One of the best ways to use social media is to add value to your target audience in a classy, non-threatening way. Endless status updates about miniscule details of your life or sending out mass invites to non-first-time homebuyers about your first-time homebuyer workshops is not classy. In fact, it can be annoying. Your social media contacts will quickly tune you out and “hide” your status updates—effectively cutting off your ability to communicate important messages that may be relevant to them.Read more

Investors currently account for 19 percent of all home sales according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). This means that real estate investors are purchasing one out of every five residential homes being sold today. In fact, it is estimated that a whopping $141 billion of non-owner-occupied investment property loans will be funded in 2010. What if you could capture more business from this lucrative segment of the market?Read more

Many loan originators take the viewpoint that knowledge of the federal mortgage and housing tax laws is not necessary to successfully originate loans. I completely disagree. In fact, there are specific opportunities for you to generate more business by understanding various mortgage and housing tax concepts.Read more

Record numbers of originators continue to exit the mortgage industry. Yet, many originators are experiencing record numbers in their origination volume. What gives? Why are some originators going out of business, while other originators are making record profits?Read more

I’m sure you’ve heard that incredulous gasp or moment of silence on the other end of the phone when you tell someone that they might benefit by considering an interest-only adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM). It’s as if the very mention of an interest-only ARM places you in a category of being, “One of THOSE”—a big bad mortgage broker who singlehandedly caused the whole housing, financial and economic crisis.

So, I have two questions for you:Read more

The new Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) rule and Good Faith Estimate (GFE) has changed the entire sales process for our $2 trillion per year mortgage industry. What if you could transform industry chaos into your secret weapon to crush the competition and make 2010 your best year ever? Here are three strategies to help you do just that:Read more

Congress has extended the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit and expanded it to include a $6,500 tax credit for move-up homebuyers who have lived in their primary homes for at least five out of the last eight years. We have only a few short months (until April 30, 2010) to generate business with this incentive. How can we get the maximum benefit out of this?Read more

Stan Wang, CMC, CRMS has announced the launch of Premier Brokers Network LLC (PBN), an organization created to facilitate the selection of outstanding mortgage brokers throughout the United States by PBN members and the public. This is accomplished via access to a database of carefully selected mortgage brokers, so that members may confidently recommend top rated brokers for their client’s financing needs in states where they are not licensed. PBN is a user-friendly Web-based service unlike any other.Read more