Loan Think

We promise not to lecture in this article but the headline above says it all. If you are reading this, then we commend you for having stuck it out during the past few years. Things have not been easy for sure. So take a minute and congratulate yourself. Reverse mortgages still hold a lot of promise for the future. But you know where we’re going with this.

Monday evening the U.S. Treasury sold $10.5 billion worth of Citigroup common stock, washing its hands (sort of) of the once dominant megabank. Treasury said U.S. taxpayers will earn a profit of roughly $12 billion on their initial $45 billion investment in the company.

If there has been one lesson to heed from the current crisis is that to remain a successful mortgage professional, you need to build a referral-based business. But for quite a few people, they need to know the answer to the basic question how do they start.

Over the past year or so we've been reporting on the increasing likelihood that some factions of the mortgage business might shift over from being controlled by banks to nondepositories. Case in point, is the recent National Mortgage News story on the rise of IBM in the servicing space.

Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corp has agreed to pay $38,000 fine for violations of branch office rules that require the corporation to pay all expenses of all branch offices. (See Mortgagee Approval Handbook 4050.1 Rev-2 ¶¶ 2-8, 2-14.B.). AHMCC also agreed to refund “improper fees” to two borrowers and “buy down the principal of one loan that was over-insured,” HUD said.

THIS JUST IN: Bank of America has taken it on the chin the past two years (along with its stock price). Its "legacy" problems can be directly traced to its August 2008 purchase of Countrywide Financial Corp., which had $80 billion in problematic loans (home equity, nonprime, alt-A) on its books.

Jumbo mortgage lenders take note: The (Don) Corleone estate is for sale in Staten Island. The asking price for the 8-bedroom, 4.5-bath house in NYC's most suburban borough is $2.9 million. Staten Island is just a ferry ride away from lower Manhattan where a different type of mob makes its living: the stock market gang.

Are you out of time? Out of energy? Have you said lately, "I’m just not going to respond to that e-mail or phone call. Don’t they know how busy I am?" Yet, the time you are spending on your business is not exactly yielding the results that you really desire, need and/or want?

It's another wild and wacky day in the markets. The yield on the 10-year briefly rose above 3% which could affect mortgage rates, but then again mortgage rates are shaped by what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are doing in the secondary market. Wait a second, mortgage rates are rising too. Is the world coming to an end?

So you want to remember your favorite real estate agent over the holidays, right? (Okay, maybe you don’t—so don’t read this!) You’ll get lost in the “crowd” by giving a gift during Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, etc.