Minorities get higher rates. They add that the fact minorities are more likely to borrow from institutions specializing in high-priced loans could mean they are being steered to such lenders or that some lenders are unwilling or unable to serve minority neighborhoods. This is called redlining. It is illegal. HUD really gets their panties in …
Continue reading “Lender Discrimination and Shopping for a Home Loan”
The question every good loan officer hates the most is “What is your lowest rate?” First off, everybody doesn’t get the same choices. As I’ve said before, somebody who can prove they make enough money, has a history of paying their debt, and offers the lender a situation where there’s 30 percent equity (or more) …
Continue reading “Mortgage Loans: The Tradeoff between Rate and Cost”
A few points as to what’s likely to happen with this. Hurricane is not a named peril on most policies. Fire, Lightning, and removal (i.e. moving stuff to a safer area after a partial destruction) are three named perils that are universally covered under National Association of Insurance Commissioner (NAIC) rules. You can get more …
I have a confession to make: When I was doing financial planning, I didn’t put enough emphasis on Disability Income Insurance. I was hardly alone in this; Disability Insurance is one of the two most undersold financial products there is. The other is Long Term Care Insurance, which product I at least researched properly and …
Many people get confused between small ‘a’ atheism and Atheism. atheists (small a) do not believe in the divine. Even as a non-christian, I may have an opinion that believes they are being willfully blind, but that’s okay. Turn it around 180 degrees, and they think I’m hallucinating – seeing things that don’t exist. The …
I found this article by Ken Harney in the Sunday paper. WASHINGTON – Call it funny money for the housing boom: Now you don’t need actual cash in the bank to buy a house. All you need is somebody who says you’ve got money in the bank. Need a hundred grand on deposit to convince …
When I originally wrote this, every day I was passing by another real estate office where the agent had a big banner outside “I SOLD 101 HOMES IN 2004!” This is what is called a production metric, and this one sounds fairly impressive at first glance, right? The question I want to ask is how …
Continue reading “Production Metrics versus Consumer Metrics”
Yesterday, 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 your life”. I can understand where the sentiment is coming from, particularly if they were of the sort of person who …
From an email: I was in the process of buying and selling the house when we saw a FSBO house we liked was for sale. But sale fell through, which is a good thing anyway because of contigency on our house. But I also suspected it failed ecause the seller refuses to pay commission to …
Continue reading “Exclusive versus Non-Exclusive Buyer’s Agent Agreement”
While I was reading up on the Able Danger controversy this morning, I ran across some side information on a recurring theme of mine. I want to bring this to the attention of my readers: From the CNN interview of Colenel Shaffer What I did was I married the land information warfare activity, LIMA, at …
Continue reading “Able Danger, Databases, and the Right to Privacy”
