March Mayhem
Random thoughts on this past weekend’s NCAA March Madness games:
- Washington was robbed by poor officiating. UCONN shot 43 foul shots!
- Gonzaga deserved to lose. Adam Morrison couldn’t hit a clutch shot and JP Batista and Derek Raivio were handling the ball in crunchtime.
- Congrats to Cinderella George Mason! Sometimes heart beats talent. When I lived in DC, I thought they were a satellite campus for George Washington University.
- How do you stop JJ Reddick? Non-ACC referees. I’ll miss his jump shot but not his attitude. Let’s just hope he doesn’t end up playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Trajan Langdon and Luke Jackson had similar games to JJ and languished with the Cavs.
- Brandon Roy gets my vote for Player of the Year with Randy Foye a close second. Both players can shoot, defend and put it on the floor unlike the top two scorers in the country.
- Joakim Noah has mad skillz! What’s with the hair?
- Does Hakim Warrick have a younger brother named Tyrus Thomas?
- For the record, I had UCONN beating Texas. Yikes!
Oodle
There’s another odd sounding website name called Oodle. Basically oodle collects all the classified ads from sources such as ebay, various newspapers, adpost, et. al. and aggregates this info. One of the biggest online ad sites, Craigslist, did not want their ads included.
Tags: vaRepresenting!
The Apprentice on NBC kicked off a few weeks ago using the same standard formula - get a bunch of educated, type A, over zealous, go-getters with massive egos, allocate them to different teams, assign them dubious tasks and watch them attack each other early and often.
So far none of the candidates from the first 4 seasons have represented the Philippines, until Charmaine Hunt came along:
Tags: mortgage, rate, real estateCharmaine, 27, an only child, was born and raised in a small town in Kentucky. Her mother, an adventurous and hard-working Filipino immigrant who left everything to move to the U.S., has been a big influence on Charmaine. She earned a B.A. in corporate communications from Western Kentucky University, and after winning numerous awards for her leadership and public speaking, she moved to San Diego, where she began her career in marketing and advertising sales. She successfully brought in multi-million dollar clients, trained new employees, and structured long term pricing and contracts. Charmaine, the youngest on the sales team, consistently exceeded her sales goal by more than 200 percent, making her the No. 1 in sales for two consecutive years. She went on to Scottsdale for her next challenge in new business development with a mortgage firm. Charmaine now resides in Nashville, Tennessee where she is an area manager for a Fortune 500 company. She works in warranty and risk-management consulting and is highly involved in the local real estate community. Whether she’s driving the performance of the company or mobilizing an entire office to run a mini-marathon for charity, Charmaine has proven she knows how to get it done.
Donde Esta mi equidad?
That’s spanish for “Where’s my equity?”
According the Denver Business Journal, Colorado is 2nd to last (Tenneesee is 1st) when it comes to states with the lowest home equity levels. NY is number one when it comes to states with the highest levels of home equity.
In other words, Coloradoans have tappped their equity and/or purchased homes using low to no money down programs.
The article is only in the print edition of the Denver business journal and not available online yet.
Tags: colorado, denver, home equity, purchase, vaMy least favorite email signature quotes
Email signatures typically have your name, position, company name, phone, cell, fax, url and maybe a quote. Some quotes are more annonying than others. Here are quotes used within the mortgage/real estate industry that get the nod as some of the worst:
- “The Greatest Compliment I can ever Receive is a Personal Referral”
- “Your Lender for life”
- “Helping you finance your dreams.”
- “Building my business, one referral at a time”
- “You’ve got a friend in the real estate/mortgage business.”
Here is the one quote I’d really like to see:
- “Refer me to your friends and family like you said you would.”
It was bound to happen
The mortgage industry now has another player…
Tags: commercial, home equity, lending, mortgage, shoppingWith Trump Mortgage, you can stop shopping around. Because our clients have direct access to mortgage specialists who are not only smart, seasoned lending professionals, but experienced, knowledgeable and exceptionally visionary individuals. Their personal commitment to customer service, coupled with our state-of-the-art technological capabilities, ensures quick commitments and smooth, on time closings. We offer a wide range of mortgage solutions for residential, luxury, commercial and home equity financing.
St Patrick’s Day
I got this from one of my account reps. It’s probably the most enlightening and thought provoking email i’ve received in a while.
Did You Know?
- The first St. Patrick’s Day in America was celebrated in Boston in 1737.
- Nine of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence were of Irish origin, and 19 Presidents of the United States can claim Irish heritage, including George Washington.
- St. Patrick was born around 385 A.D. He became Ireland’s Patron Saint even though his father was Italian and his mother was Scottish.
Hoist a pint of Guinness on Friday!
Tags: rateMarch Madness
It’s HERE!
Here are my picks:
Final Four: Texas, Gonzaga, UCONN, Nova
Final Two: Texas, UCONN
National Champion: UCONN
How do I stack up against the ESPN National Bracket
Final Four: Duke, Gonzaga, UCONN, Nova
Final Two: Duke, UCONN
National Champion: Duke
Keep in mind I had the Jets playing the Vikings in the Superbowl 
780 Credit Is Mediocre….
… according to the new scoring model. I have yet to see a credit report reflect the news scores.
Tags: compare, credit score, debt, lending, mortgage, rate, vaCredit Agencies Aim to Simplify Scoring
Tuesday March 14, 11:55 am ET
By Eileen Alt Powell, AP Business Writer
Three Large Credit Agencies Adopt Uniform Credit Score Aimed at Simplifying Loan Process
NEW YORK (AP) — The three major consumer credit reporting agencies announced Tuesday that they have created a new credit scoring system aimed at simplifying the loan process for both lenders and borrowers.The announcement by Equifax, Experian and TransUnion said the new “VantageScore” was “a direct result of market demand for a more consistent and objective approach to credit scoring.”
The agencies in the past each used their own proprietary formulas to create their own scores, meaning that a lender dealing with a consumer’s application for a credit card or a mortgage might have to reconcile three widely different scores.
With the new system, a single methodology will be used to create the scores.
“Under the new scoring system, credit score variance between credit reporting companies will be attributed to data differences within each of the three consumer credit files and not to the structure of the scoring model or data interpretation,” the agencies said in a joint statement.
It added that VantageScore “will provide consumers and businesses with a highly predictive, consistent score that is easy to understand and apply.”
Kerry Williams, group president of Experian’s credit services division, told The Associated Press that his agency was making the new scores available immediately to financial institutions and expected wide adoption, but said he did not expect the scores to be rolled out for consumers until later this year.
Credit scores are important because they measure how much debt a consumer is carrying and how well the consumer keeps up with bills.
The higher the score, the more credit worthy the consumer is considered and the lower the interest rate the consumer is likely to be charged.
The three credit agencies termed the move to a unified score as “unprecedented.”
The scores will range from 501 to 990. The top end is slightly higher than scores currently in use.
Colleen Tunney, spokeswoman for TransUnion, told a conference call with reporters and credit industry representatives that the new score was created by looking at millions of consumer files at the same time to ensure consistent readings across the three bureaus’ data.
She and spokesmen for Equifax and Experian said it was not immediately clear how quickly the new score would be adopted by lending institutions.
“Step one is we’re talking to our credit grantors as we speak,” said David Rubinger, spokesman for Experian. He said each agency was marketing the new score to its own customers.
He added: “For any score to have merit in the marketplace, all parties need to be at the table.”
Many lenders, especially those in the mortgage business, use FICO scores, which are named for the Minneapolis-based Fair, Isaac Corp. which developed them. Others use proprietary scores from the individual credit bureaus or use the bureau data to generate their own scores.
Spokesmen for Fair, Isaac could not immediately be reached for comment.
Rubinger said the new score was expected to reduce the variance in a consumer’s scores by about 30 percent compared with what it was under the old system. He gave no other details.
He said the score would reflect a consumer’s frequency of borrowing, delinquency in paying bills and other “file content,” but had no specific weights for the components.
In a separate statement, Experian said the new scores will be grouped on “the familiar academic scale.” Experian gave these groupings:
A — 901-990
B — 801-900
C — 701-800
D — 601-700
F — 501-600
Experian said it was hoped that “as consumers increase their awareness of the importance of credit scores and credit reporting, the consistency of VantageScore will provide the type of information they need to evaluate their credit standing and make sound financial decisions.”
VantageScore is being independently marketed and sold separately through each of the three national credit reporting companies via licensing agreements with VantageScore Solutions LLC, the joint announcement said. The spokesmen said that VantageScore was jointly owned by the three credit bureaus. They said it did not yet have a headquarters, although an informational Web site had been set up at http://www.vantagescore.com.
The credit reporting agencies are operated by Equifax Inc. of Atlanta, Experian Information Solutions Inc. of Costa Mesa, Calif., and TransUnion LLC of Chicago.
The Sopranos
After 22 months, Tony and the gang are back for Season 6! It’s one of my favorite shows on television and I’ve been addicted since season one. Here’s a list of my top five characters:
- Tony Soprano - something unexpected happens to this wiseguy at the end of the first episode in Season 6. The centerpiece of the show. I remember him playing whatelse, a wiseguy in the movie True Romance.
- Meadow Soprano - she was an annoying teen, then an annoying college student, but hey she’s hot! Also, she sang the national anthem when the Jets played the Colts in the 2003 playoffs.
- Chris Moltisanti - he played Spider in Goodfellas and got whacked by Joe Pesci. Adrianna is no longer around to beat up and that means no more dogs are going to get whacked.
- Ralphie Cifaretto - played by the one and only Joe Pantoliano. He got whacked at the end of season 4 but he left his mark on the show by being one of the most sadistic villains of the show.
- Uncle Junior - he was once crime boss and the patriarch of the family but has been slowly fazed out the last couple of seasons.