UPDATE: The Real Estate RSS Icons are now located at LeadPress.

View FREE Real Estate RSS Icons

Get your free BrokerScience RSS Feed Icons Now! Download after the jump!

Read The Full Story »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

If you can prove you are one of these people and back up your claims, LeadPress will pay you $250,000!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

We did the Carpool Confessions series on LeadCritic with Mike Ferree.  We chatted about a lot of things including REBarCamp Los Angeles, Twitter acquisition rumors, mortgage leads and more.

Check it out here!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This is a guest post written by Clarion Mortgage CEO, David Marr. Originally distributed as an internal email to LO’s, it has been reformatted to read as a general market commentary without addressing specific bank or loan scenarios.

Yesterday not the first of many complaints came to me regarding an important issue that will only increase going forward.  This is an industry issue and will soon become the norm.  An LO submitted a loan to a bank, got a full approval with the condition of a 4506-T.  The borrower was FULL DOC W-2, $180,000 per year no brainer.  The bank ordered the the tax transcripts via the 4506T on 12/26 and, once received, the LO got a new condition on 1/6 requiring 2 years tax returns, thus killing the lock.

This example illustrates that the industry is moving toward 100% 4506T usage on all files.  Incidents of fraud are surprisingly UP! as borrowers are pursuing false documentation to solve their loan needs now that Stated Income programs are gone.  In the next 3 months, we believe submitting pulled taxed returns will be a requirement from all investors as borrower/originator credibility continues to be questioned.  But that’s irrelevant now.  In order to save time and save your locks, it makes sense to provide pulled tax returns and present them in the file.

Read The Full Story »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Wow! Yesterday was quite the blowout for Ben Behrouzi and DotNext Inc. First, TechCrunch stated the obvious and sad truth about LeapFish, then Ben and his employees were then caught red handed calling themselves “geniuses” in the comments section of the same article by IP address tracking and finally, Ben Behrouzi was reduced to name calling in front of the world on TechCrunch and on two articles on this blog.

Where does one go from such a melodic sequence of events that is music to the ears of anyone that has ever had the unfortunate experience of crossing paths with Ben Behrouzi? The truth is that there is nowhere to go. A little unknown blog with little to no traffic like BrokerScience can never accomplish what TechCrunch accomplished yesterday. More importantly, we’ve done more than our fair share of the heavy lifting in exposing Ben Behrouzi, ePerks, Leapfish and DotNextInc’s business practices. This means we are no longer going to be writing about Ben Behrouzi or any of his “companies”.

There is one main factor driving this decision: time. There are not enough hours in the day to work on my own projects and there are enough hours in the day to cover the Ben Behrouzi and his exploits. We simply have to pick and choose where our energy is going. You may have noticed we weren’t blogging much anyways over the past months except for Benham Behrouzi news when it occurred and that was again, due to time constraints. That is also the reason that there has been a disproportionate amount of Behrouzi coverage.

Read The Full Story »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Ben Behrouzi has hit an all time low for himself and his new startup LeapFish in front of Silicon Valley and the world. After Techcrunch declared LeapFish as “another meta search engine no one will ever use” his employees were caught red handed making shill comments praising LeapFish and calling it “genius”. Classic. This puts him on the fast track to destroy yet another brand in addition to his past casualties, ePerks, Brabus Ventures, and iHype.

Now Techcrunch knows what the rest of us have known for years. Ben Behrouzi, LeapFish and most of Ben’s companies are spammers. I’ve personally received ePerks and LeapFish spam and or phone calls. A former ePerks employee confided in me that Behrouzi employees are given free reign to use whatever techniques are necessary to hit their numbers.

Former Ben Behrouzi ePerks employee that wished to remain unnamed:

I graduated from USC, I never imagined I would be spamming for a living.

TechCrunch points out the obvious that LeapFish provides no real value to searchers. LeapFish claims to be the “first multi-dimensional information aggregator and search portal in the world”. In reality it is simply a search engine aggregator similar to DogPile (launched in 1996), Addict-o-Matic, or the hundreds of others that exist.

Bens’ Fake TechCrunch Comments are a Thing of Beauty

After one shill comment after another, it becomes clear that most of the comments are simply fake and obviously made by Ben Behrouzi and or his employees.

When we pointed out that spamming blog comments is a Ben Behrouzi / DotNext Inc. / LeapFish hallmark, TechCrunch confirmed that in fact, all of the comments were coming the same IP address. This IP address was later banned.

Ben Threatens BrokerScience and Others Yet Again….

Also for the record you and your readers should know that, the trace richardson and lord matt commenting above are rogue bloggers looking for attention, traffic and destruction of others. They are motivated by a disgustingly shameful agenda that clearly manifests itself in their comments above and have a long history of stalking our people and spreading fabricated news in mass quantities. The company will be addressing each of their malicious activities soon. – Ben Behrouzi, CEO Dotnext, Inc. LeapFish

Welcome to Ben’s World of Fail:

Techcrunch Writer, Robin Wauters Finally Bans One of The IP Addresses:

Other BrokerScience Coverage of Ben Behrouzi / ePerks / LeapFish / DotNext:

Ben Behrouzi Caught on Tape: Threatens to Blackball Employee on Voicemail

Vlad Zablotzkyy Defeats LeapFish / ePerks / DotNext CEO Ben Behrouzi

Ben Behrouzi, LeapFish CEO Caught Spamming TechCrunch

The Beginner’s Action Guide to Learning about Vlad Zablotkyy vs. ePerks / Ben Behrouzi

ePerks / LeapFish CEO Ben Behrouzi Threatens BrokerScience with Legal Action

ePerks IP Address Link to Vlad Zablotzkyy: When the Hunter Becomes the Prey

iHype.com Launch Coverage Here

Ben Behrouzi Updates Company “Values” and “Culture” Web Pages. Only One Problem: They’re Stolen

Beginning of the End: ePerks CEO Ben Behrouzi Sues Blogger, Confirms No Strategy in Place

BrokerScience Acquires BenBehrouzi.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

On October 22nd, 2008, Ben Behrouzi / Eperks /LeapFish’s atorney, Ronald J. Cook filed for dismissal of their complaint against Vlad Zablotzkyy. This is yet one more embarrassment for Ben Behrouzi in addition to the public humiliation and ridicule that has already befallen him and his dieing brand ePerks, at the hands of the Real Estate community at large.

The withdrawal was likely the result of a settlement with Vlad (the terms of which have not been disclosed) in which Vlad was required to post a statement which is essentially a lawyer contrived “I’m Sorry”. One highlight is where “Vlad” requests that other bloggers covering the story print retractions. Vlad was outgunned and his willingness to settle clearly reflects that.

Considering that Ben Behhrouzi has threatened BrokerScience with threats similar to those he made against Vlad, we see this defeat as fitting, to say the least.

“Behnam “Ben” Behrouzi filed what’s called an “unverified” complaint against Vlad.  That’s in contrast to a “verified” complaint, in which the plaintiff signs the complaint and declares under penalty of perjury that the statements in the complaint are true and correct.  The lawsuit ended in settlement without Behrouzi ever making any statement under oath.  Specifically, he never denied that he was responsible for the slander of Vlad.” – Brief Submitted to BrokerScience by Source that Wished to Remain Anonymous

View: All Ben Behrouzi / Brabus Ventures vs Zablotzkyy Court Documents

(The file above is 2mb, so be patient) A hat tip goes out to the attorney that delivered these and quote above to our doorstep and wished to remain anonymous.)

While most intelligent CEO’s couldn’t attract the kind of bad publicity and ill will Behrouzi has managed to generate for ePerks on their worst day, this is an area where Ben truly shines. Then again, Ben has proven himself to be a tactless bully time and time again, so this is par for the course.

Read The Full Story »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

School is out for summer, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t work to be done. I would like to revisit one of the simplest, yet most powerful tools for progressing in your career and life: Setting Goals.

That’s right, we all know about goal setting, realize the importance that setting goals can bring to measuring and assessing success and progress and yet many of us are not consistently setting and measuring our progress towards goals. I am guilty of this as well.

What are your goals / objectives for the day, week, month and year? Write them down, somewhere. Anywhere. Make that place the simplest place to access you can think of to achieve consistency in visiting your goals.

Once your goals are set, evaluate and assess your performance. Did you achieve your goal for the day, week or month? You can only know if you assess your progress. This means a short day end check and weekly and monthly checks….. it only takes a few minutes. Designate a consistent time slot for your reviews, this will help build the habit of reviewing.

If you don’t set a standard of performance or measure of performance, you will find yourself producing and achieving less…. you can’t hold yourself responsible for under performing if you aren’t aware that you aren’t where you should be! Many times we think we are performing at a higher level than we really are.

Most importantly, don’t be too hard on yourself if you are not progressing as fast as you would like. This is why it is important that your goals are realistic. The real goal here is to achieve an overall consistency in evaluating your progress…. not pushing yourself into depression because you didn’t nail your target goals. Not achieiving set goals is merely an opportunity to learn and evaluate so that you do achieve those  goals in the future.

When you are done, click here.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Redfin suffered about the worst occurrence a datacenter can endure, fire. They still beat Realtor.com by 12 hours with only 5 hours of downtime compared to Realtor.com’s 17 hours of downtime or 53 hours of downtime if you include the 36 hours of in-action before going offline for 17 hours after  their blog was hacked. In fact, the once daily posts on the Realtor.com blog have ceased altogether for over  two weeks, so it is apparent that the problem is  not under control, unless giving hard working / blogging Realtors less exposure is part of an unannounced strategy.

That’s right, their datacenter caught fire and they still smoked Realtor.com, pun intended. There is only one right way to handle such a situation: quickly, honestly and transparently. If Redfin gets this, why can’t Realtor.com?

Chris Neitzert Sorts Through Charred Rubble of Redfin Datacenter

There was a fire in the Seattle-based data center that Redfin uses to host our web servers, causing a loss of service between approximately 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. Pacific Time. The entire data center was shut down by the fire department, including universal power supplies. Thanks to Redfin’s Chris Neitzert and his team, the site is now up and running. Throughout the interruption, our agents have of course stayed at their posts working with clients. But as the data center installs new equipment, it is possible that we will experience much-briefer interruptions in our website service around midnight tonight. We will continue to be available by telephone at 877-973-3346 or through the direct number our clients have for their agents.
For now, we apologize for the interruption in our service.

Aftermath of Realtor.com Blog Hack

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

BrokerScience is not affiliated, related or endorsed in any way, shape or form to or by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

You can find the National Association of Realtors at Realtor.org.

If you are interested in Real Estate and Mortgage news, you’re in the right place, take a look around!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!