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Archive for January, 2010
Five Easy Steps to owning your new home
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Five Easy Steps to Owning Your Own
1. (60-40 Days From Closing) The Pre-qualification Process
2. (40-30 Days From Closing) Make The Offer To Purchase
3. (30-25 Days From Closing) Acceptance Of The Offer
4. (25-5 Days From Closing) Meeting All Deadlines
5. (5 Days From Closing) Last Minute Details
1. (60-40 Days From Closing) Begin
The Pre-qualification Process
This is an excellent time to begin the pre-qualification process. Pre-qualifying can mean several things depending on the lender that you choose, but generally it involves knowing the following points- the area you want to live, the type of home you want, and the loan best fits your financial needs.
Many lenders will pre-qualify you for free. A simple call, with no obligation will allow you to know the type of loan that is best for you. There are hundreds of loans available, so you should know your best options. The lender will also ask if they can pull your credit report. This report will alert the lender to any problems. If you’ve experienced any financial difficulties (many of us have), you should explain that to the lender so they can provide the best alternatives for you. Next, the lender will most likely ask you a number of questions regarding other things about your life such as employment history, saving habits, marital status, ownership of additional properties, and many other questions to help them determine your ability to repay the loan. This is standard procedure in the mortgage process, so please don’t be alarmed.
The following are some additional questions a lender might ask:
Are you a first time homebuyer?
-A first time homebuyer has not owned a home in the last three years or is a recently divorced homemaker. Why is this important? Because there are many programs that require a lower down payment, provide a lower interest rate, or even provide down payment and closing cost assistance to new homebuyers.
Are you a Veteran?
-Many Veterans qualify for a special VA loan that requires no down payment! In most cases, it is easier to qualify for a VA loan. So, why not use this special benefit?
Psychology and Mortgage Marketing
Posted by: | CommentsPsychology and Mortgage Marketing
Have you ever heard someone refer to sales and marketing as both an art and a science? It’s easy to dismiss such a statement without really diving into the true meaning behind the words. With all the smoke and mirrors and disinformation on the market today, it’s easy to view sales as this mystical beast that can never be conquered.
While it’s true that no one can close 100% of the people 100% of the time; if you contemplate the science behind the sales process, you can most definitely tip the odds strongly in your favor.
A great place to start is the brain. (This is going to be fun) The sheer amount of data that must be processed each and every second of your day is staggering. Your mind is assaulted with visual input, audio input, touch, smell and so forth.
How big is this item in front of you - is it a danger? What color is it? What direction is it headed? Is that a baby crying in the distance? Wow I love that song I hear coming from that car as it drives by… It goes on and on.
In addition to the flood of sensory input entering your brain, the average consumer is also hit with thousands of sales messages every day. Thousands… Billboards, radio ads, Gas station signs, television commercials, spam, banner ads, pop-ups, the list is endless. If you had to consciously consider the relevance of each of those advertisements, how much time would you have left in your day?
Not much! So what happens, is your brain has created a rating system, or filter if you will, that helps place a level of importance on specific activities and input. For example, if you received an email right now that contained the subject line: “This is very important!” would you be concerned? If it was from an unknown person, and likely a piece of spam, you would delete it.
Now, if a family member called you up, or even sent you an email with the same line, how important would that email be? You would instantly recognize this email as urgent, and open it right away. Let’s stop here for a moment.
In the above scenario, did you even have to think about what course of action you would take? No, you didn’t ponder the situation, and think to yourself “Hmmmm… I wonder if this is important?” No, you simply took action.
This happens because your brain has assigned family as important, and will instantly give priority to anything of concern relating to family.
So why is this important to a loan officer or real estate agent? Because somewhere buried within each of your prospects is a list of buttons that are also labeled as “important.” Each one of his has specific topics that will cause us to sit up and take notice. Have you ever seen a formerly dull or quiet individual open up and blossom when speaking about something he/she is passionate about?
The key is to stop marketing or selling your services the same way your competitors are. Instead, take a look at a list of core values that your ideal client is likely to have, and build your script, marketing campaign, and follow up messages around these core values.
Richard Simpson
770-623-6341
http://atlantahomesaleshelp.com
Definitions of Federal Reserve Board terms
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- Image via Wikipedia
Definitions of Federal Reserve Board terms
Here is a glossary that defines the terms and the players in the interest-rate drama.
DISCOUNT RATE – The interest rate that the Fed charges banks to borrow reserves from the Fed. The Federal Reserve wants to be the lender of last resort, meaning that banks borrow reserves from the Fed when it is impractical to borrow from other banks.
EFFECTIVE FEDERAL FUNDS RATE – The average interest rate which federal funds actually trade at in a day. The federal funds rate will remain stable for months at a time, but the effective rate is a volatile one that will vary every business day.
FEDERAL FUNDS RATE – A target interest rate for banks borrowing reserves among themselves. It is set by the Federal Open Markets Committee.
FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD, OR THE FED – Congress
founded the Federal Reserve Board, the central bank of the United States, in 1913. It conducts the nation’s monetary policy and regulates its banks in order to achieve a flexible and stable economy. The seven members of the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve System are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate to serve 14-year terms. The chairman of the Board of Governors is Alan Greenspan. The chairman and the vice chairman of the board are named by the president from among the members and are confirmed by the Senate. They serve a term of four years.
FEDERAL OPEN MARKETS COMMITTEE – This 12-member committee, chaired by Alan Greenspan, meets eight times a year to set guidelines for the Federal Reserve regarding the sale and purchase of government securities in the open market. Its chief importance for consumers is that the FOMC can adjust the federal funds rate and the federal discount rate. Banks set their rates based on the
FOMC’s, and therefore the committee’s actions effectively ratchet consumer interest rates upward or downward. The committee is comprised of the seven members of the Board of Governors; the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and four of the presidents of the other 11 reserve banks.
GREENSPAN, ALAN – Chairman of the Fed’s Board of
Governors since 1987; his current four-year term will end June 20, 2004. Greenspan also chairs the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s principal monetary policymaking body. Greenspan was born on March 6, 1926, in New York City and holds a doctoral degree in economics from New York University.
INFLATION - Inflation is caused when too many dollars chase after too few goods. In an inflationary period, it takes more money to buy goods or services than it used to. The Fed raises rates to keep inflation in check.
PRIME RATE – The rate that banks charge their best customers. It is also the linchpin that connects the Fed’s actions to consumers. Here’s why: Many consumer loans — including credit cards, home equity loans and home equity lines of credit — are tied in some way to the prime rate. When it changes, so do the interest rates consumers must
pay. When the FOMC raises the federal funds rate and federal discount rate, banks typically raise their prime rates by the same amount within 24 hours.
RECESSION – Usually defined as two successive quarters in which economic activity shrinks. When the economy slows to the point where a recession becomes a threat, the Fed responds by cutting interest rates
Richard Simpson
770-623-6341
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Top 5 e-Mail Marketing Tasks for success
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Pondering my e-Mail Marketing
Are your mailings doing as well as they could be?
Probably not, based on a recent survey of the FeedBlitz database (see results below).
Why is that?
Well, to get the best value from your blog, your mailings and your mailing list you need to bring together multiple factors to persuade your subscribers to stay engaged, open your message, and interact with it.
This is true whether you’re using FeedBlitz’s automated social media marketing (blog to mail, twitter, instant messenger etc.) or your own in-house solution. Once you have the email delivered to the subscriber’s inbox, you still have to get them to take the next step and open it, read it and interact with it. At each of these steps, though, you risk losing the reader or – worse – earning a quick trip to the trash folder.
Top 5 Essential Tasks
So how do you minimize these risks and boost your mailing’s effectiveness? Simple, really: With these basic five tasks:
- Identify Yourself
- Brand Your Mailings
- Tweet the Word
- Say Thank You
- Write Great Content
Well, OK, what do these mean in practice? And how do you make them happen in FeedBlitz?
Identify Yourself
When your mail turns up in your recipient’s in box, is it obviously from you? Putting your name (or your company or brand name) as the sender is an essential step in the recipient recognizing that the mail is, in fact, from you. This means that your mailing is much more likely to be opened in those crucial first seconds when the subscriber gets it.
All FeedBlitz publishers can set this for their mailings at Newsletters / Settings / Email Envelope Settings.
Brand Your Mailings
Once the mail is opened, does it reinforce your brand? Or, at least, does it look like the way you want it to?
If your blog, brand name or logo isn’t at the top left of the email when it’s opened then you’re missing an opportunity to reinforce your branding and further encourage the recipient to read on. This is especially true for email read on mobile platforms – give your recipient a chance to recognize your brand without having to scroll the screen.
FeedBlitz mailing list owners can upload logos and other artwork and use it to quickly build a branded mailing at Newsletters / Settings / Easy Email Design Editor. More advanced users can dive into HTML using the advanced template editor.
Tweet The Word
Get your mailings onto Twitter where it will reach your most ardent and sophisticated social media audience – as well as be picked up by real-time search engines, including Google now.
You can get your word out quickly and to a wider audience than your traditional mailing list this way. It’s trivial to set up at Newsletters / Mailings / Twitter
Say Thank You
Seems basic, doesn’t it? When a subscription is activated, let your new subscribers know you care – or reward them with a free white paper, report or coupon. Such event-driven mailings are called “autoresponders” and can be simple one-shot deals (e.g. sending a “thank you for subscribing” message) to multi-step drip marketing sequences or email courses.
Set these up at FeedBlitz using the Responders tab (or read on for an easy way to create a single step “thank you” autoresponder).
Write Great Content
Ok, this part’s up to you! But if you’re blogging for fun, family or business you’re probably already doing that. Right? Right! But… are you reaching everyone you could? There’s an extra task here that you might want to consider.
You’re using FeedBlitz to automate both production and distribution of your mailings, so think about importing opted-in subscribers from other services via Newsletters / Subscribers / Import Subscribers (we’ll validate them with an opt out mailing if your import passes our other anti-abuse policies).
That’s the Theory – But in the Real World…
The thing about all these tasks is that while each takes only a matter of seconds to a couple of minutes to do each task, most publishers haven’t done any for their lists. And that means that they’re not making nearly the most of marketing services like FeedBlitz and that your list is potentially underperforming.
In fact, we ran a report on the FeedBlitz database last week. Including the import task, we wanted to know how well our users where using our service.
Scary stuff.
- Fully 85% of our lists haven’t done anything beyond our default settings. No customization, branding, importing, tweeting.
- 8.6% had just one of these tasks completed.
- 3.9% had finished two, 2.0% had finished three best practice tasks, and only 0.3% had done four.
- And the percentage with all these Good Things done? 0.02%
Yet all these features are readily available to all. So how can we help you use them?
Encouraging Best Practice
Now to be fair, some of the features that we’re talking about didn’t exist at FeedBlitz in the early days. Since the beauty of FeedBlitz is that it automates the mailing tasks and pretty much just works, once it’s been set up there’s no compelling reason to keep coming back unless it’s for reporting or to run an import.
But still – it seems there’s a lot of room for improvement. And since we’re here to help, here’s what we’ve done.
When you come back to your newsletters tab, you’ll find a new “Best Practices” task list sitting atop your Newsletter tab, along with your grade (we give you a mulligan for creating the list in the first place, so nobody starts at zero!). A completed task list looks like this:
The task(s) you need to do next will gently pulse until you do them. We prioritize identification and branding first, since these will immediately benefit your existing subscribers and give you the most value in terms of increased attention and engagement. Clicking on the icon, if it’s pulsing or enabled, takes you directly to the page you need without having to traverse the site’s navigation. Icons that are disabled will start to pulse when the appropriate pre-requisite tasks have been finished.
Once you’ve set up these, you can move on to importing, tweeting and quickly setting up a simple one-step “thank you” autoresponder, without having to work with the more powerful but more complex user interface in the Responders area. Each task typically takes no more than a minute or two to finish, although an import will have to complete before you can start a new one.
Richard Simpson
770-623-6341
http://www.atlantahomesaleshelp.com
http://www.helptoavoidmortgageforeclosure.com