Loan Think

At the start of this year, nearly one in four mortgages was underwater and 4.5 million mortgages were seriously delinquent. And today, some studies estimate that as many as 10 million borrowers are at risk of defaulting on their mortgages in the coming years. One of the problems that has made things even harder for struggling homeowners is the state of the mortgage servicing industry.

Tongues are clucking in the industry about the death of the ‘transitory’ license with many nonbank loan officers believing that their depository brethren are at a financial disadvantage.

If you’re not healthy and don’t feel good, how can you possibly run an effective mortgage business? Here are few ideas for you to help improve your physical well-being.

A Mobile, Ala. real estate investor, agreed to plead guilty for his role in a plot to rig bids and commit mail fraud at public real estate foreclosure auctions in Southern Alabama.

For many years, mortgage servicers operated with little or no regulation and only quasi-governance at best. Operational inadequacies were largely ignored as the mortgage banking community was focused on origination…better, faster and highly profitable.This is definitely no longer the case.

In a few weeks we’ll know whether the Treasury Department’s third largest investment in housing/mortgages will file for bankruptcy protection. I’m talking about Residential Capital Corp./GMAC, which recently missed a bond payment and has 30-days to make good on it.

Until recently, the deterioration of properties didn’t pique the interest of servicing agencies until it was clearly designated REO and, until recently, this was all well and good. But the winds have changed.

Randall Craig, a Toronto-based social media marketing expert, said marketing campaigns using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like, can be measured through the following four approaches.

Sometimes I go in circles. I do marketing, my phone rings, I get busy, I stop marketing. I close loans, I realize my phone isn't ringing as much so I start all over. My new goal is to go in a straight line.

While it is evident that loans are receiving a great deal of scrutiny these days, it is also true that appraisal reports are generally viewed most closely for the value they recommend, not the detail they contain.