Posts Tagged ‘ Brian Brady ’

Four VA Home Loan Myths Debunked

Are you using VA loans properly in your real estate brokerage business? Most agents don’t fully understand them and their customers are suffering because of it.

Here are four myths, truths and action items, about VA home loans, that could help you serve your home buying customers better:

LOAN MYTH 1: You have to be on active duty, in the military service, to use a VA home loan.
FACT: Eligibility is determined by current and past service. Essentially, if a veteran served for at least six months, from 1964 to today, they most likely have VA home loan eligibility. There are 15 million veterans under the age of 65 today; most of them should be eligible.
ACTION ITEM: Ask every new homebuyer, regardless of their age if they served. Don’t rule out the gals; about 10% of those vets are women.

LOAN MYTH 2: Sellers have to pay for the veteran’s closing costs.
FACT: The VA doesn’t allow for certain loan-related fees to be paid by the veteran. Those fees are usually about $1,200. The loan originator or REALTOR can pay those fees. THE VA allows the seller to contribute up to 4$ of the selling price towards ANY loan-related costs but the seller does NOT have “mandatory” fees.
ACTION ITEM: Write “seller not responsible for any allowable or non-allowable VA loan-related costs” and call the listing agent to explain this when presenting an offer. Continue reading this post

Posted by: Brian Brady on March 10th, 2009 under Financing, Mortgage and Home Loans

9 Comments »

How a 4.5% Mortgage Rate Can Benefit REALTORs

Mortgage rates have been very volatile this past month. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll note that the Fed is trying to drive fixed-rate conventional loans down to a 4.5% rate. Last week, The Fed announced it would purchase mortgage-backed securities, in the open market, in order to drive down mortgage rates to 4.5%.

The preponderance of the Government intervention is being perceived as inflationary. In short, investors believe that the Government has created so much money in the past eighteen months that it could render our currency as worthless as a Banana Republic. This should drive mortgage rates much higher in 12-18 months. Continue reading this post

Posted by: Brian Brady on January 5th, 2009 under Financing, Mortgage and Home Loans

1 Comment »

Mortgage Broker or Direct Lender?

Happy New Year, HomeGainers!

One of my resolutions this year is to be more active on the HomeGain Blog. While I love to talk about marketing ideas, my self-appointed “title” here, if you will, is resident mortgage guru. I hope to expand my offering to you with a weekly column, more focused on mortgage financing issues that you, the professional real estate agents, face.

I asked my LinkedIn network if they believed that better loan terms were secured by independent mortgage brokerages or direct lending institutions. Here are some of the answers:

Supporting Direct Lenders:

Bill Powell:

As a direct lender (portfolio lender for most of our offering with a few loans being sold to the secondary market for FHA and VA loans) I have seen changes in the common offerings. You might expect me to say “go with a banker” but read on, especially the the advice in last paragraph. We play fair at this company.

At one point the brokers had most everything the banks had with very similar rates. Now it seems the brokers have more speciality type products but with higher rates and fees.

My advice to borrowers is to… Continue reading this post

Posted by: Brian Brady on December 29th, 2008 under Financing, Mortgage and Home Loans, Guest Bloggers

15 Comments »

Hear Success Tips for 2009: “Ask The Experts” Forum

HomeGain hosted its second “Ask The Experts” live real estate forum yesterday. Due to the success of the August Ask The Experts, HomeGain kept to its original format and featured four experts to each speak on a different real estate issue and answer questions from the audience.

Several hundred real estate agents and brokers registered for the event to listen to Mitch Ribak, Alisha Wade, Joseph Ferrara and Brian Brady give advice for succeeding in a turbulent market.

If you weren’t able attend, or would like to hear it again, you can listen to the December 4th Ask The Experts recording at your convenience.

What was each experts topic?

Continue reading this post

Posted by: Jessica Gopalakrishnan on December 5th, 2008 under Ask the Experts

2 Comments »

Can You Whip A Stockbroker?

HomeGainers (and anyone else who wants to attend) have an incredible opportunity this month. For the past two years, your pin-stripe suited cousins on Wall Street have been pooh-poohing real estate as a viable retirement planning investment. Securities statements are coming out around the 5th or 6th of December and you have a chance to get some business. Over 90% of the “white shoe” investment firms’ $1 million clients are seeking advice elsewhere. Only 29% of the clients of the smaller, “boutique firms” will be leaving their advisers.

What’s your plan to get some of that money?

Do you know how to compare the S&P500 to responsibly leveraged residential real estate? The S&P 500 is lower than it was a decade ago. Today, it’s trading at 857 while it was over 900 in 1998. At it’s peak in the last decade, the index broached 1600 (last year) , almost twice of its current value. This means some 40-50 year olds have seen 30-40% of their retirement accounts drop in value…

…and they’re very scared.

If an investor wanted to double his money in the next ten years, leaving it in the S&P500 may just do it. What would a single-family home, in a good area, need to appreciate, to achieve the same goal?

…about 3.3% per year. In other words, can a home selling for $200,000 today, sell for $300,000 in ten years? If you can confidently answer “yes” to that question, you can compete with the Wall Street titans for their former clients’ money…and I’ll show you how to do it..for free*

Don’t wait. Register for the FREE “Ask the Experts Call” today.

* There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. If you like what you hear on the call, I’ll hope to earn the right to help your new clients with their financing. It’s not mandatory but I might just help you snare a new client.

Posted by: Brian Brady on November 29th, 2008 under Financing, Mortgage and Home Loans, Guest Bloggers, HomeGain

1 Comment »

Coming December 4: “Ask The Experts – Strategies for Success in a Turbulent Market”

Join us at HomeGain’s next “Ask The Experts” exclusive phone event live on Thursday, December 4th at 10am Pacific.

You’ll have the chance to interact with the following team of real estate experts:

Mitch Ribak, eHomes Realty Network – “Web Lead Conversion Strategies”
Alisha Wade, RE/MAX Achievers and Realty One Group – “Advice for Handling Foreclosures”
Joseph Ferrara, Sellsius Real Estate Blog – “Getting Leads from Your Blog”
Brian Brady, World Wide Wealth Advisors – “Home Mortgage Insight”

Hear strategic advice essential to your success in real estate in 2009 – and have the opportunity to ask the experts questions specific to your own business.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

Click here for the “Ask the Experts” Archive.

Posted by: Jessica Gopalakrishnan on November 20th, 2008 under Ask the Experts

2 Comments »