Most advertising tells you how great the company paying for the ad is, or how old they are, or how they are # 1 or some other cute and uninteresting facts. This is called Institutional Advertising. The way it is used by most people is a pure waste of time. It doesn't give any good reason for the
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11/30/2010
One discount that shoppers should think twice about is the popular “Open A Charge Card, Save 20%” promotion. The short-term savings may be tempting, but the long-term costs may be huge. It’s because of how credit scores work. “New credit” accounts for 85 out of 850 possible credit scoring points
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11/30/2010
Hey guys, I heard a great saying today, "Make a friend first, make a sale later." What a great concept. Join groups where you have similar interests - gardening, travel, motorcycles, etc. and make friends there. Then intertwine what you do in the conversation - "I have a great house for sale tha
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11/29/2010
It's been quite some time since my last post on Active Rain. Going forward, I intend to be a more active participant of this great site for real estate professionals. There are many great professionals whom I have great respect for who have left the mortgage business for greener pastures. By s
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09/15/2010
For people trying to time the mortgage market for the best rate, clues about the future of mortgage rates may be at the local gas station. Rising gas prices are indicative of the rising cost of energy and, indeed, crude oil appears to be on a continual rise upward. As these energy costs grow, s
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06/12/2009
The Pareto Principle is a statistical concept most commonly known as the 80/20 Rule. It says 80 percent of the effects come from 20 of the causes. Apparently, the 80/20 Rule applies to foreclosures, too -- at least according to data compiled by foreclosure-tracking firm RealtyTrac. Based on dat
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06/12/2009
Tighter mortgage guidelines since late-2008 are forcing home buyers to make bigger downpayments. Anecdotally, the change has led to a surge in buyers taking gifts of cash from family members. If you're among those accepting a cash gift from family, it's important to know that you can't just dep
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06/12/2009
Since Memorial Day, conforming mortgage rates have jumped by more than 1.125 percent, adding thousands of dollars to the annual cost of homeownership. To the casual observer, the moves may seem random. There's a reason this is happening, however. It starts with inflation. As an economic force,
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06/12/2009
Shopping for low mortgage rates is a game of luck. Some days, mortgage rates are favorable. Other days, they're not. And while you can sometimes make an educated guess about where rates might be headed, you're not always going to guess right. Even the experts get it wrong more often than they
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04/22/2009
Since 2007, foreclosures have dominated real estate news. You can't turn on the news or open a paper without some foreclosure-related story. But for all of the discussion, foreclosures continue to be geographically concentrated. Adding up the latest stats from RealtyTrac.com, more than half o
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04/22/2009