Richard Nacht's The Daily Mortgage

Lead generator fights spam

From Originator Times

GoApply.com, a leading mortgage and financial services website, says it adopts extremely stringent anti-spam policies and procedures as part of its company-wide charter. In addition, the company mandates its business partners to heed stringent anti-spam policies as well or face violating their GoApply.com contractual agreements. According to the company, this is an excellent first step to stopping spam in its tracks.

”We take anti-spam compliance very seriously and we expect our business partners to do the same,” said Bill Baskin, COO of GoApply.com. “It’s important for organizations in this industry to do their homework, to have comprehensive processes in place to analyze who they’re doing business with and how they’re getting customers, and most importantly, it’s essential for credible organizations like ours to keep each other in check — it’s important for the protection of consumers as well as the integrity of the online mortgage industry.”

By definition, GoApply.com is an online lead generator — an organization that matches home loan and refinance customers with accredited lenders across the country. In some cases, GoApply.com — and other large online lead generators in the industry — rely on outside marketing companies to secure home loan customer requests. On the back end, this process of ‘affiliate marketing’ is complex because a variety of different websites and marketers work in conjunction with one another (or aside from one another) to generate requests. Since there are different points of contact and different people involved in the marketing process, sometimes it’s difficult for companies to monitor how mortgage customers are originated in the first place. In certain situations, even well intentioned organizations like GoApply.com aren’t aware any spamming has taken place until after (and in some cases IF) the customer indicates to the lender that he or she was spammed in the first place.

Full article

Homes.com changes

From Inman News

Real estate portal Homes.com is launching new advertising opportunities for real estate agents this week, including a new Featured Listings product.

Featured Listings are home listings that are positioned in prime locations on the search criteria and search results pages of Homes.com. The prime placement aims to deliver more leads to agents and brokers.

The Featured Listings advertisements include full-color photos of homes for sale that also display price and home descriptions. Each listing is advertised for four months, or for the life of the listing, and can be replaced when the home is sold.

The latest addition is one of several changes Homes.com plans for its product line this year.

Homes.com, a member of Trader Publishing Co., is an online members-only real estate listings database. The company offers nationwide MLS coverage, Web site management tools and lead generation for brokers and agents.

Grappling with Loan Quality

From Mortgage Banking, February 2005

LENDERS DON’T USUALLY WINCE IN PAIN OVER visions of liquidity woes. But a quick glance at 2004’s headlines left them troubled as they read about federal investigators busting a Charlotte, North Carolina, fraud ring swindling lenders out of up to $50 million. Another headline talked about a bust of five people in a Cincinnati real estate flipping scheme that bled investors for millions.

Other scams feeding lenders’ nightmares are: balloon-flipping scams targeting emerging markets; falsified Social Security numbers cloaking criminal histories to secure mortgage licenses; and an FBI probe of well-organized fraud rings comprised of brokers, lawyers and myriad loan stakeholders. All these misdeeds had lenders flinching to uncover what the FBI thinks will be billions in cost.

With parasitic fraud schemes flaring up and mutating cleverly ahead of authorities into burgeoning markets nationwide, mortgage fraud begs a wait-a-minute, Will Rogers philosophy of horse sense: When it comes to loan quality, would you rather perform preventative medicine-or an autopsy?

Rest of article.

Online ad spending soaring

From my sister blog, The Search Engine Marketing Weblog, “The Interactive Advertising Bureau is reporting on research done by Borrell Associates. Local online advertising is expected to grow by 46 percent in 2005 over 2004, to 3.9-billion dollars.”

Paid search represents 8.4 percent of that. Key industries are general retail, and health care and, of course, mortgages.

Second home buying increasing

From the Inman Blog

AMERICANS BUYING SECOND-HOMES AT RECORD PACE, NEW NAR STUDY SHOWS
David Lereah, NAR’s chief economist, will explain the answers found in 2005 National Association of Realtors Profile of Second-Home Buyers, released March 1, 2005 at 9:00 a.m.

WHEN: By phone-bridge Tuesday, March 1, 2005; between 1- 2:30pm.
HOW: To connect to phone bridge, call the Participant Line at: 800/289-0496. At the prompt, enter the Call Access Code: 4751798, and press #

New home sales weaker

New home sales fell in January 9.2%, to 1.106 annualized, according to new figures released by the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  December’s number was revised to 1.218 annualized.  January’s level is also down 4.2% from a year ago.

Also reported was a 4.7 month supply of new homes, the highest number in over a year.

MBA announces Certified Mortgage Servicer designation

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) has announced a new professional designation to recognize residential mortgage servicers. CampusMBA introduced the Certified Mortgage Servicer (CMS) designation at MBA’s 2005 Servicing Conference in Orlando. The designation program is  open to MBA members and nonmembers.

Mortgage president’s club of Iowa

Julie Adam, a vice president and manager for Cornerstone Mortgage, an affiliation with First National Bank of Omaha, has been inducted into the Iowa Mortgage Association President’s Club.

The President’s Club recognizes Iowa Mortgage Association members for their mortgage production achievements. To be eligible, a member must have had a minimum of 15 million or 120 units of residential loan volume for 2003. Adam ended 2003 with 20 million in volume.

Adam, who has had 15 years of mortgage experience, is part of the Mortgage Mastery Club offered by the nationally known Duncan Group. Most recently, Adam joined Cornerstone Mortgage, a correspondent lender located at 915 Pierce St., Suite A, Sioux City.

Attorneys as lenders

This looks interesting - I’ll write more when I find out more.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) February 21, 2005 — JurisTrust announced that it has reached a milestone of 1,100 registered attorneys nationwide, making them the largest provider of residential and commercial mortgage underwriting services to attorneys in the nation.

“Mortgage law represents a new frontier for attorneys who in recent years have battled with non-attorneys for title insurance services.” said Cathy Rae Smith, general manager, marketing, JurisTrust.

JurisTrust is a direct lending service available exclusively through registered attorneys. Working with the attorney, this online service offers homeowners access to a direct lending source that provides access to mortgage loans that eliminate points, origination fees, and junk fees while still offering low interest rates

“The residential mortgage industry represents a multi-trillion dollar growth market for lawyers,” said Steven Lopez, CEO, JurisTrust. “The JurisTrust founders designed an online system that would offer homeowners the benefit of attorney involvement in what is often their single largest economic decision.”

JurisTrust registered attorneys provide homeowners consumer protection by representing their best interests via the attorney’s fiduciary duty to the client, their local code of ethics, and years of legal training and professional expertise. Additionally, many attorneys offer the time saving advantage of one-stop-shopping: mortgage, closing, and title.

“I think the biggest advantage outside of the cost savings is the convenience factor.” said Jeff Horn, senior counsel for Home Closing Company.

JurisTrust is currently in 35 states, expanding into all 50 states.

Muslim ‘lending’ opens home ownership

Fascinating article from USA Today on the advances in the $600 million Muslim mortgage market in the US.  Really worth the read.

Governed by the Islamic religion’s sharia laws, which prohibit earning or paying interest on borrowed money, the market is expected to double in the next few years as American Muslims with conventional home loans look to refinance with Islamic products.

Rushdi Siddiqui, director of the Dow Jones Islamic Index Group, which tracks sharia-compliant investments, says, “Frankly, with 9/11, as with any tragedy, there was a silver lining. One of the silver linings … was a revival by Muslims to look inward to how they can be more compliant (with the Islamic faith).” As a result, he says, American Muslims have become better educated about alternatives to Western financial products.

The trickle of new capital is changing people’s lives.