Mortgage rates continued lower last week fueled by concerns regarding employment and statements made in the June Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) minutes regarding market weakness. The consensus among the majority of the recently released market data and the FOMC minutes is that the overall recovery is still a work in progress and the levels of GDP growth needed to fuel a healthy economy are still a ways off. This is good news for mortgage bad news for the economy as a whole.

Economic Calendar for Week of July 18, 2011

• Monday – NAHB Housing Market Index
  
• Tuesday – Housing Starts
• Wednesday – Existing Home Sales
• Thursday – Initial Claims, Philadelphia Fed, Leading Indicators

Mortgage rates have been been held down for weeks as bad economic data has driven bond prices up creating a unique and very likely last chance for home owners and buyers to take advantage of extremely low rates. The concern is that once this window closes and rates begin their inevitable move up, there will be no going back, which means that once the opportunity is gone, it’s gone for good. We can help you understand if you are in or getting into the best mortgage for your needs, please contact us for a free consultation.

The University of Michigan’s / Thomson Reuters widely-watched consumer confidence index shows consumer confidence moving lower driven by lack of confidence in government economic policies and increasing pessimism over unemployment, home prices and falling income. The index fell  7.7 points to 63.8, its biggest decline since March with the index falling to 76.3 from 82.0, the lowest reading since November of 2009.

One issue at the forefront of eroding consumer confidence is the impending budget deal debacle which will decide the fate of whether or not the US debt ceiling can be increased, allowing the United States to continue funding its monthly obligations.

Adding to consumer anxiety is credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s statements this week that there is a 50 per cent chance it will downgrade the U.S. government’s credit rating within three months because of the congressional infighting over approving an increase in the debt ceiling. The rating agency has placed the United States on a credit watch, not good news for the economy or consumers.

FED Chairman Ben S. Bernanke in Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress:

Much of the slowdown in aggregate demand this year has been centered in the household sector, and the ability and willingness of consumers to spend will be an important determinant of the pace of the recovery in coming quarters. Real disposable personal income over the first five months of 2011 was boosted by the reduction in payroll taxes, but those gains were largely offset by higher prices for gasoline and other commodities. Households report that they have little confidence in the durability of the recovery and about their own income prospects. Moreover, the ongoing weakness in home values is holding down household wealth and weighing on consumer sentiment. On the positive side, household debt burdens are declining, delinquency rates on credit card and auto loans are down significantly, and the number of homeowners missing a mortgage payment for the first time is decreasing. The anticipated pickups in economic activity and job creation, together with the expected easing of price pressures, should bolster real household income, confidence, and spending in the medium run.

The silver lining for mortgage rates is that bad economic news results in lower or depressed mortgage rates. We can help you decide if you in the best mortgage for your needs or if a lower rate is available. Please contact us today for your free existing or future mortgage consultation.

The Federal Reserve released notes from the June 21-22 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on Tuesday, shedding light on the FOMC’s current observations of the market and how it will be adjusting its activities moving forward. This release of minutes is one of eight releases the Fed meets, following each of the eight Fed meetings that take place each year.

The minutes didn’t drop any bombshells that have had any significant immediate impact on mortgage rates, but did provide useful insight on how the Fed will be adjusting its activities, which will affect how mortgage rates move in the future. The market and mortgage rates as a whole were largely unmoved release of the minutes.

The Fed overview on the current state of the market shows that recovery has been slower than expected and that housing prices remain depressed, both factors holding back the overall recovery of the economy.

From the June 2011 FOMC Minutes:

Activity in the housing market remained depressed, as both weak demand and the sizable inventory of foreclosed or distressed properties continued to hold back new construction. Starts and permits of new single-family homes were essentially unchanged in April and May, and they stayed near the very low levels seen since the middle of last year. Sales of new and existing homes remained at subdued levels in recent months, while measures of home prices fell further.

Since the Fed sets monetary policy and participates in other activities such as buying Treasury debt, their activities can significantly impact the mortgage rates and the economy as a whole. As the Fed has implemented various policies to help push the economy out of recession, maintaining these policies for an extended period of time can do more damage than good. The June minutes provided some insight into how the Fed will unwind or exit some of these policies moving forward.

Fed Exit Strategy Principles

1. The Fed will raise the Fed Funds Rate (the rate at which banks lend each other money overnight)
2. The Fed will stop buying Treasury Debt (they are currently reinvesting the proceeds on existing obligations)
3. The Fed will sell its holdings in mortgage-backed securities

Since rates are currently at very low levels, there is a lot more room for rates to go up then go down. That means that now is a great time to inquire about whether your existing mortgage is the best fit for you or to learn about your options if you are considering purchasing a home.

ePerks, the brand and company that exposed the world to Ben Behrouzi and his unethical business practices and inability to deliver services as promised has been hacked.

The ePerks brand had all but been abandoned in embarrassment when Ben Behrouzi and company lost their failed bid to take down blogger Vlad Zablotkyy’s blog, GoBeyondMLS.

When ePerks was exposed and Ben Behrouzi’s unethical business practices were given national attention in 2008, Ben changed the name of his original holding company from Brabus Ventures to DotNextInc due to the unflattering attention. Additionally, ePerks was no longer listed on the DotNextInc website as a Behrouzi owned company and his profile was removed from ePerks.com. Other companies listed in Behrouzi’s portfolio are Ziddler.com (landing page claimed Ziddler was “Launching Summer 2009″) which failed to launch and the ill fated iHype.com, another company that never got off the ground. Today Ben Behrouzi is at the helm of LeapFish, another company that expands on ePerk’s very questionable business model.

Hiya! BrokersScience has been quiet for the last year or so and that will be changing in the coming months. We’ve just rebuilt BrokerScience from the ground up. Sure, it doesn’t look like much has changed on the outside, but we’ve added some very cool new features.

BrokerScience Joins the LeadPress Mortgage Network

The first addition is that BrokerScience is the first blog to join the LeadPress Mortgage Network! What does that mean besides a new grey toolbar at the top of the page? It means that BrokerScience is now tied in with the LeadPress Campus. This means that BrokerScience activity streams show up on the LeadPress Campus and registration for BrokerScience is now handled via the LeadPress Campus. Registering for a LeadPress account means you get a neato profile page and the chance to meet others, learn and network.

New Faces in Mortgage Blogging

We’re also really excited to be adding some talented folks to the roster as well. We think the mortgage blogosphere could use quite a bit of work and we’re hoping that BrokerScience can be a new and exciting channel for mortgage and real estate peeps alike. In fact, if you know someone that you think might be a good addition to the team, ping us at trace at leadpress dot com.

New Author Pages and Sidebar Highlights

Another cool addition we’ve added is the ability to highlight our contributors. All contributors will have their own author page, author box (at  bottom of posts) and sidebar highlight (look to the right). The sidebar highlight is kind of nifty too because the newest contributors to post are automatically pushed to the top where they will likely get more eyeballs. These author boxes have a brief author bio and also point to the author’s website, BrokerScience posts, email and LeadPress profile. If you comment on BrokerScience, LeadPress Campus visitors can see your comments and may even join in the discussion. If you haven’t checked out the LeadPress Campus or the LeadPress Forums, now might be a good time! Things are a bit slow, but will be picking up as we add new features and build traffic.

Author Page Highlight Box

Sidebar Contributor Highlight

Have Feedback? What Would You Like to See That’s Different?

Have some ideas on a new feature or topic you would like to see? Let us know in the comments or contact us at the contact page above and you can always ping me at trace at leadpress with any feedback or questions!

LeadPress launched this week, offering mortgage lenders a much need premium option for establishing a superior online presence. The mortgage space is infamous for employing severely out of of date and sometimes tacky websites in the quest for generating mortgage leads. LeadPress fixes the problems exhibited by most mortgage websites today such as employing Full 1003 Applications (lead generation killers), tacky flash intro pages, poor designs / layouts, music and sound effects and many other user experience issues.

As many of you know, we’ve been hard at work on LeadPress for quite a while, so it’s great to finally launch and move into the space.

Learn more about LeadPress Mortgage Websites.

LeadPress is also paying a $250 referral fee through our Mortgage Affiliate Program, if this interests you, drop us a note or call! This is a great opportunity for mortgage / real estate industry facing websites, but a referral via word of mouth works just as well for getting the referral fee.

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!

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 »

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.

Read The Full Story »

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

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 »

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.

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

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LeadPress builds mortgage marketing websites and helps loan officers generate exclusive mortgage leads.

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!

Are you a fanatical Title Insurance, Escrow or Appraisal blogger? Do you currently blog and need another avenue of exposure? BrokerScience will soon be launching new Title/Escrow centric and Appraisal Centric blogs and we need bloggers!

BrokerScience network blogs (WordPress based) are highly SEO optimized, utilize the latest bleeding edge plugins and can provide an optimal platform for insuring you get the best search engine coverage of your posts. We will obviously maintain the platform rigorously and will build out necessary features you find necessary. That’s right, if you have an idea or format you want us to build out for you, we will do it! Once we obtain a minimal level advertising we will gladly revenue share as well.

If you are interested or know somebody who is, let’s talk!