Denver Mortgage Loans and Denver Home Equity Loans
I came across a fsbo blog that discusses using technology to create a classified ad of a real estate property and post the ad to services on the internet:
The name of the service is called Postlets. Create one, post to all. Seems like a great concept. The only drawback is that it the service doesn’t auto post to craigslist; you have to do it yourself.
Last summer I spoke to a borrower who was having a hard time getting his house shown. He said he couldn’t understand why. His house was priced right and had a lot of upgrades. The real estate agent he chose to list his home told him that it would take time and to be patient. However, the borrower was getting impatient. I asked the borrower if he had heard of craigslist. He responded with “who’s list?” I told him that craigslist was an online classified ads service that was free and receives “a lot” of internet traffic. He was intrigued. So, I walked him through putting an ad on craigslist. Within a week, he had a couple of showings.
Craigslist has become a major weapon when selling a home. It was started by Craig Newmark (hence, Craigslist) in 1995 in San Francisco and has grown to serve most major cities over the world. Denver was up and running in 2001. The traffic craigslist receives is staggering. Currently it’s ranked in the top 50 sites. While many competitors have sprouted such as Propsmart, oodle, backpage, et. al. none come close to Craigslist’s traffic.
If you’re in the market for a new home, check out craigslist’s real estate section.
While trolling some of the mortgage blogs, I came across an article on Behind the Mortgage regarding home prices slumping in Minneapolis and St. Paul during the last quarter in 2006. The article summarizes a CNN article and includes a graphic where Minneapolis/St. Paul is circled to show that their market isn’t so bad.
The graphic caught my eye because Denver’s real estate market is better than Minneapolis (albeit slightly better). At least we have bragging rights for now.
Would you ever go to your bank to get pre-approved for a mortgage AND while you’re there, hire a real estate agent to help you find a house?
The answer is you’ll never have that opportunity.
According to Realtown Wayne Allard, the Republican Senator from Colorado and Hillary Clinton, the Whitewater Wonder, teamed up to co-sponsor a bill that would deny banks from having real estate brokerages. The bill was created to “ensure the nation’s real estate industry remains competitive.”
So let me get this straight, banks can’t have real estate brokerages but real estate brokerages can own mortgage companies. Sounds like a competitive edge to real estate brokerages.
Personally I would never go to my bank to get a mortgage. They’re really good at charging me fees for just about every service they offer and they’re even better at giving me ridiculously low savings account interest rates. Moreover, banks offer retail mortgage rates rather than wholesale. So if I wouldn’t get a mortgage from my bank, why would I get real estate from them as well.
This past weekend, the Denver Post and New York Times both had articles on real estate websites:
The Denver Post’s article, “Homework: Buying and Selling on the Web” discusses the various real estate websites available to consumers such as:
The main focus of the article is how craiglist (a free listing service) is used by many real estate agents to list properties.
Craigslist, www.craigslist.com, has been touted as the world’s seventh-most-visited website, with about 3 billion hits per month. Users search through bare-bones home pages to find cities or regions they’re interested in.
Ads are posted by date in egalitarian fashion, so re-posting or updating an ad keeps it closer to the top of the page, where it presumably would be seen by more people.
The New York Times article, “Forget Gimmicks: Buyers Want Numbers” (login required) discusses the home buyers insatiable appetite for information when it comes to buying a home.
Today, companies and brokers are focusing less on toys and are offering something more straightforward: numbers. This detailed information — be it local home values, neighborhood amenities or broader market conditions — is part of a trend to attract consumers by offering data they cannot find easily elsewhere, or could once get only from real estate agents.
The article also sites websites such as realtor.com and trulia.com. Incidentally a Denver real estate agent (and fellow Denver blogger) Kristal Kraft is mentioned in the article. Her site, www.kristalsellsdenver.com contains chock full of info on Denver relocation.
A few months ago a couple of search terms “What’s the next Wash Park” and “Up and Coming neighborhoods in Denver” led people to my site. However, I’m not a real estate agent nor do I have any plans to become an agent in the near future. If I had to venture a guess, Riverfront, Highlands, or Eisenhower Park would be the next hot neighborhood. However, they will never be Wash Park because Wash Park is one of Denver’s best known landmarks.
The Denver Business Journal touts Eisenhower Park as the next hot area. Their article Eisenhower Park becoming a popular market:
Looking for an undiscovered neighborhood with great charm, easy access to transportation, a range of public amenities and lower prices than comparable areas?
Realtors and custom home builders are touting the Eisenhower Park neighborhood northeast of the intersection of South Colorado Boulevard and East Hampden Avenue.
Note: To access this article online you may need a subscription to the Denver Business Journal.
From the denver.gov site:
Eisenhower Park is a fully developed 22-acre truf grass park located at S. Colorado Blvd. & E. Dartmouth Ave.. The park features Eisenhower Recreation Center, two skinned softball fields, one un-skinned softball field, one soccer field, two football fields, four tennis courts, horseshoe pits, four flower beds, four picnic sites (one with a shelter). Restrooms are provided during the summer months and are located on the East Side of the Recreation Center.
Google has a feature called alerts that filters news stories from across the web and sends them directly to your email account. I’ve used this feature in the past to access stories related to mortgage and real estate. In the beginning it was cool getting news links sent to me on a regular basis. However, I began noticing a trend; the alerts were including press releases more frequently.
A press release can or cannot be news. When the Dallas Cowboys recently announced that Bill Parcells was retiring, the press release could be considered newsworthy. It’s newsworthy because there aren’t too may coaches employed by the Dallas Cowboys named Bill Parcells. When a real estate company announces that they launched a website that streamlines the home buying or home selling process, the press release is not considered newsworthy. Why? There are a multitude of real estate websites launched every month that have tried to streamlined the home buying or home selling process. This is not news, it’s spam! Mortgage companies are just as guilty. When I see a “Prequalification”, “1% Loan”, or “Lowest Rates” press release, I know it’s spam.
Unless your a Pacific Islander, most people just don’t like spam. Sure you can wrap it rice and seaweed and call it musubi but it’s still spam. I hope Sergei and Larry are paying attention and improve alerts to ensure they don’t include spam that are camouflaged as press releases.
Here are some interesting real estate articles around the web:
From time to time I’ll be addressing client questions that are frequently asked and some questions that are quite obscure. Some questions are mortgage related, some are real estate related, and some are Denver related. My answers won’t be the canned answers you see on most mortgage sites.
Q: “How do I get the best rate?”
A: Let’s assume the following:
If you fit this profile you’ll get the best rates because mortgage institutions view this profile as little to no risk. These loans are typically run through an automated underwriting program i.e. computer software that runs an algorerithm (software geek joke) and gives you a loan approval in seconds. Even if you don’t fit this profile 100%, the automated underwriting program may still grant you an approval in seconds. Your history of paying debt (credit score), capacity to pay the loan (income/assets), and the collateral backing the debt (property) all plays a role in getting the best rate.
Real estate is a hot topic on the web. One quick search for “real estate” on google nets you 275,000,000 results. That’s a lot of indexed pages on real estate alone. From blogs to news feeds, the amount of information on real estate is overwhelming. If you’re looking for non-location specific real estate sources start here:
With stories like “Business Card Confirms Real-Estate Salesman Is Eddie Money,
” the Onion would’ve made it to the front this list if they had a real estate section.