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Drastic rate cuts by the Fed should ease mortgage rates even more
2008-01-17 21:31:00
With the stock market crashing daily, Wall Street and Main Street look to the Fed for a series of interest rate cuts this winter (although most acknowledge it's too little, too late). According to HSH, the financial data publisher, changes in the Fed Funds rate correlate poorly with changes in mortgage rates: Indeed, according to Dan Green, Bankrate's Mortgage Rate Trend survey states 62% believe mortgage rates will increase even though the Fed is expected to cut rates, even a dramatic 75 point cut on January 29. Last week, Inman News' Lou Barnes also states: Dramatic Fed cuts would hike mortgage rates. However, history says that when the Fed cuts rates drastically, mortgage rates also inevitably drop (an eyeball perusal shows this). And mortgage rates are plunging now (50 bp in a month!) - , today's 30-year fixed rate is at the same level as it was in July 2005. Simple facts: the housing market needs the boost from lower mortgage rates, lenders need to lend... ...
More About: Economy , Rates , Ease

Property search engines' marketing conundrum
2008-01-16 02:04:00
AltSearch Engines discusses property search engines with Europe-based Yannick Laclau of Properazzi and Victor Aloi of Migoa/Nuroa. Here are the takeaways, all pretty obvious to anyone who has studied listings search engines: Marketing - getting noticed and capturing market share from the incumbents - is the key challenge. In the US, Realtor.com by virtue of its older brand name is still the gorilla that Trulia and Zillow are trying to catch. ComscoreThere are a lot of property search sites, and the consumer generally can't tell the difference until they use Properazzi or Nuroa and realize their advanced functionality.Business model is... advertising.Vertical search sites all borrow features from each other, so sites tend to evolve along the same paths.With so many sites, all with the same business model and similar features, property search engines become indistinguishable... which leads to >>>Marketing is the key challenge. In particular, viral marketing is a most effici...
More About: Technology , Search Engines , Property

Peer-to-Peer Lending - Credit crunch meets social networking
2008-01-15 02:43:00
Combine the credit crunch with the inherent trust factor being cultivated within social networks, and you get peer-to-peer lending. Today, the Digerati Life gives a comprehensive overview of the major P2P lending players : Prosper.com, Lending Club, Zopa.com, Kiva.org And USA Today sports a research analyst's prediction on the growth of P2P lending: We know there's a surfeit of borrowers today... why is lending on a P2P network so worthwhile and who would take the chances of unsecured lending to strangers? From USA Today: Default rates are lower for peer-to-peer loans than for other consumer loans. Cory Moore became a lender on Prosper.com this year. To hedge against defaults, he spreads his risk by lending small sums to different borrowers. So far, he's made 170 loans, for $50 apiece. "If one defaults, I've lost (money for) a dinner for two," says Moore, who says he's collected about $4,000 in interest from the loans. "Each loan is only $50, so I'm ...
More About: Social , Social Networking , Credit , Networking , Peer-to-peer

OpenHouse.com
2008-01-14 01:48:00
While at the Inman conference last week, I met up with Ben Phillips, Managing Director of OpenHouse.com, a new site focused on supplying open house listings data, glaringly missing from most MLS systems. Although developed and managed by Realogy, OpenHouse.com is positioned as non-denominational and is encouraging any brokerage or agent to participate by submitting listings feeds. It's significant that one of the largest brokerages is developing an "open data" product for the benefit of the industry. The impetus behind OpenHouse was to develop a user generated content site of open house listings and do away with all Realogy companies' print ads that were populating weekend newspapers. Ben says it saves the company several million per year. With the real mission of saving brokerages money (and of course, further disintermediating print media), advertising will be limited or non-existent. Realogy may benefit from owning a valuable online asset if OpenHouse.com does become a destina...

Why good Real Estate Video is rare
2008-01-13 14:11:00
I saw Rachel Klein, real estate video producer/star... from far away... at one of the Inman Connect cocktail parties last week. It was tough to get a word in edgewise to say I was a fan... she was like a media celebrity in a crowd of real estate agents (well, I guess that explains it...) We're so accustomed to TV-quality video production, or even JibJab-simple quality production, that anything less seems amateurish. (Link) This is the way to make compelling real estate videos... and Rachel demonstrates exactly why it's hard for real estate agents to get their hands around video as a marketing tool. Thus, the need for quality production assistance from For Sale by Locals, Real Estate Shows, and Wellcome Mat to name a few.
More About: Video , Real Estate , Good

Inman Connect review
2008-01-11 10:44:00
Five quick observations about this week's Inman Connect NYC: The declining housing market, credit crunch and looming recession seemed to dominate the conversations. Reason? All panelists in four general sessions (here's the liveliest one ) revolving around the economy acknowledged how critical the problem is with varying degrees of doom. There was not too much room for optimism although John Vogel does propose a solution.Brian Boero provides 50 powerful tips to help your business (the powerpoint will be posted here once I receive it)... and he goes beyond the remedial. Twitter arrives with real time comment streams on speakers in session. The stream reminds me of a ticker tape, and future conferences might experimentally include Twitter in one of the presentation windows behind the speakers (although I see it could easily distract the audience). Andy Kaufman (working virtually from Berkeley) ingeniously set up a compendium of Twitter streams from the Inman participants' Twitter ...
More About: Events , Review

Trulia distributes listings to media free
2008-01-09 08:11:00
Today, Trulia announces their publishing platform that can essentially place Trulia's feature tools - the heat maps and listings/comps data - on any site. I'm particularly focused on their partnership with publishers Kiplinger.com, Village Voice Media and AmericanTowns to facilitate the creation of co-branded sites that display on the publishers' sites. And it's all for free.The offering takes one further step towards commoditizing listings data and making them free.  It takes dead aim at the third party vendors like Homescape that provision listings data for publishers and charges them for it.Since no monetization is involved, what are the benefits to each party?Benefits for publisher - free listings contentBenefits to brokerage partners and their listings agent - broader listings distributionBenefits to Trulia - Trulia further positions itself as a national listings distributor. In particular, these content distribution agreements get their consumers comfortable with Tr...
More About: Free , Listings

Year of the Blog Networks
2008-01-06 23:35:00
This is the first of a few "prediction" articles I'll be developing this month in tribute to 2008. "Blog networks" is not part of the lexicon yet, but it will be. They already exist on many online newspapers like the New York Times as "blog network gardens" that consist primarily of the blogs of their own journalists (essentially, blogs have become the online incarnation of the journalist's daily or weekly column). All types of publications, like Forbes.com, will be creating blog networks by selecting and aggregating blogs by business/financial topic. More thematically, real estate trade publications are also exploring the launch of blog networks (more later). Finally, although technically not blogs, companies like Circuit City are inviting their customers to register as users and participate in comment streams and forums revolving around the products that Circuit City sells... it's a concept for potential adoption by real estate companies - builders, title companies, lenders, e...
More About: Networks , Year

Counter intuitive lead generation ideas
2008-01-04 03:00:00
During today's discussion on how to make brokerage websites even better made me think about counter-intuitive lead generation ideas 1) Consumers want tools and free data for their home buying experience but are wary of submitting any personal contact information. Why not just explicitly state on the website - "REGISTER TO USE OUR TOOLS AND WE PROMISE NEVER TO SPAM OR CONTACT YOU, OR ABUSE YOUR PERSONAL DATA. IT'S COMPLETELY UP TO YOU WHEN YOU WANT TO INITIATE CONTACT". I would sign up to use good tools with this guarantee. 2) When the consumer wants to start contacting agents for conversation, provide tools like Meebo / Plugoo chat boxes and Jaxtr anonymizing phone callers that allow the consumer to contact agents anonymously and encourage them to make contact anonymously. Why? Interviewing and ultimately rejecting the hiring of an agent slightly tears the social fabric. Rejection causes disappointment and a me versus them / good guys/bad guys feeling. For example, I stopped get...
More About: Ideas , Counter , Generation , Lead

Latest brokerage website trends
2008-01-04 02:51:00
I got the chance to participate, in part, in the planning session for a sophisticated new brokerage website today. Here are the objectives: 1) The cookie-cutter IDX site is dead... the new broker website should look, at least, like Trulia - with listings maps, Web 2.0 features like Q&A to facilitate consumer/agent interaction, and lots of useful data like heat maps and automated valuation models. 2) The brokerage's blog network will be integrated into the website so that every time a blogger posts an article, its excerpt gets uploaded onto a kind of "virtual" feedreader. The blogging agents will provide qualitative, real time data interpretation complementary to the quantitative listings, comparable and other data... and they will blog independently under their own domain names, not under the broker's blog. 3) Recruitment is more important to the broker than lead generation referral fees. The brokerage wants its agents to see tangible results from the leads its sophisticated ...
More About: Website , Trends , Brokerage

Active Rain Review
2008-01-01 10:50:00
Happy New Year!Some readers here don't know I also have a small presence on Active Rain ("AR"), a real estate professional community and blog network with a devoted core of participants. Here's a review I published on AR:I admit I'm not the most appropriate to do an Active Rain year in review because I didn't have enough time in my schedule to participate fully in the AR experience. I've always been very impressed with Active Rain's growth and spirit, and see it as the bellwether for the direction of real estate blogging. Pardons, I'm going to break the year end review rules because I couldn't think of how to write a retrospective . Instead, I'll go with my natural inclinations and try to scope out the future evolution of Active Rain in 2008.The Active Rain business modelActive Rain has become the definitive national social network for the real estate community. It will continue to thrive on just the loyalty and participation of its growing member body. But social networki...
More About: Review

Real estate bloggers - finally, a direct channel into the online consumer
2007-12-31 02:19:00
Now anyone can write a blog on SoCal's Orange County Register (here's mine). The local paper has contracted with Pluck, the company behind Blogburst that works with major media companies to add blogging functionality and content. Their third party platform makes it easy for the masses to write blogs on OCRegister.com. Simply put, the OC Register and soon, other major news media are finally enabling a "permanent" voice to their readership that goes beyond the news article comments now seen on most online press.Major media awaken to leveraging their brand names in Web 2.0Major media were caught unaware by social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit and Netscape that positioned themselves as populist news distribution sources. Of the news organizations, CNN.com and NY Times.com pop up at #111 and #224 in Alexa's top global 500 sites, relatively poor showings for premier media properties. Only recently have the NY Times and WSJ understood that they are no longer news gateways and are...
More About: Estate , Real Estate , Consumer , Direct , Bloggers

Rentomatic
2007-12-28 13:47:00
Investment Instruments, the company behind mapping mashup Rentometer, the renter's pricing guide, will be launching a new product - Rentomatic - targeted to small- and mid-sized landlords, property managers and investors that automate rent payments and communications with their tenants. You can beta test it at https://www.rentomatic.com/tenant_home.Re ntomatic and Rentometer are great coordinated brand names for a B2B application and consumer site by a company that is conquering an underserved business niche of rental properties.

Recession domino theories in abundance
2007-12-26 17:32:00
As 2008 appears on the horizon, the "recession domino theory" has reached consensus with many economy pundits, particularly over the past week: Commercial real estate dominoes collapse - Minyanville, Dec. 26 Once one key player backs out of a commercial development, they all do. As big anchors like Lowe's and Home Depot retrench, other retailers like Target follow suit and halt commercial development across the country, which in turn creates fewer jobs and more unemployment. Credit downturn hits the malls - WSJ, Dec. 26 Anchor chain stores dropping out of developments aren't the only deal killers. The inability to refinance short term and mezzanine debt (that looked like sure bets one year ago) also kill projects. "Credit was so plentiful when Mr. Macklowe purchased his Manhattan office buildings from Blackstone, he only needed to put in $50 million of equity to secure $7.1 billion in debt, which included a bridge loan and the senior mortgage, people familiar with the deal say....
More About: Economy , Abundance , Theories , Recession , Domino

A Preview of Internet 2008
2007-12-24 11:59:00
Mainstream media embraces Web 2.0 - Mashable reports on Reuters' new partnership with SocialPicks, a newly funded stock picking social network, to develop their own branded social network community called StockBuzz. This new product has interesting implications for real estate community networks like Active Rain, Realivent or Zolve, who might consider launching branded community networks for real estate brokerages. -------------The Economist projects Internet developments for 2008 : Bandwidth will slow down as the Internet reaches limits. Until recently, most Internet users were consumers of content and only downloaded stuff into their PCs. User generated content has spawned an explosion of uploaded content, which of course just increases more consumption by an expanded user base that includes new mobile users. Internet access stops being taken for granted.Google's initiative to develop Android, its mobile phone platform, has effectively opened up the mobile phone application bus...
More About: Preview

How to Market your House on the Internet - the definitive presentation
2007-12-22 13:49:00
Friend John Harper has really outdone himself with a great client slide presentation that sells the Harper Team's Internet and Web 2.0 expertise. Real estate blogs generally have been acknowledged as informational by nature, hooking lead generation opportunities by providing real time insight and data for their local or regional client base. Hard sell is seen as no-no. What John has done is to "sell" how the Harper Team and its blog differentiates itself from competition that has not established any web presence. The slide presentation is a call to action that I believe every blogger should develop... the tone and style of John's presentation fits naturally within the parameters of blog marketing - educational, factual, and easy to understand. Bravo!
More About: House , Market , Blogging , San Francisco Bay Area

Chinese investment in the US to increase
2007-12-21 01:06:00
It's logical to think the credit crunch has shut down liquidity and cash has become scarce, but in reality there is still a lot of global cash looking for investments. The Chinese in particular are flush with cash derived in part from booming asset markets (check the Shanghai Composite Index above), and this week made a significant investment for 10% of Morgan Stanley. And the Chinese yuan keeps on getting stronger vis-a-vis the US dollar. And today, China increased their interest rate to curb its inflation rate led by 12% economic growth, making the yuan even stronger. Chinese invest in and push up their own stock market simply because they don't know where else to put their money. What happens when the Chinese investors diversify and move their cash from their stock market to US assets? Here are the latest articles: "It's a good time for investment (in the US)," said Yin Zhongli, a researcher with the Financial Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. ...
More About: Economy , Investment

Reading the mood on Wall Street
2007-12-19 00:59:00
Main Street looks to investor psychology for the signals that portend recession, relief from the credit crunch, etc. But the earliest indications of a market turnaround arise from psychology shifts on the trading floor. The general public can glimpse the mood from watching real time market news and interviews on CNBC. The major media financial newspapers generally don't report on that mood, but Financial Times notes today that there's an atmospheric change: But down on the trading floors and in the treasury departments of financial services groups, a subtle psychological shift is under way: as the shock of the summer?s events starts to fade, traders, investors and issuers are starting to adapt to the idea that the cost of borrowing has changed. As a result, activity in debt markets is picking up again. Or as Ben Bennett, an analyst at Lehman Brothers, says: ?The credit machine is slowly restarting.? Although encouraging, the article continues to say that three factors could st...
More About: Economy , Reading , Wall Street , Wall

Meeting your Social Graph at Conferences
2007-12-18 01:25:00
Social networking and the transparency of the social graph profoundly changes how people meet and interact. Yesterday, I discussed Chris Anderson's premise that the marginal cost of online information exchange is essentially free. 99% of the interaction within online social networks is the free exchange of information and insights that do not translate to commercial value - a transaction, a lead, a gift. Instead, the interactions create value by establishing reputation and credibility that eventually facilitate the prize of the business relationship. The social media speeds up the process of forming business relationships by exposing each parties' experiences, knowledge and social graphs, and each find their commonalities. But what really catalyzes a business relationship after an online relationship is established is the face-to-face meeting. The visceral physical introduction binds the relationship like the meeting of pen pals. Conferences become far more important as physical...
More About: Social , Transparency , Graph , Meeting

The Emerging World of Free
2007-12-17 08:48:00
Chris Anderson, author of the Long Tail, talks about the premises underlying his new book "The Emerging World of Free " in this must-see video (h/t to Guy Kawasaki). Real estate professionals collectively fret over the erosion of their income as they realize how much closer to "free" their services are becoming. Anderson explains that this is simply the manifestation from a business model paradigm based on gatekeepers using scarcity of knowledge as a value proposition to one where knowledge becomes free on the internet. Examples Scarcity paradigm - knowledge, content are controlled by a scarce few Abundance paradigm - knowledge and content are distributed by the masses Manifestation Gatekeepers uphold scarcity and charge their "arm and leg" for it Knowledge becomes free because there is little marginal cost to posting said knowledge on the internet Example - Mass media 20th Century model - broadcast media - infinite reach but limited channe...
More About: Disintermediation

Glenn Kelman and Celebrity 2.0
2007-12-14 01:07:00
Redfin further brands itself as the geek of brokerages with its Real Estate Scientist program. And Glenn Kelman gets to publicize it on the Today show tomorrow... and I'll be the first to predict that the interview will tie in Microsoft, Seattle and other icons of geekdom. Talking tech is a good fit for Redfin.The thing I find interesting is how Glenn, by virtue of two TV appearances, has become the national celebrity for consumer real estate. I can't think of anyone else real estate related who has had similar exposure. Real estate has had no celebrities with Q Score, tech has Mark Cuban and Steve Jobs, stocks has Peter Lynch and Jim Cramer, retail has Howard Schultz, etc. Celebrity 2.0 Microcelebrity is the phenomenon of being extremely well known not to millions but to a small group ? a thousand people, or maybe only a few dozen. As DIY media reach ever deeper into our lives, it's happening to more and more of us. Got a Facebook account? A whackload of pictures on Flick...

Fed rolls out Plan B... and it doesn't work
2007-12-12 23:16:00
Since the lazy rate cut didn't work, the Fed went to plan B the next day. The world's Central Banks flooded the markets with cash to encourage lending. The coordinated actions with Europe's top central banks is a tacit admission by the Federal Reserve that lowering the federal funds rate, as was done Tuesday, hasn't accomplished enough to unclog credit markets that have frozen in fear over subprime mortgages and other securities that have been badly mispriced. The Fed is pushing liquidity into the system, rather than having banks demand it. It supplies extra liquidity at whatever price the market deems, rather than setting an interest rate first and letting the amount of the loans be determined by demand from banks. The market knee jerked but top rate cut evangelist Jim Cramer among others says plan B is bogus (if it were for real, why would bank stocks drop?) and the traders agreed, dropping the market back to where it started. Plan C coming soon...
More About: Economy , Work , Plan B

Fed rolls out Plan B... and it doesn't work
2007-12-12 23:16:00
Since the lazy rate cut didn't work, the Fed went to plan B the next day. The world's Central Banks flooded the markets with cash to encourage lending. The coordinated actions with Europe's top central banks is a tacit admission by the Federal Reserve that lowering the federal funds rate, as was done Tuesday, hasn't accomplished enough to unclog credit markets that have frozen in fear over subprime mortgages and other securities that have been badly mispriced. The Fed is pushing liquidity into the system, rather than having banks demand it. It supplies extra liquidity at whatever price the market deems, rather than setting an interest rate first and letting the amount of the loans be determined by demand from banks. The market knee jerked but top rate cut evangelist Jim Cramer among others says plan B is bogus (if it were for real, why would bank stocks drop?) and the traders agreed, dropping the market back to where it started. Plan C coming soon...
More About: Economy , Work , Plan B

A lazy rate cut crashes the market
2007-12-12 00:50:00
Most traders fully expected the Fed, always reluctant to cut rates, to make that 25 Fed Funds rate cut today, but the markets harbored expectations that a 50 point cut would really signal the Fed's intention to fight recession. Well, even though the 25 point Fed Funds cut was expected, the Fed was also faulted for dropping the Bank's discount rate (the rate banks can borrow from the central bank) only 25 points and not 50, so the markets crashed as traders almost act to "punish" the Fed for its tepid action to ease the credit crisis. Only four short months ago, hardliners were calling for keeping interest rates high to stave off a weak dollar and inflation. They were even implying that a recession would be good for America, like a cold shower. They cited "moral hazard"; bailing out the subprime victims who acted inappropriately - the lenders, the borrowers and the buyers of subprime laced CDOs - would create a precedent that would encourage new risky behavior. In the end, the h...
More About: Economy , Market , Rate , Crashes , Lazy

Before tomorrow's rate cut - market looks to 2008
2007-12-10 11:37:00
As traders look for the Fed interest rate cut tomorrow, the spectre of rising inflation will rear its ugly head with the release of CPI and other inflation indicating government data later this week. Last week, I discussed why the world's Central Banks will try to control inflation and prevent the fall of the dollar. Bernhard Eschweiler, head of JP Morgan's Central Bank Group, explains why it is difficult to "crash the dollar" because countries managing their exchange rate with the dollar are locked into holding dollars: The principle mistake that many commentators make is the assumption that central banks can separate the currency allocation of reserves from their exchange rate objectives. In practice, this is often not the case, especially for the large surplus economies in Asia as well as the oil-exporting countries. These countries all follow some sort of dollar standard, whether it is an outright peg or a dirty float. So, when they intervene to prevent their currencie...
More About: Economy , Market , Rate , 2008 , Morrow

Social networking to sell a car or a house
2007-12-07 21:18:00
Starting this article on a personal anecdote. I'm selling our old car, a Lexus RX300 after purchasing a new one and decided to price it as low as possible for a quick sale. This approach mirrors a particularly effective strategy being used to sell homes in San Francisco - high demand product, low inventory, price it low for multiple offers. Well, a car is not a house. Despite clearly having the best priced single owner 1999 Lexus RX300 on CraigsList SF Bay Area, $2,700 below BlueBook, all callers were seeking a discount on the price. It's the ingrained negotiation ethic that accompanies a transaction between strangers... and it's an annoying part of the sales process. Classifieds and car listing sites like Craigslist are currently the most efficient way to advertise a vehicle to a wide group of strangers. But this got me to thinking how much easier it would be to sell a car through a network of friends and acquaintances, particularly since offering a good value is ingrained as...
More About: Social , House , Social Networking , Networking , Sell

Central Banks cooperate with interest rate cuts
2007-12-06 12:16:00
Bank of Canada dropped its interest rate 25 basis points on Tuesday. Today the Bank of England cut its interest rate after five hikes since August 2006. Since all the world's Central Banks are collectively lowering interest rates to ease the credit crunch, the dollar in theory won't crash relative to other currencies. I'm no economist, but the prospect of global stagflation - runaway inflation combined with a weak global economy exacerbated by the credit crunch - might be a risk. Stagflation has never happened on a global level before. Here's my take on the global risk. The subprime debacle has demonstrated how credit problems arising primarily from the US can impact the global economy, both on a macro- and micro- level. The solutions for the global crisis are also being tackled by the Central Banks in unison. The Armageddon hawks seem to believe that a global crash will be preceded by a series of falling dominoes - first, the US recession and dollar devaluation, then collapse...
More About: Economy , Interest , Rate

Builders' land fire sale will crash land prices in affected areas
2007-12-05 02:37:00
After the news broke yesterday about Lennar dumping 11,000 properties at 40% the price they paid for it, I did a little research on the evolution of this institutional vulture market. I was frankly surprised to see how much overpriced land was on the builders' books. I had assumed builders would have hedging strategies for land development, but then I realized that Wall Street and real estate companies reside in different worlds with regards to risk management... (try finding a Wall Streeter working at a builder) The key consequence of these land dumping deals is their sheer volume will reset the pricing benchmark for properties in speculator-ridden regions in Florida, California, etc. It may have the stunning effect of crashing certain markets down to the same 60% off peak levels where sellers still held out with hopes they could somehow recoup something. Dec. 3, 2007 - Money.CNN Builder dumps homes in Morgan Stanley deal / Builders pull the trigger and finally sell land at ...
More About: Economy , Real Estate Investment , Sale , Fire

Blogging primers
2007-12-03 21:46:00
Some of the work we do with brokerages is getting their agents to understand how powerful blogging is as a marketing medium. Over the weekend and today, I noticed a rash of articles that puts a unique spin on "Why blog?" From Common Craft: Blogs in Plain English - (great application of instructional video)Blogging is dead? According to whom? Blogging is fundamental, an archetype of Web 2.0 and the most basic self expressive media there is. Social networks aren't eclipsing blogging, they are complementing blogging. (h/t to Greg ) Why blog? Daniel Rothamel answers the loaded question all bloggers hear: "How many leads are you getting from your blog?" He produces a hand held video (his hand is pretty steady like a track cam, how does he keep his mug centered?) that reveals his personality - peripatetic and forthright (and we're both bball fans). The real reason your agent should be blogging Kris Berg doesn't treat her readers as potential leads, she honors them as her future ...

Complicity of Brokers
2007-12-03 02:24:00
This is not an indictment on brokers, nor on capitalism. This string of events is the product of a capitalist system where, at a given point in time, each transaction made was logical and moreover, commonly accepted practice. At each stage, someone was well compensated to lubricate the transaction.Only afterwards did the consequences of selling a subprime loan to a Nevada home buyer indirectly result in a small Norwegian town unable to make municipal payroll.EventReasoningReason it unraveledLender/mortgage broker sold subprime loan to home buyer"Everybody should own their own home" / Mortgage broker collects commission by tapping into a new market of home buyersYes, housing prices skidded... but a key reason not discussed for the initial faith in subprime products was public belief that credit would continue to be available, i.e. there would continue to be credit (refi) products they could transition into after their first ARM reset. The credit crunch was unexpected, although it see...
More About: Economy , Brokers