Doug Jones's (dougj) Blog

Credit Bureaus sell information of people applying for mortgage loans to banks and other lenders - without the customers consent or knowledge.The article below was put out yesterday by the National Association of Mortgage Brokers. This has been a "secret" in the mortgage industry. So many times w...

What does it take to become a 'great' Realtor?  To be an expert ? Let me mention first that I am not a 'great' Realtor - yet.  I never wanted to be a Realtor. Most of my working years have been as a lender and I did not grow up wanting to be a lender either. I only  wanted to make a living, enjoy...

The letter was not friendly. It said, "Pay us $5,000 and we won't sue you."The letter was from a law firm in Los Angeles and the attorney represented an artist who artwork we used in a blog. The letter explained that we had used the artwork with out the permission of the artist.We got the artwork...

Over the weekend I met with a Contractor to go over items for a home that needed preparation for re-sale. The owner met us at the home and we spent over an hour reviewing things to be repaired or upgraded. After a while the owner had to leave and asked me to close up. We continued going over diff...

This morning I am hating loan rules. It is perhaps once every 10 years that I use the word 'hate' and maybe there is a better word but driving in this morning it hit me that I really do 'hate' so many loan rules.Before the financial meltdown I would tell so many applicants to throw out common sen...

This article was posted a year ago under a different name. The reason I am re-posting is because one of my agents asked what to do to get re-started and this can be an answer. But there is another reason I remember from  the book the author asked "How do you know when you have done enough"? (enou...

I walked into my office this morning and my red message light on the telephone was blinking. I listened to the message and it was a wholesale loan representative from a bank in southern California encouraging me to send business to her company.She calls me pretty much every day which shows persev...

When I taught sales we used a 5 step procedure to always know where we were in the selling process: Attention, Interest, Conviction, Desire, and Close. Over the years the words changed but the ideas remained the same. The word 'desire' changed to 'motivation' but the flow of the formula worked th...

One thing I always liked about real estate is that we were taught to be "color blind".  We do not red line, block bust, or steer.  From all my studies we are to simply treat everyone with respect, professionalism, and to follow the Golden Rule.In loans I wonder not about the mortgage lenders or t...

There is a lot of concern in California about the new mortgage interest write off limits. For loans in place prior to the tax law change those mortgages still fall under the old limits. I posted a video yesterday regarding the reduction from $1,000,000 to $750,000 and immediately got questions ab...