Archive for Finance

Desperate to boost your credit?

June 4th, 2007 • Business, Finance, Loan Programs, Real Estate

One of my Digg.com friends Chris just passed along an interesting story on yahoo about some enterprising credit repair providers. They use a technique that many mortgage brokers/Loan Officers have known about for years called piggybacking.
Instead of spending several years repairing his credit rating, which he said was marred by two forgotten cell phone bills and identity theft, the 37-year-old real estate agent paid $1,800 to an Internet-based company to bump up his score almost overnight. Instantcreditbuilders.com, or ICB, helped Estruch boost his score by arranging for him to be added as an authorized user on several credit cards of people with stellar credit who were paid to allow this coattailing. Parents also use this practice when they add their children to their credit cards to help them build solid credit. The pitch to those who are essentially renting their credit history for pay is seductive: You don't need to worry about users of this service receiving duplicate copies of your credit cards, account numbers or any of your personal information. It's essentially free money, they are told.
In the past if a borrower needed a few points extra to qualify for a loan program loan officers would ask them if any of their family members had an account they could get authorized on. Once the borrower is authorized as a user on the account, they do a rapid rescore and 75% of the time the prior history would be attached to the newly authorized user. This company however is taking it to a new level.

The Reality of Foreclosure Investing

September 15th, 2006 • Business, Finance, Real Estate

The reality of foreclosure investing is very different from what people have been led to believe through late night infomercials and the hundreds of books written on the subject. Always remember these two key facts when dealing in foreclosures. • Every active foreclosure investor works a lot more than people working 9-5 jobs. • Serious foreclosure investors either have large sums of money of their own or have another investor backing them up.

read more | digg story

Real Estate News Today

August 31st, 2006 • Finance, Real Estate

Real Estate Round Up

August 29th, 2006 • Finance, Real Estate

Today's Good News in the Housing Market

August 28th, 2006 • Finance, Real Estate

I know some people who read this blog must laugh at my unrequited optimism for the housing market, however here is today's support for my opinion that there will be another short term housing or at least a refinancing boom. From Reuters and Richard Leong
A further decline in benchmark Treasury yields may spur massive buying of government bonds by mortgage investors, adding zest to a market already spurred on by the Federal Reserve's pause in interest-rate increases. A tumble in Treasury yields on hopes the Fed may lower its key rate in 2007 has hurt returns on mortgage investments. As falling yields have lowered mortgage rates, homeowners have been enticed to refinance their loans. As a result, some fund managers and loan-service companies have been forced into so-called convexity hedging, buying Treasuries or using interest-rate swaps to receive fixed-rate payments on their investments to make up for expected lost income from mortgage holdings. "The mortgage market has been awoken here," said Terry Belton, head of fixed income and derivatives strategy at J.P. Morgan Securities in Chicago. "The rally (in Treasuries) has triggered some significant buying by mortgage hedgers."

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