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Snapshot of Federal Reserve Website on April 19, 2011 What is the Federal Reserve? Its the central bank of the United States of America. What does the Federal Reserve do? It provides the United States of America with a safe, flexible, monetary and financial system. How does the Federal Reserve provide the nation . . . → Read More: US Federal Reserve Wins The New Nobel Prize For Comedy Real Estate Appraisal GuidelinesThe Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of Thrift Supervision and the National Credit Union Administration released the new guidelines for home appraisals. A copy of the guidelines document is available for download from the News and Issuances tab of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency website.
Some real estate brokerages own their title companies and they try to steer → continue reading Dirty Home Appraisals Before signing a Home Purchase Agreement or Contract Form, home buyers may be strongly urged by a real estate agent and/or home mortgage lender that the buyer will need a pre-approval letter from the lender. This is a common practice in the self serving and closed looped real industry where a large group eats out of the same trough. The apparent advantage is that the home buyer can show the home seller that they are more likely to be able to buy the house, even though the pre-approval letter offers no guarantee. Further, the pre-approval letter information will also provide the real estate agent clues regarding the highest price the home buyer might be willing to pay for the home. Since the real estate agent’s commission is directly proportional to the home selling price, the agent might have an incentive to drag this selling price higher. The real estate agent works for the real estate broker and therefore has fiduciary responsibility to the employer, the real estate broker. Therefore obtaining a pre-approval letter is a disadvantage to the home buyer. → continue reading Home Purchase Agreement or Contract Form: Preapproval Letter What is a Standard Home Purchase Agreement (or Contract) Form?I don’t think there is any such thing as a Standard Home Purchase Agreement (or Contract) Form. When a home buyer in the Cleveland, Ohio area (a similar practice might be prevalent in other areas) is ready to make a purchase offer to a home seller, a real estate agent, may present to the home buyer, a Home Purchase Agreement (or Contract) Form, which the agent may refer to as the “Standard” Urban Institute’s publication titled, Reforming the Mortgage Interest Deduction by Eric Toder, Margery Austin Turner, Katherine Lim, Liza Getsinger suggests that
Henry Paulson, former US Treasury Secretary, recommends that → continue reading Reduced Mortgage Interest Deduction (MID) coming? The City of Solon Planning Commission is discussing an ordinance proposal which will require that owners or agents obtain Occupancy Permit for rental units.  Signature of Solon Golf Community Subdivision A Signature of Solon resident approached City of Solon Planning Commission and stated that she believes there have been builders in the Signature of Solon neighborhood who have built homes and rented them prior to obtaining an occupancy permit. Additionally, many Signature of Solon model homes were built but not sold and have become rental properties. Many of these Signature of Solon rental homes are neglected and improperly maintained which is damaging to the Signature of Solon community. → continue reading Signature of Solon rental properties cause concern  Mammon, the God of Subprime Lending The following is the testimony of Patricia Lindsay for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Hearing on April 7, 2010: Credit, Collateral, Capacity and CharacterThank you for inviting me to speak this afternoon. My hope for today’s session is that I give you a unique perspective into Subprime lending. I know I was not alone in not understanding the steadily increasing risks taken in the years before my employer New Century Financial Corp. stopped making loans in March of 2007. I grew up in the real estate business where my father was a Broker and a hard money lender. A hard money loan is a short term loan to a borrower who has a significant amount of equity in the property and cannot qualify for a traditional bank loan. I became an Account Executive at Beneficial Mortgage the end of 1996. Beneficial was one of the original subprime lenders who held their loans in their portfolio rather than selling them. There were a lot of similarities between Beneficial and my experience with hard money lending, Beneficial and the various hard money lenders with whom I worked were very aligned in their thought process on how to evaluate a loan. We had three things that we used to evaluate a loan; Credit, Collateral and Capacity. We would look at these three C’s and if any were lacking, like credit, a borrower better have some compensating factors, like great collateral. There was a fourth C, character, that went missing when → continue reading The nature of subprime mortgage lending |
 I am a Civil Engineer from Louisiana State University. The compound word, Americaneer, is a combination of the words, American and Engineer. |
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I call it the Standard Home Purchase Contract for Sheeple. This contract form may be a rudimentary real estate document authored by a local real estate body or group. It does not mean that the home buyer (or the home seller) is legally required to use this so called Standard Home Purchase Agreement (or Contract) Form. Make no mistake when it comes to this form; this document is arguably the most important document in the arduous home purchase process. I have two words regarding this Standard Home Purchase Agreement, BUYER BEWARE. In my opinion, this standard contract strongly favors the home seller; it shields everyone but the home buyer.