North Country Mortgages

I recently read an article portraying how dirty the lending industry is based on the fact that there are fees associated with closing on a mortgage. Now I know first hand that there are some predatory lenders out there. I know that there are some unscrupulous people still lurking for there next victim operating within our industry, but the truth is that THEY ARE BEING WEEDED OUT FAST.

The real focus in the article that I read was on the fact that there is origination and or yield spread premium being collected on loans. Now there is a huge difference between gouging your clients unfairly and charging an honest fee for a job well done. It seems like insanity to me knowing how much work goes into each and every loan that there are people out there who are angry about the fact that we don't work for free. WE ARE PAID A PERCENTAGE OF YIELD SPREAD PREMIUM AND ORIGINATION FEE. This is how we make a living.

I have on several occasions read articles mentioning how a Realtor bashed a loan officers fee. I have never heard a single complaint about a Realtor's 6% commissions. Don't get me wrong; Realtors do a lot of hard work and they deserve what they earn. What baffles me are all of the people out there who think that MORTGAGE PROFESSIONALS SHOULD WORK FOR NOTHING IN RETURN.

I know personally that I work with the attorney's on both sides and our own, the Realtors on both sides, the underwriters, the processors, the title companies when needed, banks, appraisers, inspectors, not to mention THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THE TRANSACTION; THE BORROWER'S. Most designations within the real estate/mortgage lending industries do not deal with as many people as we do.

We are absolutely integral to the process of transferring real estate from one person to another in most cases. If someone has the cash to do a cash deal that may be a different story, but that is not very often. Most people who could do a cash deal prefer to take a mortgage as a way of leveraging their AVAILABLE LIQUID INCOME/CASH RESERVES.

I work very hard as I am sure that most of you do as well. I believe firmly that I am entitled to earn an honest living. I do not agree with the content of the article that I recently read. Now on the same token as everything that I've just said I also do not believe that it is right to charge people as much as possible. I believe that rate and fee should be a reflection of THE LAYERING OF RISK FACTORS AND THE AMOUNT OF WORK THAT IT TOOK TO GET DONE!

If you spend 3 months on a loan because there were a dozen tax liens to track down I think that an extra premium is not necessarily unfair. No one questions a mechanic, or a Realtor about what everything costs. Many service related industries DO NOT EVEN DISCLOSE THE FEE UNTIL THE WORK IS DONE.

I am not writing this post to bash anyone. I think that it is perfectly fine that Realtors earn a healthy commission when business is good. I believe that a mechanic should be paid after a hard days work. I just want to open up peoples eyes a little bit and let everyone know that NOT everyone in this industry is predatory and that we mortgage people put a lot of hard work and effort into what we do. WE DESERVE TO BE PAID LIKE PROFESSIONALS!

I am very excited right now! I have always had a dream of being able to purchase a home for my parents. My parents home is in terrible condition and has been since I can remember. They were looking for a small cottage in a wooded area with full amenities. Now I am not in a position to purchase a home for my parents but I am in position to make financing available to them in order to facilitate the acquisition of real estate.

My parents could not find anything in their price range (60k) that they really liked. One day I was looking through the local MLS service website for a client of mine. He too was looking for a property in a relatively low price range. I accidentally stumbled across a perfect home for my parents. It is a small 2 bedroom home with full amenities. The entire inside is completely finished with knotty pine, The kitchen floor is flagstone tile, everything on and in the property is included with the purchase price; It is absolutely gorgeous. As soon as I stepped out of the car when I went to check it out with my parents and the Realtor all I could smell was fresh air, pine, and the sweet smell of blue berry bushes. Fishing, hiking, canoeing, and camping are all available on the property. 10 minutes away by car there is a golf course, recreation center, and VFW (perfect cause my dad is a vet). The property is in Mountain View, NY.

I cannot emphasis how much I love this place. The best feature of the property is its price. It had been on the market 632 days prior to my parents scheduling a viewing. The price was reduced twice and no one took any interest in the property. The price tag was $49,900. With 6% seller's concessions which is what I can approve my mother for and what is written into the contract the price is only $52,800.00.

My mother did not want to negotiate the price, she feels like she is getting a steal of a deal and I agree. We are closing on the 8th of Oct. I am going up with her for the following weekend to help her move in. If it is still nice outside I am going to camp out back at the base of the mountains. I cannot wait.

Although I am not purchasing the property for my mother I feel like in a way I am accomplishing my long time goal of providing a better home for her.

I have have a client who is seeking a home loan for the purpose of aquiring a foreclosed upon property. His plan is to renovate it then either flip it or rent it. He has not decided yet. Unfortunately he was laid off just prior to getting ready to close. He is laid off every winter. This winter everyone in his area who works in a similiar capacity is being laid off early.

He is also rehired every summer and has averaged around the same annual income for the past six years. I decided to get creative and contact his employer. I asked them to sign a contract of employment that I wrote myself. It did not bind them to anything that they were not already prepared to do. I submitted the contract of employment and told my borrower that I would have an answer quickly. The answer has not come so quickly, Underwriters are really analyzing every detail.

I am not sure if a contract of employment will suffice or not. I have used contracts of employment on multiple occasions for people such as teachers and professors who are getting their financing done in the summer. I was about to let the loan file die, but I wanted to give it one last shot before I canned it. I just got word back today that the contract for employment will be ok. When you are faced with a difficult situation like this; get creative!

I just ran into something very unusual to me. I took a complete and accurate 1003 just a few minutes ago. The applicant has plenty of assets (close to $300k). He says his credit rating is good. The problem that I have is a bit of a technical one. He is a US citizen whom lives in Canada. I have his Canadian address, but MTL does not fit into the State field of the address portion in Calyx Point. I have not run into this before. From what I gathered taking the 1003 he seems to be a very good borrower. He already has a contract and I have a complete 1003 but I cannot figure a way to get his credit.

The loan is on the larger side for this area, so if anyone reading this has come up against this please let me know what you did. Thanks!

This is an interesting time that we live in. There is so much uncertainty in the stability of peoples lives across our great nation. What people thought that they had built up in equity is fast disappearing, Jobs are becoming more scarce, and it takes a little more credit to get to where you want to be than it used to. Something that I believe is underestimated however is the fact that our economy is cyclic.

Our economy is designed to give and take. It is designed so that when something is off kilter it makes adjustments automatically and corrects itself. Some of those corrections are not always easy to deal with. Sometimes when we are in this type of a market due to instability in our economy we as individual American's really "feel the pinch".

Home loan applications are down significantly. The phones are ringing less and there is less actively overall in the office. I am sure that many other lenders are feeling the same strain.

The truth is that operating in the capacity of a mortgage advisor is still a viable and fruitful career. When you think in terms of pie charts; yes it is true that production as a whole is down. It is also true that if one pie is half the size of another pie but there are 1/4 the amount of people eating that pie there is still more pie to go around.

Yes production is down for the industry, but many many originators have moved on to "greener" pastures. That leaves a whole lot of pie for those of us who are still here. The industry has shrunk when compared to the historical bubble that we have all just witnessed burst. But the industry is no less viable now than it was back in the late 80's. Rates used to be in the teens and no-one batted an eye.

In the last few years rates have been historically low and we have all been spoiled. Now rates are still historically low, just not as low as they once were. Now people are so afraid of rising rates but the fact is there is a whole lot of wiggle room before anyone really has to worry.

Everyone has seen the press circling around all of the huge sub-prime lenders that have gone out of business. Its true that many lenders have had liquidity crisis. The reason is simply that those lenders were not properly evaluating risk factors. People were easily able to get into "too much home". Now that this bubble has burst we all need to look at tightening up our own personal lending criteria as well.

It is much harder to get into a jumbo loan without personal assets and a down payment, using a "power option arm" (I hate these products for FTHB's) to get into a home that is too expensive is more difficult to get approved. The fact that certain loans are harder to get for certain borrowers is not a bad thing. Abusing the system in place and finding loop holes to put your borrowers through that is not truly in their best interest is a bad thing.

It is not enough to have had a borrower "tell you what they want". If our clients already knew what they wanted and how to do it we would be out of a job. Often times what the borrower wants is not in their best interest. Just because a borrower wants something that they should not get does not mean that they are "stupid". It simply means that we are the professionals highly trained in our field of work just like most of our clients are. We are highly trained to determine first whether or not we can qualify our clients for what they are looking for and then help them determine whether or not it is viable given their current situation. If our client is not qualified it is our job to point them in the right direction. If my client is just barely qualified based on the guidelines, but I can tell that it will put my client into a bad situation it is my duty to properly inform and educate my client as to what their best options are.

As far as a liquidity crisis goes; Fannie and Freddie have no liquidity issues at all and neither does FHA. There are plenty of loans still out there to be originated. Thanks for reading! Have a great day!

I am a residential Mortgage Advisor. I work for a local company in Plattsburgh, NY. I was gone for a while getting my career started before coming back to this great town. It is beautiful and peaceful here. I have 2 children and I think that Plattsburgh, NY is a great place to raise them.

Something that I have noticed about Plattsburgh upon my return is that the commercial sector has really picked up. There are many new restaurants, stores, and office buildings going up everywhere. There is even an international airport that has been built and is being setup right now. My business right now is exclusively residential. However I have the ability to broker commercial loans via the investors that we work with here at Lake City Mortgage but I have little experience with commercial loans.

Commercial is definitely something that I would like to add to my own personal product line. It is a good way to subsidize income while this "credit crunch" is going on.

Not only would getting into commercial loans benefit me by way of gaining valuable experience and increasing my income, but it will also give me the opportunity to give back to the community that I first got my roots. I love the idea of being a part of the expansion of Plattsburgh NY.

Although I do not have much experience commercially I work with a team of experts who have a ton of experience. I learn a great deal from my colleagues. I am very good at the residential side of things, but I am very interested in learning more and bringing some deals into the company. Anything commercial that I bring in initially I will be working on with the team here at Lake City Mortgage. Reputation is very important in this industry and especially in a town like Plattsburgh. I do want to get some commercial experience in, but I will not be flying solo on a commcercial deal until I am confident in my ability to complete a commercial deal without a hitch.

Any advice on how to enter into this area of the mortgage industry will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Christopher Ohlsen

Mortgage Advisor

I had a great weekend, it was a good oportunity to reflect on my progress in this business. I am going on my third year as a mortgage professional. Although I haven't been around forever, I have seen many changes take place within the industry. I have also worked for 3 seperate mrotgage companies and trained by 4. I work 9-10 hours per day then I go home an study vigoriously. I am addicted to knowledge and I cannot get enough. So many companies are faultering right now because they were too lax with their lending practices and many individual LO's are leaving because they have lost their entire client base.

I lost a large chunk of my client base as well. I have had to learn new guidelines and systems that I previously did not need to know. I view myself as a work in progress. 10 years from now I will still be learning because this industry is alive. Things do not sit still, they are constantly changing. The change is what I love about this business. I do not want to exchange my time for a few bucks every day. Instead I want to work as smart and hard as I can. I enjoy the fact that I write my own paycheck with effort.

I just typed "Plattsburgh mortgage pro" into google to find out if I am on there or not. I popped up as the first listing. That is awesome because I only began blogging around a week ago. I am in the process of building my own website. I currently have my own domain and a somewhat crappy website bookmarking my domain (www.lakecitymtg.net) . I am also working on setting up my own blog. I have never done a whole lot of my own marketing. The companies that I have worked for in the past covered all of the marketing. The company that I am at now has a great marketing set-up, but I am at a point in my career where I want to track my own leads and originate around 10 or more loans per month. It is essential at this point that I take responsibility for my own marketing efforts. I am also working on some newly developed marketing strategies that I plan on incorporating into my relationships. I am working on technology that will help realtors get their listings moved faster. I plan on using this technology to help agents move their inventory more quickly by advertising their listings (with permission) and handle the financing on the borrowers that I am able to bring in with the listings.

There is a lot of ground work that needs to be laid out and I am happy to recieve any advice from professionals who have been doing their own marketing for some time. I am blogging every day, sometimes a couple of times a day in order to get my NYS ranking up.

Web marketing is important, but I am also attending open houses, do "pop-by's", and sending referral business to realtors in areas that I regularly do business.

I have had a great time coming on AR blogging, commenting on other peoples blogs, and reading what professionals in the industry from around the country have to say about the business.

I started blogging a couple of weeks ago. Its been a lot of fun once I got over the stage feeling of stage fright that I felt when I posted my first blog. It's strange that the feeling is so common with Bloggers. Now I am far from a pro-blogger, but I am certainly motivated to become a top blogger in the nation. My question however is; What does blogging do for your business. I have heard that it does amazing things. I have heard that business increases many times over when you begin to blog. I know that it increases exposure which of course will lead to more business. However even if I do not get more business from blogging I am having a beneficial experience here on AR. I have read dozens of posts so far that have shed new light and perspective on many topics that are of great importance to me in this industry. Even if I didn't believe that blogging would increase the leads that I have coming into my office, I do believe that knowledge is everything in this business. What I feel is truly beneficial to me is the community atmosphere. The opportunity to engage in great discussion concerning each and every one of us on a daily basis is really what is drawing me back here every day. I love posting a blog about a difficult situation or a scenario that I could use a little extra help on and receiving comments packed full of great advice.

Just this morning I posted something that I was dealing with that was difficult and less than 10 minutes later someone left a comment on my blog with a bit of advice. I followed his advice, it checked out, and I was able to make one of my current clients very happy.

This is a great community. I was told as much by the person who referred me to the community, but now being here and realizing all of the great support that every one gives to each other; I am very happy that I joined.

Aside from maximizing your web presence, Active-rain contains a wealth of knowledge from highly skilled professionals across the nation.

Thanks for all of the help everyone. Have a great weekend!!

Sincerely,

Christopher Ohlsen

Mortgage Advisor