Loan Think

If all the mortgage industry economists are correct (and let's face it, their track record over the past few years is not good) 2012 is expected to have fewer loan origination opportunities than 2011. So any source of sales advice can be seen as a helping hand.

The mailbag for the week between Christmas and New Year's was, as you might expect, pretty light. Both messages I received were about the same story, which claimed that four of ten home sales in 2011 were cash-only deals, no mortgage. Our two correspondents questioned the particulars of that story.

Did perceived liquidity problems at PHH Corp. lead to this week's ouster of company president and CEO Jerry Selitto? I'm told that PHH doesn't have any liquidity problems and the company said as much in a recent SEC filing.

Quick regulation is rarely great regulation. This will ultimately prove true for Single Point of Contact (SPOC) as well. The idea of a single individual as liaison for a borrower looking to avoid default is a brilliant core concept if the only problem is to simplify the process of navigating the “waterfall” of options currently available.

If you had only $100 to spend on a killer marketing strategy, how would you spend it?I posted that very question on my social media page at www.facebook.com/karendeis and I wanted to share with you some of the ideas, including many that don’t cost you anything but your time.

I talk and write (a lot) about Realtor marketing and as you know, there are countless ways to spend your marketing time and dollars. Today, I want to point out what I consider to be the top three elements of a successful loan originator in relationship to Realtor marketing. These will help you build a strong referral-based business so your phone is consistently ringing with new clients. And isn’t that what we all want?

Big news in the online lead generation world—Google is no longer selling mortgage rate advertising to lenders in all but four states and the District of Columbia.

Thanks for checking out “Mortgage Bytes,” the new blog of Mortgage Technology magazine.The genesis of this blog, and its name, goes back more than a year ago, shortly after I came on board as managing editor of the magazine. With all of the product releases, technology integrations and company hire news coming out of the mortgage tech sector, I wanted a way to bring all of these briefs together in one place for readers to quickly get informed on the latest industry updates.

A new book from journalist Robert Neuwirth estimates that small, illegal, off-the-books businesses collectively account for trillions of dollars in commerce and employ fully half the world's workers. How much of this is going on in America is another question.

Depending on whose foreclosure data you believe, the case is that more than five million units make up the current excess housing inventory in the United States. CoreLogic reports that north of 1.6 million units are in the foreclosure process, with more than 750,000 units that are “seriously delinquent,” meaning that the attached mortgages are 90 or more days late.