Category: Personal Reflection

Five-Star Professional Awards…Two Years In A Row!

For the second year in a row, I have been featured in Sacramento Magazine as both a Five Star Mortgage Professional AND Five-Star Real Estate Agent (you can see the feature here, or pick up a current copy on newsstands). The Five Star program is the largest real estate award program in North America (you can read more about the program here), and very few people have won awards in multiple categories in multiple years like this.

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It is an honor to be honored with these awards, and they serve as reminders for how fortunate we are to have our awesome family of clients.  We sincerely thank you for your business, your referrals, your raving reviews, and for your efforts to help spread the news of our Five Star awards.  We share these awards with you!

That’s My Daughter In The Water

Most parents sent their kids back to school in recent weeks (in fact, today is National Back to School Day!), and with it came the common bittersweet feelings of watching your baby take one step closer to becoming all grown up.  Oddly enough, those feelings didn’t come for Mary and me last week when we dropped Maddison off for her first day of 1st grade.  Our daughter had already squeezed our hearts and made us wistful while out on the water earlier this month.  Let me share…with video too, of course!

In early August, Maddison came to us and said she wanted to try water skiing.  Mary and I kept our giddiness thinly veiled and then quickly darted off to Water Ski World to pick up a pair of training skis.  A few days later, we were off to the houseboat to work on this new challenge together.  When a kid learns to ski an adult sits in the water with them to help handle their skis, give instruction and keep them calm.  That was going to be my role so you see, I was going to be an invaluable piece to Maddison’s skiing success…or so I thought.

The experience hardly required my “expertise.”  She popped up on her second try and took off like a pro.  This left me alone in the middle of the lake, watching her image shrink into the horizon.  I could hear her excited shrieks and the cheers of her Mama, Cousins and Godparents in the boat. Suddenly it occurred to me that I was the farthest person from her skiing success.

As I was bobbing in the water alone with the caution flag and my thoughts, I realized that this was a classic parenting moment.  Being a parent is rarely about participating in your child’s exciting life moments alongside them.  When they are babies, they let you only by necessary proxy.  As they get older and take steps away from us, we see that our job is to the lay the foundation and hand them the tools to build their own successes.  We don’t get to rush out onto the football field with them at their first big football game or be a fly on the wall at their first real job.   As badly as we want to do those things, we instead get to do the gritty un-glamorous job of preparing them to take those defining moments head on with passion and confidence.

Maddison may not have needed Mary or I to learn to ski that day, but it turns out we’ve been creating the right environment for her to want to try for a while now.  Watching Maddison ski away from me suddenly became a very gratifying parenting moment.  Daddy had done his job of getting his baby ready and it was just time to watch her grasp the glory all on her own.

VIDEO POST! The Blue Waters Group, Office, & Grand Opening Event

Come see The Blue Waters Group, check out our office, and be our guest at our Grand Opening Event on June 7th, 2012. Check out full details and RSVP at www.TheBlueWatersGroup.com.

Also, visit us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Blue-Waters-Mortgage-and-Real-Estate-Group/…

You Helped Me Win a Prestigous Award

I wanted to celebrate with you an honor I recently received. In the February 2012 issue of Sacramento Magazine, I am recognized as a “Five-Star Professional” as both a mortgage consultant and real estate agent. Furthermore,I am the only professional in the entire Sacramento area to win the award in BOTH categories. Pretty cool!

THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
I have my clients and peers to thank for these distinguished awards. Without you I would never be in a position to be recognized as one of the industry’s best on such a large platform like Sacramento Magazine. First and foremost, your trust and support has enabled me to grow my business during a challenging real estate market. Secondly, your referrals and testimonials allow others to know about my services, thus bringing more and more people to my business. And lastly, some of you surely received the Five-Star surveys and must have raved about me. Thank you!

How I Was Selected
A recent, wide-spread survey was conducted by a research firm called Five Star Professional. They asked homeowners about their recent real estate transaction to identify real estate professionals at the top of their game. From the findings, the research recognizes less than 7% of the area professionals as “Five-Star” quality based on customer service, integrity, market knowledge, communication and negotiation skills, closing preparation, helping you find the right home, marketing the home being sold, and overall satisfaction (click here for more research details). 481 real estate professionals and 87 mortgage professionals were awarded throughout the region, but only 1 was recognized in both categories. I am overwhelmingly honored and humbled by your support through this exclusive accolade.

Spread The Word!
I am so fortunate to have a loyal family of clients who drive my business growth with their referrals. I hope the recognition as Sacramento’s only combined “Five-Star” mortgage and real estate professional gives you even more confidence to refer me to your friends, family, and colleagues for home buying, selling, and refinancing services. The good word is clearly getting out; please help to make sure it spreads like wildfire!

Thank you again for your emphatic support.

Getting in Tune with HARP 2.0

Many clients are very interested in how the improvements to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (I call it HARP 2.0) could help them, and rightfully so. The recent announcement is unprecedented, as it will allow many homeowners with loans backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac to refinance regardless of their loan-to-value ratio. There is much to be excited about for American homeowners that have toughed it out to keep their mortgage current despite being underwater on their home. HARP 2.0 has the potential to be the missing life-line that middle-class America has been looking for since the economy soured in 2008.

Keep in mind the HARP enhancements are not available yet, and it’s likely to take several weeks for banks to figure out how to implement them. In the meantime, you will hear “chatter” amongst friends, family, and other mortgage companies about the HARP improvements, and inevitably some of the hearsay will be incorrect. If you are interested in staying up-to-date with the latest, accurate HARP news, I ask you to get in touch with me. I will be devoted to sharing the real scoop in the coming weeks with those who are interested, and preparing my business to help as many folks as possible once the HARP improvements become available.

Also, please share this news with anyone you know who may benefit from a refinance in today’s tough economy. I am always honored and grateful for the confidence my clients place in me to care for their friends, family, and colleagues. Thank you in advance for your trust and referrals.

Could 30 Year Rates go to 3% or 3.5%?

I read this article this morning on Bloomberg. There are some officials that support further action from The Fed to push mortgage rates even lower. How low can they go? Enjoy the read!

(Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke can’t go it alone when it comes to reviving the U.S.housing market.

Fed policy makers, who start a two-day meeting today, are considering buying mortgage-backed securities to push down borrowing costs and help homeowners refinance their debt. That would reduce monthly payments, freeing up cash for other purchases that could spur the economy and reduce unemployment, Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo said Oct. 20.

Such an effort would save homeowners $60 billion to $80 billion a year, or about 0.5 percent of gross domestic product, so long as the Obama administration succeeds in helping homeowners through a stepped-up refinancing aid plan, said Joseph Gagnon, a former Fed economist. Should the program fail, Fed asset-buying would probably provide homeowners less than half its potential savings, said Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics inWashington.

“The Achilles’ heel of the Fed’s efforts so far has been that the monetary-policy transmission has not worked as they would like because of, in large part, the inability of consumers to get loans” for homes and other purchases, said Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies & Co. in New York.

Refinancing Program

(The Federal Housing Finance Agency said Oct. 24 it will let qualified homeowners refinance mortgages regardless of how much their houses have dropped in value, expanding terms of the 2009 Home Affordable Refinance Program, which has fallen 80 percent short of the goal of reaching 5 million borrowers. The FHFA estimates the changes will help generate about 900,000 refinanced loans by the end of 2013. If the alterations to the so-called HARP plan don’t spur refinancing, any Fed purchases of mortgage bonds would bring limited benefits, said McCarthy, a former Fed researcher.

(The Federal Open Market Committee, which has kept its benchmark interest rate near zero since December 2008, plans tomorrow to release a statement and economic projections from governors and regional Fed presidents. Bernanke is scheduled to hold a press conference at 2:15 p.m., his first since June and third since the Fed started the briefings in April.

(Central bank officials may not be ready this week to pull the trigger on more bond-buying because of an increase this year in core inflation, which excludes food and fuel costs, Gagnon said. Once policy makers see slowing price gains for another month or two, “they will then feel empowered, indeed driven,” to restart asset purchases, he said.

‘Top of the List’

(Tarullo, in a speech in New York last month, said additional mortgage-securities purchases should “move back up toward the top of the list of options” because “the aggregate -demand effect should be felt not just in new-home purchases, but also in the added purchasing power of existing homeowners who are able to refinance.” Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen said Oct. 21 that a third round of asset purchases “might become appropriate” if the economy’s state warranted additional stimulus.

(“I don’t know how you could embark on a program of buying agency mortgages thinking you’re going to stimulate more refinancing,” said Bryan Whalen, co-head of mortgage bonds at Los Angeles-based TCW Group Inc., which oversees $120 billion in assets. “It’s not a rate issue, it’s a qualification issue.”

(The average rate on a typical 30-year fixed mortgage fell to a record low 3.94 percent in October, from this year’s high of 5.05 percent, before climbing to 4.10 percent last week, according to Freddie Mac survey data. In September, the FOMC voted to reinvest proceeds from maturing housing debt into mortgage-backed securities, switching from Treasuries.

Record Easing

(New York Fed President William C. Dudley said Oct. 24 that removing “impediments” to the transmission of monetary stimulus would make the central bank’s record easing more effective. The FHFA’s plan to make it easier for borrowers with high loan-to-value ratios to refinance is “a step in the right direction,” he said, adding he hoped additional measures would follow.

(Bernanke said in congressional testimony last month that the Fed needs help from other branches of government to aid the economy. “Monetary policy can be a powerful tool, but it is not a panacea for the problems currently faced by theU.S.economy,” he told the Joint Economic Committee Oct. 4.

(Gagnon urged the central bank to target a 30-year mortgage rate of 3 percent to 3.5 percent by buying as much as $2 trillion of mortgage-backed securities. While boosting stocks and supporting property prices, Fed asset purchases may help create at least 3 million jobs, he said in an Oct. 24 blog titled “The Last Bullet.”

Out of Reach

(“The Fed could do stuff, and it would help, but there would be a lot of people who without HARP couldn’t take advantage of it,” Gagnon said in a telephone interview.

(Reduced home prices and tightened lending standards have slowed the pace of replacement home loans. The Mortgage Bankers Association forecast on Oct. 11 that refinancing this year would total $783 billion, down from $1.1 trillion last year, even amid lower interest rates. Refinancing peaked at a record $2.5 trillion in 2003.

(Stanford University Professor John Taylor, best known for the Taylor Rule formula that suggests how the Fed should set its benchmark interest rate, said more Fed purchases of mortgage bonds are unlikely to reduce loan rates.

(Another round of purchases wouldn’t cut rates “appreciably, and not really in any predictable way,” Taylor, an economic adviser to House Republican lawmakers, said in a phone interview.

‘Difficult to Detect’

(Taylor and one of his graduate students, Johannes Stroebel, wrote a paper arguing that “it is difficult to detect a significant effect” from Fed purchases of mortgage bonds totaling $1.25 trillion from January 2009 to March 2010.

(Gagnon, co-author of a Fed study that found the bond buying lowered borrowing costs and helped the economy, disputed Stroebel andTaylor’s findings, saying they focused on the impact of the actual purchases, rather than the announcement.

(A May 2011 Bank of Canada review of research into central bank bond-buying said the Fed’s MBS purchases “appear to have eased mortgage-market conditions.” At the same time, the Fed’s $600 billion, second round of bond purchases, undertaken from November 2010 through June of this year, probably had a “more modest” effect because of fewer “distortions” in financial markets and the economy at the time, the Canadian central bank’s researchers said.

(Without the administration program sparking more refinancing, Fed asset purchases won’t be of much help to the housing market, says Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities LLC inStamford,Connecticut, who opposes further bond-buying.

(“If the pipeline is stuck, then it doesn’t matter if mortgage rates are 4 percent, 3.5 percent or zero,” said Stanley, a former Richmond Fed researcher.

A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action Please!

On September 22nd, mortgage rates hit their lowest marks ever!  30 year fixed rates were BELOW 4%; shorter terms were even lower.  Naturally, one would assume that mortgage broker’s phones would be ringing off the hook the following week from people looking to refinance, right?  RIGHT?

As it turned out, refinance applications decreased 5.2% in the last week of September compared to the previous week (according to the Mortgage Banker’s Association).  What gives?  Why are applications going down when rates are this low?

In my opinion, many homeowners are simply not applying because programs are not available to them.  Our country’s lawmakers know this, and have been talking for months about how to solve the problem.  I believe the solution to be fairly straightforward; expand the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), a government-created refi program in 2009 that has been fairly successful since its inception (read my April 2009 post for more details about the program).  A growing group of Senators agree with this, and wrote a letter on October 11th to top officials encouraging such a policy improvement.  President Obama also concurs, as he recently noted in a speech to Congress that the average refinance would “put $2000/year in a family’s pocket.”  This savings, mind you, is more than double the amount of what the current Social Security payroll tax relief is saving average American families; clearly making refinances more widely available to homeowners without equity could be a powerful way to help families and our economy at large.  Let’s hope all this conversation turns into a little more action in the near future.  You can surely count on me to keep you informed of positive updates.

With that being said, however, please don’t assume you can’t qualify for a refinance.  If you haven’t pursued your refi options yet, please give me a call and I’d be happy to chat about your situation and what refinance options may be available to you.

Got Inspiration?

Back in December, I posted about how accountability can help you keep and achieve your goals.  Now that we’re three months into 2011 and the adrenaline of goal-setting season is over, how are you faring with your goals?  If you are staying focused on and reaching them without any difficulty, then you’re better than most.  But, if you are floundering with some of your goals (as I am), consider another piece of the puzzle you may be missing…inspiration.

Inspiration is like a beaming spot light for your goal.  Without it, we easily lose sight of our goal when we inevitably become distracted and disheartened.  But with it, we are constantly “illuminated” on why our goal is so important.  For example, a goal to lose 20 pounds by July 1st is a fine measurable goal, but one that is easy to lose sight of.  It needs some oomph, some pizzazz, some inspiration.  Consider this alternative…

When stating a goal, try adding “because” after the statement.  Such as, “I will lose 20 pounds by July 1st BECAUSE I want to have a healthier body and more energy to play with my grandkids.”  Combine that with pictures of you playing with your grandkids posted on your refrigerator and pantry door and now you’ve got a goal with lasting power; with inspiration!

Any ambition can become a goal.  And accountability can remind you of a goal.  But it is inspiration that helps you ultimately achieve that goal.  If you need to breathe a little life back into your 2011 goals, go back to your list, write “because” after each written goal and fill in the blank.  This simple extra step could be the difference between writing off your goals or conquering them.

Learn From Our Neighbors

I read an interesting article in the Sacramento Bee the other day about the health of Canada’s current banking and housing markets.  It was enlightening since most media has casted the recent economic collapse  as a global meltdown.  To the contrary, Canada avoided the housing depression that the United States is still wading through.  While more than 300 banks went belly up in the States in recent years, not a signle Canadian bank failed.  WOW!

Canadian banks were recently named the best in the World by the World Economic Forum. The U.S. should look north to learn from their achievements, and our mistakes.

I encourage you to read the artice (click here).  But, if you want the Cliff’s Notes, our neighbor’s economic stability in housing has been a result of their commitment to prudent, traditional underwriting.   A Canadian bank CEO was quoted saying “…we are in the business of making loans to people who will pay them back.”  How profound, right? 

Give it a read, and consider how we should always try to learn from our neighbors.  From fixing sprinklers to avoid economic crises, neighbors often face the same dilemmas with very different tactics.  When you don’t get it right, take notice and learn from the neighbor who did.

Got Accountability?

What do house cleaners and business coaches have in common?  For me, they both provide accountability, but in very different ways.  Let me share with you my thoughts on the matter, and how accountability will help you keep your goals in ‘11. 

Last night was our family’s ritual clean-up night.  We tidy up the house in preparation for our house cleaner’s bi-weekly Friday visits.  Seems crazy, right?  Clean up the house for the house cleaner?!?  Actually, it makes good sense.  While our house cleaner, Marcy, is a wonder and does more in hours than we can do in days, she can’t do it amongst clutter.  So, we get the house in order ahead of time so she can help keep our home cleaner than we ever could on our own.

In an indirect way, Marcy is a great accountability partner.  Before she comes, we clean the house so her time (and our money) is spent efficiently while she is there.  After she comes, the house is so sparkly that we want to keep it that way.  Marcy’s brief, hard work improves the cleanliness of our home even when she is not around because we want to stay accountable to her high-caliber work.

In a much more direct manner, I have an amazing business coach as a professional accountability partner.  Just like Marcy, I have an appointment with Brian every two weeks.  I know that in order to make the most of our time together I must have my “house in order” so we can spend time on the important tasks at hand.  For me, hiring help is not so much about having someone do it all for me, but rather help me achieve things at a greater level by keeping me accountable.

You don’t need to hire someone for accountability (although paying for help is a great accountability inducer).  A friend, co-worker, or spouse can be there for you, either directly calling you out (like my business coach) or indirectly inspiring you towards improvement (like a house cleaner).  Both approaches lead to effective accountability.

When you sit down to write (yes, write them down) your goals for 2011, think of who you can openly, honestly share them with and discuss them periodically through the year.  Anyone can make goals, but it takes accountability and inspiration to keep goals. 

Here’s to a happy rest of the holiday season and a wonderful New Year.  If you’d like to share your 2011 goals with me, I would love to receive them.  And don’t be surprised if I follow up with you every now and then and see how you’re coming along.  If you’re looking for that kind of accountability, then I look forward to hearing from you.