| Must-knows about mortgage rate/fee combos and Economists don't agree on real estate recovery |
|
|
|
|
Last week I discussed a new integrated calculator on my website that uses current and personalized mortgage price data to help borrowers select the type of mortgage that would minimize their net costs. This article introduces a second integrated calculator that helps borrowers select the best combination of interest rate and lender fees on their preferred type of mortgage.Before describing this new approach, it is instructive to consider how the rate/fee combination is selected now.Lowest rate used to solicit naive borrowers Naive borrowers know that mortgages carry an interest rate, but they don't know that the rate varies with the amount of total upfront fees. [Read the full article] Whether you consider yourself a more or less avid pop-culture observer, chances are good that by now you've seen at least one of the videos, Twitter accounts or articles chronicling the phenomenon we'll just call "Stuff Girls Say" (hereafter "SGS," with "Stuff" being my G-rated substitution for another word you can probably guess at).The original Twitter account contained nothing but a couple of comedy writers' rapid-fire blurbs of silly things young women say.But the spinoff Web video series took the hilarity up a huge notch, featuring a young man in a wig delivering these verbal tics with inflection and body language you'll find bizarrely familiar if you are a woman under 40 years old or know many of them (the video also featured Juliette Lewis, which might seem like a random choice but turned out to be exemplary casting). [Read the full article] For more than a decade, our tag line at RealEstateCoach.com has been "Seven percent of the agents do 93 percent of the business -- the rest don't have coaches!" Hundreds of thousands of licensees do one or fewer transactions a year. How can you cope when the other agent is inexperienced or simply clueless?A widespread complaint about the real estate industry is the lack of professionalism. Licensing requirements are seen as lax. Furthermore, the industry has been unsuccessful in raising standards. Realtors continue to rank below used-car salespeople and attorneys in terms of customer satisfaction.All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this article without permission is a violation of federalcopyright law. [Read the full article] 
|