Latest Forum CommentsTrace Richardson wrote on Jesse Erickson’s wire: 8 hours, 56 minutes ago
Jesse! Thanks for joining LeadPress. Please don’t hesitate if you have any questions, or if you decide to set up a blog …. Thanks again.
Trace
Jesse Erickson joined the group LeadPress User Group 14 hours, 55 minutes ago
Jesse Erickson and Trace Richardson are now friends 14 hours, 55 minutes ago
Trace Richardson wrote on Michael Eachus’s wire: 1 day, 4 hours ago
Michael: I appreciate you checking us out. Please don’t hesitate with any questions. We’ve got a lot of good stuff coming out in the coming months regarding blogging, lead generation, google, etc.
Trace
Trace Richardson wrote on rtraeger’s wire: 1 day, 4 hours ago
Hey Ryan! Thanks for checking us out, please let me know if you have any questions. We’re not officially launched, so in the coming month a lot of lead generation tutorials and tools will be released when finally launch….
Trace
Trace Richardson wrote on the wire of the group Real Estate Cougars 1 day, 5 hours ago
Yes, we’re serious. Sort of. Yes, I’m talking to myself.
Trace Richardson wrote on the wire of the group Real Estate Cougars 1 day, 5 hours ago
You can’t be serious, Real Estate cougars?
rtraeger joined the group LeadPress User Group 1 day, 6 hours ago
rtraeger and Trace Richardson are now friends 1 day, 6 hours ago
Trace Richardson created the forum topic Cougars in the group Real Estate Cougars: 1 day, 6 hours ago
This is the official Cougar thread!
LoanSifter offers “Advanced Product and Pricing Search for Mortgage Professionals”. LoanSifter helps mortgage professionals price their loans and saves the results for future reference. Once loans are in the pipeline, LoanSifter will continue to update users on changes in pricing as the mortgage market moves.
In addition to loan pricing:
Push Search Function enables you to [...]
LoanSifter offers “Advanced Product and Pricing Search for Mortgage Professionals”. LoanSifter helps mortgage professionals price their loans and saves the results for future reference. Once loans are in the pipeline, LoanSifter will continue to update users on changes in pricing as the mortgage market moves.
Leads360 is lead management software company that services the mortgage, debt, insurance, loan modification and education verticals. Their solution enables company to sync the Leads360 interface with many of the leading lead providers to provide efficient management and distribution of leads.
NYLX is a self described “Product Eligibility and Loan Pricing Engine”, or in short, a loan pricing tools for mortgage professionals. NYLX was originally the engine behind TheMoneyStore.com when the company decided that they could enter the loan pricing market and take market share with their existing tool.
LenderHomePage.com is a mortgage website design company that builds mortgage websites and offers mortgage marketing services. LenderHomePage offers a wide variety of template mortgage website styles.
Great news on the HVCC front. On June 25th, Representatives Childers (D-MS) and Miller (R-CA) introduced HR 3044, legislation that calls for an 18 month moratorium on HVCC.
There has been significant fallout from the enactment of HVCC including, higher costs for consumers, devastating loss of income for independent appraisers and increased loan turn times / fees. I can’t stress enough that for all the good intent, HVCC does more harm to the end consumer than good in the form of higher fees, longer turn times, and increased loan fees related to extending rate locks.
Not only would the passing of HR 3044 help refinance and purchase and turn times but would also help displaced appraisers that have been significantly harmed by the required AMC component of HVCC. Unfortunately many industry veterans have already left when HVCC was enacted as they were simply unable to continue making a living under the enforced AMC system. It isn’t out of the real of possibility that if HR 3044 was enacted that when it ends HVCC could be completely absolved or at least re-written.
Some signs are pointing to recent NAR pressure as being responsible for the creation of HR 3044. Unfortunately the NAR was completely silent about the ramifications of HVCC until after the fact. I wrote over a year ago about the lack of leadership exhibited by NAR President Richard Gaylord when he failed to mention a single bad element of that actually mattered in HVCC.
You can track HR 3044 here or view the NAMB Press Release.
We are happy to announce the FREE LeadPress RSS Real Estate Icon Collection! You can use these RSS Icons in your blog, website or wherever you choose! They are the perfect addition to your RSS feed subscription bar.
To download CLICK HERE or on the image below!
Google PR (PageRank) updates are under way again, just a month after the last update. Typically updates occur every 3 months or so making this update a bit out of the ordinary.
PageRank Forumla = PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))
Page Rank is an often misunderstood and misinterpreted part of the many signals and components that make up the Google ranking algorithm like. To keep things complicated, read this primer. To keep things simple, PageRank uses a logarithmic scale and is based primarily on incoming links. In plain speak, this means that if PR were on a point scale and moving from PR1 to PR2 took “10 Points”, then moving moving from PR2 to PR3 might take “200 points” and moving from PR3 to PR4 might take “1500 Points” and moving from PR4 to PR5 might take “9500 points”. I think you get the idea, while my points system is just nonsense I’ve made up, the point is that each move upwards in PR becomes exponentially harder. 
What does PageRank mean to you? Well for starters, PageRank does not guarantee high search engine rankings. PR is more of a qualitative measure of a site, but does not translate into directly higher rankings, although there is no reason why a site with high PR shouldn’t rank well also. Well it’s perfectly normal to get excited as you watch your PR grow. The truth is that I’ve had sites that I’ve put no effort in building links to become PR4. While PR5 is definitely respectable, I think PR6 is a real accomplishment and requires a real sustained effort, most blogs will never become a PR6. At the end of the day you can NEVER go wrong focusing on publishing high quality content that others find useful. If you do, people will link to you, you will rank well and eventually your PR will follow. PR is a lagging indicator, so don’t put the horse in front of the cart!
One thing is for sure, over the last couple of years it seems to me that PR3 is the new PR4. In other words, PR ranking has become harder to achieve.
A year or so ago, I wrote a petition called “Request For Careful Reconsideration of HVCC” when the implications of HVCC became clear to me. Although HVCC has been looming for quite some time, many are just now hearing about it recently since it was implemented on May 1st. In the last couple of weeks alone, the petition has gained roughly 5000 signatures. If you have not signed, PLEASE DO. Will the petition have any effect? I don’t know, but it can’t hurt. In fact, the true effects of HVCC are still playing out as we speak.
In an email to LeadPress, Douglas Bowes point out:
The HVCC causes the appraiser to have many reasons to appraise a property BELOW it’s true value - because…
- the appraiser is fearful of being kicked off the approved list because someone thought the value was too high.
- the appraiser is being paid less per appraisal, he has to do more appraisals… meaning not enough time will be given to justify a more accurate, higher value.
- So, far my experience has been ….appraisals are coming in about 10% less than the true value. ( 180k instead of true value of 200k).
- At a time when billions of dollars are being spent to allow as many refinances as possible, HVCC serves to actually DECREASE the # of refinances that are possible.
We were also contacted by Craig Butterfield, whom has been very active in raising awareness about HVCC. Craig pointed out this great CNBC video on HVCC and this article as well to us, they are worth a look.
Craig hand delivered the following letter to all 71 Congressional members on the banking/finance committee in DC last week.
I was there all week running through the Congressional halls with three other appraisers), I’ve also E mailed it to about 200 Appraisal board members in all 50 states, and spoke with perhaps 50 of them on the phone.
#################################
Dear Senators and Congress persons:
Please take a moment to review the attached information packet that relates to the new legislation that took effect May 1, 2009 regarding residential appraisals. We represent the more than 1,000,000 people whose livelihoods are being compromised by the passage of the new Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC).
I have a new Facebook page. I was torn about the best way to integrate business / work related friends and non work related friends in Facebook. I decided that the solution was to definitely NOT add work related friends and contacts to my personal page.
This would create a lot of pointless messages that my non work friends could care less about like mortgage lead generation, web development, social media, etc. and vice versa.
Friend Me Up on Facebook Here!
While your at it, are you following me on Twitter?
TraceRichardson.com is finally up! It may be a few weeks before it looks pretty in IE6 and a few other browsers… it’s at the bottom of the list right now…. I will cover more personal things there and things that don’t quite fit in with the theme of LeadPress.
Complete with my latest tweets at the top of the page and all of my latest social stream activities in the left hand column….. my social profiles live in the right column…..
Check out our pics and video from BarCamp LA. Good times hanging with some folks from the Yahoo team and Dustin Luther.
What do you think? Have any feedback?
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