Loren's Blog

Here in Minneapolis-St. Paul, we are still a 2 newspaper town. It's interesting to see how each looks at some Real estate trends that surfaced this morning. The St. paul paper has an above-the-fold headline, " Over One-Third of Homeowners Lose Money on Homes". Of course, that caught my eye....bei...

Today's mortgage market reaction to the weaker than expected Employment report appeared to be counterintuitive, as mortgage rates rose a little after the news, offsetting some of the rate improvement seen earlier in the week. The explanation is that the jobs data was so bad that investors now exp...

After publishing an article last week titled, "Understanding FHA," I received quite a few comments regarding FHA - Rehab loans. Here is a summary of more detailed information on the Rehab loan. Section 203k loans are a key part of the FHA's efforts to rehab and repair owner occupied, one to four ...

There are those who make things happen, those who watch what is about to happen and the rest who wonder what happened. Some people instinctively know what to do next in order to progress and succeed, and yet the high majority has to be shown the way. The former are the leaders and the latter are ...

Since AR was down today...and I am a BIG Hockey fan, I decided to use my time to go get a NEW flat-panel TV at Best Buy. Now that it's plugged in, I'm loving it...and since it's on my mind, I'm passing along tips I used to shop with... 1. I'd recommend measuring the space you have available in yo...

Welcome to November! As we start the first business week, there are a number of economic reports out this week that will affect mortgage rates. The biggest report this week will be Friday's important Employment data. As usual, this data on the number of jobs, the Unemployment Rate, and wage infla...

I spent my afternoon & evening yesterday at an "Emerging Homeowner" seminar in brooklyn Park, which was sponsored by the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency. There were 36 'vendors' of services there, from credit repair services to child care.......to mortgage & realtor services. 2 things really sup...

Since I see so many other folks filling their blogs with political thoughts, I just thought I'd add one comment of my own. Tonight on TV, there was an unprecedented 30 minute 'ad' for a canadate that reportedly cost upwards of $4 million- just to buy the ad time on the networks.......not includin...

The activity in MBS (Mortgage Backed Securities) markets - and other financial markets - has been very unusual this month. The Fannie Mae Required Net Yield has already made two round trips from about 5.70% to 6.60% over the past few weeks, displaying a level of volatility rarely seen. Under norm...

When was the last time you had a cup of coffee with your strategic partners? For me, as a Mortgage Professional, my strategic partners (SP's) are other Realtors like yourselves, but also CPA's, Financial Planners, and Title Agents. All of them help my business grow, and I am also helping them. Ho...