- If you are speaking to a loan officer at a bank, a mortgage banker or a mortgage broker and they ask that you help them fill out an application without going over your financial pedigree, you may be asking for a lot of trouble.
- If you are refinancing your mortgage to pay off credit card debts, you may very well be asked by the lender to pay the balances to zero AND close out the account.
- Always ask your loan officer what happens and what your options are if the appraisal comes in less than what you expected.
- Know what your approximate closing costs are before doing an application. If your loan officer doesn't volunteer the information, ask.
- Be prepared for a long, tedious process.
- Banks will not look at your liquid asset statements if there is 1 page missing.
- Assume that the bank will ask for a letter of explanation for the smallest of deposits in your account.
- Any credit inquiries on your credit report within the last 90 days will require a letter of explanation.
- Be prepared to sign many disclosures that don't make a lot of sense.
- If you are buying a home and the appraisal comes in at less than the purchase price, you will probably have to write a letter that says you understand the value is below the purchase price and you still want to move forward.
- At this point in time, no matter what rate you end up getting, you're a winner.
- Never assume that the appraiser has done everything correctly. Mistakes are made all the time.
- "Common sense" underwriting no longer applies.
- Loans are getting closed despite what we see on the news. Just be patient, give the bank everything it asks for and be patient. (I said that already, didn't I?)
Monday, August 6, 2012
Mortgage lending and things you should know
If you are thinking of buying or refinancing or just looking to give some advice to a friend or family member, read ahead. Some words of wisdom: that we can all benefit from:
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Does Twitter really grow my business?
Let's start with the following statement-I really like Twitter. I find it fun, thought provoking and informative. Wherever I turn, I hear that social media is the way to go. It's the wave of the present and future and if you aren't doing it, you are in the dark ages. Is it really?
From a pure social standpoint, its great. But is it helping me actually grow my business? Since I have only been "tweeting" for a few months, I decided to ask a real estate agent that is a veteran of the business and more importantly, a veteran of Twitter. His tweets, people who follow him and people he follows are in the thousands. Surely, I could get some positive feedback from him on how Twitter has helped him grow his business. Surely, he would be able to tell me a wonderful story about how a tweet he sent regarding the increase in purchase transactions struck a chord with someone and how they contacted him immediately to be come their real estate agent and how he sold them a $2,000,000 property.
I started out delicately asking him how he can constantly come up with new things to tweet about. I mentioned that I have done like 100 tweets and I feel like I have nothing left to say. (That could be due to the fact that I don't use Twitter to let people know what dressing I had with my oriental chicken salad or where I would be at 3:12 PM). OK. Let's get back to the story. He said that it's hard work and required time, effort and dedication. I then asked him the $64,000 question as to whether this has helped his business and his answer-I don't know. There it was. Thousands of tweets, endless hours of work finding informative articles and writing witty things and it's an "I don't know". Boy, that didn't fill me with hope. My mind started to race. "Left behind"? "In the dark ages if you don't do it"?
Maybe others were and are having great success with it so that begged the question-what am I doing wrong? Wait a minute. Am I actually doing something wrong? For the most part, I try to give informative information and I target real estate agents, attorneys and potential borowers. Information that will help them on a daily basis and help grow their business. It could be a good article that I found or just something new in regards to underwriting or rate changes. Surely, that would attract people to follow me, right? Not yet. I'm mostly getting real estate consulting firms in places like Kenosha Wisconsin to follow me. Don't get me wrong, Wisconsin is a wonderful state and they make great cheese but it's not really the target audience that I am trying to attract.
Maybe I wasn't doing this the proper way so I set out searching the internet with queries like-"how to increase twitter followers" and I find some of the information interesting and somewhat of a help but after reading all that stuff, the basics of how to attract people are all the same.
Are there not enough people in residential real estate using it? And for those that are, are they mostly using it for social purposes and not business? Does the social aspect of it attarct business? I think that's what many would say but I am not interesting in telling my life story so I won't go there. Am I not giving it enough time? Yes, that must be it. I am too impatient and these things take time, right? Then I think about my real estate friend that has been doing this for years and has tweeted thoudsands of times and I keep hearing the same thing in my head-"I'm not sure". Oh boy.
From a pure social standpoint, its great. But is it helping me actually grow my business? Since I have only been "tweeting" for a few months, I decided to ask a real estate agent that is a veteran of the business and more importantly, a veteran of Twitter. His tweets, people who follow him and people he follows are in the thousands. Surely, I could get some positive feedback from him on how Twitter has helped him grow his business. Surely, he would be able to tell me a wonderful story about how a tweet he sent regarding the increase in purchase transactions struck a chord with someone and how they contacted him immediately to be come their real estate agent and how he sold them a $2,000,000 property.
I started out delicately asking him how he can constantly come up with new things to tweet about. I mentioned that I have done like 100 tweets and I feel like I have nothing left to say. (That could be due to the fact that I don't use Twitter to let people know what dressing I had with my oriental chicken salad or where I would be at 3:12 PM). OK. Let's get back to the story. He said that it's hard work and required time, effort and dedication. I then asked him the $64,000 question as to whether this has helped his business and his answer-I don't know. There it was. Thousands of tweets, endless hours of work finding informative articles and writing witty things and it's an "I don't know". Boy, that didn't fill me with hope. My mind started to race. "Left behind"? "In the dark ages if you don't do it"?
Maybe others were and are having great success with it so that begged the question-what am I doing wrong? Wait a minute. Am I actually doing something wrong? For the most part, I try to give informative information and I target real estate agents, attorneys and potential borowers. Information that will help them on a daily basis and help grow their business. It could be a good article that I found or just something new in regards to underwriting or rate changes. Surely, that would attract people to follow me, right? Not yet. I'm mostly getting real estate consulting firms in places like Kenosha Wisconsin to follow me. Don't get me wrong, Wisconsin is a wonderful state and they make great cheese but it's not really the target audience that I am trying to attract.
Maybe I wasn't doing this the proper way so I set out searching the internet with queries like-"how to increase twitter followers" and I find some of the information interesting and somewhat of a help but after reading all that stuff, the basics of how to attract people are all the same.
Are there not enough people in residential real estate using it? And for those that are, are they mostly using it for social purposes and not business? Does the social aspect of it attarct business? I think that's what many would say but I am not interesting in telling my life story so I won't go there. Am I not giving it enough time? Yes, that must be it. I am too impatient and these things take time, right? Then I think about my real estate friend that has been doing this for years and has tweeted thoudsands of times and I keep hearing the same thing in my head-"I'm not sure". Oh boy.
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