the world. There are federal laws that give you time to call off a transaction if you change your mind, disclosure requirements, consumer protections against builders with teeth in them, and a tort system that, if it does go overboard some times, still gives you an excellent chance at recovering what unethical people took from you. Many states (California, for instance) go well beyond mandatory federal consumer protections.

So keep this in mind when you see me ranting on and on about the problems with our financial markets here. Consider a capital market willing to loan the average person several years worth of wages. I can get a family making $6000 per month a loan for nearly $400,000 on an A paper 30 year fixed rate basis – most expensive loan there is in the most favorable, hardest to qualify for loan market – no surprises, no prepayment penalties, no “gotchas!” of any kind, and I can do it without hiding or shading the truth in the least. That’s more than every dollar they will make for the next five years, and this family is every bit as chased after as the richest person in the world (more actually, because there are more of them). When you stop and think about it, that’s a pretty wonderful situation. For all of the rants I make, the unethical things that happen, and the problems that exist in our capital markets, they are pretty damned good, and have chosen a set of tradeoffs that appears to be working better than anywhere else in the world, at any other time in history.





Amortization: Fixed rate, Balloon, ARM and Hybrid Loans

One of the things that always seems to be aiming to confuse mortgage consumers is advertising based upon whether the loan is fixed rate, and for how long.

First, I need to acquaint you with two concepts: amortization and term. The term of the loan is nothing more than how long the loan lasts. How many months or years from the time the documents are signed until it is done. At the end of the term, the loan is over. In some cases, the payoff schedule (or amortization) will not pay the loan off in this amount of time, leaving you with a balance which you must pay off at that time. When this happens, it is known as a “balloon payment.”

Amortization is the payoff schedule. In other words, if the term was long enough (it isn’t always) how long would it take you to pay the loan off with these payments?

There are four basic types of loan rate determination out there. The first is the “true” fixed rate loan, the second is the “true” ARM, or Adjustable Rate Mortgage, the third is the hybrid, which starts out fixed but switches to adjustable, and finally, the Balloon.

“True” Fixed rate loans have the interest rate fixed for the entire life of the loan. Loan term of a true fixed rate loan is always the same as amortization period. Until you pay it off or refinance, the rate never changes. They are most commonly fixed for thirty years, but are fairly common in fifteen year variety, and widely available in 25, 20, and even 10 year variants, and the 40 year loan appears to be making a comeback. The shorter the period, the lower the rate will be at the same time, but the higher the payment, as you have to get the entire principal paid off in a much shorter period of time. I seem to always use a $270,000 loan amount, so let us consider that. Making and holding a few background constraints constant, a few days ago from a random lender a thirty year fixed rate loan was 6.25% at par (no points, no rebate). The 20 was 6.125, the 15 year 5.75. The 15 sounds like a better deal, right? But where the payment on the 30 year fixed rate loan is $1662.43, the payment on the 20 year fixed rate loan is $1953.88, and the payment on the 15 year loan is $2242.11 So you may not be able to afford the payment on the 15 year loan. (This particular lender doesn’t have 25 or 10 year loans.)

Some thirty year fixed rate loans are available with interest only for a certain period, usually five years, and then they amortize over the last 25 years of the period. Some people do this because they expect a raise in their income over the next few years, and some just do it for cash flow reasons, planning to sell or refinance before the end of the fifth year. Using the example in the preceding paragraph, this would have you making a monthly payment of $1406.25 for the first five years, then $1781.11 for the last twenty-five.

If there is a pre-payment penalty on a thirty year fixed rate loan, it is typically in effect for five years. Considering that over 50% of everybody will refinance or sell within two years, and over 95 percent within five, this is an awfully long time for a pre-payment penalty to be in effect. Practically everyone with a five year pre-payment penalty is going to end up paying it.

“True” Adjustable Rate Mortgages, or ARM loans, are adjustable from day one. The interest rate is, from the time the loan starts, always based upon an underlying rate or index, plus a specified margin. There is no fixed period whatsoever on a “true” ARM. This makes them in general hard to sell, because people cannot plan their mortgage payments, and except for the Negative Amortization loan (also known as “Option ARM” or “Pick a Pay”) these loans are very rare.

(If someone offers you a rate that appears way below market rates, like 1%, they are offering you a Negative Amortization loan. The 1% is a “nominal” or “in name only” rate, the real rate on these is month to month variable from the start based upon an underlying index, making this a “true” ARM.)

If there is a prepayment penalty on a “true” ARM, it must therefore be for a longer period than the fixed period, which is zero. You are taking a risk that you will have to pay a pre-payment penalty because the rate did something that you did not anticipate, and you may not be able to afford the payments if the rates change but the penalty is still in effect.

Rate adjustments on ARMs can be monthly, quarterly, biannually, or annually, with monthly being most common, including for every Negative Amortization loan I’ve ever seen.

The third category is the hybrid loan. Hybrids are often called Adjustable Rate Mortgages, and most loan officers are really talking about hybrids when they discuss ARMs. You should ask if uncertain, but in general, everybody from the lender on down calls them ARMs (I myself almost always call them ARMs), but when you get down to the technical details, they are a hybrid. Hybrids start out fixed rate for a given period, then become adjustable. The overall term of the loan is usually thirty years, but the forty is becoming more common again for subprime. Unlike Balloons, if you like what they adjust to, you are welcome to keep hybrids for as long as they fit your needs. There is no requirement to refinance a hybrid after the fixed period.

Hybrids are widely available with 2, 3, 5, 7 and 10 year initial fixed rate periods, and they may also be available “interest only” for the period of fixed rate at a slightly higher interest rate. Two years fixed is typically a subprime loan, and while five and seven and ten year fixed periods are available from some subprime lenders, they are more commonly “A paper” loans. Three is common both subprime and “A paper”. Once they begin adjusting, “A paper” typically (not always!) adjusts once per year, while every hybrid subprime I’ve ever seen adjusts every six months.

WARNING: I often see hybrid loans advertised and quoted as “fixed” rate loans, and you find the fact that they are hybrid ARMs buried in the fine print somewhere. Yes, they are “fixed rate” for X number of years. But this is fundamentally dishonest advertising. This is one of the reasons I keep saying that any time you see the words “Fixed rate,” you should immediately ask the question “How long is the rate fixed for?” Please go ahead and ask, for your own protection. Ethical loan officers know that people get sold a bill of goods on this point every day, and so they’re not offended. And you don’t want to do business with the unethical ones, right?

Now, I am a huge fan of hybrid loans myself. I will go so far as to say that I will never have a thirty year fixed rate loan on my own home (unless the rates do something economically unprecedented, anyway). You get a lower interest rate because you’re not paying for an insurance policy that the rate won’t change for thirty years, without jacking up the minimum payment to something you may not be able to afford. Most people voluntarily abandon their thirty year interest rate insurance policy (also known as “Thirty year fixed rate loan”) within about two years anyway. So why would I want to spend the money for that policy in the first place, when I’m likely to only use two or three or five of those years?

Nonetheless, particularly with subprime loans, you need to be careful. I have seen precisely one subprime loan in my life without a pre-payment penalty, and I’ve seen a lot of loans (at least thousands, maybe tens of thousands – I wasn’t counting at the time – where your average real estate agent has seen maybe a few dozen, and your average bank loan officer maybe a few hundred). Many loan providers, even “A Paper” loan providers will stick you with a three or five year pre-payment penalty on a two year fixed rate loan. Why? Because it increases their commission. So if you take one of these loans, you will have a period of time when you don’t know what the rate will be doing, but if you refinance or sell during that period, you will have to pay your lender several thousand extra dollars. This puts many people on the horns of a dilemma – whether to keep making payments they can’t afford, or pay the pre-payment penalty. The bank wins either way.

One final point about hybrid loans. Once they adjust, they all adjust to the same rate plus the same margin. Unless you need the lower payment to qualify for the loan, it makes no sense to pay three points to buy the rate down on a five year hybrid ARM (or anything else) when it takes eight to ten years to recover the cost of your points. Why? Because you’ll never get the money back! When the rate adjusts on the loan you paid three points for (IF you keep it that long), it goes to the same rate as the loan where they paid all of your closing costs. Judging by the evidence, most people don’t understand this.

The final category of loan that I’m going to discuss here is the Balloon. This is a loan where the amortization is longer than the term. So if the amortization is thirty years, you make payments “as if” it were a thirty year loan, but since the actual term of the loan is shorter, you will have to sell, refinance, or somehow make extra payments before the loan term expires. The thing I don’t understand is that Balloon rates are typically higher than the comparable hybrid ARM, despite the fact that you either have to come up with a large chunk of cash at the end or sell or refinance prior to that. This makes them a less attractive loan. Furthermore, pre-payment penalties are every bit as common. Balloons are widely available in five and seven year terms with thirty year amortization, and I’ve seen three and ten, as well. Probably the most common “balloon” loan, though, is for those who do a second fixed rate mortgage, where the best loan available is usually a thirty year amortization with a fifteen year balloon. Since over half of everybody has refinanced within two years anyway, and 95 percent within five, the fact that it’s got a fifteen year balloon payment just doesn’t affect a whole lot of people.

WARNING!: I have seen Balloon Loans mis-advertised in the same way as I talked about with hybrid ARMS a few paragraphs ago. I regard this as even more misleading than advertising hybrid’s as fixed. Unfortunately, many states do not have good regulations on rate advertising, and in many others, enforcement is lax. When a loan provider advertises, the entire game is to get you to call, and then control what you see and what you learn from that point on. Your best protection from this is to talk to other loan providers. Shop around, compare offers, tell them all about each others’ offers. If something is not real, or it has a nasty gotcha!, if you talk to enough people, somebody will likely tell you about it. If you only talk to one person, you’re at their mercy. Even if you somehow ask the right question to discover the gotcha!, the people who do this have long practice in distracting you, or answering another question that somehow seems similar enough that you let it go.

Caveat Emptor

Recording Errors and Title Insurance

I just got a google search where the question asked was “What if the mortgage is recorded in the wrong county?”

I’ve never actually seen this (and San Diego County, once upon a time, included what is now Riverside, Imperial and San Bernardino counties), but if it’s the mortgage on your loan, no big deal. You should get a copy of the recorded trust deed, and the county recorder’s stamp should tell you the county it was recorded in. You probably want to record it in your own county, as when the document is scanned in both recorder’s stamps will appear, thus making it obvious that these two documents are one and the same. There may be better ways to deal with it. Since the error was (everywhere I’ve ever worked) your title company’s, they should be willing to repair it to eliminate the cloud on your title. If and when you refinance this loan or sell the property, make sure that the Reconveyance is recorded in both counties, and references both recordings.

More dangerous is the issue of what if it’s the previous owner’s loan that was wrongly recorded. The previous owner is obviously no longer making payments on the property. The lender may or may not have been paid off properly; if they were there may not be any difficulties. It could just disappear into some metaphorical black hole of things that weren’t done right and were never corrected, but just don’t matter because everybody’s happy and nobody does anything to rock the boat. However, unlike black holes in astronomy, things do come back out of these sorts of black holes.

However, if the previous lender was not paid off correctly, or if they were paid but something causes it to not process correctly, they’ve got a claim on your property, and because the usual title search that is done is county-based, it won’t show up in a regular title search. Let’s face it, property in County A usually stays right where it’s always been, in County A. There is no reason except error for it to be recorded in County B. Therefore, the title company almost certainly would not catch it when they did a search for documents affecting the property in County A; it would be a rare and lucky title examiner who caught it.

In some states, they still don’t use title insurance, merely attorneys examing the state of title. When the previous owner’s lender sues you, you’re going to have to turn around and sue that attorney who did your title examination for negligence, who is then going to have to turn around and sue whoever recorded the documents wrong. If it’s a small attorney’s office and they’ve since gone out of business, best of luck and let me know how it all turns out, but the sharks are going to be circling for years on this one, and the only sure winners are the lawyers.

In most states, however, the concept of title insurance has become de rigeur. Here in California, lenders don’t lend the money without a valid policy of title insurance involved.

Let’s stop here for a moment and clarify a few things. When we’re talking about title insurance, there are, in general, two separate title insurance policies in effect. When you bought the property, you required the previous owner to buy you a policy of title insurance as an assurance that they were the actual owners. By and large, it can only be purchased at the same time you purchase your property. This policy remains in effect as long as you or your heirs own the property. The first Title Company, which became Commonwealth Land Title (now part of Fidelity), was started in 1876, and there are likely insured properties from the 19th century still covered. If you don’t know who your title insurance company is, you should. Most places, the company and the order of title insurance are on the grant deed.

The other policy of title insurance is a lender’s policy of title insurance. This insures your lender against loss on that particular loan due to title defects, and when the loan is paid off (either because the property is sold, refinanced, or that rare property where the people now own it free and clear), it’s over and done with. Let’s face it, most people are not going to continue to make payments if they lose the property. If you take out a new loan, your new lender will require a new policy of title insurance. You pay but they are the ones insured by the policy.

To get back to the situation, what happens when you order title insurance is that a searcher and/or an examiner go out and find all of the documents they can find that are relevant to the title of the property. These days, they typically perform an automated search, and sometimes documents are indexed and cross referenced incorrectly and therefore they do not show up when they should. Nonetheless, the title company takes this list of documents and tells you about known issues with the title, and then basically says “We will sell you a policy of title insurance that covers everything else.” This document is variously known as a Preliminary Report, PR, or Commitment.

Now it shouldn’t take a genius to figure out why you want a policy of title insurance. Around here, the average single family residence goes for somewhere on the high side of $500,000. You’re committing a half million dollars of your money on the representation that Joe Blow owns the property and that if you give him half a million, he’ll give you valid title. I would never consider buying property without an owner’s policy of title insurance. Even with the best will in the world and my best friend whose family has owned it since the stone age, all kinds of issues really do crop up (Another agent in the office has a client right now who bought a property via an uninsured transfer – and there was an unrecorded tax lien. Ouch. Say bye-bye to your investment). The lenders are the same way. No lender’s policy, no loan.

So what happens when this old mortgage document is uncovered? Well, that’s one of the hundreds of thousands of reasons why you have that policy of title insurance. You go to your title company and say, “I have a claim.” Since they missed that document in their search, they usually pay off the loan (there are other possibilities). After all, if they hadn’t missed it, it would have been taken care of before the Joe Blow got paid for the property and split to the Bahamas.

None of this considers the possibility of fraud, among many other possibilities, but those are all beyond the scope of this article.

So when buying, insist that your seller provide you with a policy of title insurance. When selling, it really isn’t out of line for your buyer to require it – it shows that you have a serious buyer. Some places may have the buyer purchasing his own policy, but most places that use title insurance, the seller pays for the owner’s policy out of the proceeds. Of course, anytime there is a loan done on the property, the lender is going to require you pay for a lender’s policy. If the quotes you are given do not include this, be certain to ask why.

Caveat Emptor