Bay Area Mortgage Blog

When a bank sells a foreclosed property do they try to replace one bad loan with one good loan? If the main agenda is to dump the house, is the hidden agenda to seize a golden opportunity to gain a new loan customer (far less risky because the "dumped" price was lower and the qualification standa...

Every time a loan is locked, does it require the same mysterious skills used by a CAT stalking its prey? POUNCE when the moment is perfect. Purely instinctive, no skill required. Or not? Who hasn't seen a feline in hunting mode, silently frozen, eyes like lasers, tail twitching? Suddenly, a gutt...

What does it take to refinance your California home loan? Two words: WAITING GAME. Be prepared for a time line like you have never seen before. How do you WIN that low interest 30 year FIXED RATE mortgage? Two words: BE PREPARED.  Yesterday was one of the LOW days in the mortgage office. You know...

  Why do Realtors think preapproval letters are about as worthless as a wet cocktail napkin? Has it become so bad that Realtors believe a do-it-yourself prequalification is better than one from the mortgage office? I believe the time has come for preapproval letters to gain some respect. We can a...

Remember a few years ago when we stopped laughing at geeks? The dorky kid with thick glasses, white socks, and pants belted way too high rose to celebrity status seemingly overnight. No longer were we snickering behind his back and calling him Poindexter. What the heck? The nerds of the world had...

Have you noticed????? Just about everything out there is, well,...... a whole lot cheaper.  Sure, the focus is on real estate and the the stock market. But "declining values" have impacted almost everything we buy. What we learned in Econ 101 still holds true: Lower the demand and you are going t...

Remember the old TV commercial that went like this: This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. For those of you too young to remember this anti-drug TV spot, your brain on drugs is supposed to look like a fried egg on the sidewalk (not so subtle message of "you can fry your brains out if yo...

Imagine my surprise when an article in the Wall Street Journal featured: A client of our family's auto leasing company who was also... A client of my former mortgage company who was also... Complaining bitterly about lack of jumbo loans to refinance his house in ALAMO, CALIFORNIA (median home pri...

Is Stimulation Just Economic Medicine and Did We Need Such A Big Dose? So the spigot is in the "ON" position. America, let the "stimulation" begin. President O has prescribed the medicine for our economic maladies, so let's all just swallow and get cured. But hold on. As anyone knows, swallowing ...

It isn't a done deal yet, but here comes the newly improved first time home buyer tax credit, courtesy of President O's 2009 Stimulus Bill. Will it be a magic bullet? Or just a stray bullet that missed the target by miles? It is supposed to: Get people off the fence, kind of like when the car sal...