How Your Escrow Account Works
June 5, 2011 by blarrabee · 2 Comments
To most first time buyers and even many that have been there before, an escrow account is a mysterious beast. It can be hard to understand not only why it’s often required but how it really works. We’ve all seen many attempts at providing clarity and plenty that fall short. Granted, it’s not a simple feat [...]
46 Minutes…
Never seems to fail that whenever a SureFire mailing goes out that there is a response of the impending application kind and aren’t those the best? At 6:45 AM I received my notice and sample of the Neighborhood Home Activity Report email going out to my DB, at 7:31 AM, the following email arrived: [...]
FHA Madness
August 8, 2010 by blarrabee · Leave a Comment
The FHA recently proposed reducing the UFMIP while increasing the annual premium that is paid monthly. Their stated intention is to bolster their insurance reserve fund. Um, not so fast…. Before even running the numbers, cutting the upfront MIP which is arguably when they need the money the most, wouldn’t seem to make sense. So when [...]
Home Value Update – 4th Quarter 2009
March 28, 2010 by blarrabee · Leave a Comment
If all we did was listen to the news, our picture or perception of the housing market would be pretty grim. In fact, most people do perceive it that way. Yet viewing housing over the longer term tells a different story, especially if we measure the performance of housing against a few other popular benchmarks. [...]
GFE 2010, Irony, Hypocrisy or Worse?
February 7, 2010 by blarrabee · Leave a Comment
Ever hear that Alanis Morisette song, ” ironic” ? The funny thing about it was that the lyrics didn’t pose much if any irony leaving the only irony to be that she wrote a song about a word but didn’t really know what the word means.. - Ex. “A black fly, in my Chardonnay” or “it’s like rain……, on your wedding day” Rather, these [...]
Rate Quote Reality
August 2, 2009 by blarrabee · Leave a Comment
No one in our industry slogging it out in the trenches everyday needs to be told that properly educating our prospects is both the most important thing we need to do while often also one of the more difficult tasks to boot. It’s amazing, though not entirely surprising given the history of misleading advertising that we’re [...]
Inflation or Fire Drill
June 8, 2009 by blarrabee · Leave a Comment
We’ve just witnessed either a massive, pre-emptive, wholesale sentiment shift in the bond and MBS markets or one heck of a dress rehearsal. Like the old EF Hutton commercial, when Bill Gross speaks, the markets listen. To those that missed this, Bill really detonated the destruction by suggesting that the US of A could lose its AAA debt [...]
Mortgage Revolution Video
May 31, 2009 by blarrabee · Leave a Comment
As I write this post, there’s a grass roots movement taking place in the mortgage industry. The 2009 Super Bowl of all things mortgage is quietly under construction. It’s a revolution and in fact, it’s ”The Mortgage Revolution”. A group of 14, incited to action by the vision of Mark Green, diverse, able, motivated, desirous of change and just inquisitive enough to ask each [...]
If You're Not a Resource, You're Just Another Salesperson…
March 21, 2009 by blarrabee · Leave a Comment
Words to live by spoken by my great friend Frank I. in a “real life” commercial for the Wall St. Journal. Though I love music, I used to listen to AM radio on my way into the office each morning to catch the business news on 1010 WINS. I almost drove off the road the first [...]
