Sunday, October 29, 2006

Wow, it's been quite a week for me. I've put the finishing touches on our November 1st newsletter; brought our eductional & training CD Lessons inventory to up where it needs to be - since our Buy Two Get One Free Sale starts Tuesday and runs for two weeks - these mortgage lessons are always well received, especially during our annual Halloween Sale. Last year we ran out of a few lessons mid-sale, but got 'em out anyway, though it was hectic!

I have started to read and learn about RSS and added a feed to this blog (which I'm not all that sure I did correctly) and plan on adding an RSS feed to our newsletters as well, once I figure it out sufficiently, right now I know that I know just enough to still be materially ignorant on the subject.

And, our Boys from Oakland are now 2 and 5 -- I think they call that a winning streak! Two in a row.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

I haven't been feeling too well the last few days, I have good days and bad ones - been lucky I guess, since I had a few bad ones in a row! But, have been doing some reading about 'blogging for beginners' and I think my brain's going to explode!

There's loads of info out there telling me the who, what, where, when, and why on blogging. Had a long conversation with Doug, a real sharp guy His site is HERE and picked up some good info; from what I heard and saw on his site, I suggest you contact him (tell him I sent you!).

Been working on our November 1st newsletter these last couple of days. Our 3rd Annual Halloween Sale will be announced in that edition. Each year we run a 'Buy 2 get One Free' on our educational & training CD Lessons for 2 weeks. Be sure you get our Free newsletter and pick up a couple of them.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Where did username Secret! come from?

I got asked this question the other day, here's the story. Several years ago, the premiere industry publisher (people I have known for 3 decades) started a home-made discussion board, the Mortgage Grapevine was born with no bells and whistles; we all used our real names and employer names as well. I was a regular contributator there for several years (and at the time their longest running individual paid advertiser for 18 months as well), posted over 7,000 times. They quickly discovered real names was a mistake, since many people would post using the name of anoher, so they went to 'usernames.' Since this was my very first exposure to a discussion board, I thought I would be clever - so I selected Secret! (translation "who I am is none of your business"). At that time I thought it was pretty funny.

I developed a mortgage originator's website, and spoke about Internet originations openly there daily, all my stats etc. Many people back then, lived the experience through me (all the joys and all the mistakes), so I stated teaching a Live class on Websites & Internet Originations - after I had operated the website in the real world for 39 months. After a short while I retired from operations and decided to get my teaching credential and teach, then evolved that one class into a larger enterprise - now Secret! University.

Oh by the way, my Raiders WON!!! And did any of you see that hit the Colts quarterback took in the second quarter, looked like they snapped his spine to me - it was ugly.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

I'm in yet another debate on an industry discussion board about 'salesmen' loan officers ... "they" incorrecty believe it's a 'sales' job. Some days it seems like everybody who originates loans anymore, has no history or understanding on how this industry ran for many decades. I kinda think of it as the internet generation, 'QUICK' this and 'Quick' that, no time for anything except 'what can I do to put you into this loan today?' - "Closer' talk. And, everything surrounds how much commissions they earn. It seems they don't realize the job discription of a loan officer did not include Big Commissions or Sales before the beginning of this last cycle (Black Friday August 1998). With the advent of big commissions and sales into the industry entry level position of loan originator, 9 years ago, now the loan officer's commission interests tend to come before the interests of their customers. It's really all about credibility, have strong principals, Integrity, and behaving in an Ethical manner with customers -- who rally don't like dealing with a former used car salesmen (and his/her attitude) when it comes to the largest financial transaction in their lives. I feel like the only voice out there in the wilderness talking about these non-sales issues.

Grand-Daughter's soccer team WON yesterday One to Zero! They dominated the other team the entire day. It was a good day, Grandpa told her, 'better to win then lose huh honey?' ... she gave me a knowing nod.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

HOW CAN WE IMPROVE ?

I am hoping with this blog to discover and learn more about what our present and future students may want from Secret! U. I am trying to spark our small community of readers into conversation here. I want to have a conversation with you about how we can improve what we do and therefore make our offerings of materials and services more helpful, and therefore meaningful for your career. Your voice will be heard. Please 'comment' - Thanks.

Friday, October 20, 2006

I spend several hours weekly visiting a handful of industry discussion boards, and have done so for a few years now. I go to these 21st Century versions of the 'local pub' to keep myself up with what's on the minds of those that post; I learn a lot about the degree of industry training and education that's out there! I also learn from some of the answers that are given; the replies tell me almost as much as do some of the questions ... they keep me in-touch.

I receive a half dozen webmaster newsletters monthly, so I can have a hand into that industry as well, since websites are so very critical to our consumer residential real estate mortgage loan industry. I spotted some stats in one of them a couple of days ago - about discussion board visitors. These are the reasons that newsletter reported about why people frequent discussion boards: 78% - Meet people 47% - find entertainment 38% - learn something new 23% - influence others. Kinda fascinating.

By the way, if you're not a major league baseball fan, the league champion contests ar eover - the World Series starts tomorrow in Detroit 4:30PM (Pacific time).

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Gosh, I remember when I first went out on my own, had big dreams – no way was I going to operate a one-man company for long, I fancied myself as an empire builder. Studying and passing the test to get my own license was first on my list. I remember speaking with one landlord after another, to finally find one that would trust be enough to lease me office space, then I recall chocking on the reality of being on my own (not everybody is fit to be self-employed) - and having to sign a multi-year occupancy space lease (putting me in debt tens of thousands of dollars), then the joy of buying or leasing a $7,500 copier, and because I had no intention of staying small, lobby furniture, customer water cooler, coffee service, customer interviewing table, chairs etc. external & internal signage, I bought several desks, cement fire-safe filing cabinets, a telephone instrument system, office plants, pictures, chairs, wall clock, staplers, pencils, paperclips and all the other office supplies I imagined, fax machine, computers, and swallowing hard to hire (NON commissioned salaried personnel) where I got to pay the employer's share of payroll taxes plus their payroll whether or not loans were closing, of course talking real fast to influence wholesalers to take a chance with an unknown (me) and accept business from me, several told me nope! It all was a ‘barrier to entry’ I didn’t truly appreciate until years later (and I saw the riff-raff it kept out) … it all ran me (and others back then) somewhere between $10,000 and $30,000 to "go out on my own" and start my own little company.

Unlike today, where many are working in their jammies with the attached bunny feet, unshaven for days on end, out of a furnished 2 bedroom apartment, dealing with the single largest financial transaction most Americas ever face, which was (rightfully) not allowed then – however, all that jammed a commitment inside my brain to be a good industry citizen (if for no other reason but to protect my investment). Sometimes 'principals' are effected by what you have committed to an endeavor.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Again, my NFL Team punished me for being a loyal fan - today they're ZERO and 5. They really taught me a lesson, as I watched every minute of the game last night, one goof after another - they continue to look pretty good then they shot themselves in the foot, over and over.

For those of you that have seen my Resume (there's a link to it off our Mentor page on the main Secret! U website), you may have spotted my company and I were members of several trade associations over the years (it was smart business as I look back) - the absolute finest #1 Best one was always the Mortgage Bankers Association - a first class organization. Their conventions & expos always had vendor suppliers, who were first class - I learned a great deal attending their functions and walking the expo to see all the new things out there which I didn't yet know about.

MBA's 93rd Annual Convention & Expo is at the Hyatt Regency Chicago October 22-25 this year - I strongly urge all of you industry employed people to attend (NOT TO PLAY) but to Learn, this is one place to help your own career with perspectives, and education you may not have considered.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

I saw this nice little pieced the other day, about the cyclical nature of the industry and the correction we're experiencing - albeit it gently instead of crashing as I had predicted in several articles written for our newsletters and posted in several industry discussion boards earlier this year:

"The National Association of Realtors joins Alan Greenspan in saying "we think housing has now hit bottom." Why do they think it has hit bottom already? What kind of bottom is it that is less than 2% below the all-time high? What kind of world is that allows consumers, homeowners and speculators to go on the biggest, debt-fueled binge of all time pushing up housing so much that the typical house went up more than 50% in the last five years, and permitting Americans to 'take out' $1.3 trillion from their houses over a two-year period and then, when the bubble finally pops, punishes them with a decline of less than 2%? The median house in August was worth precisely 1.7% less than it was worth the year before." There's a definate sarcastic tone to this writers comment - but he's hit it right on the nose in my view!

The pendulum swong in the direction of hyper-inflation for residential real property values and at the same time mortgage interest rates took a nose-dive to all-time historical lows, while wholesale funding sources - on a greed binge - offered ever more reckless loan products (called "exotics"), all resulted in residential mortgage lending industry employments numbers to soar with hundreds of thousands of new commissioned salesmen, to well over 500,000, primarily being driven by the opportunity to make a lot of money (unlike previous cycles which attracted new people who were far more career minded), and therefore placing their own interests before those of their own customers; the net branch paradigm grew from nowhere to more than 20% of industry employed people (in my opinion), most with no investment in their branch or career, and all poking around in the unlicensed and unsupervised darkness, brutalizing one customer after another as they learned (from their kitchen table) by delivering punishing mistakes to customer dreams, time and time again. Results? A real mess. Loads of income earned by commissioned sales-types, a mega number of homeowners punished due to listening to many of them and accepting loan products offered which neither the loan officer nor the borrower understood - even though the borrowers thought their loan officer knew his/her own loan products (what they really understood was how to influence borrowers to selected the loan type that made them the most commisisons in far too many cases - can you say STATED/MARGIN/YSP?).

As this pendulum now swings back the other way, we're seeing home property values sinking and rates climbing. This is the fourth cycle I have seen, the early casualties tend to be those larger firms that grew the most during this period - they've had/have large overhead expenses - and now with production numbers sinking - they choke first.

The more nimble loan officers/mortgage brokers - who during this period did all they could not to invest in their own companies (as they should have), but instead withdrew the income out of the biz and plopped it into their own payroll; so today they continue to work out of their homes (sometimes in their jammies with bunny feet still attached) with little or no commercial business expenses or overhead (or assets either). They'll hang on the longest hoping the correction will be short lived, it won't ... it's gonna run a few years in this reversed direction, heading back to a more normal reality unlike the last 8 years or so of easy-times.

One early casualty NetBank Inc. sold $8.5 billion in mortgage servicing rights, according to an announcement Friday. The rights represented the majority of the company's MSRs. A more significant victim 'ECC Capital Corp' announced it will sell certain operating asset to Bear Stearns Residential Mortgage Corp. The assets are those used in ECC's subprime wholesale mortgage unit (Encore Credit). Bear was both warehousing and buying loans from the non-depository subprime firm. Sometime in the past there were loan "buyback" issues between the two parties, but a spokeswoman for Bear has said the matter was settled long ago. Golden West Financial, parent of World Savings, one of the last of the Savings & Loans -- and a payment-option ARM giant -- has been swallowed up by Wachovia Corp. Late this past week, Centex, which recently sold its subprime unit, reported a 28% drop in orders and a huge uptick in home purchase cancellations. Two more subprime firms going ... Morgan Stanley initiated coverage of Accredited Home Lenders, calling the subprime company an "underweight." Accredited recently saw its loan buyback requests surge. Morgan, of course, is in the process of buying Saxon Capital, which is also a subprime funder.

These are merely a small handful of what's to come, I predict probably another 2 dozen wholesale funding sources will be gone before end of the first quarter 2007; plus another 100,000 LO's and Brokers will also be gone.

Friday, October 13, 2006

This news piece came to my attention yesterday, it hits home quite squarely: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-10-internet-defamation-case_x.htm ... I think it's good there's interest in this potentially harmful area. Based upon what I have seen on the Internet, some calm measured hand needs to be inserted here and there frequently; some people do go too far.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Naturally, everybody had a great time yesterday at the 'Happiest Place on Earth' - loads of goodies and plenty to eat too!


The last month or so we've been getting more inquiries about our Mentor Program at Secret! University, than I can remember in recent years. Maybe our website visitors, have figured out it's the most flexible program we have. Since between our Mentors and myself, we've easily got the 'horsepower' to help anyone with virtually anything they want to accomplish in the industry.

Our most recent student is just now starting his own mortgage brokerage operation and wanted some one-on-one training on doing mailers. One of our Mentor/teachers I happen to know specializes in that particular avenue of marketing, so we had a nice match to help him out.

Currently I am mentoring a husband and wife team (who are 8 year experienced wholesale AE's from Florida) and wanted step by step direction on starting up their own retail store-front mortgage brokerage company. This has helped them shave off several months of stumbling and wasted money while getting all set-up and ready to go. They also signed up for our Internet & Website Originations class, so they flew out here to Southern California for that one day class, and I had the pleasure to meet them face to face.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006


Today my twin grandsons Jack and Jason, who 22 months ago were born premature, and today both look like NFL defensive guards with the bald heads and everything, are going to Disneyland with their big sister (5 year old Kristin), also with my Daughter-in-law and their Grandma. I told grandma, to be sure she picks up Mickey Mouse ears for the boys from Grandpa, and some Tinkerbell stuff for our Grand-Daughter Kristin... and of course buy all the food they can eat!


This next Saturday is the Season Opener for the Soccer year and my oldest Grand-Daughter's first game of the Fall, can't wait to see her. My oldest Son tells me she's pretty good too!

In industry news today, I see Encore Credit is selling off it's money losing wholesale division to one of the Wall Street players -- surprises me, since it was started by several of the former heavy-weights from New Century, and they started off with a bang! Maybe it was the bad Wall Street advise they got to become a REIT, that was the nail in their coffin.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

One of the many industry publications I regularly read, the National Mortgage News (formerly National Threift News), had a piece this week on one of the title insurance companies here in California and their troubles with RESPA; this article is only one of probably one dozen or more I have noticed over the last two or 3 months about title insurance companies getting in trouble for some of their marketing (kickback/referral) activities. The tone of those I have spotted, seem to be somewhat shocked that these firms normally violate 'Section 8', in order to get new customer orders!

What surprises me, is that the authorities rarely utilize previous industry experienced people (who have seen it for years) to help them. Title reps have historically (I define 'historically' by the length of my own 40+ years lending career) have provided kickbacks for business, since as far back as I can remember! The RESPA Police busting them in 2006 comes as no shock to me, other than they should have gone after them decades ago.

Monday, October 09, 2006

This was a terrible week-end for the sports teams I follow. My Raiders, now 0/4, looked better then previous games this season ... however.

Our Dodger's missed their opportunity this season, at this last game our future hall of fame pitcher didn't show up to pitch, instead this evil- twin 'Lester' was pitched instead and looked weak, my buddies Kenny & Raffie (center fielder and short-stop)were off as well ... well, there's always next year.

Friday, October 06, 2006

I'm pretty happy about the results (after only one week since we sent it) of readership of our latest free monthly newsletter. In the past three or 4 editions I have experimented with adding a small handful of news pieces in the newsletter, instead of just my own take on industry relevant issues, as I had been doing for the previous 30+ issues.

In this October 2006 edition I plugged in pieces by two of our faculty members, and they have received a pleasing number of click-thrus - so next month and December as well, I'm lining up other faculty member/Mentors to write a little something (their own individual opinions on this or that industry issue). I feel this broader perspective, which included some news articles as well, will have a broader appeal to our readership.

Our newsletter reach is 52,149 people, to date we have a very respectable 'read-rate' of 37.3% - when most newsletters I understand come in in their low 20's.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Along with several of our faculty members at Secret! University, I recently finished our most comprehensive and far reaching mortgage lesson and designation program - Certified Mortgage Professional (CMP) after quite a bit of research on the internet, looking at what other similar programs are like. I found the National Mortgage Broker's trade association and handful of individual State association also have a CMP designation available through them. What they have in common seems to be a reliance on input from the candidate as the measuring stick they use to award their designation; I wanted ours to be better. I wanted ours to be something a graduate will be proud of; with the others the candidiate submits letters from current employer, an up to date resume and an assertion of knowledge, years on the job, etc.

Our is all about passing a strict test, based upon a training lesson that accompanies the program. This way, we know a CMP from Secret! University actually IS a Mortgage Professional, and knows a great deal about a wide-ranging amount of industry relevant information. We've only launched it week before last; however based upon the number of specific page views of the program - http://americasmoneycenter.com/certifiedmortgageprofessional.htm - I see a great deal of interest so far. I mentally wrestled with myself over the final tuition/fee for this program, more than I have with other materials and services we offer - I think I've settled on a reasonable number.
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