Archive for Published Articles
Orange County Foreclosures Drop
Orange County home foreclosures declined significantly this spring, with some economists and home financing analysts speculating that most risky mortgage loans have worked their way through the system and the housing market may bottom by year end. However, home financing advisor and Kelly Media Group founder, Jason Cardiff reminded us that “Orange County was the epic center for option ARM loan also know as 1% negative amortization loans.” Cardiff said in a recent article that “We are not out of the woods until the neg ams and exotic mortgages disappear. Banks seized 42 properties in the second quarter in Santa Ana’s 92701, which had the county’s highest ratio of foreclosures to existing homes at 8 per 1,000. Yet the 42 foreclosures represented a 65 % drop from a year ago. More examples: Buena Park’s 90620 saw foreclosures drop 57 % to 29 homes seized. In Costa Mesa’s 92627 they dropped 37 % to 22, and in Ladera Ranch’s 92694, foreclosures dropped 40 % to 30. Yet experts say government intervention has played a role in the declines. Read the original Jason Cardiff article at > Foreclosures Drop in Orange County
Jason Cardiff Marketing Tips for SEO
Read the latest Make a Statement with Headlines
The header statement is arguably the most important piece of text in your direct mail letter or advert. It will grab the reader’s attention and encourage them to read the rest of your copy. Web visitors like details, but they love benefits. Give them a reason to do business with you or buy your product or service.
Call to Action
What do you want your website visitors and readers to do? Read the Original 3 Direct Marketing Tips for SEO
Voice Broadcasting for Increasing Leads and Sales
In a recent article, Christine Harrell writes about the benefits that voice broadcasting can have for boosting sales and leads.
Using Voice Broadcasting to Boost Sales Leads
Every type of business is best suited for different type of lead generation. For many businesses such as real estate agents, college loan refinancing lenders, landscaping companies, and more, cold calling is undeniably effective. No matter how many business owners and self employed people cringe at the thought of making cold calls, they work incredibly well in generating leads.
Sidestepping the hassle of cold calling
A little known and highly effective solution to the many hurdles of cold calling is voice broadcasting. Voice broadcasting allows you to prerecord a message that will be delivered to your targeted call list through a completely automated process. Sending your marketing message through voice broadcasting eliminates the discomfort of a cold call while still achieving the same highly effective results.
Lead generation is a numbers game
Even for those who enjoy reaching out to new customers, cold calling is incredibly time consuming. Generating leads is a numbers game: the more you reach out, the more leads you will make. Using voice broadcasting, you can set aggressive business goals without hiring an army of people to generate qualified leads.
Set new leads goals based on your call success ratio
If your goal is to generate 50 new sales leads per week and you know that you have a call success rate of 1 in 30, you can consistently reach your goals. Simply multiply the 50 leads you desire by the 30 calls it takes to gain one lead (50×30=1500 calls) and let your automated voice broadcasting message do the work.
Creating an effective voice broadcasting campaign
Your success ratio depends on the quality of your voice broadcast. When creating your voice broadcasting message, keep these tips and ideas in mind:
· Sound natural: The key to a voice broadcast is to engage the caller immediately and this is best done by using a natural phone voice. When a recipient thinks they’ve received a faceless automated machine, they have a tendency to tune out. When people sense sincerity in the voice and message, they tend to listen.
· Introduce yourself: Give your name at in the first line of the call to further personalize the experience.
· Speak in terms of customer benefits: When creating your message, speak in terms of how the recipient will directly benefit from your product or service. For example, instead of saying “our current home loans rates are 5.2%,” try “the average Californian saves over $7,000 per year by switching to our low interest home loan.”
· Get right to the point: State the benefit to customer very early on in the call. The sooner they understand how they will benefit, the more open they will be to your message.
· Entice the customer to find out more: Don’t reveal everything in your voice broadcast message. Instead, entice prospects with the most interesting and beneficial points and encourage them to take an action to find out more. Encouraging a prospect to make the next move is a critical step in turning a prospect into a client.
· Include a call to action: Decide on the precise action you want the caller to take after hearing your message and ask them to take the action throughout and/or at the end of the call. The action may be to call your direct line within the next 24 hours or fill out a form on your website.
For those who have never tried cold calling because of fear, doubt, or time constraints, voice broadcasting is the solution for eliminating all of cold callings most unattractive points while still reaping the full lead generating potential. The cost of a voice broadcast is miniscule compared with the cost of live personnel, but can achieve the results of an unlimited sized call center. By using these few tips and ideas, you can easily build a marketing campaign to drastically boost your sales leads.
Author is a writer for Unix USA which specializes in fax broadcasting and generating sales leads. For additional information about these services you can visit http://www.unixusa.net. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christine_Harrell
Jobless Rate in Western US States Rises Above 10 Percent
Over the years the unemployment rate has been a key indicator for measuring the US economy. However theses numbers are easily scewed and remember self employed people who are out of work are not factored into this number.
The AP reported unemployment rate in the West jumped over 10% last month, the first time that regional threshold has been broken in about 25 years. On the state level, eight set record-highs and only two Nebraska and Vermont did not report increases.
The Labor Department reported Friday that 48 states and the District of Columbia saw employment conditions deteriorate last month. The fallout from the longest recession since World War II, was the worst in Michigan as automakers cut tens of thousands of jobs. Its unemployment rate rose to 14.1%.
The West region reported the highest jobless rate at 10.1%. The last time any region had a rate of at least 10% was September 1983, when the country was emerging from a severe recession. The region is home to California, where the jobless rate rose to a record 11.5 % last month, Nevada, where it’s a record 11.3%, and other states that have been slammed when the housing boom went bust snatching jobs and wealth.
The Dept. of Housing and Urban Development recently released an important FHA Mortgagee Letter that is imperative for mortgage brokers, lenders and finance companies that plan to see FHA loans in their future. In an effort to protect the public trust and the FHA Insurance Fund, HUD is enforcing that mortgagees are accountable for their lending practices. FHA expects each mortgagee to exercise the same level of care in originating, underwriting and servicing an FHA insured home loan as it would for home financing in which the mortgagee would be entirely dependent on the property as security to protect its investment. When a mortgagee fails to comply with HUD’s policies and procedures, HUD will take the appropriate action. For example, brokers or lenders that materially violate FHA program statutes, regulations and handbook requirements may be referred to the Mortgagee Review Board for appropriate sanctions, which may include termination of mortgagee approval. HUD believes that many lenders have not lived up to the ethic codes and high standards required with FHA underwriting guidelines. HUD believes that many FHA lenders have not lived up to the ethic codes and high standards required with FHA underwriting guidelines. That could become a problem because home mortgages that do not meet FHA mortgage lending standards to the letter are likely to result in foreclosure or a home loan default that cause FHA insurance to rise. Assistant Secretary for Housing, Brian D. Montgomery recommends that if you have questions regarding this Mortgagee Letter, please call the FHA Resource Center at 1-800-CALL-FHA (1-800-225-5342). Read the complete FHA lending article > FHA Mortgage Loans Update with New HUD Rules for Lenders.HUD Updates FHA Mortgage Letter and Cracks Down on Lenders
Does Credit Report Study by FICO Consider the High Cost Regions?
The father company that created credit scores, FICO released new results of a credit line study measuring the breadth of credit card limit reductions as well as the subsequent impact to consumer’s FICO credit scores. The study is the first of its kind since credit card issuers began to heavily ramp up their credit limit reduction activity in early 2008. Let’s consider some note-worthy points of the credit report study by FICO: 16% of the U.S population had their overall available revolving credit reduced between April and October of 2008. With credit bureau databases holding 200+ million consumer credit files, this would seem to indicate that at least 32 million cardholders lost some of their credit limits during the study timeframe of April 2008 through October 2008.
Bad credit mortgage options remained non-existent for struggling homeowners seeking home refinancing with fixed rates and lower loan payments. Millions of homeowners have been turned down by mortgage lenders across the country, because of low credit scores, delinquent mortgages, negative equity or employment instability. Some homeowners may qualify for loan modification plans if they happen to have their mortgage collateralized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. However, only conforming home mortgages qualify for the federal mortgage modification program. Jumbo home loans do not qualify for a federal or FHA mortgage that ensures foreclosure prevention through a loan workout or mortgage refinance loan.
According to FICO, “Credit utilization rate has proven to be extremely predictive of future repayment risk, so it is often an important factor in a consumer’s credit score. Credit holding companies started taking a pro-active approach to borrowers who access a significant proportion of their credit available because they are much more likely to default on their credit card terms with debt settlement, credit counseling or bankruptcy. However people maintaining lower credit utilization levels whose credit cards and home equity lines of credit are not maxed out are much more likely to continue making their credit debt payments as agreed.
5 % of the population, or 10 million consumers, saw their limits reduced because of some sort of risky credit activity including late payments, accounts in collections, or a negative public record added on their credit reports. The credit score decrease is likely due in part to an increased credit utilization percentage, while the score increase is likely due to the reduction of credit card balances. News reports also indicated that the home loan defaults and credit card debt negotiations have caused the credit repair industry to explode.
Read the complete credit report article > Thousands of Credit Card Consumers Report Credit Line Reductions in 2008.
Outside of the Advertisement Thought
Why should it be accepted that the only way to generate revenue for your site is to bombard your audience with ads that your audience eventually ignores? Far too often, publishers have come to the conclusion that making money has to come at the cost of compromising user experience. The crafty publisher has realized this and embraced new forms of monetizing their traffic that their audience actually welcomes.
Free offers such as free magazines subscriptions, white papers, free downloads for trials for software, podcasts and webinars have proven to be an extremely lucrative way for publishers to not only generate an incremental revenue stream, but also reward their visitors for their continued support. Tapping into human nature and the impulse of requesting something that is free has turned the traditional revenue generation model on its head for many publishers.
Gone are the days where you constantly have to rely on selling your audience something or sending them to a site that’s only going to ask for their credit card shortly after visiting. Think about it…giving your audience a free subscription to Oracle Magazine or sending them over to Amazon to buy a book on Oracle. What do you think would perform better?
The conversion rates on free products are statistically off the charts in comparison to traditional commerce/transactional based affiliate programs. While many publishers realize this to be the case, they struggle to find ways to monetize free content efficiently. Read the full article> Article was written by David Fortino for NetLine. Get more financing and investing tips at tips online.
Keeping the Feds Out of the Banking Business
Take a look at this Video from Forbes reinforcing and emphasizeding that the US government needs to oavoid nationalizing banks.
Steve Forbes Video Keep Feds Out of Banking Business
Chairman, CEO of Forbes and Forbes magazine editor-in-chief Steve Forbes says the government should stay out of the banking business.
Fed Chief Considers Lessons of First Great Depression for Capitalism Survival
Watch the Federal Reserve Chief, Ben Bernanke as he reviews the mistakes made in the First Great Depression. Bernanke takes a question from Arnaud de Borchgrave about whether capitalism has failed. Borchgrave asks the Fed Chief if they have become a casino, divorced from productive activity with social utility.
Fed Chief Bernanke Considers the Great Depression
Bernanke analyzes the Great Depression, but does not criticize the casino aspects of Credit Default Swaps that led to the current situation. It seems obvious that the financial sector is a large machine with nothing real to invest in, as the real economy has been destroyed or off shored so the financial class are left to invent artificial ‘innovations’ aka derivatives that sucker in investors to invest in things of no real productive value, aka financial weapons of mass destruction. Watch more videos on
When it was passed last year as part of the FHA reform package, the Hope for Homeowners program was a federal mortgage refinancing plan designed to help some 400,000 people who now have toxic loans. In fact, the program has been a complete bust. As of January 31st, HUD figures show that there have been 465 Hope for Homeowners applications — and not one approval from the government. Hope for Homeowners has gone nowhere because it’s complex. It requires lenders to take a loss and borrowers to share profits and make big payments to Uncle Sam. While the intention is good, the program is just too complex to succeed. Now we find an effort to revamp the Hope for Homeowners program and the betting here is that few FHA loans will result.Is the FHA Planning to Penalize Borrowers?
Under H.R. 1106: The Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009, the program will become MORE restrictive if the legislation passes as it is now written. Huh? How can that help anyone?
Once again, the intention is good but the result is doomed to failure. For instance, the legislation requires that a borrower does not “intentionally defaulted on the existing FHA home loans or mortgages.”
Translation: If you’re stuck in an over-priced house you can’t buy a replacement home and then default on house #1. This seems logical, except that when someone applies to buy that second home they have not yet defaulted on the first house. If default comes at all, it will come later.
Here’s another one: You can’t get a Hope for Homeowners loan if you have “knowingly, or willfully and with actual knowledge, furnished material information known to be false for the purpose of obtaining the eligible mortgage to be insured.”
What’s remarkable about this section is that it ought to apply to all loans. The simple solution here is to require that EVERY home loan applications must be fully documented. That’s the case with FHA mortgage applications and one reason the program is successful. If a borrower can’t come up with some tax returns and proof of employment and income why would you give that person several hundred thousand dollars? It makes no sense.
However, my favorite section goes like this: “BAN ON MILLIONAIRES — The mortgagor shall not have a net worth, as of the date the mortgagor first applies for a mortgage to be insured under the Program under this section, that exceeds $1,000,000.” I’m not making this up. The home financing bill would actually ban financially-strong borrowers from the program. Now — just thinking out loud here — wouldn’t it make sense to get borrowers with a net worth of $1 million or more to participate in the program? You know, folks who might pay their bills and, if they don’t, could be sued by the government for any shortfall?
Read the complete article > Should We Ban Millionaire Borrowers?
