We have close friends who have moved in and out of real estate investments very profitably over the past few years—and it was not unusual for them to be holding several properties at once. Good friends they are, but they never took our advice about mortgage financing.

Instead, they always used some loan hack who never returned phone calls, was late on all commitments, but somehow managed to get the loan funded—several days late. According to our friends, he could “get any loan funded.” And he did.

This hack has relocated from the Los Angeles area to San Diego and is now one of those non-responsive real estate phantoms who list foreclosures.

It’s deja vu all over again.

It absolutely baffles me that the very folk who helped create this mess are now being rewarded by the lenders they duped. I am amazed at the number of listing agents who are also former loan brokers and wonder how this came to be.

And like Brian Brady and other concerned real estate professionals, I believe that separate licensing should be required of mortgage originators and real estate agents—and that banks and lenders should be vetting their foreclosure representatives more closely.

Far too often, in my opinion, these foreclosure listings are being placed with Continue reading this post

It seems everyone had another life prior to real estate. Few people grow up saying, “I want to be a real estate agent!” Rare is the 18 year old that gets a license and does nothing but sell real estate the rest of their life.

I had a plethora of jobs in my youth. I got a job at McDonalds the day I turned 16 and have been pretty much working ever since. One summer in college I moved pianos. That job sucked. Another summer I had a brief stint installing guard rails for the Texas Highway Department. That was about as much fun as moving pianos.

I went to college for two semester’s right after high school. First was at Texas A&M at Galveston where I quickly found out going to a college where you could see the beach outside the English 101 classroom was not conducive to proper study habits. Rather than get kicked out, I packed up and moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas. There I quickly found out being 18, away from home and living in a college town that is jammed full of coeds, in a house with 5 other guys, was not conducive to proper study habits.

I pumped gas that semester in Austin (physically pumped gas – this was back in the day of full service gas stations) which did not pay well. One evening an ad came on the radio announcing that Motorola was hiring for entry-level workers in their semiconductor manufacturing facility. The pay was outstanding—$3.50 an hour (almost a buck over minimum wage!) and it had benefits – like vacation time, tuition reimbursement and health insurance. So I dropped out of college (“They can’t teach me anything!”) and applied for a position.

Fast forward 16 years. I was still employed at Motorola and Continue reading this post

As a guy who does search engine marketing, I believe in testing. I test a lot.

During a typical week, I will visit quite a few real estate websites. This past week, I took the opportunity while visiting them to “Mystery Shop” 50 of them. I was not mystery shopping to see who had the prettiest website or the coolest interface, or the most search criteria.

I was simply registering with my name, phone number and email address to see who called me back first. This post is a BASIC report of what I found.

(Note: I am going to do a more detailed study on many more sites in about 2 months for publication – if you would like a copy of that study, shoot me an email! – it should be out in December / January and I would be happy to share it with you. It is going to not only include how quickly people responded, but HUNDREDS of examples of their responses as well).

Out of the 50 real estate websites that I registered for, I did not receive a callback or contact at all on 27 of them. (I was STUNNED at that one.) Nine of them called me back within two hours. By the end of 24 hours Continue reading this post

Last week we kicked off the Lives of the Realtors series. So far we have heard from two amazing individuals, Ryan Ward and Mitch Ribak.

Later this week we will be publishing the past life of Phoenix Real Estate Guy, Jay Thompson.

Jay has had an interesting background prior to becoming a successful Realtor and one of the country’s top bloggers.

We will also be launching a new series about Realtors – A Day in the Life.
In the new series we will ask Realtors to talk about their current day to day practices, business philosophies, work habits, office set up and other daily items that make up a Realtors’ life.

Stay tuned, better yet, subscribe to the HomeGain Real Estate Blog.

Louis Cammarosano

Continue reading this post